unsel, guide, or friend;
With spirit high John learned the world to brave,
And in both senses was a ready knave."--CRABBE.

"My grandfather sold walking-sticks and umbrellas in the little passage
by Exeter 'Change; he was a man of genius and speculation. As soon as he
had scraped together a little money, he lent it to some poor devil with
a hard landlord, at twenty per cent., and made him take half the loan
in umbrellas or bamboos. By these means he got his foot into the ladder,
and climbed upward and upward, till, at the age of forty, he had amassed
L5,000. He then looked about for a wife. An honest trader in the Strand,
who dealt largely in cotton prints, possessed an only daughter; this
young lady had a legacy, from a great-aunt, of L3,220., with a small
street in St. Giles's, where the tenants paid weekly (all thieves or
rogues-all, so their rents were sure). Now my grandfather conceived a
great friendship for the father of this young lady; gave him a hint as
to a new pattern in spotted cottons; enticed him to take out a patent,
and lent him L700. for the speculation; applied for the money at the
very moment cottons were at their worst, and got the daughter instead of
the money,--by which exchange, you see, he won L2,520., to say nothing
of the young lady. My grandfather then entered into partnership with the
worthy trader, carried on the patent with spirit, and begat two sons.
As he grew older, ambition seized him; his sons should be gentlemen--one
was sent to College, the other put into a marching regiment. My
grandfather meant to die worth a plum; but a fever he caught in visiting
his tenants in St. Giles's prevented him, and he only left L20,000.
equally divided between the sons. My father, the College man" (here
Gawtrey paused a moment, took a large draught of the punch, and resumed
with a visible effort)--"my father, the College man, was a person of
rigid principles--bore an excellent character--had a great regard for
the world. He married early and respectably. I am the sole fruit of
that union; he lived soberly, his temper was harsh and morose, his home
gloomy; he was a very severe father, and my mother died before I was
ten years old. When I was fourteen, a little old Frenchman came to
lodge with us; he had been persecuted under the old regime for being a
philosopher; he filled my head with odd crotchets which, more or less,
have stuck there ever since. At eighteen I was sent to St. John's
C