dark night, waist deep, on the duck points, I with a fowling-piece I was
all but too young to carry, and brought back a hundred red-heads or
canvas-backs in our bags. He went with unfailing regularity to the races
at Annapolis or Chestertown or Marlborough, often to see his own horses
run, where the coaches of the gentry were fifty and sixty around the
course; where a negro, or a hogshead of tobacco, or a pipe of Madeira was
often staked at a single throw. Those times, my children, are not ours,
and I thought it not strange that Mr. Carvel should delight in a good
main between two cocks, or a bull-baiting, or a breaking of heads at the
Chestertown fair, where he went to show his cattle and fling a guinea
into the ring for the winner.

But it must not be thought that Lionel Carvel, your ancestor, was wholly
unlettered because he was a sportsman, though it must be confessed that
books occupied him only when the weather compelled, or when on his back
with the gout. At times he would fain have me read to him as he lay in
his great four-post bed with the flowered counterpane, from the
Spectator, stopping me now and anon at some awakened memory of his youth.
He never forgave Mr. Addison for killing stout, old Sir Roger de
Coverley, and would never listen to the butler's account of his death.
Mr. Carvel, too, had walked in Gray's Inn Gardens and met adventure at
Fox Hall, and seen the great Marlborough himself. He had a fondness for
Mr. Congreve's Comedies, many of which he had seen acted; and was partial
to Mr. Gay's Trivia, which brought him many a recollection. He would
also listen to Pope. But of the more modern poetry I think Mr. Gray's
Elegy pleased him best. He would laugh over Swift's gall and wormwood,
and would never be brought by my mother to acknowledge the defects in the
Dean's character. Why? He had once met the Dean in a London
drawing-room, when my grandfather was a young spark at Christ Church,
Oxford. He never tired of relating that interview. The hostess was a
very great lady indeed, and actually stood waiting for a word with his
Reverence, whose whim it was rather to talk to the young provincial. He
was a forbidding figure, in his black gown and periwig, so my grandfather
said, with a piercing blue eye and shaggy brow. He made the mighty to
come to him, while young Carvel stood between laughter and fear of the
great lady's displeasure.

"I knew of your father," said the Dean, "before he went to the colonie