an immense fortune he might have realized, had
not death cut short his speculations at an early period of his life.

He had married uncle Drury's only daughter, a few years after he became
partner in the firm, by whom he had two sons, Edward and Robert, to
both of whom he bequeathed an excellent property.

Edward, the eldest, my father, had been educated to fill the mercantile
situation, now vacant by its proprietor's death, which was an ample
fortune in itself, if conducted with prudence and regularity.

Robert had been early placed in the office of a lawyer of eminence, and
was considered a youth of great talents and promise. Their mother had
been dead for some years, and of her little is known in the annals of
the family. When speculating upon the subject, I have imagined her to
have been a plain, quiet, matter-of-fact body, who never did or said
anything worth recording.

When a man's position in life is marked out for him by others, and he
is left no voice in the matter, in nine cases out of ten, he is totally
unfitted by nature and inclination for the post he is called to fill.
So it was with my father, Edward Moncton. A person less adapted to fill
an important place in the mercantile world, could scarcely have been
found. He had a genius for spending, not for making money; and was so
easy and credulous that any artful villain might dupe him out of it.
Had he been heir to the title and the old family estates, he would have
made a first rate country gentleman; for he possessed a fine manly
person, was frank and generous, and excelled in all athletic sports.

My Uncle Robert was the very reverse of my father--stern, shrewd, and
secretive; no one could see more of his mind than he was willing to
show; and, like my grandfather, he had a great love for money, and a
natural talent for acquiring it. An old servant of my grandfather's,
Nicholas Banks, used jocosely to say of him: "Had Master Robert been
born a beggar, he would have converted his ragged wrap-rascal into a
velvet gown. The art of making money was born in him."

Uncle Robert was very successful in his profession; and such is the
respect that men of common minds pay to wealth for its own sake, that
my uncle was as much courted by persons of his class, as if he had
been Lord Chancellor of England. He was called the _honest lawyer_:
wherefore, I never could determine, except that he was the _rich_
lawyer; and people could not imagine that the envied posse