n to each other, and, thanks to the liberality of his late
master's will in more ways than one, a long minority, and the industry
of the ci-devant head shopman, the nuptial benediction was no sooner
pronounced, than our family stepped into the undisputed possession of
four hundred thousand pounds. One less scrupulous on the subject of
religion and the law, might not have thought it necessary to give the
orphan heiress a settlement so satisfactory, at the termination of her
wardship.

I was the fifth of the children who were the fruits of this union, and
the only one of them all that passed the first year of its life. My poor
mother did not survive my birth, and I can only record her qualities
through the medium of that great agent in the archives of the family,
tradition. By all that I have heard, she must have been a meek, quiet,
domestic woman; who, by temperament and attainments, was admirably
qualified to second the prudent plans of my father for her welfare. If
she had causes of complaint, (and that she had, there is too much reason
to think, for who has ever escaped them?) they were concealed, with
female fidelity, in the sacred repository of her own heart; and if
truant imagination sometimes dimly drew an outline of married happiness
different from the fact that stood in dull reality before her eyes, the
picture was merely commented on by a sigh, and consigned to a cabinet
whose key none ever touched but herself, and she seldom.

Of this subdued and unobtrusive sorrow, for I fear it sometimes reached
that intensity of feeling, my excellent and indefatigable ancestor
appeared to have no suspicion. He pursued his ordinary occupations with
his ordinary single-minded devotion, and the last thing that would have
crossed his brain was the suspicion that he had not punctiliously done
his duty by his ward. Had he acted otherwise, none surely would have
suffered more by his delinquency than her husband, and none would have
a better right to complain. Now, as her husband never dreamt of making
such an accusation, it is not at all surprising that my ancestor
remained in ignorance of his wife's feelings at the hour of his death.

It has been said that the opinions of the successor of the fancy-dealer
underwent some essential changes between the ages of ten and forty.
After he had reached his twenty-second year, or, in other words, the
moment he began to earn money for himself, as well as for his master,
he ceased to cry "W