gentleman was the wealthiest farmer in that section;
with but one son and heir to supplant him, in
time, in the role of "county god," and haply
perpetuate the prouder title of "the biggest taxpayer on
the assessment list." And this fact, too, fortunate
as it would seem, was doubtless the indirect occasion
of a liberal percentage of all John's misfortunes.
From his earliest school-days in the little
town, up to his tardy graduation from a distant
college, the influence of his father's wealth invited
his procrastination, humored its results, encouraged
the laxity of his ambition, "and even now," as John
used, in bitter irony, to put it, "it is aiding and
abetting me in the ostensible practise of my chosen
profession, a listless, aimless undetermined man of
forty, and a confirmed bachelor at that!" At the
utterance of his self-depreciating statement, John generally
jerked his legs down from the top of his
desk; and rising and kicking his chair back to the
wall he would stump around his littered office till
the manila carpet steamed with dust. Then he
would wildly break away, seeking refuge either in
the open street, or in his room at the old-time
tavern, The Eagle House, "where," he would say, "I
have lodged and boarded, I do solemnly asseverate,
for a long, unbroken, middle-aged eternity of ten
years, and can yet assert, in the words of the more
fortunately-dying Webster, that 'I still live'!"

Extravagantly satirical as he was at times, John