THE FOX IN THE WELL.

(ESOP ILLUSTRATED.)

BY THE AUTHOR OF "PETER PRIGGINS," &c.

Res angusta domi.-HORACE.

FABLE VIII.

"A FOX," says Esop, "having fallen into a well, made a shift by sticking his claws into the sides, to keep his head above water. Soon after, a wolf came and peeped over the brink, to whom the fox applied very earnestly for assistance, entreating him that he would help him to a rope or something of that kind, which might favour his escape. The wolf moved with compassion at his misfortune, could not forbear expressing his concern. Ah! poor reynard,' says he, 'I am sorry for you with all my heart; how could you possibly come into this melancholy condition? Nay, prithee, friend,' replied the fox, if you wish me well, do not stand pitying of me, but lend me some succour as fast as you can: for pity is but cold comfort when one is up to the chin in water, and within a hair's breadth of starving or drowning."

THE ILLUSTRATION.

СНАР. І.

"BOUVERIE COOPER, you know what to-morrow will be?" said a tall, middle-aged gentleman, addressing his son.

"I should rather fancy I did." replied the boy, a youth who had seen some seventeen summers. "It is my birthday.'

"Will be-will be-to speak correctly. Never use the present tense when speaking of the future," said the father.

"Twaddle!" said the boy, but not loud enough to be heard by his father. "Well, to-morrow will be your birthday—I have a treat in store for you-I am going to-"

"Stand a gold watch, chain and seals, I hope; for my old silver hunter is declared to be decidedly snobbish. There is not another sixth-form boy in the school that does not sport a gold ticker, I can tell you."

"If you gain a prize this half, you shall have a gold watch as a reward; but I was about to say, that in addition to your relations, who are always expected here to keep your natal day, I have invited a friend -a schoolfellow to join the party."

"Who is it? is it Lord Jinks? because if he is invited, you must come out a little with turtle, venison-and all that sort of thing or else he'll go back to Westminster and take away your character," said the boy.

"I flatter myself that we live as well as Lord Jinks, or any other lord," said the father, proudly; "but the lad whom I have invited is a commoner."

"What is his cog, sir?"

"His what, boy?" inquired the amazed father.

"His cognomen-his surname-thought you knew what cog, meant," replied the boy.

"Richardson Byshe is the name of the youth."

"Byshe! why his father's only a grocer!" said Master Bouverie Cooper, looking deeply disgusted.

"Nonsense, boy, his father is a merchant, a highly respectable man, said to be worth a hundred thousand at least. I dined with him yesterday at the Crown and Anchor, where he took the chair, and did the duties most admirably."

"All I can say is, that I heard Byshe say that his governor had forked in ten thousand by a speculation-a hit I think he called it-in coffees, and none but grocers deal in that article," said the boy.

"Nonsense, I say, sir; but we will not argue the point. I have invited the young man, and I expect you will treat him properly, and cultivate his friendship. He may be of essential service to you hereafter. His father has large estates lying contiguous to the borough of Bloomby, and I wish to see my son, my only son, in parliament before I die. You understand me, Bouverie ?"

"I think I do," said the boy, "and as it is rather a crack thing, and very convenient, I am told, to write M.P. after your name, I don't feel myself justified in opposing your wishes."

"Amiable youth! Come here and let me kiss you, Bouverie," said his mother, who had been silently listening to the foregoing dialogue. "I always said you would turn out well-your views are so correct!

Be assured that

your father should not have obtained my consent to young Byshe's being invited here if I had not thought it would prove advantageous to you."

The youth received this speech without the least sign of pleasure, and having allowed his mother to salute him, hinted a determination to take a turn or two in the park.

"Before you go, Bouverie, allow me to thank you for having so readily yielded to my wishes. Byshe is a highly respectable man-I speak of the father-although he is in trade. His son will, I doubt not, be brought up to one of the liberal professions, so that you can associate with him without fear of losing caste. I am really obliged to you," said the senior, shaking his son's hand.

"Then perhaps you will turn that little idea of the gold watch and appendages over in your mind," said the boy.

66

Certainly, my love," said the lady, "go and enjoy your ride, and leave me to talk to father on the subject."

your

Bouverie smiled, for he knew that his wishes would be accomplished. He nodded to his parents, and left the room.

