may perhaps ascribe these circumstances to the fact of finding the
Greens, generation after generation, made the dupes of more astute
minds, and when the hour of


[8 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]

danger came, left to manage their own affairs in the best way they
could, - a way that commonly ended in their mismanagement and total
confusion. Indeed, the idiosyncrasy of the family appears to have
been so well known, that we continually meet with them performing the
character of catspaw to some monkey who had seen and understood much
more of the world than they had, - putting their hands to the fire,
and only finding out their mistake when they had burned their fingers.

In this way the family of the Verdant Greens never got beyond a
certain point either in wealth or station, but were always the same
unsuspicious, credulous, respectable, easy-going people in one
century as another, with the same boundless confidence in their
fellow-creatures, and the same readiness to oblige society by putting
their names to little bills, merely for form's and friendship's sake.
The Vavasour Verdant Green, with the slashed velvet doublet and
point-lace fall, who (having a well-stocked purse) was among the
favoured courtiers of the Merry Monarch, and who allowed that monarch
in his merriness to borrow his purse, with the simple I.O.U. of
"Odd's fish! you shall take mine to-morrow!" and who never (of
course) saw the sun rise on the day of repayment, was but the
prototype of the Verdant Greens in the full-bottomed wigs, and
buckles and shorts of George I.'s day, who were nearly beggared by the
bursting of the Mississippi Scheme and South-Sea Bubble; and these,