was a hard expression about his otherwise well-formed mouth, such as
rarely indicated generosity of feeling, or any acquaintance with the
kinder impulses of our nature. He was his mother's pet and favorite, and
her principal wish was that he should be looked upon and addressed as
a gentleman, and for that purpose she encouraged him to associate with
those only whose rank and position in life rendered any assumption of
equality on his part equally arrogant and obtrusive. In his own family
his bearing towards his parents was, in point of fact, the reverse
of what it ought to have been. He not only treated his father with
something bordering on contempt, but joined his mother in all that
ignorant pride which kept her perpetually bewailing the fate by which
she was doomed to become his wife. Nor did she herself come off better
at his hands. Whilst he flattered her vanity, and turned her foibles
to his own advantage, under the guise of a very dutiful affection, his
deportment towards her was marked by an ironical respect, which was the
more indefensible and unmanly because she could not see through it. The
poor woman had taken up the opinion, that difficult and unintelligible
language was one test of a gentleman; and her son by the use of such
language, let no opportunity pass of confirming her in this opinion, and
establishing his own claims to the character.

"Where did you ride to this mornin' Misther Hycy?"

"Down to take a look at Tom Burton's mare, Crazy Jane, ma'am:--

"'Away, my boys, to horse away,
The Chase admits of no delay--'"

"Tom Burton!" re-echoed the father with a groan; "an so you're in Tom
Burton's hands! A swindlin', horse-dalin' scoundrel that would chate St.