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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Kenelm Chillingly, by E. B. Lytton, Book 1
+#78 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: Kenelm Chillingly, Book 1.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7650]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on March 25, 2004]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILLINGLY, LYTTON, BOOK 1 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Dagny,
+                and David Widger,
+
+
+
+
+
+                           KENELM CHILLINGLY
+
+                      HIS ADVENTURES AND OPINIONS
+
+                                   BY
+
+                          EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+
+                              (LORD LYTTON)
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+SIR PETER CHILLINGLY, of Exmundham, Baronet, F.R.S. and F.A.S., was
+the representative of an ancient family, and a landed proprietor of
+some importance.  He had married young; not from any ardent
+inclination for the connubial state, but in compliance with the
+request of his parents.  They took the pains to select his bride; and
+if they might have chosen better, they might have chosen worse, which
+is more than can be said for many men who choose wives for themselves.
+Miss Caroline Brotherton was in all respects a suitable connection.
+She had a pretty fortune, which was of much use in buying a couple of
+farms, long desiderated by the Chillinglys as necessary for the
+rounding of their property into a ring-fence.  She was highly
+connected, and brought into the county that experience of fashionable
+life acquired by a young lady who has attended a course of balls for
+three seasons, and gone out in matrimonial honours, with credit to
+herself and her chaperon.  She was handsome enough to satisfy a
+husband's pride, but not so handsome as to keep perpetually on the
+/qui vive/ a husband's jealousy.  She was considered highly
+accomplished; that is, she played upon the pianoforte so that any
+musician would say she "was very well taught;" but no musician would
+go out of his way to hear her a second time.  She painted in
+water-colours--well enough to amuse herself.  She knew French and
+Italian with an elegance so lady-like that, without having read more
+than selected extracts from authors in those languages, she spoke them
+both with an accent more correct than we have any reason to attribute
+to Rousseau or Ariosto.  What else a young lady may acquire in order
+to be styled highly accomplished I do not pretend to know; but I am
+sure that the young lady in question fulfilled that requirement in the
+opinion of the best masters.  It was not only an eligible match for
+Sir Peter Chillingly,--it was a brilliant match.  It was also a very
+unexceptionable match for Miss Caroline Brotherton.  This excellent
+couple got on together as most excellent couples do.  A short time
+after marriage, Sir Peter, by the death of his parents--who, having
+married their heir, had nothing left in life worth the trouble of
+living for--succeeded to the hereditary estates; he lived for nine
+months of the year at Exmundham, going to town for the other three
+months.  Lady Chillingly and himself were both very glad to go to
+town, being bored at Exmundham; and very glad to go back to Exmundham,
+being bored in town.  With one exception it was an exceedingly happy
+marriage, as marriages go.  Lady Chillingly had her way in small
+things; Sir Peter his way in great.  Small things happen every day;
+great things once in three years.  Once in three years Lady Chillingly
+gave way to Sir Peter; households so managed go on regularly.  The
+exception to their connubial happiness was, after all, but of a
+negative description.  Their affection was such that they sighed for a
+pledge of it; fourteen years had he and Lady Chillingly remained
+unvisited by the little stranger.
+
+Now, in default of male issue, Sir Peter's estates passed to a distant
+cousin as heir-at-law; and during the last four years this heir-at-law
+had evinced his belief that practically speaking he was already
+heir-apparent; and (though Sir Peter was a much younger man than
+himself, and as healthy as any man well can be) had made his
+expectations of a speedy succession unpleasantly conspicuous.  He had
+refused his consent to a small exchange of lands with a neighbouring
+squire, by which Sir Peter would have obtained some good arable land,
+for an outlying unprofitable wood that produced nothing but fagots and
+rabbits, with the blunt declaration that he, the heir-at-law, was fond
+of rabbit-shooting, and that the wood would be convenient to him next
+season if he came into the property by that time, which he very
+possibly might.  He disputed Sir Peter's right to make his customary
+fall of timber, and had even threatened him with a bill in Chancery on
+that subject.  In short, this heir-at-law was exactly one of those
+persons to spite whom a landed proprietor would, if single, marry at
+the age of eighty in the hope of a family.
+
+Nor was it only on account of his very natural wish to frustrate the
+expectations of this unamiable relation that Sir Peter Chillingly
+lamented the absence of the little stranger.  Although belonging to
+that class of country gentlemen to whom certain political reasoners
+deny the intelligence vouchsafed to other members of the community,
+Sir Peter was not without a considerable degree of book-learning and a
+great taste for speculative philosophy.  He sighed for a legitimate
+inheritor to the stores of his erudition, and, being a very benevolent
+man, for a more active and useful dispenser of those benefits to the
+human race which philosophers confer by striking hard against each
+other; just as, how full soever of sparks a flint may be, they might
+lurk concealed in the flint till doomsday, if the flint were not hit
+by the steel.  Sir Peter, in short, longed for a son amply endowed
+with the combative quality, in which he himself was deficient, but
+which is the first essential to all seekers after renown, and
+especially to benevolent philosophers.
+
+Under these circumstances one may well conceive the joy that filled
+the household of Exmundham and extended to all the tenantry on that
+venerable estate, by whom the present possessor was much beloved and
+the prospect of an heir-at-law with a special eye to the preservation
+of rabbits much detested, when the medical attendant of the
+Chillinglys declared that 'her ladyship was in an interesting way;'
+and to what height that joy culminated when, in due course of time, a
+male baby was safely entbroned in his cradle.  To that cradle Sir
+Peter was summoned.  He entered the room with a lively bound and a
+radiant countenance: he quitted it with a musing step and an
+overclouded brow.
+
+Yet the baby was no monster.  It did not come into the world with two
+heads, as some babies are said to have done; it was formed as babies
+are in general; was on the whole a thriving baby, a fine baby.
+Nevertheless, its aspect awed the father as already it had awed the
+nurse.  The creature looked so unutterably solemn.  It fixed its eyes
+upon Sir Peter with a melancholy reproachful stare; its lips were
+compressed and drawn downward as if discontentedly meditating its
+future destinies.  The nurse declared in a frightened whisper that it
+had uttered no cry on facing the light.  It had taken possession of
+its cradle in all the dignity of silent sorrow.  A more saddened and a
+more thoughtful countenance a human being could not exhibit if he were
+leaving the world instead of entering it.
+
+"Hem!" said Sir Peter to himself on regaining the solitude of his
+library; "a philosopher who contributes a new inhabitant to this vale
+of tears takes upon himself very anxious responsibilities--"
+
+At that moment the joy-bells rang out from the neighbouring church
+tower, the summer sun shone into the windows, the bees hummed among
+the flowers on the lawn.  Sir Peter roused himself and looked forth,
+"After all," said he, cheerily, "the vale of tears is not without a
+smile."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+A FAMILY council was held at Exmundham Hall to deliberate on the name
+by which this remarkable infant should be admitted into the Christian
+community.  The junior branches of that ancient house consisted,
+first, of the obnoxious heir-at-law--a Scotch branch named Chillingly
+Gordon.  He was the widowed father of one son, now of the age of
+three, and happily unconscious of the injury inflicted on his future
+prospects by the advent of the new-born, which could not be truthfully
+said of his Caledonian father.  Mr. Chillingly Gordon was one of those
+men who get on in the world with out our being able to discover why.
+His parents died in his infancy and left him nothing; but the family
+interest procured him an admission into the Charterhouse School, at
+which illustrious academy he obtained no remarkable distinction.
+Nevertheless, as soon as he left it the State took him under its
+special care, and appointed him to a clerkship in a public office.
+From that moment he continued to get on in the world, and was now a
+Commissioner of Customs, with a salary of L1500 a year.  As soon as he
+had been thus enabled to maintain a wife, he selected a wife who
+assisted to maintain himself.  She was an Irish peer's widow, with a
+jointure of L2000 a year.
+
+A few months after his marriage, Chillingly Gordon effected insurances
+on his wife's life, so as to secure himself an annuity of L1000 a year
+in case of her decease.  As she appeared to be a fine healthy woman,
+some years younger than her husband, the deduction from his income
+effected by the annual payments for the insurance seemed an
+over-sacrifice of present enjoyment to future contingencies.  The
+result bore witness to his reputation for sagacity, as the lady died
+in the second year of their wedding, a few months after the birth of
+her only child, and of a heart-disease which had been latent to the
+doctors, but which, no doubt, Gordon had affectionately discovered
+before he had insured a life too valuable not to need some
+compensation for its loss.  He was now, then, in the possession of
+L2500 a year, and was therefore very well off, in the pecuniary sense
+of the phrase.  He had, moreover, acquired a reputation which gave him
+a social rank beyond that accorded to him by a discerning State.  He
+was considered a man of solid judgment, and his opinion upon all
+matters, private and public, carried weight.  The opinion itself,
+critically examined, was not worth much, but the way he announced it
+was imposing.  Mr. Fox said that 'No one ever was so wise as Lord
+Thurlow looked.'  Lord Thurlow could not have looked wiser than Mr.
+Chillingly Gordon.  He had a square jaw and large red bushy eyebrows,
+which he lowered down with great effect when he delivered judgment.
+He had another advantage for acquiring grave reputation.  He was a
+very unpleasant man.  He could be rude if you contradicted him; and as
+few persons wish to provoke rudeness, so he was seldom contradicted.
+
+Mr. Chillingly Mivers, another cadet of the house, was also
+distinguished, but in a different way.  He was a bachelor, now about
+the age of thirty-five.  He was eminent for a supreme well-bred
+contempt for everybody and everything.  He was the originator and
+chief proprietor of a public journal called "The Londoner," which had
+lately been set up on that principle of contempt, and we need not say,
+was exceedingly popular with those leading members of the community
+who admire nobody and believe in nothing.  Mr. Chillingly Mivers was
+regarded by himself and by others as a man who might have achieved the
+highest success in any branch of literature, if he had deigned to
+exhibit his talents therein.  But he did not so deign, and therefore
+he had full right to imply that, if he had written an epic, a drama, a
+novel, a history, a metaphysical treatise, Milton, Shakspeare,
+Cervantes, Hume, Berkeley would have been nowhere.  He held greatly to
+the dignity of the anonymous; and even in the journal which he
+originated nobody could ever ascertain what he wrote.  But, at all
+events, Mr. Chillingly Mivers was what Mr. Chillingly Gordon was not;
+namely, a very clever man, and by no means an unpleasant one in
+general society.
+
+The Rev. John Stalworth Chillingly was a decided adherent to the creed
+of what is called "muscular Christianity," and a very fine specimen of
+it too.  A tall stout man with broad shoulders, and that division of
+lower limb which intervenes between the knee and the ankle powerfully
+developed.  He would have knocked down a deist as soon as looked at
+him.  It is told by the Sieur de Joinville, in his Memoir of Louis,
+the sainted king, that an assembly of divines and theologians convened
+the Jews of an Oriental city for the purpose of arguing with them on
+the truths of Christianity, and a certain knight, who was at that time
+crippled, and supporting himself on crutches, asked and obtained
+permission to be present at the debate.  The Jews flocked to the
+summons, when a prelate, selecting a learned rabbi, mildly put to him
+the leading question whether he owned the divine conception of our
+Lord.  "Certainly not," replied the rabbi; whereon the pious knight,
+shocked by such blasphemy, uplifted his crutch and felled the rabbi,
+and then flung himself among the other misbelievers, whom he soon
+dispersed in ignominious flight and in a very belaboured condition.
