Reverence
endeavoured to persuade the young man to remain in England, and even
went so far as to promise his influence to obtain him preferment. But
Mr. Carvel chose rather (wisely or not, who can judge?) to come back to
Carvel Hall and to the lands of which he was to be master, and to play
the country squire and provincial magnate rather than follow the varying
fortunes of a political party at home. And he was a man much looked up
to in the province before the Revolution, and sat at the council board of
his Excellency the Governor, as his father had done before him, and
represented the crown in more matters than one when the French and
savages were upon our frontiers.

Although a lover of good cheer, Mr. Carvel was never intemperate. To the
end of his days he enjoyed his bottle after dinner, nay, could scarce get
along without it; and mixed a punch or a posset as well as any in our
colony. He chose a good London-brewed ale or porter, and his ships
brought Madeira from that island by the pipe, and sack from Spain and
Portugal, and red wine from France when there was peace. And puncheons
of rum from Jamaica and the Indies for his people, holding that no
gentleman ever drank rum in the raw, though fairly supportable as punch.

Mr. Carvel's house stands in Marlborough Street, a dreary mansion enough.
Praised be Heaven that those who inherit it are not obliged to live there
on the memory of what was in days gone by. The heavy green shutters are
closed; the high steps, though stoutly built, are shaky after these years
of disuse; the host of faithful servants who kept its state are nearly
all laid side by side at Carvel Hall. Harvey and Chess and Scipio are no
more. The kitchen, whither a boyish hunger oft directed my eyes at
twilight, shines not with the welcoming gleam of yore. Chess no longer
prepares the dainties which astonished Mr. Carvel's guests, and which he
alone could cook. The coach still stands in the stables where Harvey
left it, a lumbering relic of those lumbering times when methinks there
was more of goodwill and less of haste in the world. The great brass
knocker, once resplendent from Scipio's careful hand, no longer
fantastically reflects the guest as he beats his tattoo, and Mr. Peale's
portrait of my grandfather is gone from the dining-room wall, adorning,
as you know, our own drawing-room at Calvert House.

I shut my eyes, and there comes to me unbidden that dining-room in
Marlborough Street of a gra