the demi-fashionable squares, among judges, physicians, barristers, and
merchants, at the north side of the metropolis. Being the only lawfully
begotten issue of his father, when the frail Angelina made it impossible
he should have any brothers and sisters, he succeeded, by will, to
three-fourths of the late Mr. Jonathan Stubbs's property, and, by oxalic
acid, to the remaining fourth;[5] the affair being too sudden to permit
of any further testamentary dispositions, or of any of those benevolent
codicils, which sometimes have the effect of tapering down primary
bequests, like Prior's Emma, "fine by degrees and beautifully less." Upon
a fair computation, after a few trifling legacies were paid, and all
debts satisfied, young Mr. Stubbs might calculate his inheritance, in
India stock, Bank stock, houses, canal shares, and exchequer bills, at
nearly eighty thousand pounds.

[5] Mr. Jonathan Stubbs retired from business long before he reached
his grand climacteric, to his country house at Newington Butts,
with the solid dignity of at least half a plum. What length of
years might have been in store for him, if he had regularly taken
Dr. James's analeptic pills, it is impossible to say; but not doing
so, he had occasion to send the coachman one night for an ounce of
Epsom salts. They proved to be oxalic acid; and stomach-pumps not
being then in existence, there was an inevitable termination to the
existence of Mr. Stubbs. An "extraordinary sensation," as the
newspapers have it, was produced in Newington Butts by this
dreadful catastrophe.

His education had not been neglected; that is to say, his father sent
him, at nine years old, to one of those suburban seminaries for "_young
gentlemen_," usually kept by elderly gentlemen, who know what it is to
have been deprived of similar advantages in their own youth. They feel,