That Bristol merchant in “Waste Not, Want Not,”[151] who invited his two nephews to stay with him, in order to decide which of them he should adopt, bears more than a chance resemblance to Mr. Day. If the two boys had been girls, the story might have been his own; but in literature, as in life, Mr. Day was prone to digress; he never could have followed the relentless order of events from the untying of the two parcels by Hal and Benjamin (the Merton and Sandford of this drama) to its logical result. There is a cumulative fatality about this which puts it beyond question.