CHAPTER II.

TOUCHING MYSELF AND TEN THOUSAND POUNDS.


Although my ancestor was much too wise to refuse to look back upon
his origin in a worldly point of view, he never threw his
retrospective glances so far as to reach the sublime mystery of his
moral existence; and while his thoughts might be said to be ever on
the stretch to attain glimpses into the future, they were by far too
earthly to extend beyond any other settling day than those which
were regulated by the ordinances of the stock exchange. With him, to
be born was but the commencement of a speculation, and to die was to
determine the general balance of profit and loss. A man who had so
rarely meditated on the grave changes of mortality, therefore, was
consequently so much the less prepared to gaze upon the visible
solemnities of a death-bed. Although he had never truly loved my
mother, for love was a sentiment much too pure and elevated for one
whose imagination dwelt habitually on the beauties of the stock-
books, he had ever been kind to her, and of late he was even much
disposed, as has already been stated, to contribute as much to her
temporal comforts as comported with his pursuits and habits. On the
other hand, the quiet temperament of my mother required some more
exciting cause than the affections of her husband, to quicken those
germs of deep, placid, womanly love, that certainly lay dormant in
her heart, like seed withering with the ungenial cold of winter. The
last meeting of such a pair was not likely to be attended with any
violent outpourings of grief.