text:  The time has been when--according to Washington Irving and other veracious historians--a young man had no sooner got into difficulties than a guardian angel appeared to him in a dream with the information that at such and such a bridge or under such and such a tree he might find at a slight expenditure of labour a gallipot secured with bladder and filled with glittering tomauns; or in the extremity of despair the youth had only to append himself to a cord and straightaway the other end thereof forsaking its staple in the roof would disclose amidst the fractured ceiling the glories of a profitable pose