+The conduct of the knight was reported to the sainted king, with a
+request that it should be properly reprimanded; but the sainted king
+delivered himself of this wise judgment:--
+
+"If a pious knight is a very learned clerk, and can meet in fair
+argument the doctrines of the misbeliever, by all means let him argue
+fairly; but if a pious knight is not a learned clerk, and the argument
+goes against him, then let the pious knight cut the discussion short
+by the edge of his good sword."
+
+The Rev. John Stalworth Chillingly was of the same opinion as Saint
+Louis; otherwise, he was a mild and amiable man.  He encouraged
+cricket and other manly sports among his rural parishioners.  He was a
+skilful and bold rider, but he did not hunt; a convivial man--and took
+his bottle freely.  But his tastes in literature were of a refined and
+peaceful character, contrasting therein the tendencies some might have
+expected from his muscular development of Christianity.  He was a
+great reader of poetry, but he disliked Scott and Byron, whom he
+considered flashy and noisy; he maintained that Pope was only a
+versifier, and that the greatest poet in the language was Wordsworth;
+he did not care much for the ancient classics; he refused all merit to
+the French poets; he knew nothing of the Italian, but he dabbled in
+German, and was inclined to bore one about the "Hermann and Dorothea"
+of Goethe.  He was married to a homely little wife, who revered him in
+silence, and thought there would be no schism in the Church if he were
+in his right place as Archbishop of Canterbury; in this opinion he
+entirely agreed with his wife.
+
+Besides these three male specimens of the Chillingly race, the fairer
+sex was represented, in the absence of her ladyship, who still kept
+her room, by three female Chillinglys, sisters of Sir Peter, and all
+three spinsters.  Perhaps one reason why they had remained single was,
+that externally they were so like each other that a suitor must have
+been puzzled which to choose, and may have been afraid that if he did
+choose one, he should be caught next day kissing another one in
+mistake.  They were all tall, all thin, with long throats--and beneath
+the throats a fine development of bone.  They had all pale hair, pale
+eyelids, pale eyes, and pale complexions.  They all dressed exactly
+alike, and their favourite colour was a vivid green: they were so
+dressed on this occasion.
+
+As there was such similitude in their persons, so, to an ordinary
+observer, they were exactly the same in character and mind.  Very well
+behaved, with proper notions of female decorum: very distant and
+reserved in manner to strangers; very affectionate to each other and
+their relations or favourites; very good to the poor, whom they looked
+upon as a different order of creation, and treated with that sort of
+benevolence which humane people bestow upon dumb animals.  Their minds
+had been nourished on the same books--what one read the others had
+read.  The books were mainly divided into two classes,--novels, and
+what they called "good books."  They had a habit of taking a specimen
+of each alternately; one day a novel, then a good book, then a novel
+again, and so on.  Thus if the imagination was overwarmed on Monday,
+on Tuesday it was cooled down to a proper temperature; and if
+frost-bitten on Tuesday, it took a tepid bath on Wednesday.  The
+novels they chose were indeed rarely of a nature to raise the
+intellectual thermometer into blood heat: the heroes and heroines were
+models of correct conduct.  Mr. James's novels were then in vogue, and
+they united in saying that those "were novels a father might allow his
+daughters to read."  But though an ordinary observer might have failed
+to recognize any distinction between these three ladies, and, finding
+them habitually dressed in green, would have said they were as much
+alike as one pea is to another, they had their idiosyncratic
+differences, when duly examined.  Miss Margaret, the eldest, was the
+commanding one of the three; it was she who regulated their household
+(they all lived together), kept the joint purse, and decided every
+doubtful point that arose: whether they should or should not ask Mrs.
+So-and-so to tea; whether Mary should or should not be discharged;
+whether or not they should go to Broadstairs or to Sandgate for the
+month of October.  In fact, Miss Margaret was the WILL of the body
+corporate.
+
+Miss Sibyl was of milder nature and more melancholy temperament; she
+had a poetic turn of mind, and occasionally wrote verses.  Some of
+these had been printed on satin paper, and sold for objects of
+beneficence at charity bazaars.  The county newspapers said that the
+verses "were characterized by all the elegance of a cultured and
+feminine mind."  The other two sisters agreed that Sibyl was the
+genius of the household, but, like all geniuses, not sufficiently
+practical for the world.  Miss Sarah Chillingly, the youngest of the
+three, and now just in her forty-fourth year, was looked upon by the
+others as "a dear thing, inclined to be naughty, but such a darling
+that nobody could have the heart to scold her."  Miss Margaret said
+"she was a giddy creature."  Miss Sibyl wrote a poem on her, entitled,
+"Warning to a young Lady against the Pleasures of the World."  They
+all called her Sally; the other two sisters had no diminutive
+synonyms.  Sally is a name indicative of fastness.  But this Sally
+would not have been thought fast in another household, and she was now
+little likely to sally out of the one she belonged to.  These sisters,
+who were all many years older than Sir Peter, lived in a handsome,
+old-fashioned, red-brick house, with a large garden at the back, in
+the principal street of the capital of their native county.  They had
+each L10,000 for portion; and if he could have married all three, the
+heir-at-law would have married them, and settled the aggregate L30,000
+on himself.  But we have not yet come to recognize Mormonism as legal,
+though if our social progress continues to slide in the same grooves
+as at present, Heaven only knows what triumphs over the prejudices of
+our ancestors may not be achieved by the wisdom of our descendants!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+SIR PETER stood on his hearthstone, surveyed the guests seated in
+semicircle, and said: "Friends,--in Parliament, before anything
+affecting the fate of a Bill is discussed, it is, I believe, necessary
+to introduce the Bill."  He paused a moment, rang the bell, and said
+to the servant who entered, "Tell Nurse to bring in the Baby."
+
+Mr. CHILLINGLY GORDON.--"I don't see the necessity for that, Sir
+Peter.  We may take the existence of the Baby for granted."
+
+Mr. MIVERS.--"It is an advantage to the reputation of Sir Peter's work
+to preserve the incognito. /Omne ignotum pro magnifico/."
+
+THE REV. JOHN STALWORTH CHILLINGLY.--"I don't approve the cynical
+levity of such remarks.  Of course we must all be anxious to see, in
+the earliest stage of being, the future representative of our name and
+race.  Who would not wish to contemplate the source, however small, of
+the Tigris or the Nile!--"
+
+MISS SALLY (tittering).--"He! he!"
+
+MISS MARGARET.--"For shame, you giddy thing!"
+
+The Baby enters in the nurse's arms.  All rise and gather round the
+Baby with one exception,--Mr. Gordon, who has ceased to be
+heir-at-law.
+
+The Baby returned the gaze of its relations with the most contemptuous
+indifference.  Miss Sibyl was the first to pronounce an opinion on the
+Baby's attributes.  Said she, in a solemn whisper, "What a heavenly
+mournful expression! it seems so grieved to have left the angels!"
+
+THE REV. JOHN.--"That is prettily said, Cousin Sibyl; but the infant
+must pluck up its courage and fight its way among mortals with a good
+heart, if it wants to get back to the angels again.  And I think it
+will; a fine child."  He took it from the nurse, and moving it
+deliberately up and down, as if to weigh it, said cheerfully,
+"Monstrous heavy! by the time it is twenty it will be a match for a
+prize-fighter of fifteen stone!"
+
+Therewith he strode to Gordon, who as if to show that he now
+considered himself wholly apart from all interest in the affairs of a
+family who had so ill-treated him in the birth of that Baby, had taken
+up the "Times" newspaper and concealed his countenance beneath the
+ample sheet.  The Parson abruptly snatched away the "Times" with one
+hand, and, with the other substituting to the indignant eyes of the
+/ci-devant/ heir-at-law the spectacle of the Baby, said, "Kiss it."
+
+"Kiss it!" echoed Chillingly Gordon, pushing back his chair--"kiss it!
+pooh, sir, stand off!  I never kissed my own baby: I shall not kiss
+another man's.  Take the thing away, sir: it is ugly; it has black
+eyes."
+
+Sir Peter, who was near-sighted, put on his spectacles and examined
+the face of the new-born.  "True," said he, "it has black eyes,--very
+extraordinary: portentous: the first Chillingly that ever had black
+eyes."
+
+"Its mamma has black eyes," said Miss Margaret: "it takes after its
+mamma; it has not the fair beauty of the Chillinglys, but it is not
+ugly."
+
+"Sweet infant!"  sighed Sibyl; "and so good; does not cry."
+
+"It has neither cried nor crowed since it was born," said the nurse;
+"bless its little heart."
+
+She took the Baby from the Parson's arms, and smoothed back the frill
+of its cap, which had got ruffled.
+
+"You may go now, Nurse," said Sir Peter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+"I AGREE with Mr. Shandy," said Sir Peter, resuming his stand on the
+hearthstone, "that among the responsibilities of a parent the choice
+of the name which his child is to bear for life is one of the gravest.
+And this is especially so with those who belong to the order of
+baronets.  In the case of a peer his Christian name, fused into his
+titular designation, disappears.  In the case of a Mister, if his
+baptismal be cacophonous or provocative of ridicule, he need not
+ostentatiously parade it: he may drop it altogether on his visiting
+cards, and may be imprinted as Mr. Jones instead of Mr. Ebenezer
+Jones.  In his signature, save where the forms of the law demand
+Ebenezer in full, he may only use an initial and be your obedient
+servant E. Jones, leaving it to be conjectured that E. stands for
+Edward or Ernest,--names inoffensive, and not suggestive of a
+Dissenting Chapel, like Ebenezer.  If a man called Edward or Ernest be
+detected in some youthful indiscretion, there is no indelible stain on
+his moral character: but if an Ebenezer be so detected he is set down
+as a hypocrite; it produces that shock on the public mind which is
+felt when a professed saint is proved to be a bit of a sinner.  But a
+baronet never can escape from his baptismal: it cannot lie /perdu/; it
+cannot shrink into an initial, it stands forth glaringly in the light
+of day; christen him Ebenezer, and he is Sir Ebenezer in full, with
+all its perilous consequences if he ever succumb to those temptations
+to which even baronets are exposed.  But, my friends, it is not only
+the effect that the sound of a name has upon others which is to be
+thoughtfully considered: the effect that his name produces on the man
+himself is perhaps still more important.  Some names stimulate and
+encourage the owner; others deject and paralyze him: I am a melancholy
+instance of that truth.  Peter has been for many generations, as you
+are aware, the baptismal to which the eldest-born of our family has
+been devoted.  On the altar of that name I have been sacrificed.
+Never has there been a Sir Peter Chillingly who has, in any way,
+distinguished himself above his fellows.  That name has been a dead
+weight on my intellectual energies.  In the catalogue of illustrious
+Englishmen there is, I think, no immortal Sir Peter, except Sir Peter
+Teazle, and he only exists on the comic stage."
+
+MISS SIBYL.--"Sir Peter Lely?"
+
+SIR PETER CHILLINGLY.--"That painter was not an Englishman.  He was
+born in Westphalia, famous for hams.  I confine my remarks to the
+children of our native land.  I am aware that in foreign countries the
+name is not an extinguisher to the genius of its owner.  But why?  In
+other countries its sound is modified.  Pierre Corneille was a great
+man; but I put it to you whether, had he been an Englishman, he could
+have been the father of European tragedy as Peter Crow?"
+
+MISS SIBYL.--"Impossible!"
+
+MISS SALLY.--"He! he!"
+
+MISS MARGARET.--"There is nothing to laugh at, you giddy child!"
+
+SIR PETER.--"My son shall not be petrified into Peter."
+
+MR. CHILLINGLY GORDON.--"If a man is such a fool--and I don't say your
+son will not be a fool, Cousin Peter--as to be influenced by the sound
+of his own name, and you want the booby to turn the world topsy-turvy,
+you had better call him Julius Caesar or Hannibal or Attila or
+Charlemagne."
