, and at twenty-five
he found that the Stock Exchange was the mart in the world for such
talents and energies as he possessed. What was the nature of his
failure during the year that he went into the city, was known only to
himself and his father,--unless Ferdinand Lopez knew something of it
also. But at six-and-twenty the Stock Exchange was also abandoned;
and now, at eight-and-twenty, Everett Wharton had discovered that a
parliamentary career was that for which nature and his special genius
had intended him. He had probably suggested this to his father, and
had met with some cold rebuff.

Everett Wharton was a good-looking, manly fellow, six feet high, with
broad shoulders, with light hair, wearing a large silky bushy beard,
which made him look older than his years, who neither by his speech
nor by his appearance would ever be taken for a fool, but who showed
by the very actions of his body as well as by the play of his face,
that he lacked firmness of purpose. He certainly was no fool. He had
read much, and, though he generally forgot what he read, there were
left with him from his readings certain nebulous lights, begotten by
other men's thinking, which enabled him to talk on most subjects. It
cannot be said of him that he did much thinking for himself;--but
he thought that he thought. He believed of himself that he had gone
rather deep into politics, and that he was entitled to call many
statesmen asses because they did not see the things which he saw.
He had the great question of labour, and all that refers to unions,
strikes, and lock-outs, quite at his fingers' ends. He knew how the
Church of England should be disestablished and recomposed. He was
quite clear on questions of finance, and saw to a "t" how progress
should be made towards communism, so that no violence should disturb
that progress, and that in the due course of centuries all desire
for personal property should be conquered and annihilated by a
philanthropy so general as hardly to be accounted a virtue. In the
meantime he could never contrive to pay his tailor's bill regularly
out of the allowance of L400 a year which his father made him, and
was always dreaming of the comforts of a handsome income.

He was a popular man certainly,--very popular with women, to whom
he was always courteous, and generally liked by men, to whom he was
genial and good-natured. Though he was not himself aware of the fact,
he was very dear to his father, who in his own