r, my son:
'tis day-light, though you look at it through a bed-curtain, and think
you are half-dreaming. Now then for me, Richie.'

My father went on in this wise excitedly:

'I was laying the foundation of your fortune here, my boy. Heavens! when
I was in that bronze shell I was astonished only at my continence in not
bursting. You have grown,--you have shot up and filled out. I register my
thanks to your grandfather Beltham; the same, in a minor degree, to
Captain Jasper Welsh. Between that man Rippenger and me there shall be
dealings. He flogged you: let that pass. He exposed you to the contempt
of your school-fellows because of a breach in my correspondence with a
base-born ferule-swinger. What are we coming to? Richie, my son, I was
building a future for you here. And Colonel Goodwin-Colonel Goodwin, you
encountered him too, and his marriageable daughter--I owe it to them that
I have you here! Well, in the event of my sitting out the period this
morning as the presentment of Prince Albrecht, I was to have won
something would have astonished that unimpressionable countryman of ours.
Goodness gracious, my boy! when I heard your English shout, it went to my
marrow. Could they expect me to look down on my own flesh and blood, on
my son--my son Richmond--after a separation of years, and continue a
statue? Nay, I followed my paternal impulse. Grant that the show was
spoilt, does the Markgrafin insist on my having a bronze heart to carry
on her pastime? Why, naturally, I deplore a failure, let the cause be
what it will. Whose regrets can eclipse those of the principal actor?
Quotha! as our old Plays have it. Regrets? Did I not for fifteen minutes
and more of mortal time sit in view of a multitude, motionless, I ask
you, like a chiselled block of stone,--and the compact was one quarter of
an hour, and no farther? That was my stipulation. I told her--I can hold
out one quarter of an hour: I pledged myself to it. Who, then, is to
blame? I was exposed to view twenty-three minutes, odd seconds. Is there
not some ancient story of a monstrous wretch baked in his own bull? My
situation was as bad. If I recollect aright, he could roar; no such
relief was allowed to me. And I give you my word, Richie, lads both, that
while that most infernal Count Fretzel was pouring forth his execrable
humdrum, I positively envied the privilege of an old palsied fellow,
chief boatman of the forest lake, for, thinks I, hang him! he can nod his
hea