s
integrity in the whole affair; and although I am aware that a writer who
has so many wonders to relate, as must of necessity adorn the succeeding
pages of this manuscript, should observe a guarded discretion in drawing
on the credulity of his readers, truth compels me to add, that every
farthing of the money was duly invested with a single eye to the wishes
of the dying Christian, who, under Providence, had been the means of
bestowing so much gold on the poor and unlettered. As to the manner in
which the charity was finally improved, I shall say nothing, since no
inquiry on my part has ever enabled me to obtain such information as
would justify my speaking with authority.

As for myself, I shall have little more to add touching the events of
the succeeding twenty years. I was baptized, nursed, breeched, schooled,
horsed, confirmed, sent to the university, and graduated, much as
befalls all gentlemen of the established church in the united kingdoms
of Great Britain and Ireland, or, in other words, of the land of my
ancestor. During these pregnant years, Dr. Etherington acquitted himself
of a duty that, judging by a very predominant feeling of human nature
(which, singularly enough, renders us uniformly averse to being troubled
with other people's affairs), I think he must have found sufficiently
vexatious, quite as well as my good mother had any right to expect. Most
of my vacations were spent at his rectory; for he had first married,
then become a father, next a widower, and had exchanged his town living
for one in the country, between the periods of my mother's death and
that on my going to Eton; and, after I quitted Oxford, much more of my
time was passed beneath his friendly roof than beneath that of my own
parent. Indeed, I saw little of the latter. He paid my bills, furnished
me with pocket-money, and professed an intention to let me travel after
I should reach my majority. But, satisfied with these proofs of paternal
care, he appeared willing to let me pursue my own course very much in my
own way.

My ancestor was an eloquent example of the truth of that political dogma
which teaches the efficacy of the division of labor. No manufacturer of
the head of a pin ever attained greater dexterity in his single-minded
vocation than was reached by my father in the one pursuit to which he
devoted, as far as human ken could reach, both soul and body. As any
sense is known to increase in acuteness by constant exercise, or