young lady. My grandfather then entered into partnership with the worthy
trader, carried on the patent with spirit, and begat two sons. As he
grew older, ambition seized him; his sons should be gentlemen--one was
sent to College, the other put into a marching regiment. My grandfather
meant to die worth a plum; but a fever he caught in visiting his tenants
in St. Giles's prevented him, and he only left L20,000. equally divided
between the sons. My father, the College man" (here Gawtrey paused a
moment, took a large draught of the punch, and resumed with a visible
effort)--"my father, the College man, was a person of rigid principles--
bore an excellent character--had a great regard for the world. He
married early and respectably. I am the sole fruit of that union; he
lived soberly, his temper was harsh and morose, his home gloomy; he was a
very severe father, and my mother died before I was ten years old. When
I was fourteen, a little old Frenchman came to lodge with us; he had been
persecuted under the old _regime_ for being a philosopher; he filled my
head with odd crotchets which, more or less, have stuck there ever since.
At eighteen I was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge. My father was
rich enough to have let me go up in the higher rank of a pensioner, but
he had lately grown avaricious; he thought that I was extravagant; he
made me a sizar, perhaps to spite me. Then, for the first time, those
inequalities in life which the Frenchman had dinned into my ears met me
practically. A sizar! another name for a dog! I had such strength,
health, and spirits, that I had more life in my little finger than half
the fellow-commoners--genteel, spindle-shanked striplings, who might have
passed for a collection of my grandfather's walking-canes--bad in their
whole bodies. And I often think," continued Gawtrey, "that health and
spirits have a great deal to answer for! When we are young we so far
resemble savages who are Nature's young people--that we attach prodigious
value to physical advantages. My feats of strength and activity--the
clods I thrashed--and the railings I leaped--and the boat-races I won--