evil it appears in other men's professions--condemned my father, a
born soldier, to seek his line in diplomacy; wherein he had no sooner
built a reputation by services at two or three of the Italian courts
than, with a knighthood in hand and an ambassadorship in prospect, he
suddenly abandoned all, cast off the world, and retired into
Cornwall, to make a humdrum marriage and practise fishing for trout.

The reason of it none knew, or how his estate had come to be
impoverished, as beyond doubt it was. Here again he showed himself
unlike the rest of men, in that he let the stress of poverty fall
first upon himself, next upon his household, last of all upon his
tenants and other dependants. After my mother's death he cut down
his own charges (the cellar only excepted) to the last penny, shut
himself off in a couple of rooms, slept in a camp bed, wore an old
velveteen coat in winter and in summer a fisherman's smock, ate
frugally, and would have drunk beer or even water had not his stomach
abhorred them both. Of wine he drank in moderation--that is to say,
for him, since his temperance would have sent nine men out of ten
under the table--and of the best. He had indeed a large and
obstinate dignity in his drinking. It betrayed, even as his carriage
betrayed beneath his old coat, a king in exile.

Yet while he pinched himself with these economies, he drew no
strings--or drew them tenderly--upon the expenses and charities of a
good landlord. The fences rotted around his own park and
pleasure-grounds, but his tenants' fences, walls, roofs stood in more
than moderate repair, nor (although my uncle Gervase groaned over the
accounts) would an abatement of rent be denied, the appeal having
been weighed and found to be reasonable. The rain--which falls alike
upon the just and the unjust--beat through his own roof, but never