; and if ever you come Bernard Street way
on a Sunday, about six o'clock, and would like a slice of beef and a
glass of port, I hope you'll come and see us."

Do not let us be too angry with Colonel Newcome's two most respectable
brothers, if for some years they neglected their Indian relative, or
held him in slight esteem. Their mother never pardoned him, or at least
by any actual words admitted his restoration to favour. For many years,
as far as they knew, poor Tom was an unrepentant prodigal, wallowing in
bad company, and cut off from all respectable sympathy. Their father had
never had the courage to acquaint them with his more true, and kind, and
charitable version of Tom's story. So he passed at home for no better
than a black sheep; his marriage with a penniless young lady did not
tend to raise him in the esteem of his relatives at Clapham; it was not
until he was a widower, until he had been mentioned several times in the
Gazette for distinguished military service, until they began to speak
very well of him in Leadenhall Street, where the representatives of
Hobson Brothers were of course East India proprietors, and until he
remitted considerable sums of money to England, that the bankers his
brethren began to be reconciled to him.

I say, do not let us be hard upon them. No people are so ready to give
a man a bad name as his own kinsfolk; and having made him that present,
they are ever most unwilling to take it back again. If they give him
nothing else in the days of his difficulty, he may be sure of their
pity, and that he is held up as an example to his young cousins to
avoid. If he loses his money they call him poor fellow, and point morals
out of him. If he falls among thieves, the respectable Pharisees of his
race turn their heads aside and leave him penniless and bleeding. They
clap him on the back kindly enough when he returns, after shipwreck,
with money in his pocket. How naturally Joseph's brothers made salaams
to him, and admired him, and did him honour, when they found the poor
outcast a prime minister, and worth ever so much money! Surely human
nature is not much altered since the days of those primeval Jews.
We would not thrust brother Joseph down a well and sell him bodily,
but--but if he has scrambled out of a well of his own digging, and got
out of his early bondage into renown and credit, at least we applaud him
and respect him, and are proud of Joseph as a member of the family.

Little Cliv