+
+SIR PETER, (who excels mankind in imperturbability of temper).--"On
+the contrary, if you inflict upon a man the burden of one of those
+names, the glory of which he cannot reasonably expect to eclipse or
+even to equal, you crush him beneath the weight.  If a poet were
+called John Milton or William Shakspeare, he could not dare to publish
+even a sonnet.  No: the choice of a name lies between the two extremes
+of ludicrous insignificance and oppressive renown.  For this reason I
+have ordered the family pedigree to be suspended on yonder wall.  Let
+us examine it with care, and see whether, among the Chillinglys
+themselves or their alliances, we can discover a name that can be
+borne with becoming dignity by the destined head of our house--a name
+neither too light nor too heavy."
+
+Sir Peter here led the way to the family tree--a goodly roll of
+parchment, with the arms of the family emblazoned at the top.  Those
+arms were simple, as ancient heraldic coats are,--three fishes
+/argent/ on a field /azure/; the crest a mermaid's head.  All flocked
+to inspect the pedigree except Mr. Gordon, who resumed the "Times"
+newspaper.
+
+"I never could quite make out what kind of fishes these are," said the
+Rev. John Stalworth.  "They are certainly not pike which formed the
+emblematic blazon of the Hotofts, and are still grim enough to
+frighten future Shakspeares on the scutcheon of the Warwickshire
+Lucys."
+
+"I believe they are tenches," said Mr. Mivers.  "The tench is a fish
+that knows how to keep itself safe by a philosophical taste for an
+obscure existence in deep holes and slush."
+
+SIR PETER.--"No, Mivers; the fishes are dace, a fish that, once
+introduced into any pond, never can be got out again.  You may drag
+the water; you may let off the water; you may say, 'Those dace are
+extirpated,'--vain thought!--the dace reappear as before; and in this
+respect the arms are really emblematic of the family.  All the
+disorders and revolutions that have occurred in England since the
+Heptarchy have left the Chillinglys the same race in the same place.
+Somehow or other the Norman Conquest did not despoil them; they held
+fiefs under Eudo Dapifer as peacefully as they had held them under
+King Harold; they took no part in the Crusades, nor the Wars of the
+Roses, nor the Civil Wars between Charles the First and the
+Parliament.  As the dace sticks to the water and the water sticks by
+the dace, so the Chillinglys stuck to the land and the land stuck by
+the Chillinglys.  Perhaps I am wrong to wish that the new Chillingly
+may be a little less like a dace."
+
+"Oh!" cried Miss Margaret, who, mounted on a chair, had been
+inspecting the pedigree through an eye-glass, "I don't see a fine
+Christian name from the beginning, except Oliver."
+
+SIR PETER.--"That Chillingly was born in Oliver Cromwell's
+Protectorate, and named Oliver in compliment to him, as his father,
+born in the reign of James I., was christened James.  The three fishes
+always swam with the stream.  Oliver!--Oliver not a bad name, but
+significant of radical doctrines."
+
+Mr. MIVERS.--"I don't think so.  Oliver Cromwell made short work of
+radicals and their doctrines; but perhaps we can find a name less
+awful and revolutionary."
+
+"I have it!  I have it!" cried the Parson.  "Here is a descent from
+Sir Kenelm Digby and Venetia Stanley.  Sir Kenelm Digby!  No finer
+specimen of muscular Christianity.  He fought as well as he wrote;
+eccentric, it is true, but always a gentleman.  Call the boy Kenelm!"
+
+"A sweet name," said Miss Sibyl: "it breathes of romance."
+
+"Sir Kenelm Chillingly!  It sounds well,--imposing!" said Miss
+Margaret.
+
+"And," remarked Mr. Mivers, "it has this advantage--that while it has
+sufficient association with honourable distinction to affect the mind
+of the namesake and rouse his emulation, it is not that of so
+stupendous a personage as to defy rivalry.  Sir Kenelm Digby was
+certainly an accomplished and gallant gentleman; but what with his
+silly superstition about sympathetic powders, etc., any man nowadays
+might be clever in comparison without being a prodigy.  Yes, let us
+decide on Kenelm."
+
+Sir Peter meditated.  "Certainly," said he, after a pause, "certainly
+the name of Kenelm carries with it very crotchety associations; and I
+am afraid that Sir Kenelm Digby did not make a prudent choice in
+marriage.  The fair Venetia was no better than she should be; and I
+should wish my heir not to be led away by beauty but wed a woman of
+respectable character and decorous conduct."
+
+Miss MARGARET.--"A British matron, of course!"
+
+THREE SISTERS (in chorus).--"Of course! of course!"
+
+"But," resumed Sir Peter, "I am crotchety myself, and crotchets are
+innocent things enough; and as for marriage the Baby cannot marry
+to-morrow, so that we have ample time to consider that matter.  Kenelm
+Digby was a man any family might be proud of; and, as you say, sister
+Margaret, Kenelm Chillingly does not sound amiss: Kenelm Chillingly it
+shall be!"
+
+The Baby was accordingly christened Kenelm, after which ceremony its
+face grew longer than before.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+BEFORE his relations dispersed, Sir Peter summoned Mr. Gordon into his
+library.
+
+"Cousin," said he, kindly, "I do not blame you for the want of family
+affection, or even of humane interest, which you exhibit towards the
+New-born."
+
+"Blame me, Cousin Peter!  I should think not.  I exhibit as much
+family affection and humane interest as could be expected from
+me,--circumstances considered."
+
+"I own," said Sir Peter, with all his wonted mildness, "that after
+remaining childless for fourteen years of wedded life, the advent of
+this little stranger must have occasioned you a disagreeable surprise.
+But, after all, as I am many years younger than you, and in the course
+of nature shall outlive you, the loss is less to yourself than to your
+son, and upon that I wish to say a few words.  You know too well the
+conditions on which I hold my estate not to be aware that I have not
+legally the power to saddle it with any bequest to your boy.  The
+New-born succeeds to the fee-simple as last in tail.  But I intend,
+from this moment, to lay by something every year for your son out of
+my income; and, fond as I am of London for a part of the year, I shall
+now give up my town-house.  If I live to the years the Psalmist allots
+to man, I shall thus accumulate something handsome for your son, which
+may be taken in the way of compensation."
+
+Mr. Gordon was by no means softened by this generous speech.  However,
+he answered more politely than was his wont, "My son will be very much
+obliged to you, should he ever need your intended bequest."  Pausing a
+moment, he added with a cheerful smile, "A large percentage of infants
+die before attaining the age of twenty-one."
+
+"Nay, but I am told your son is an uncommonly fine healthy child."
+
+"My son, Cousin Peter!  I was not thinking of my son, but of yours.
+Yours has a big head.  I should not wonder if he had water in it.  I
+don't wish to alarm you, but he may go off any day, and in that case
+it is not likely that Lady Chillingly will condescend to replace him.
+So you will excuse me if I still keep a watchful eye on my rights;
+and, however painful to my feelings, I must still dispute your right
+to cut a stick of the field timber."
+
+"That is nonsense, Gordon.  I am tenant for life without impeachment
+of waste, and can cut down all timber not ornamental."
+
+"I advise you not, Cousin Peter.  I have told you before that I shall
+try the question at law, should you provoke it, amicably, of course.
+Rights are rights; and if I am driven to maintain mine, I trust that
+you are of a mind too liberal to allow your family affection for me
+and mine to be influenced by a decree of the Court of Chancery.  But
+my fly is waiting.  I must not miss the train."
+
+"Well, good-by, Gordon.  Shake hands."
+
+"Shake hands!--of course, of course.  By the by, as I came through the
+lodge, it seemed to me sadly out of repair. I believe you are liable
+for dilapidations.  Good-by."
+
+"The man is a hog in armour," soliloquized Sir Peter, when his cousin
+was gone; "and if it be hard to drive a common pig in the way he don't
+choose to go, a hog in armour is indeed undrivable.  But his boy ought
+not to suffer for his father's hoggishness; and I shall begin at once
+to see what I can lay by for him.  After all, it is hard upon Gordon.
+Poor Gordon; poor fellow! poor fellow!  Still I hope he will not go to
+law with me.  I hate law.  And a worm will turn, especially a worm
+that is put into Chancery."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+DESPITE the sinister semi-predictions of the /ci-devant/ heir-at-law,
+the youthful Chillingly passed with safety, and indeed with dignity,
+through the infant stages of existence.  He took his measles and
+whooping-cough with philosophical equanimity.  He gradually acquired
+the use of speech, but he did not too lavishly exercise that special
+attribute of humanity.  During the earlier years of childhood he spoke
+as little as if he had been prematurely trained in the school of
+Pythagoras.  But he evidently spoke the less in order to reflect the
+more.  He observed closely and pondered deeply over what he observed.
+At the age of eight he began to converse more freely, and it was in
+that year that he startled his mother with the question, "Mamma, are
+you not sometimes overpowered by the sense of your own identity?"
+
+Lady Chillingly,--I was about to say rushed, but Lady Chillingly never
+rushed,--Lady Chillingly glided less sedately than her wont to Sir
+Peter, and repeating her son's question, said, "The boy is growing
+troublesome, too wise for any woman: he must go to school."
+
+Sir Peter was of the same opinion.  But where on earth did the child
+get hold of so long a word as "identity," and how did so extraordinary
+and puzzling a metaphysical question come into his head?  Sir Peter
+summoned Kenelm, and ascertained that the boy, having free access to
+the library, had fastened upon Locke on the Human Understanding, and
+was prepared to dispute with that philosopher upon the doctrine of
+innate ideas.  Quoth Kenelm, gravely, "A want is an idea; and if, as
+soon as I was born, I felt the want of food and knew at once where to
+turn for it, without being taught, surely I came into the world with
+an 'innate idea.'"
+
+Sir Peter, though he dabbled in metaphysics, was posed, and scratched
+his head without getting out a proper answer as to the distinction
+between ideas and instincts.  "My child," he said at last, "you don't
+know what you are talking about: go and take a good gallop on your
+black pony; and I forbid you to read any books that are not given to
+you by myself or your mamma.  Stick to 'Puss in Boots.'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+SIR PETER ordered his carriage and drove to the house of the stout
+parson.  That doughty ecclesiastic held a family living a few miles
+distant from the Hall, and was the only one of the cousins with whom
+Sir Peter habitually communed on his domestic affairs.
+
+He found the Parson in his study, which exhibited tastes other than
+clerical.  Over the chimney-piece were ranged fencing-foils,
+boxing-gloves, and staffs for the athletic exercise of single-stick;
+cricket-bats and fishing-rods filled up the angles.  There were sundry
+prints on the walls: one of Mr. Wordsworth, flanked by two of
+distinguished race-horses; one of a Leicestershire short-horn, with
+which the Parson, who farmed his own glebe and bred cattle in its rich
+pastures, had won a prize at the county show; and on either side of
+that animal were the portraits of Hooker and Jeremy Taylor.  There
+were dwarf book-cases containing miscellaneous works very handsomely
+bound; at the open window, a stand of flower-pots, the flowers in full
+bloom.  The Parson's flowers were famous.
+
+The appearance of the whole room was that of a man who is tidy and
+neat in his habits.
+
+"Cousin," said Sir Peter, "I have come to consult you."  And therewith
+he related the marvellous precocity of Kenelm Chillingly.  "You see
+the name begins to work on him rather too much.  He must go to school;
+and now what school shall it be?  Private or public?"