"Cooper, you must buy that amiable youth a watch; he really deserves it for his condescension in admitting young Richardson Byshe among the number of his friends," said the lady. "He has been brought up with such very different notions, that I really wonder at his submitting so quietly as he has done to your suggestions."

"Mrs. Cooper, my love, I accord fully with you in your notions of our son's excessive good taste in complying with my wishes. He is really a model of a boy, and I think we may venture to hope that he will realise all the expectations that we have formed of him; but as to the watch, that is another matter. I could never dream of presenting Bouverie with an inferior article; he would, and very properly too, reject it

with disdain; and upon my word, my love, I cannot afford just at present to go to any great amount in a purchase of that kind. My account at my banker's is so greatly overdrawn, that-you would hardly believe itI was ushered into a d-d little back-parlour the other day, and expostulated with I was, by heaven!"

"How excessively wrong!" said the lady; "but you need not pay for the little birthday present for a year or two."

"That is very true; but somehow these year or twos, as you call them, come round so dreadfully quick, that, hang me, if I am ready with the stumpy-excuse the term-when the artisan reminds me of the fact."

"Well, just for once, as Bouverie has really behaved very creditably, you must stretch a point; the watchmaker will readily-”

"Do as his watches do-you would say, my love!-go tick," said the gentleman.

Mrs. Cooper laughed immoderately at her husband's joke, and so pleased was he at the way in which his pun, old as watches themselves, had been appreciated by her, that he sallied out with a full determination of displaying his taste and liberality in the purchase of a watch that should cause his son to be envied by all his brother Westminsters.

Mrs. Cooper, having gained her object, ceased laughing as soon as her husband had left the room, and remarking to herself, “How very easily people are gulled by a little well-placed flattery," curled herself up on the cushions of a luxurious sofa, and went to sleep.

СНАР. ІІ.

"BUT who was or is Mr. Cooper?" asks the curious reader. I feel myself bound to explain.

Mr. Cooper was a man of family-of an old family—indeed, of a family so old, as Theodore Hook used to say, that it was nearly worn out with age. Mrs. Cooper-a Bouverie of Bouverie-was also a scion of a very old family, and when they were united in the bonds of hymen, their joint fortunes did not amount to more than a thousand per annum. But then both the Coopers and the Bouveries had great interest in high quarters, and not one of their friends entertained a doubt of their obtaining something or another from the government of the day, which would make a pretty little addition to their little income. Nor were they disappointed-that is, altogether—for although Cooper did not get the appointment of first Lord of the Treasury, or even the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, he did get a stick either of gold or silver, white or black, to which some 500l. per annum was attached as a compensation to the person who bore it, for the great trouble of carrying so weighty

an article.

Fortunately for the Coopers, their marriage was productive of one child only; but, although they were not compelled to leave their little quiet house in Harley-street, which just afforded a spare room for a nursery, yet they lived at a rate-how could they help it when it was so necessary to keep up their standing in society?-which always kept Cooper in hot water. He scrambled on, however, and built his hopes upon his only son, for whose education and advancement in life he grudged no expence, and often pinched himself to enable the boy to "do as others did" in the aristocratic regions of Westminster.

His plan-a plan that he had laid down the very day Bouverie was

born-was to educate his son for the bar-push him along by using all the interest he was or might be possessed of, get him into parliament at an early age, and marry him to the daughter of some great man, possessed either of money or government patronage. In these plans he was backed by his wife, who, though indolent and careless in other matters, never did any thing-never "made a move," as she called it, without reference to the future advancement of her son. She cultivated the friendship of successive Lord Chancellors' ladies, and made a point of being introduced to the wife of every newly appointed judge. She did not trouble herself to do the amiable to attorneys and solicitors, as she thought there would be time enough for that when her Bouverie was in a position to receive a brief.

"And who was Richardson Byshe?" asks the same curious reader. I feel bound to explain this also.

He was the son of a highly respectable merchant, who had worked his way from the lowest desk to the top of "the house" in the city. He was an industrious, plodding man-not possessed of one grain of ambition-but then he had a wife who was possessed of some tons of that article, and who insisted upon her eldest son being sent to a public school, and brought up as a gentleman.

"You can afford it, Byshe," she would say to her husband, "and Richardson shall never disgrace himself by sitting on a counting-house stool."

