another was one of the doughty barons who wrested from John the Great
Charter, England's declaration of independence; another was high in
the councils of Henry V. I have omitted one whom I should not fail to
mention: Adjodika Caskoden, who was a member of the Dunce Parliament
of Henry IV, so called because there were no lawyers in it.

It is true that in the time of Edward IV a Caskoden did stoop to
trade, but it was trade of the most dignified, honorable sort; he was
a goldsmith, and his guild, as you know, were the bankers and
international clearance house for people, king and nobles. Besides, it
is stated on good authority that there was a great scandal wherein the
goldsmith's wife was mixed up in an intrigue with the noble King
Edward; so we learn that even in trade the Caskodens were of honorable
position and basked in the smile of their prince. As for myself, I am
not one of those who object so much to trade; and I think it
contemptible in a man to screw his nose all out of place sneering at
it, while enjoying every luxury of life from its profits.

This goldsmith was shrewd enough to turn what some persons might call
his ill fortune, in one way, into gain in another. He was one of those
happily constituted, thrifty philosophers who hold that even
misfortune should not be wasted, and that no evil is so great but the
alchemy of common sense can transmute some part of it into good. So he
coined the smiles which the king shed upon his wife--he being
powerless to prevent, for Edward smiled where he listed, and listed
nearly everywhere--into nobles, crowns and pounds sterling, and left a
glorious fortune to his son and to his son's son, unto about the
fourth generation, which was a ripe old age for a fortune, I think.
How few of them live beyond the second, and fewer still beyond the
third! It was during the third generation of this fortune that the