+
+THE REV. JOHN STALWORTH.--"There is a great deal to be said for or
+against either.  At a public school the chances are that Kenelm will
+no longer be overpowered by a sense of his own identity; he will more
+probably lose identity altogether.  The worst of a public school is
+that a sort of common character is substituted for individual
+character.  The master, of course, can't attend to the separate
+development of each boy's idiosyncrasy.  All minds are thrown into one
+great mould, and come out of it more or less in the same form.  An
+Etonian may be clever or stupid, but, as either, he remains
+emphatically Etonian.  A public school ripens talent, but its tendency
+is to stifle genius.  Then, too, a public school for an only son, heir
+to a good estate, which will be entirely at his own disposal, is apt
+to encourage reckless and extravagant habits; and your estate requires
+careful management, and leaves no margin for an heir's notes-of-hand
+and post-obits.  On the whole, I am against a public school for
+Kenelm."
+
+"Well then, we will decide on a private one."
+
+"Hold!"  said the Parson: "a private school has its drawbacks.  You
+can seldom produce large fishes in small ponds.  In private schools
+the competition is narrowed, the energies stinted.  The schoolmaster's
+wife interferes, and generally coddles the boys.  There is not
+manliness enough in those academies; no fagging, and very little
+fighting.  A clever boy turns out a prig; a boy of feebler intellect
+turns out a well-behaved young lady in trousers.  Nothing muscular in
+the system.  Decidedly the namesake and descendant of Kenelm Digby
+should not go to a private seminary."
+
+"So far as I gather from your reasoning," said Sir Peter, with
+characteristic placidity, "Kenelm Chillingly is not to go to school at
+all."
+
+"It does look like it," said the Parson, candidly; "but, on
+consideration, there is a medium.  There are schools which unite the
+best qualities of public and private schools, large enough to
+stimulate and develop energies mental and physical, yet not so framed
+as to melt all character in one crucible.  For instance, there is a
+school which has at this moment one of the first scholars in Europe
+for head-master,--a school which has turned out some of the most
+remarkable men of the rising generation.  The master sees at a glance
+if a boy be clever, and takes pains with him accordingly.  He is not a
+mere teacher of hexameters and sapphics.  His learning embraces all
+literature, ancient and modern.  He is a good writer and a fine
+critic; admires Wordsworth.  He winks at fighting: his boys know how
+to use their fists; and they are not in the habit of signing
+post-obits before they are fifteen.  Merton School is the place for
+Kenelm."
+
+"Thank you," said Sir Peter.  "It is a great comfort in life to find
+somebody who can decide for one.  I am an irresolute man myself, and
+in ordinary matters willingly let Lady Chillingly govern me."
+
+"I should like to see a wife govern /me/," said the stout Parson.
+
+"But you are not married to Lady Chillingly.  And now let us go into
+the garden and look at your dahlias."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE youthful confuter of Locke was despatched to Merton School, and
+ranked, according to his merits, as lag of the penultimate form.  When
+he came home for the Christmas holidays he was more saturnine than
+ever; in fact, his countenance bore the impression of some absorbing
+grief.  He said, however, that he liked school very well, and eluded
+all other questions.  But early the next morning he mounted his black
+pony and rode to the Parson's rectory.  The reverend gentleman was in
+his farmyard examining his bullocks when Kenelm accosted him thus
+briefly,--
+
+"Sir, I am disgraced, and I shall die of it if you cannot help to set
+me right in my own eyes."
+
+"My dear boy, don't talk in that way.  Come into my study."
+
+As soon as they entered that room, and the Parson had carefully closed
+the door, he took the boy's arm, turned him round to the light, and
+saw at once that there was something very grave on his mind.  Chucking
+him under the chin, the Parson said cheerily, "Hold up your head,
+Kenelm.  I am sure you have done nothing unworthy of a gentleman."
+
+"I don't know that.  I fought a boy very little bigger than myself,
+and I have been licked.  I did not give in, though; but the other boys
+picked me up, for I could not stand any longer; and the fellow is a
+great bully; and his name is Butt; and he's the son of a lawyer; and
+he got my head into chancery; and I have challenged him to fight again
+next half; and unless you can help me to lick him, I shall never be
+good for anything in the world,--never.  It will break my heart."
+
+"I am very glad to hear you have had the pluck to challenge him.  Just
+let me see how you double your fist.  Well, that's not amiss.  Now,
+put yourself into a fighting attitude, and hit out at me,--hard!
+harder!  Pooh! that will never do.  You should make your blows as
+straight as an arrow. And that's not the way to stand.  Stop,--so:
+well on your haunches; weight on the left leg; good!  Now, put on
+these gloves, and I'll give you a lesson in boxing."
+
+Five minutes afterwards Mrs. John Chillingly, entering the room to
+summon her husband to breakfast, stood astounded to see him with his
+coat off, and parrying the blows of Kenelm, who flew at him like a
+young tiger.  The good pastor at that moment might certainly have
+appeared a fine type of muscular Christianity, but not of that kind of
+Christianity out of which one makes Archbishops of Canterbury.
+
+"Good gracious me!" faltered Mrs. John Chillingly; and then,
+wife-like, flying to the protection of her husband, she seized Kenelm
+by the shoulders, and gave him a good shaking.  The Parson, who was
+sadly out of breath, was not displeased at the interruption, but took
+that opportunity to put on his coat, and said, "We'll begin again
+to-morrow.  Now, come to breakfast."  But during breakfast Kenelm's
+face still betrayed dejection, and he talked little and ate less.
+
+As soon as the meal was over, he drew the Parson into the garden and
+said, "I have been thinking, sir, that perhaps it is not fair to Butt
+that I should be taking these lessons; and if it is not fair, I'd
+rather not--"
+
+"Give me your hand, my boy!" cried the Parson, transported.  "The name
+of Kenelm is not thrown away upon you.  The natural desire of man in
+his attribute of fighting animal (an attribute in which, I believe, he
+excels all other animated beings, except a quail and a gamecock) is to
+beat his adversary.  But the natural desire of that culmination of man
+which we call gentleman is to beat his adversary fairly.  A gentleman
+would rather be beaten fairly than beat unfairly.  Is not that your
+thought?"
+
+"Yes," replied Kenelm, firmly; and then, beginning to philosophize, he
+added, "And it stands to reason; because if I beat a fellow unfairly,
+I don't really beat him at all."
+
+"Excellent!  But suppose that you and another boy go into examination
+upon Caesar's Commentaries or the multiplication table, and the other
+boy is cleverer than you, but you have taken the trouble to learn the
+subject and he has not: should you say you beat him unfairly?"
+
+Kenelm meditated a moment, and then said decidedly, "No."
+
+"That which applies to the use of your brains applies equally to the
+use of your fists.  Do you comprehend me?"
+
+"Yes, sir; I do now."
+
+"In the time of your namesake, Sir Kenelm Digby, gentlemen wore
+swords, and they learned how to use them, because, in case of quarrel,
+they had to fight with them.  Nobody, at least in England, fights with
+swords now.  It is a democratic age, and if you fight at all, you are
+reduced to fists; and if Kenelm Digby learned to fence, so Kenelm
+Chillingly must learn to box; and if a gentleman thrashes a drayman
+twice his size, who has not learned to box, it is not unfair; it is
+but an exemplification of the truth that knowledge is power.  Come and
+take another lesson on boxing to-morrow."
+
+Kenelm remounted his pony and returned home.  He found his father
+sauntering in the garden with a book in his hand.  "Papa," said
+Kenelm, "how does one gentleman write to another with whom he has a
+quarrel, and he don't want to make it up, but he has something to say
+about the quarrel which it is fair the other gentleman should know?"
+
+"I don't understand what you mean."
+
+"Well, just before I went to school I remember hearing you say that
+you had a quarrel with Lord Hautfort, and that he was an ass, and you
+would write and tell him so.  When you wrote did you say, 'You are an
+ass'?  Is that the way one gentleman writes to another?"
+
+"Upon my honour, Kenelm, you ask very odd questions.  But you cannot
+learn too early this fact, that irony is to the high-bred what
+Billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another
+gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank: he implies it in the
+politest terms he can invent.  Lord Hautfort denies my right of free
+warren over a trout-stream that runs through his lands.  I don't care
+a rush about the trout-stream, but there is no doubt of my right to
+fish in it.  He was an ass to raise the question; for, if he had not,
+I should not have exercised the right.  As he did raise the question,
+I was obliged to catch his trout."
+
+"And you wrote a letter to him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How did you write, Papa?  What did you say?"
+
+"Something like this.  'Sir Peter Chillingly presents his compliments
+to Lord Hautfort, and thinks it fair to his lordship to say that he
+has taken the best legal advice with regard to his rights of free
+warren; and trusts to be forgiven if he presumes to suggest that Lord
+Hautfort might do well to consult his own lawyer before he decides on
+disputing them.'"
+
+"Thank you, Papa.  I see."
+
+That evening Kenelm wrote the following letter:--
+
+
+Mr. Chillingly presents his compliments to Mr. Butt, and thinks it
+fair to Mr. Butt to say that he is taking lessons in boxing; and
+trusts to be forgiven if he presumes to suggest that Mr. Butt might do
+well to take lessons himself before fighting with Mr. Chillingly next
+half.
+
+
+"Papa," said Kenelm the next morning, "I want to write to a
+schoolfellow whose name is Butt; he is the son of a lawyer who is
+called a serjeant.  I don't know where to direct to him."
+
+"That is easily ascertained," said Sir Peter.  "Serjeant Butt is an
+eminent man, and his address will be in the Court Guide."
+
+The address was found,--Bloomsbury Square; and Kenelm directed his
+letter accordingly.  In due course he received this answer,--
+
+
+You are an insolent little fool, and I'll thrash you within an inch of
+your life.
+
+ROBERT BUTT.
+
+
+After the receipt of that polite epistle, Kenelm Chillingly's scruples
+vanished, and he took daily lessons in muscular Christianity.
+
+Kenelm returned to school with a brow cleared from care, and three
+days after his return he wrote to the Reverend John,--
+
+
+DEAR SIR,--I have licked Butt.  Knowledge is power.
+
+Your affectionate     KENELM.
+
+P. S.--Now that I have licked Butt, I have made it up with him.
+
+
+From that time Kenelm prospered.  Eulogistic letters from the
+illustrious head-master showered in upon Sir Peter.  At the age of
+sixteen Kenelm Chillingly was the head of the school, and, quitting it
+finally, brought home the following letter from his Orbilius to Sir
+Peter, marked "confidential":--
+
+
+DEAR SIR PETER CHILLINGLY,--I have never felt more anxious for the
+future career of any of my pupils than I do for that of your son.  He
+is so clever that, with ease to himself, he may become a great man.
+He is so peculiar that it is quite as likely that he may only make
+himself known to the world as a great oddity.  That distinguished
+teacher Dr. Arnold said that the difference between one boy and
+another was not so much talent as energy.  Your son has talent, has
+energy: yet he wants something for success in life; he wants the
+faculty of amalgamation.  He is of a melancholic and therefore
+unsocial temperament.  He will not act in concert with others.  He is
+lovable enough: the other boys like him, especially the smaller ones,
+with whom he is a sort of hero; but he has not one intimate friend.
+So far as school learning is concerned, he might go to college at
+once, and with the certainty of distinction provided he chose to exert
+himself.  But if I may venture to offer an advice, I should say employ
+the next two years in letting him see a little more of real life and
+acquire a due sense of its practical objects.  Send him to a private
+tutor who is not a pedant, but a man of letters or a man of the world,
+and if in the metropolis so much the better.  In a word, my young
+friend is unlike other people; and, with qualities that might do
+anything in life, I fear, unless you can get him to be like other
+people, that he will do nothing.  Excuse the freedom with which I
+write, and ascribe it to the singular interest with which your son has
+inspired me.  I have the honour to be, dear Sir Peter,
+
+Yours truly,     WILLIAM HORTON.
