by fortune, without being soured thereby, as some fruits become
mellower and sweeter, from having been bruised or frost-bitten. He
smiled when I expressed my desire. "I have no great story," said he,
"to relate. A mere tissue of errors and follies. But, such as it is,
you shall have one epoch of it, by which you may judge of the rest."
And so, without any farther prelude, he gave me the following anecdotes
of his early adventures.




BUCKTHORNE, OR THE YOUNG MAN OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS.


I was born to very little property, but to great expectations; which is
perhaps one of the most unlucky fortunes that a man can be born to. My
father was a country gentleman, the last of a very ancient and
honorable, but decayed family, and resided in an old hunting lodge in
Warwickshire. He was a keen sportsman and lived to the extent of his
moderate income, so that I had little to expect from that quarter; but
then I had a rich uncle by the mother's side, a penurious, accumulating
curmudgeon, who it was confidently expected would make me his heir;
because he was an old bachelor; because I was named after him, and
because he hated all the world except myself.

He was, in fact, an inveterate hater, a miser even in misanthropy, and
hoarded up a grudge as he did a guinea. Thus, though my mother was an
only sister, he had never forgiven her marriage with my father, against
whom he had a cold, still, immovable pique, which had lain at the
bottom of his heart, like a stone in a well, ever since they had been