but about
their fight there can be no question. Wherever hard knocks of any
kind, visible or invisible, are going, there the Brown who is nearest
must shove in his carcass. And these carcasses for the most part
answer very well to the characteristic propensity; they are a
square-headed and snake-necked generation, broad in the shoulder, deep
in the chest, and thin in the flank, carrying no lumber. Then for
clanship,[13] they are as bad as Highlanders; it is amazing the belief
they have in one another. With them there is nothing like the Browns,
to the third and fourth generation. "Blood is thicker than water," is
one of their pet sayings. They can't be happy unless they are always
meeting one another. Never was such people for family gatherings,
which, were you a stranger, or sensitive, you might think had better
not have been gathered together. For during the whole time of their
being together they luxuriate in telling one another their minds on
whatever subject turns up; and their minds are wonderfully
antagonistic, and all their opinions are downright beliefs. Till
you've been among them some time and understand them, you can't think
but that they are quarrelling. Not a bit of it; they love and respect
one another ten times the more after a good set family arguing
bout,[14] and go back, one to his curacy,[15] another to his
chambers,[16] and another to his regiment, freshened for work, and
more than ever convinced that the Browns are the height of company.

[13] #Clanship#: here, the holding together of a class, tribe,
or family.

[14] #Bout#: contest.

[15] #Curacy#: parish.

[16] #Chambers#: law offices.

This family training, too, combined with their turn for combativeness,
makes them eminently quixotic.[17] They can't let anything alone which
they think going wrong. They must speak their mind about it, annoying
all easy-going folk; and spend their time and money in having a tinker
at it, however hopeless the job. It is an impossibility to a Brown to
leave the most disreputable lame dog on the other side of a stile.
Most other folk get tired of such work. The old Browns, with red
faces, white whiskers, and bald heads, go on believing and fighting to
a green old age. They have always a crotchet[18] going, till the old
man with a scythe[19] reaps and garners them away for troublesome old
boys as they are.

And the most provoking thing is, that no failures knock them up, or
make them hol