+
+
+Upon the strength of this letter Sir Peter did not indeed summon
+another family council; for he did not consider that his three maiden
+sisters could offer any practical advice on the matter.  And as to Mr.
+Gordon, that gentleman having gone to law on the great timber
+question, and having been signally beaten thereon, had informed Sir
+Peter that he disowned him as a cousin and despised him as a man; not
+exactly in those words,--more covertly, and therefore more stingingly.
+But Sir Peter invited Mr. Mivers for a week's shooting, and requested
+the Reverend John to meet him.
+
+Mr. Mivers arrived.  The sixteen years that had elapsed since he was
+first introduced to the reader had made no perceptible change in his
+appearance.  It was one of his maxims that in youth a man of the world
+should appear older than he is; and in middle age, and thence to his
+dying day, younger.  And he announced one secret for attaining that
+art in these words: "Begin your wig early, thus you never become
+gray."
+
+Unlike most philosophers, Mivers made his practice conform to his
+precepts; and while in the prime of youth inaugurated a wig in a
+fashion that defied the flight of time, not curly and hyacinthine, but
+straight-haired and unassuming.  He looked five-and-thirty from the
+day he put on that wig at the age of twenty-five.  He looked
+five-and-thirty now at the age of fifty-one.
+
+"I mean," said he, "to remain thirty-five all my life.  No better age
+to stick at.  People may choose to say I am more, but I shall not own
+it.  No one is bound to criminate himself."
+
+Mr. Mivers had some other aphorisms on this important subject.  One
+was, "Refuse to be ill.  Never tell people you are ill; never own it
+to yourself.  Illness is one of those things which a man should resist
+on principle at the onset.  It should never be allowed to get in the
+thin end of the wedge.  But take care of your constitution, and,
+having ascertained the best habits for it, keep to them like
+clockwork."  Mr. Mivers would not have missed his constitutional walk
+in the Park before breakfast if, by going in a cab to St. Giles's, he
+could have saved the city of London from conflagration.
+
+Another aphorism of his was, "If you want to keep young, live in a
+metropolis; never stay above a few weeks at a time in the country.
+Take two men of similar constitution at the age of twenty-five; let
+one live in London and enjoy a regular sort of club life; send the
+other to some rural district, preposterously called 'salubrious.'
+Look at these men when they have both reached the age of forty-five.
+The London man has preserved his figure: the rural man has a paunch.
+The London man has an interesting delicacy of complexion: the face of
+the rural man is coarse-grained and perhaps jowly."
+
+A third axiom was, "Don't be a family man; nothing ages one like
+matrimonial felicity and paternal ties.  Never multiply cares, and
+pack up your life in the briefest compass you can.  Why add to your
+carpet-bag of troubles the contents of a lady's imperials and
+bonnet-boxes, and the travelling /fourgon/ required by the nursery?
+Shun ambition: it is so gouty.  It takes a great deal out of a man's
+life, and gives him nothing worth having till he has ceased to enjoy
+it."  Another of his aphorisms was this, "A fresh mind keeps the body
+fresh.  Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday.
+As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day."
+
+Preserving himself by attention to these rules, Mr. Mivers appeared at
+Exmundham /totus, teres/, but not /rotundus/,--a man of middle height,
+slender, upright, with well-cut, small, slight features, thin lips,
+enclosing an excellent set of teeth, even, white, and not indebted to
+the dentist.  For the sake of those teeth he shunned acid wines,
+especially hock in all its varieties, culinary sweets, and hot drinks.
+He drank even his tea cold.
+
+"There are," he said, "two things in life that a sage must preserve at
+every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth.
+Some evils admit of consolations: there are no comforters for
+dyspepsia and toothache."  A man of letters, but a man of the world,
+he had so cultivated his mind as both that he was feared as the one
+and liked as the other.  As a man of letters he despised the world; as
+a man of the world he despised letters.  As the representative of both
+he revered himself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ON the evening of the third day from the arrival of Mr. Mivers, he,
+the Parson, and Sir Peter were seated in the host's parlour, the
+Parson in an armchair by the ingle, smoking a short cutty-pipe; Mivers
+at length on the couch, slowly inhaling the perfumes of one of his own
+choice /trabucos/.  Sir Peter never smoked.  There were spirits and
+hot water and lemons on the table.  The Parson was famed for skill in
+the composition of toddy.  From time to time the Parson sipped his
+glass, and Sir Peter less frequently did the same.  It is needless to
+say that Mr. Mivers eschewed toddy; but beside him, on a chair, was a
+tumbler and a large carafe of iced water.
+
+SIR PETER.--"Cousin Mivers, you have now had time to study Kenelm, and
+to compare his character with that assigned to him in the Doctor's
+letter."
+
+MIVERS (languidly).--"Ay."
+
+SIR PETER.--"I ask you, as a man of the world, what you think I had
+best do with the boy.  Shall I send him to such a tutor as the Doctor
+suggests?  Cousin John is not of the same mind as the Doctor, and
+thinks that Kenelm's oddities are fine things in their way, and should
+not be prematurely ground out of him by contact with worldly tutors
+and London pavements."
+
+"Ay," repeated Mr. Mivers more languidly than before.  After a pause
+he added, "Parson John, let us hear you."
+
+The Parson laid aside his cutty-pipe and emptied his fourth tumbler of
+toddy; then, throwing back his head in the dreamy fashion of the great
+Coleridge when he indulged in a monologue, he thus began, speaking
+somewhat through his nose,--
+
+"At the morning of life--"
+
+Here Mivers shrugged his shoulders, turned round on his couch, and
+closed his eyes with the sigh of a man resigning himself to a homily.
+
+"At the morning of life, when the dews--"
+
+"I knew the dews were coming," said Mivers.  "Dry them, if you please;
+nothing so unwholesome.  We anticipate what you mean to say, which is
+plainly this, When a fellow is sixteen he is very fresh: so he is;
+pass on; what then?"
+
+"If you mean to interrupt me with your habitual cynicism," said the
+Parson, "why did you ask to hear me?"
+
+"That was a mistake I grant; but who on earth could conceive that you
+were going to commence in that florid style?  Morning of life indeed!
+bosh!"
+
+"Cousin Mivers," said Sir Peter, "you are not reviewing John's style
+in 'The Londoner;' and I will beg you to remember that my son's
+morning of life is a serious thing to his father, and not to be nipped
+in its bud by a cousin.  Proceed, John!"
+
+Quoth the Parson, good-humouredly, "I will adapt my style to the taste
+of my critic.  When a fellow is at the age of sixteen, and very fresh
+to life, the question is whether he should begin thus prematurely to
+exchange the ideas that belong to youth for the ideas that properly
+belong to middle age,--whether he should begin to acquire that
+knowledge of the world which middle-aged men have acquired and can
+teach. I think not.  I would rather have him yet a while in the
+company of the poets; in the indulgence of glorious hopes and
+beautiful dreams, forming to himself some type of the Heroic, which he
+will keep before his eyes as a standard when he goes into the world as
+man.  There are two schools of thought for the formation of
+character,--the Real and the Ideal.  I would form the character in the
+Ideal school, in order to make it bolder and grander and lovelier when
+it takes its place in that every-day life which is called Real.  And
+therefore I am not for placing the descendant of Sir Kenelm Digby, in
+the interval between school and college, with a man of the world,
+probably as cynical as Cousin Mivers and living in the stony
+thoroughfares of London."
+
+MR. MIVERS (rousing himself).--"Before we plunge into that Serbonian
+bog--the controversy between the Realistic and the Idealistic
+academicians--I think the first thing to decide is what you want
+Kenelm to be hereafter.  When I order a pair of shoes, I decide
+beforehand what kind of shoes they are to be,--court pumps or strong
+walking shoes; and I don't ask the shoemaker to give me a preliminary
+lecture upon the different purposes of locomotion to which leather can
+be applied.  If, Sir Peter, you want Kenelm to scribble lackadaisical
+poems, listen to Parson John; if you want to fill his head with
+pastoral rubbish about innocent love, which may end in marrying the
+miller's daughter, listen to Parson John; if you want him to enter
+life a soft-headed greenhorn, who will sign any bill carrying 50 per
+cent to which a young scamp asks him to be security, listen to Parson
+John; in fine, if you wish a clever lad to become either a pigeon or a
+ring-dove, a credulous booby or a sentimental milksop, Parson John is
+the best adviser you can have."
+
+"But I don't want my son to ripen into either of those imbecile
+developments of species."
+
+"Then don't listen to Parson John; and there's an end of the
+discussion."
+
+"No, there is not.  I have not heard your advice what to do if John's
+advice is not to be taken."
+
+Mr. Mivers hesitated.  He seemed puzzled.
+
+"The fact is," said the Parson, "that Mivers got up 'The Londoner'
+upon a principle that regulates his own mind,--find fault with the way
+everything is done, but never commit yourself by saying how anything
+can be done better."
+
+"That is true," said Mivers, candidly.  "The destructive order of mind
+is seldom allied to the constructive.  I and 'The Londoner' are
+destructive by nature and by policy.  We can reduce a building into
+rubbish, but we don't profess to turn rubbish into a building.  We are
+critics, and, as you say, not such fools as to commit ourselves to the
+proposition of amendments that can be criticised by others.
+Nevertheless, for your sake, Cousin Peter, and on the condition that
+if I give my advice you will never say that I gave it, and if you take
+it that you will never reproach me if it turns out, as most advice
+does, very ill,--I will depart from my custom and hazard my opinion."
+
+"I accept the conditions."
+
+"Well then, with every new generation there springs up a new order of
+ideas.  The earlier the age at which a man seizes the ideas that will
+influence his own generation, the more he has a start in the race with
+his contemporaries.  If Kenelm comprehends at sixteen those
+intellectual signs of the time which, when he goes up to college, he
+will find young men of eighteen or twenty only just /prepared/ to
+comprehend, he will produce a deep impression of his powers for
+reasoning and their adaptation to actual life, which will be of great
+service to him later.  Now the ideas that influence the mass of the
+rising generation never have their well-head in the generation itself.
+They have their source in the generation before them, generally in a
+small minority, neglected or contemned by the great majority which
+adopt them later.  Therefore a lad at the age of sixteen, if he wants
+to get at such ideas, must come into close contact with some superior
+mind in which they were conceived twenty or thirty years before.  I am
+consequently for placing Kenelm with a person from whom the new ideas
+can be learned.  I am also for his being placed in the metropolis
+during the process of this initiation.  With such introductions as are
+at our command, he may come in contact not only with new ideas, but
+with eminent men in all vocations.  It is a great thing to mix betimes
+with clever people.  One picks their brains unconsciously.  There is
+another advantage, and not a small one, in this early entrance into
+good society.  A youth learns manners, self-possession, readiness of
+resource; and he is much less likely to get into scrapes and contract
+tastes for low vices and mean dissipation, when he comes into life
+wholly his own master, after having acquired a predilection for
+refined companionship under the guidance of those competent to select
+it.  There, I have talked myself out of breath.  And you had better
+decide at once in favour of my advice; for as I am of a contradictory
+temperament, myself of to-morrow may probably contradict myself of
+to-day."
+
+Sir Peter was greatly impressed with his cousin's argumentative
+eloquence.
+
+The Parson smoked his cutty-pipe in silence until appealed to by Sir
+Peter, and he then said, "In this programme of education for a
+Christian gentleman, the part of Christian seems to me left out."
