wronging mankind pay a great deal
better than those for righting them.

Now the news came from John Prater's first, that a gentleman of great
renown was coming down from London city to live on fish fresh out of
the sea. His doctors had ordered him to leave off butcher's meat, and
baker's bread, and tea-grocer's tea, and almost every kind of inland
victuals, because of the state of his--something big, which even
Springhaven could not pronounce. He must keep himself up, for at least
three months, upon nothing but breezes of the sea, and malt-liquor, and
farm-house bread and milk and new-laid eggs, and anything he fancied
that came out of the sea, shelly, or scaly, or jellified, or weedy.
News from a public-house grows fast--as seeds come up quicker for
soaking--and a strong competition for this gentleman arose; but he
knew what he was doing, and brought down his cook and house-maid, and
disliking the noise at the Darling Arms, took no less than five rooms at
the house of Matthew Blocks, on the rise of the hill, where he could see
the fish come in.

He was called at once Sir Parsley Sugarloaf, for his name was Percival
Shargeloes; and his cook rebuked his housemaid sternly, for meddling
with matters beyond her sphere, when she told Mrs. Blocks that he was
not Sir Percival, but only Percival Shargeloes, Esquire, very high up
in the Corporation, but too young to be Lord Mayor of London for some
years. He appeared to be well on the right side of forty; and every
young lady on the wrong side of thirty possessing a pony, or even a
donkey, with legs enough to come down the hill, immediately began to
take a rose-coloured view of the many beauties of Springhaven.

If Mr. Shargeloes had any ambition for title, it lay rather in a
military direction. He had joined a regiment of City Volunteers, and
must have been a Captain, if he could have stood the drill. But this,
though not arduous, had outgone his ambition, nature having gifted him
with a remarkable power of extracting nourishment from food, which is
now called assimilation. He was not a great feeder--people so blessed
seldom are--but nothing short of painful starvation would keep him lean.
He had consulted all the foremost physicians about this, and one said,
"take acids," another said, "walk twenty miles every day with two Witney
blankets on," a third said, "thank God for it, and drink before you
eat," and a fourth (a man of wide experience) bade him marry the
worst-tempere