Old Byshe thought there was no disgrace in it, but he was a quiet man, and did not say so. He went on adding house to house, and field to field, as his profits enabled him to do so, and left his eldest son to the whole and sole management of his mother.

When he was introduced to Cooper at the public dinner given at the Crown and Anchor, to which allusion has already been made, he did not know him from any other of Adam's posterity; but when he found him particularly attentive to him-for Cooper knew him well by public report —and received an invitation for his son to dine with Bouverie Cooper in Harley-street, he was grateful for the attention paid to him, modestly accepted the invitation, but was not in the least aware of the value of it, as an introduction for his boy into a select set, until he had mentioned the fact to his lady. Mrs. Byshe was so rejoiced, that she actually kissed her husband, and told him that he had shown more tact than she had given him credit for, and had opened a door to his son which would give him admission into the highest circles, as he might see every day in the columns of the fashionable morning paper, where Mrs. Cooper's name was to be found either as the giver of a party, or among the list of the guests at some first-rate meeting for feasting, or concerting, or balling. Cooper, senior, was delighted to think that he had pleased his wife for

once.

“Richardson, my dear boy," said Mrs. Byshe to her son, "your father has really done a good thing."

"Made a hit in coffees again?" inquired the boy.

"Now do not be so mercantile in your notions, unless you wish to kill me before my natural time," said his mother.

"Well, then he has bought more land in the neighbourhood of Bloomby.

"He has not done any thing of the kind, but he has-how, I can hardly

tell, for he is not communicative-he has-now do listen, for it is really astonishing-he has actually procured an invitation for you to dine with the Coopers," said mamma.

"The whos?" asked the boy.

"The Coopers of Harley-street, you fool."

"Who are they?" asked her son, as innocently as a baby.

"You must know Bouverie Cooper, your schoolfellow, the son of Mr. Cooper, who is an acknowledged fashionable. Don't pretend, now don't, Richardson, not to know Bouverie Cooper," said Mrs. Byshe, looking stilettoes at her son.

“Oh, I know him of course, as a Westminster, but he is not in my set. He's as poor as a church mouse, and as proud as a peacock-nothing less than a baronet's son will do for him," said Richardson.

I really wish you would not use such very vulgar similes; but, never mind, to-morrow is young Cooper's birthday, and you are invited to their house to dinner. You will meet people worth knowing, so do your best to cultivate their acquaintance."

"I don't think I shall go," said Richardson Byshe. "When we were down at Battersea the other day, at the rowing match, Cooper would not join us at porter--he even called us snobs, and that I don't like.”

"I hate all sort of old sayings-they are vulgar," said Mrs. Byshe, "but I must use one upon this occasion, and request you to 'let bygones be bygones;' rely upon it, you will not regret it hereafter."

"Now, what sort of a young gentleman was this Master Richardson Byshe?" inquires my curious reader.

Of course I feel myself bound to explain.

Richardson Byshe was a lad who had a very liberal allowance of pocket-money from his father and mother, and had not the least notion of spending it as a young gentleman should do. He knew his father's history, and felt convinced in what little mind he had, that money, and money only, was the cause of his father's being looked upon as a gentleman. As soon as this conviction came home to him, he resolved to emulate his father's virtues, as far as the acquisition of money went. Instead, therefore, of spending his pocket-money upon the follies in which his brother Westminsters indulged, he bought up trinkets, books, and pictures, and kindly parted with them. to his schoolfellows when they consented to pay him some 25 per cent. above the amount for which he had purchased them. He also did a little business in the way of money-lending, but it was generally confined to his juniors in the school, because he was afraid of trusting a senior, who could lick him—such, ladies is the correct phrase at Westminster-for fear he should not be repaid, except in such an allowance as monkeys are said to obtain. He was cut by most of the boys, who looked upon him, as what they term, "a

snob and no mistake.'

As to scholarship, Richardson Byshe could boast of none, yet he often got a prize. How this was effected, nobody knew except the few that were in the secret, who could, if they had dared to do so, have explained how many lines of Greek or Latin verses were sold by the clever juniors for a sovereign.

With the masters Byshe was a favourite. "He was so very correct in his conduct, and so very respectful in his manners." He was a patternboy, in fact, as most hypocrites are.

Now Bouverie Cooper was the reverse of all this. He was very clever,