+
+"The tendency of the age," observed Mr. Mivers, calmly, "is towards
+that omission.  Secular education is the necessary reaction from the
+special theological training which arose in the dislike of one set of
+Christians to the teaching of another set; and as these antagonists
+will not agree how religion is to be taught, either there must be no
+teaching at all, or religion must be eliminated from the tuition."
+
+"That may do very well for some huge system of national education,"
+said Sir Peter, "but it does not apply to Kenelm, as one of a family
+all of whose members belong to the Established Church.  He may be
+taught the creed of his forefathers without offending a Dissenter."
+
+"Which Established Church is he to belong to?" asked Mr.
+Mivers,--"High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, Puseyite Church,
+Ritualistic Church, or any other Established Church that may be coming
+into fashion?"
+
+"Pshaw!" said the Parson.  "That sneer is out of place.  You know very
+well that one merit of our Church is the spirit of toleration, which
+does not magnify every variety of opinion into a heresy or a schism.
+But if Sir Peter sends his son at the age of sixteen to a tutor who
+eliminates the religion of Christianity from his teaching, he deserves
+to be thrashed within an inch of his life; and," continued the Parson,
+eying Sir Peter sternly, and mechanically turning up his cuffs, "I
+should /like/ to thrash him."
+
+"Gently, John," said Sir Peter, recoiling; "gently, my dear kinsman.
+My heir shall not be educated as a heathen, and Mivers is only
+bantering us.  Come, Mivers, do you happen to know among your London
+friends some man who, though a scholar and a man of the world, is
+still a Christian?"
+
+"A Christian as by law established?"
+
+"Well--yes."
+
+"And who will receive Kenelm as a pupil?"
+
+"Of course I am not putting, such questions to you out of idle
+curiosity."
+
+"I know exactly the man.  He was originally intended for orders, and
+is a very learned theologian.  He relinquished the thought of the
+clerical profession on succeeding to a small landed estate by the
+sudden death of an elder brother.  He then came to London and bought
+experience: that is, he was naturally generous; he became easily taken
+in; got into difficulties; the estate was transferred to trustees for
+the benefit of creditors, and on the payment of L400 a year to
+himself.  By this time he was married and had two children.  He found
+the necessity of employing his pen in order to add to his income, and
+is one of the ablest contributors to the periodical press.  He is an
+elegant scholar, an effective writer, much courted by public men, a
+thorough gentleman, has a pleasant house, and receives the best
+society.  Having been once taken in, he defies any one to take him in
+again.  His experience was not bought too dearly.  No more acute and
+accomplished man of the world.  The three hundred a year or so that
+you would pay for Kenelm would suit him very well.  His name is Welby,
+and he lives in Chester Square."
+
+"No doubt he is a contributor to 'The Londoner,'" said the Parson,
+sarcastically.
+
+"True.  He writes our classical, theological, and metaphysical
+articles.  Suppose I invite him to come here for a day or two, and you
+can see him and judge for yourself, Sir Peter?"
+
+"Do."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+MR. WELBY arrived, and pleased everybody.  A man of the happiest
+manners, easy and courteous.  There was no pedantry in him, yet you
+could soon see that his reading covered an extensive surface, and here
+and there had dived deeply.  He enchanted the Parson by his comments
+on Saint Chrysostom; he dazzled Sir Peter with his lore in the
+antiquities of ancient Britain; he captivated Kenelm by his readiness
+to enter into that most disputatious of sciences called metaphysics;
+while for Lady Chillingly, and the three sisters who were invited to
+meet him, he was more entertaining, but not less instructive.  Equally
+at home in novels and in good books, he gave to the spinsters a list
+of innocent works in either; while for Lady Chillingly he sparkled
+with anecdotes of fashionable life, the newest /bons mots/, the latest
+scandals.  In fact, Mr. Welby was one of those brilliant persons who
+adorn any society amidst which they are thrown.  If at heart he was a
+disappointed man, the disappointment was concealed by an even serenity
+of spirits; he had entertained high and justifiable hopes of a
+brilliant career and a lasting reputation as a theologian and a
+preacher; the succession to his estate at the age of twenty-three had
+changed the nature of his ambition.  The charm of his manner was such
+that he sprang at once into the fashion, and became beguiled by his
+own genial temperament into that lesser but pleasanter kind of
+ambition which contents itself with social successes and enjoys the
+present hour.  When his circumstances compelled him to eke out his
+income by literary profits, he slid into the grooves of periodical
+composition, and resigned all thoughts of the labour required for any
+complete work, which might take much time and be attended with scanty
+profits.  He still remained very popular in society, and perhaps his
+general reputation for ability made him fearful to hazard it by any
+great undertaking.  He was not, like Mivers, a despiser of all men and
+all things; but he regarded men and things as an indifferent though
+good-natured spectator regards the thronging streets from a
+drawing-room window.  He could not be called /blase/, but he was
+thoroughly /desillusionne/.  Once over-romantic, his character now was
+so entirely imbued with the neutral tints of life that romance
+offended his taste as an obtrusion of violent colour into a sober
+woof.  He was become a thorough Realist in his code of criticism, and
+in his worldly mode of action and thought.  But Parson John did not
+perceive this, for Welby listened to that gentleman's eulogies on the
+Ideal school without troubling himself to contradict them.  He had
+grown too indolent to be combative in conversation, and only as a
+critic betrayed such pugnacity as remained to him by the polished
+cruelty of sarcasm.
+
+He came off with flying colours through an examination into his Church
+orthodoxy instituted by the Parson and Sir Peter.  Amid a cloud of
+ecclesiastical erudition, his own opinions vanished in those of the
+Fathers.  In truth, he was a Realist, in religion as in everything
+else.  He regarded Christianity as a type of existent civilization,
+which ought to be reverenced, as one might recognize the other types
+of that civilization; such as the liberty of the press, the
+representative system, white neckcloths and black coats of an evening,
+etc.  He belonged, therefore, to what he himself called the school of
+Eclectical Christiology; and accommodated the reasonings of Deism to
+the doctrines of the Church, if not as a creed, at least as an
+institution.  Finally, he united all the Chillingly votes in his
+favour; and when he departed from the Hall carried off Kenelm for his
+initiation into the new ideas that were to govern his generation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+KENELM remained a year and a half with this distinguished preceptor.
+During that time he learned much in book-lore; he saw much, too, of
+the eminent men of the day, in literature, the law, and the senate.
+He saw, also, a good deal of the fashionable world.  Fine ladies, who
+had been friends of his mother in her youth, took him up, counselled
+and petted him,--one in especial, the Marchioness of Glenalvon, to
+whom he was endeared by grateful association, for her youngest son had
+been a fellow-pupil of Kenelm at Merton School, and Kenelm had saved
+his life from drowning.  The poor boy died of consumption later, and
+her grief for his loss made her affection for Kenelm yet more tender.
+Lady Glenalvon was one of the queens of the London world.  Though in
+the fiftieth year she was still very handsome: she was also very
+accomplished, very clever, and very kind-hearted, as some of such
+queens are; just one of those women invaluable in forming the manners
+and elevating the character of young men destined to make a figure in
+after-life.  But she was very angry with herself in thinking that she
+failed to arouse any such ambition in the heir of the Chillinglys.
+
+It may here be said that Kenelm was not without great advantages of
+form and countenance.  He was tall, and the youthful grace of his
+proportions concealed his physical strength, which was extraordinary
+rather from the iron texture than the bulk of his thews and sinews.
+His face, though it certainly lacked the roundness of youth, had a
+grave, sombre, haunting sort of beauty, not artistically regular, but
+picturesque, peculiar, with large dark expressive eyes, and a certain
+indescribable combination of sweetness and melancholy in his quiet
+smile.  He never laughed audibly, but he had a quick sense of the
+comic, and his eye would laugh when his lips were silent.  He would
+say queer, droll, unexpected things which passed for humour; but, save
+for that gleam in the eye, he could not have said them with more
+seeming innocence of intentional joke if he had been a monk of La
+Trappe looking up from the grave he was digging in order to utter
+"memento mori."
+
+That face of his was a great "take in."  Women thought it full of
+romantic sentiment; the face of one easily moved to love, and whose
+love would be replete alike with poetry and passion.  But he remained
+as proof as the youthful Hippolytus to all female attraction.  He
+delighted the Parson by keeping up his practice in athletic pursuits;
+and obtained a reputation at the pugilistic school, which he attended
+regularly, as the best gentleman boxer about town.
+
+He made many acquaintances, but still formed no friendships.  Yet
+every one who saw him much conceived affection for him.  If he did not
+return that affection, he did not repel it.  He was exceedingly gentle
+in voice and manner, and had all his father's placidity of temper:
+children and dogs took to him as by instinct.
+
+On leaving Mr. Welby's, Kenelm carried to Cambridge a mind largely
+stocked with the new ideas that were budding into leaf.  He certainly
+astonished the other freshmen, and occasionally puzzled the mighty
+Fellows of Trinity and St. John's.  But he gradually withdrew himself
+much from general society.  In fact, he was too old in mind for his
+years; and after having mixed in the choicest circles of a metropolis,
+college suppers and wine parties had little charm for him.  He
+maintained his pugilistic renown; and on certain occasions, when some
+delicate undergraduate had been bullied by some gigantic bargeman, his
+muscular Christianity nobly developed itself.  He did not do as much
+as he might have done in the more intellectual ways of academical
+distinction.  Still, he was always among the first in the college
+examinations; he won two university prizes, and took a very creditable
+degree, after which he returned home, more odd, more saturnine--in
+short, less like other people--than when he had left Merton School.
+He had woven a solitude round him out of his own heart, and in that
+solitude he sat still and watchful as a spider sits in his web.
+
+Whether from natural temperament or from his educational training
+under such teachers as Mr. Mivers, who carried out the new ideas of
+reform by revering nothing in the past, and Mr. Welby, who accepted
+the routine of the present as realistic, and pooh-poohed all visions
+of the future as idealistic, Kenelm's chief mental characteristic was
+a kind of tranquil indifferentism.  It was difficult to detect in him
+either of those ordinary incentives to action,--vanity or ambition,
+the yearning for applause or the desire of power.  To all female
+fascinations he had been hitherto star-proof.  He had never
+experienced love, but he had read a good deal about it; and that
+passion seemed to him an unaccountable aberration of human reason, and
+an ignominious surrender of the equanimity of thought which it should
+be the object of masculine natures to maintain undisturbed.  A very
+eloquent book in praise of celibacy, and entitled "The Approach to the
+Angels," written by that eminent Oxford scholar, Decimus Roach, had
+produced so remarkable an effect upon his youthful mind that, had he
+been a Roman Catholic, he might have become a monk.  Where he most
+evinced ardour it was a logician's ardour for abstract truth; that is,
+for what he considered truth: and, as what seems truth to one man is
+sure to seem falsehood to some other man, this predilection of his was
+not without its inconveniences and dangers, as may probably be seen in
+the following chapter.
+
+Meanwhile, rightly to appreciate his conduct therein, I entreat thee,
+O candid reader (not that any reader ever is candid), to remember that
+he is brimful of new ideas, which, met by a deep and hostile
+undercurrent of old ideas, become more provocatively billowy and
+surging.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THERE had been great festivities at Exmundham, in celebration of the
+honour bestowed upon the world by the fact that Kenelm Chillingly had
+lived twenty-one years in it.
+
+The young heir had made a speech to the assembled tenants and other
+admitted revellers, which had by no means added to the exhilaration of
+the proceedings.  He spoke with a fluency and self-possession which
+were surprising in a youth addressing a multitude for the first time.
