e--not _till_ then, if I
die for it. You know me--_I'm a man of my word_--_now be off_!" Here he
grinned at me viciously, and I rushed from the room in despair.

A very "fine old English gentleman" was my granduncle, Rumgudgeon, but,
unlike him of the song, he had his weak points. He was a little, pursy,
pompous, passionate, semi-circular somebody, with a red nose, a thick
skull, a long purse, and a strong sense of his own consequence. With the
best heart in the world, he contrived, through a predominate whim of
contradiction, to earn for himself, among those who only knew him
superficially, the character of a curmudgeon. Like many excellent
people, he seemed possessed with a spirit of tantalization, which might
easily, at a casual glance, be mistaken for malevolence. To every
request, a positive "No!" was his immediate answer; but in the end--in
the long, long end--there were exceedingly few requests which he
refused. Against all attacks upon his purse he made the most sturdy
defence; but the amount extorted from him at last, was generally in
direct ratio with the length of the siege and the stubbornness of the
resistance. In charity, no one gave more liberally, or with a worse
grace.

For the fine arts, especially for the belles-lettres, he entertained a
profound contempt. Thus my own inkling for the Muses had excited his
entire displeasure. He assured me one day, when I asked him for a new
copy of Horace, that the translation of "_Poeta nascitur, non
fit_"[456-1] was "a nasty poet for nothing fit"--a remark which I took
in high dudgeon. His repugnance to the "humanities" had, also, much
increased of late, by an accidental bias in favor of what he supposed to
be natural science. Somebody had accosted him in the street, mistaking
him for a no less personage than Doctor Dubble L. Dee, the lecturer upon
quack physics. This set him off at a tangent; and just at the epoch of
this story, my granduncle, Rumgudgeon, was accessible and pacific only
upon the points which happened to chime in with the hobby he was riding.

I had lived with the old gentleman all my life. My parents in dying had
bequeathed me to him as a rich legacy. I believe the old villain loved
me as his own child--nearly if not quite as well as he loved Kate--but
it was a dog's existence that he led me after all. From my first year
until my fifth, he obliged me with very regular floggings. From five to
fifteen, he threatened me, hourly, with the House of Co