children afterwards
on the lawn at the back of the lawyer's house, and a battle-royal that
he had with a brother tontiner who had kicked his shins. The sound of
war called forth the lawyer from where he was dispensing cake and wine
to the assembled parents in the office, and the combatants were
separated, and Joseph's spirit (for he was the smaller of the two)
commended by the gentleman in the Wellington boots, who vowed he had
been just such another at the same age. Joseph wondered to himself if he
had worn at that time little Wellingtons and a little bald head, and
when, in bed at night, he grew tired of telling himself stories of
sea-fights, he used to dress himself up as the old gentleman, and
entertain other little boys and girls with cake and wine.

In the year 1840 the thirty-seven were all alive; in 1850 their number
had decreased by six; in 1856 and 1857 business was more lively, for the
Crimea and the Mutiny carried off no less than nine. There remained in
1870 but five of the original members, and at the date of my story,
including the two Finsburys, but three.

By this time Masterman was in his seventy-third year; he had long
complained of the effects of age, had long since retired from business,
and now lived in absolute seclusion under the roof of his son Michael,
the well-known solicitor. Joseph, on the other hand, was still up and
about, and still presented but a semi-venerable figure on the streets
in which he loved to wander. This was the more to be deplored because
Masterman had led (even to the least particular) a model British life.
Industry, regularity, respectability, and a preference for the four per
cents. are understood to be the very foundations of a green old age. All
these Masterman had eminently displayed, and here he was, _ab agendo_,
at seventy-three; while Joseph, barely two years younger, and in the
most excellent preservation, had disgraced himself through life by
idleness and eccentricity. Embarked in the leather trade, he had early
wearied of business, for which he was supposed to have small parts. A
taste for general information, not promptly checked, had soon begun to
sap his manhood. There is no passion more debilitating to the mind,
unless, perhaps, it be that itch of public speaking which it not
infrequently accompanies or begets. The two were conjoined in the case
of Joseph; the acute stage of this double malady, that in which the
patient delivers gratuitous lectures, soon de