+But his speech was not cheerful.
+
+The principal tenant on the estate, in proposing his health, had
+naturally referred to the long line of his ancestors.  His father's
+merits as man and landlord had been enthusiastically commemorated; and
+many happy auguries for his own future career had been drawn, partly
+from the excellences of his parentage, partly from his own youthful
+promise in the honours achieved at the University.
+
+Kenelm Chillingly in reply largely availed himself of those new ideas
+which were to influence the rising generation, and with which he had
+been rendered familiar by the journal of Mr. Mivers and the
+conversation of Mr. Welby.
+
+He briefly disposed of the ancestral part of the question.  He
+observed that it was singular to note how long any given family or,
+dynasty could continue to flourish in any given nook of matter in
+creation, without any exhibition of intellectual powers beyond those
+displayed by a succession of vegetable crops.  "It is certainly true,"
+he said, "that the Chillinglys have lived in this place from father to
+son for about a fourth part of the history of the world, since the
+date which Sir Isaac Newton assigns to the Deluge.  But, so far as can
+be judged by existent records, the world has not been in any way wiser
+or better for their existence.  They were born to eat as long as they
+could eat, and when they could eat no longer they died.  Not that in
+this respect they were a whit less insignificant than the generality
+of their fellow-creatures.  Most of us now present," continued the
+youthful orator, "are only born in order to die; and the chief
+consolation of our wounded pride in admitting this fact is in the
+probability that our posterity will not be of more consequence to the
+scheme of Nature than we ourselves are."  Passing from that
+philosophical view of his own ancestors in particular, and of the
+human race in general, Kenelm Chillingly then touched with serene
+analysis on the eulogies lavished on his father as man and landlord.
+
+"As man," he said, "my father no doubt deserves all that can be said
+by man in favour of man.  But what, at the best, is man?  A crude,
+struggling, undeveloped embryo, of whom it is the highest attribute
+that he feels a vague consciousness that he is only an embryo, and
+cannot complete himself till he ceases to be a man; that is, until he
+becomes another being in another form of existence.  We can praise a
+dog as a dog, because a dog is a completed /ens/, and not an embryo.
+But to praise a man as man, forgetting that he is only a germ out of
+which a form wholly different is ultimately to spring, is equally
+opposed to Scriptural belief in his present crudity and imperfection,
+and to psychological or metaphysical examination of a mental
+construction evidently designed for purposes that he can never fulfil
+as man.  That my father is an embryo not more incomplete than any
+present is quite true; but that, you will see on reflection, is saying
+very little on his behalf.  Even in the boasted physical formation of
+us men, you are aware that the best-shaped amongst us, according to
+the last scientific discoveries, is only a development of some hideous
+hairy animal, such as a gorilla; and the ancestral gorilla itself had
+its own aboriginal forefather in a small marine animal shaped like a
+two-necked bottle.  The probability is that, some day or other, we
+shall be exterminated by a new development of species.
+
+"As for the merits assigned to my father as landlord, I must
+respectfully dissent from the panegyrics so rashly bestowed on him.
+For all sound reasoners must concur in this, that the first duty of an
+owner of land is not to the occupiers to whom he leases it, but to the
+nation at large.  It is his duty to see that the land yields to the
+community the utmost it can yield.  In order to effect this object, a
+landlord should put up his farms to competition, exacting the highest
+rent he can possibly get from responsible competitors.  Competitive
+examination is the enlightened order of the day, even in professions
+in which the best men would have qualities that defy examination.  In
+agriculture, happily, the principle of competitive examination is not
+so hostile to the choice of the best man as it must be, for instance,
+in diplomacy, where a Talleyrand would be excluded for knowing no
+language but his own; and still more in the army, where promotion
+would be denied to an officer who, like Marlborough, could not spell.
+But in agriculture a landlord has only to inquire who can give the
+highest rent, having the largest capital, subject by the strictest
+penalties of law to the conditions of a lease dictated by the most
+scientific agriculturists under penalties fixed by the most cautious
+conveyancers.  By this mode of procedure, recommended by the most
+liberal economists of our age,--barring those still more liberal who
+deny that property in land is any property at all,--by this mode of
+procedure, I say, a landlord does his duty to his country.  He secures
+tenants who can produce the most to the community by their capital,
+tested through competitive examination in their bankers' accounts and
+the security they can give, and through the rigidity of covenants
+suggested by a Liebig and reduced into law by a Chitty.  But on my
+father's land I see a great many tenants with little skill and less
+capital, ignorant of a Liebig and revolting from a Chitty, and no
+filial enthusiasm can induce me honestly to say that my father is a
+good landlord.  He has preferred his affection for individuals to his
+duties to the community.  It is not, my friends, a question whether a
+handful of farmers like yourselves go to the workhouse or not.  It is
+a consumer's question.  Do you produce the maximum of corn to the
+consumer?
+
+"With respect to myself," continued the orator, warming as the cold he
+had engendered in his audience became more freezingly felt,--"with
+respect to myself, I do not deny that, owing to the accident of
+training for a very faulty and contracted course of education, I have
+obtained what are called 'honours' at the University of Cambridge; but
+you must not regard that fact as a promise of any worth in my future
+passage through life.  Some of the most useless persons--especially
+narrow-minded and bigoted--have acquired far higher honours at the
+University than have fallen to my lot.
+
+"I thank you no less for the civil things you have said of me and of
+my family; but I shall endeavour to walk to that grave to which we are
+all bound with a tranquil indifference as to what people may say of me
+in so short a journey.  And the sooner, my friends, we get to our
+journey's end, the better our chance of escaping a great many pains,
+troubles, sins, and diseases.  So that when I drink to your good
+healths, you must feel that in reality I wish you an early deliverance
+from the ills to which flesh is exposed, and which so generally
+increase with our years that good health is scarcely compatible with
+the decaying faculties of old age.  Gentlemen, your good healths!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE morning after these birthday rejoicings, Sir Peter and Lady
+Chillingly held a long consultation on the peculiarities of their
+heir, and the best mode of instilling into his mind the expediency
+either of entertaining more pleasing views, or at least of professing
+less unpopular sentiments; compatibly of course, though they did not
+say it, with the new ideas that were to govern his century.  Having
+come to an agreement on this delicate subject, they went forth, arm in
+arm, in search of their heir.  Kenelm seldom met them at breakfast.
+He was an early riser, and accustomed to solitary rambles before his
+parents were out of bed.
+
+The worthy pair found Kenelm seated on the banks of a trout-stream
+that meandered through Chillingly Park, dipping his line into the
+water, and yawning, with apparent relief in that operation.
+
+"Does fishing amuse you, my boy?" said Sir Peter, heartily.
+
+"Not in the least, sir," answered Kenelm.
+
+"Then why do you do it?" asked Lady Chillingly.
+
+"Because I know nothing else that amuses me more."
+
+"Ah! that is it," said Sir Peter: "the whole secret of Kenelm's
+oddities is to be found in these words, my dear; he needs amusement.
+Voltaire says truly, 'Amusement is one of the wants of man.' And if
+Kenelm could be amused like other people, he would be like other
+people."
+
+"In that case," said Kenelm, gravely, and extracting from the water a
+small but lively trout, which settled itself in Lady Chillingly's
+lap,--"in that case I would rather not be amused.  I have no interest
+in the absurdities of other people.  The instinct of self-preservation
+compels me to have some interest in my own."
+
+"Kenelm, sir," exclaimed Lady Chillingly, with an animation into which
+her tranquil ladyship was very rarely betrayed, "take away that horrid
+damp thing! Put down your rod and attend to what your father says.
+Your strange conduct gives us cause of serious anxiety."
+
+Kenelm unhooked the trout, deposited the fish in his basket, and
+raising his large eyes to his father's face, said, "What is there in
+my conduct that occasions you displeasure?"
+
+"Not displeasure, Kenelm," said Sir Peter, kindly, "but anxiety; your
+mother has hit upon the right word.  You see, my dear son, that it is
+my wish that you should distinguish yourself in the world.  You might
+represent this county, as your ancestors have done before.  I have
+looked forward to the proceedings of yesterday as an admirable
+occasion for your introduction to your future constituents.  Oratory
+is the talent most appreciated in a free country, and why should you
+not be an orator?  Demosthenes says that delivery, delivery, delivery,
+is the art of oratory; and your delivery is excellent, graceful,
+self-possessed, classical."
+
+"Pardon me, my dear father, Demosthenes does not say delivery, nor
+action, as the word is commonly rendered; he says, 'acting, or
+stage-play,'--the art by which a man delivers a speech in a feigned
+character, whence we get the word hypocrisy.  Hypocrisy, hypocrisy,
+hypocrisy! is, according to Demosthenes, the triple art of the orator.
+Do you wish me to become triply a hypocrite?"
+
+"Kenelm, I am ashamed of you.  You know as well as I do that it is
+only by metaphor that you can twist the word ascribed to the great
+Athenian into the sense of hypocrisy.  But assuming it, as you say, to
+mean not delivery, but acting, I understand why your debut as an
+orator was not successful.  Your delivery was excellent, your acting
+defective.  An orator should please, conciliate, persuade, prepossess.
+You did the reverse of all this; and though you produced a great
+effect, the effect was so decidedly to your disadvantage that it would
+have lost you an election on any hustings in England."
+
+"Am I to understand, my dear father," said Kenelm, in the mournful and
+compassionate tones with which a pious minister of the Church reproves
+some abandoned and hoary sinner,--"am I to understand that you would
+commend to your son the adoption of deliberate falsehood for the gain
+of a selfish advantage?"
+
+"Deliberate falsehood! you impertinent puppy!"
+
+"Puppy!" repeated Kenelm, not indignantly but musingly,--"puppy! a
+well-bred puppy takes after its parents."
+
+Sir Peter burst out laughing.
+
+Lady Chillingly rose with dignity, shook her gown, unfolded her
+parasol, and stalked away speechless.
+
+"Now, look you, Kenelm," said Sir Peter, as soon as he had composed
+himself.  "These quips and humours of yours are amusing enough to an
+eccentric man like myself, but they will not do for the world; and how
+at your age, and with the rare advantages you have had in an early
+introduction to the best intellectual society, under the guidance of a
+tutor acquainted with the new ideas which are to influence the conduct
+of statesmen, you could have made so silly a speech as you did
+yesterday, I cannot understand."
+
+"My dear father, allow me to assure you that the ideas I expressed are
+the new ideas most in vogue,--ideas expressed in still plainer, or, if
+you prefer the epithet, still sillier terms than I employed.  You will
+find them instilled into the public mind by 'The Londoner' and by most
+intellectual journals of a liberal character."
+
+"Kenelm, Kenelm, such ideas would turn the world topsy-turvy."
+
+"New ideas always do tend to turn old ideas topsy-turvy.  And the
+world, after all, is only an idea, which is turned topsy-turvy with
+every successive century."
+
+"You make me sick of the word 'ideas.'  Leave off your metaphysics and
+study real life."
+
+"It is real life which I did study under Mr. Welby.  He is the
+Archimandrite of Realism.  It is sham life which you wish me to study.
+To oblige you I am willing to commence it.  I dare say it is very
+pleasant.  Real life is not; on the contrary--dull," and Kenelm yawned
+again.
+
+"Have you no young friends among your fellow-collegians?"
+
+"Friends! certainly not, sir.  But I believe I have some enemies, who
+answer the same purpose as friends, only they don't hurt one so much."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you lived alone at Cambridge?"
+
+"No, I lived a good deal with Aristophanes, and a little with Conic
+Sections and Hydrostatics."
+
+"Books.  Dry company."
