reciting an
epitaph which for once did not tell any falsehoods.

CHAPTER IV. In which Harry finds a New Relative

Kind friends, neighbours hospitable, cordial, even respectful,--an
ancient name, a large estate and a sufficient fortune, a comfortable
home, supplied with all the necessaries and many of the luxuries
of life, and a troop of servants, black and white, eager to do your
bidding; good health, affectionate children, and, let us humbly add, a
good cook, cellar, and library--ought not a person in the possession of
all these benefits to be considered very decently happy? Madam Esmond
Warrington possessed all these causes for happiness; she reminded
herself of them daily in her morning and evening prayers. She was
scrupulous in her devotions, good to the poor, never knowingly did
anybody a wrong. Yonder I fancy her enthroned in her principality of
Castlewood, the country gentlefolks paying her court, the sons dutiful
to her, the domestics tumbling over each other's black heels to do her
bidding, the poor whites grateful for her bounty and implicitly taking
her doses when they were ill, the smaller gentry always acquiescing in
her remarks, and for ever letting her win at backgammon--well, with all
these benefits, which are more sure than fate allots to most mortals, I
don't think the little Princess Pocahontas, as she was called, was to
be envied in the midst of her dominions. The Princess's husband, who
was cut off in early life, was as well perhaps out of the way. Had
he survived his marriage by many years, they would have quarrelled
fiercely, or, he would infallibly have been a henpecked husband, of
which sort there were a few specimens still extant a hundred years ago.
The truth is, little Madam Esmond never came near man or woman, but she
tried to domineer over them. If people obeyed, she was their very good
friend; if they resisted, she fought and fought until she or they gave
in. We are all miserable sinners that's a fact we acknowledge in public
every Sunday--no one announced it in a more clear resolute voice than
the little lady. As a mortal, she may have been in the wrong, of course;
only she very seldom acknowledged the circumstance to herself, and to
others never. Her father, in his old age, used to watch her freaks of
despotism, haughtiness, and stubbornness, and amuse himself with them.
She felt that his eye was upon her; his humour, of which quality she
possessed little herself, subdued and be