with its touching
peroration. My mother hung down her pretty head and looked ashamed. My
uncle retreated quite into the corner and drew the dumb-waiter after
him, so as to establish a complete fortification. Mr. Squills seized the
pen that Roland had thrown down, and began mending it furiously,--that
is, cutting it into slivers,--thereby denoting, symbolically, how he
would like to do with Uncle Jack, could he once get him safe and snug
under his manipular operations. I bent over the pedigree, and my father
rubbed his spectacles.

The silence would have been appalling to another man nothing appalled
Uncle Jack.

Uncle Jack turned to the fire, and warmed first one foot, then the
other. This comfortable ceremony performed, he again faced the
company, and resumed, musingly, and as if answering some imaginary
observations,--

"Yes, yes, you are right there; and a deuced unlucky speculation it
proved too. But I was overruled by that fellow Peck. Says I to him, says
I, 'Capitalist!--pshaw! no popular interest there; it don't address
the great public! Very confined class the capitalists, better
throw ourselves boldly on the people. Yes,' said I, 'call it the
"Anti-Capitalist."' By Jove! sir, we should have carried all before us!
but I was overruled. The 'Anti-Capitalist'!--what an idea! Address
the whole reading world, there, sir: everybody hates the
capitalist--everybody would have his neighbor's money. The
'Anti-Capitalist'!--sir, we should have gone off, in the manufacturing
towns, like wildfire. But what could I do?--"

"John Tibbets," said my father, solemnly, "Capitalist 'or'
Anti-Capitalist,' thou hadst a right to follow thine own bent in
either,--but always provided it had been with thine own money. Thou
seest not the thing, John Tibbets, in the right point of view; and a
little repentance in the face of those thou hast wronged, would not have
misbecome thy father's son and thy sister's brother!"

Never had so severe a rebuke issued from the mild lips of Austin Caxton;
and I raised my eyes with a compassionate thrill, expecting to see John
Tibbets gradually sink and disappear through the carpet.

"Repentance!" cried Uncle Jack, bounding up as if ha had been shot. "And
do you think I have a heart of stone, of pumice-stone? Do you think I
don't repent? I have done nothing but repent; I shall repent to my dying
day."

"Then there is no more to be said, Jack," cried my father, softening,
and holding out his hand