"You mistake, Mr. Boss," as, in the friendliness of diminutives, Mrs.
Merrylack sometimes styled the grandiloquent practitioner, "you
mistake: the old gentleman left all his ready money in two bequests,--
the one to the College of ----, in the University of Cambridge, and
the other to an hospital in London. I remember the very words of the
will; they ran thus, Mr. Boss. 'And whereas my beloved son, had he
lived, would have been a member of the College of ---- in the
University of Cambridge, which he would have adorned by his genius,
learning, youthful virtue, and the various qualities which did equal
honour to his head and heart, and would have rendered him alike
distinguished as the scholar and the Christian, I do devise and
bequeath the sum of thirty-seven thousand pounds sterling, now in the
English Funds,' etc; and then follows the manner in which he will have
his charity vested and bestowed, and all about the prize which shall
be forever designated and termed 'The Vavasour Prize,' and what shall
be the words of the Latin speech which shall be spoken when the said
prize be delivered, and a great deal more to that effect: so, then, he
passes to the other legacy, of exactly the same sum, to the hospital,
usually called and styled ----, in the city of London, and says, 'And
whereas we are assured by the Holy Scriptures, which, in these days of
blasphemy and sedition, it becomes every true Briton and member of the
Established Church to support, that "charity doth cover a multitude of
sins," so I do give and devise,' etc., 'to be forever termed in the
deeds,' etc., 'of the said hospital, "The Vavasour Charity;" and
always provided that on the anniversary of the day of my death a
sermon shall be preached in the chapel attached to the said hospital
by a clergyman of the Established Church, on any text appropriate to
the day and deed so commemorated.' But the conclusion is most
beautiful, Mr. Bossolton: 'And now having discharged my duties, to the
best of my humble ability, to my God, my king, and my country, and