+
+"More innocent, at least, than moist company.  Did you ever get drunk,
+sir?"
+
+"Drunk!"
+
+"I tried to do so once with the young companions whom you would
+commend to me as friends.  I don't think I succeeded, but I woke with
+a headache.  Real life at college abounds with headache."
+
+"Kenelm, my boy, one thing is clear: you must travel."
+
+"As you please, sir.  Marcus Antoninus says that it is all one to a
+stone whether it be thrown upwards or downwards.  When shall I start?"
+
+"Very soon.  Of course there are preparations to make; you should have
+a travelling companion.  I don't mean a tutor,--you are too clever and
+too steady to need one,--but a pleasant, sensible, well-mannered young
+person of your own age."
+
+"My own age,--male or female?"
+
+Sir Peter tried hard to frown.  The utmost he could do was to reply
+gravely, "FEMALE!  If I said you were too steady to need a tutor, it
+was because you have hitherto seemed little likely to be led out of
+your way by female allurements.  Among your other studies may I
+inquire if you have included that which no man has ever yet thoroughly
+mastered,--the study of women?"
+
+"Certainly.  Do you object to my catching another trout?"
+
+"Trout be--blessed, or the reverse.  So you have studied woman.  I
+should never have thought it.  Where and when did you commence that
+department of science?"
+
+"When? ever since I was ten years old.  Where? first in your own
+house, then at college.  Hush!--a bite," and another trout left its
+native element and alighted on Sir Peter's nose, whence it was
+solemnly transferred to the basket.
+
+"At ten years old, and in my own house!  That flaunting hussy Jane,
+the under-housemaid--"
+
+"Jane!  No, sir.  Pamela, Miss Byron, Clarissa,--females in
+Richardson, who, according to Dr. Johnson, 'taught the passions to
+move at the command of virtue.' I trust for your sake that Dr. Johnson
+did not err in that assertion, for I found all these females at night
+in your own private apartments."
+
+"Oh!" said Sir Peter, "that's all?"
+
+"All I remember at ten years old," replied Kenelm.
+
+"And at Mr. Welby's or at college," proceeded Sir Peter, timorously,
+"was your acquaintance with females of the same kind?"
+
+Kenelm shook his head.  "Much worse: they were very naughty indeed at
+college."
+
+"I should think so, with such a lot of young fellows running after
+them."
+
+"Very few fellows run after the females.  I mean--rather avoid them."
+
+"So much the better."
+
+"No, my father, so much the worse; without an intimate knowledge of
+those females there is little use going to college at all."
+
+"Explain yourself."
+
+"Every one who receives a classical education is introduced into their
+society,--Pyrrha and Lydia, Glycera and Corinna, and many more of the
+same sort; and then the females in Aristophanes, what do you say to
+them, sir?"
+
+"Is it only females who lived two thousand or three thousand years
+ago, or more probably never lived at all, whose intimacy you have
+cultivated?  Have you never admired any real women?"
+
+"Real women!  I never met one.  Never met a woman who was not a sham,
+a sham from the moment she is told to be pretty-behaved, conceal her
+sentiments, and look fibs when she does not speak them.  But if I am
+to learn sham life, I suppose I must put up with sham women."
+
+"Have you been crossed in love that you speak so bitterly of the sex?"
+
+"I don't speak bitterly of the sex.  Examine any woman on her oath,
+and she'll own she is a sham, always has been, and always will be, and
+is proud of it."
+
+"I am glad your mother is not by to hear you.  You will think
+differently one of these days.  Meanwhile, to turn to the other sex,
+is there no young man of your own rank with whom you would like to
+travel?"
+
+"Certainly not.  I hate quarrelling."
+
+"As you please.  But you cannot go quite alone: I will find you a good
+travelling-servant.  I must write to town to-day about your
+preparations, and in another week or so I hope all will be ready.
+Your allowance will be whatever you like to fix it at; you have never
+been extravagant, and--boy--I love you.  Amuse yourself, enjoy
+yourself, and come back cured of your oddities, but preserving your
+honour."
+
+Sir Peter bent down and kissed his son's brow.  Kenelm was moved; he
+rose, put his arm round his father's shoulder, and lovingly said, in
+an undertone, "If ever I am tempted to do a base thing, may I remember
+whose son I am: I shall be safe then."  He withdrew his arm as he said
+this, and took his solitary way along the banks of the stream,
+forgetful of rod and line.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE young man continued to skirt the side of the stream until he
+reached the boundary pale of the park.  Here, placed on a rough grass
+mound, some former proprietor, of a social temperament, had built a
+kind of belvidere, so as to command a cheerful view of the high road
+below.  Mechanically the heir of the Chillinglys ascended the mound,
+seated himself within the belvidere, and leaned his chin on his hand
+in a thoughtful attitude.  It was rarely that the building was
+honoured by a human visitor: its habitual occupants were spiders.  Of
+those industrious insects it was a well-populated colony.  Their webs,
+darkened with dust and ornamented with the wings and legs and
+skeletons of many an unfortunate traveller, clung thick to angle and
+window-sill, festooned the rickety table on which the young man leaned
+his elbow, and described geometrical circles and rhomboids between the
+gaping rails that formed the backs of venerable chairs.  One large
+black spider--who was probably the oldest inhabitant, and held
+possession of the best place by the window, ready to offer perfidious
+welcome to every winged itinerant who might be tempted to turn aside
+from the high road for the sake of a little cool and repose--rushed
+from its innermost penetralia at the entrance of Kenelm, and remained
+motionless in the centre of its meshes, staring at him.  It did not
+seem quite sure whether the stranger was too big or not.
+
+"It is a wonderful proof of the wisdom of Providence," said Kenelm,
+"that whenever any large number of its creatures forms a community or
+class, a secret element of disunion enters into the hearts of the
+individuals forming the congregation, and prevents their co-operating
+heartily and effectually for their common interest.  'The fleas would
+have dragged me out of bed if they had been unanimous,' said the great
+Mr. Curran; and there can be no doubt that if all the spiders in this
+commonwealth would unite to attack me in a body, I should fall a
+victim to their combined nippers.  But spiders, though inhabiting the
+same region, constituting the same race, animated by the same
+instincts, do not combine even against a butterfly: each seeks his own
+special advantage, and not that of the community at large.  And how
+completely the life of each thing resembles a circle in this respect,
+that it can never touch another circle at more than one point.  Nay, I
+doubt if it quite touches it even there,--there is a space between
+every atom; self is always selfish: and yet there are eminent masters
+in the Academe of New Ideas who wish to make us believe that all the
+working classes of a civilized world could merge every difference of
+race, creed, intellect, individual propensities and interests into the
+construction of a single web, stocked as a larder in common!" Here the
+soliloquist came to a dead stop, and, leaning out of the window,
+contemplated the high road.  It was a very fine high road, straight
+and level, kept in excellent order by turn pikes at every eight miles.
+A pleasant greensward bordered it on either side, and under the
+belvidere the benevolence of some mediaeval Chillingly had placed a
+little drinking-fountain for the refreshment of wayfarers.  Close to
+the fountain stood a rude stone bench, overshadowed by a large willow,
+and commanding from the high table-ground on which it was placed a
+wide view of cornfields, meadows, and distant hills, suffused in the
+mellow light of the summer sun.  Along that road there came
+successively a wagon filled with passengers seated on straw,--an old
+woman, a pretty girl, two children; then a stout farmer going to
+market in his dog-cart; then three flies carrying fares to the nearest
+railway station; then a handsome young man on horseback, a handsome
+young lady by his side, a groom behind.  It was easy to see that the
+young man and young lady were lovers.  See it in his ardent looks and
+serious lips parted but for whispers only to be heard by her; see it
+in her downcast eyes and heightened colour.  "'Alas! regardless of
+their doom,'" muttered Kenelm, "what trouble those 'little victims'
+are preparing for themselves and their progeny!  Would I could lend
+them Decimus Roach's 'Approach to the Angels'!"  The road now for some
+minutes became solitary and still, when there was heard to the right a
+sprightly sort of carol, half sung, half recited, in musical voice,
+with a singularly clear enunciation, so that the words reached
+Kenelm's ear distinctly.  They ran thus:--
+
+
+  "Black Karl looked forth from his cottage door,
+     He looked on the forest green;
+   And down the path, with his dogs before,
+     Came the Ritter of Neirestein:
+   Singing, singing, lustily singing,
+     Down the path with his dogs before,
+   Came the Ritter of Neirestein."
+
+
+At a voice so English, attuned to a strain so Germanic, Kenelm pricked
+up attentive ears, and, turning his eye down the road, beheld,
+emerging from the shade of beeches that overhung the park pales, a
+figure that did not altogether harmonize with the idea of a Ritter of
+Neirestein.  It was, nevertheless, a picturesque figure enough.  The
+man was attired in a somewhat threadbare suit of Lincoln green, with a
+high-crowned Tyrolese hat; a knapsack was slung behind his shoulders,
+and he was attended by a white Pomeranian dog, evidently foot-sore,
+but doing his best to appear proficient in the chase by limping some
+yards in advance of his master, and sniffing into the hedges for rats
+and mice, and such small deer.
+
+By the time the pedestrian had reached to the close of his refrain he
+had gained the fountain, and greeted it with an exclamation of
+pleasure.  Slipping the knapsack from his shoulder, he filled the iron
+ladle attached to the basin.  He then called the dog by the name of
+Max, and held the ladle for him to drink.  Not till the animal had
+satisfied his thirst did the master assuage his own.  Then, lifting
+his hat and bathing his temples and face, the pedestrian seated
+himself on the bench, and the dog nestled on the turf at his feet.
+After a little pause the wayfarer began again, though in a lower and
+slower tone, to chant his refrain, and proceeded, with abrupt
+snatches, to link the verse on to another stanza.  It was evident that
+he was either endeavouring to remember or to invent, and it seemed
+rather like the latter and more laborious operation of mind.
+
+
+  "'Why on foot, why on foot, Ritter Karl,' quoth he,
+     'And not on thy palfrey gray?'
+
+
+Palfrey gray--hum--gray.
+
+
+  "'The run of ill-luck was too strong for me,
+     'And has galloped my steed away.'
+
+
+That will do: good!"
+
+"Good indeed!  He is easily satisfied," muttered Kenelm. "But such
+pedestrians don't pass the road every day.  Let us talk to him."  So
+saying he slipped quietly out of the window, descended the mound, and
+letting himself into the road by a screened wicket-gate, took his
+noiseless stand behind the wayfarer and beneath the bowery willow.
+
+The man had now sunk into silence.  Perhaps he had tired himself of
+rhymes; or perhaps the mechanism of verse-making had been replaced by
+that kind of sentiment, or that kind of revery, which is common to the
+temperaments of those who indulge in verse-making.  But the loveliness
+of the scene before him had caught his eye, and fixed it into an
+intent gaze upon wooded landscapes stretching farther and farther to
+the range of hills on which the heaven seemed to rest.
+
+"I should like to hear the rest of that German ballad," said a voice,
+abruptly.
+
+The wayfarer started, and, turning round, presented to Kenelm's view a
+countenance in the ripest noon of manhood, with locks and beard of a
+deep rich auburn, bright blue eyes, and a wonderful nameless charm
+both of feature and expression, very cheerful, very frank, and not
+without a certain nobleness of character which seemed to exact
+respect.
+
+"I beg your pardon for my interruption," said Kenelm, lifting his hat:
+"but I overheard you reciting; and though I suppose your verses are a
+translation from the German, I don't remember anything like them in
+such popular German poets as I happen to have read."
+
+"It is not a translation, sir," replied the itinerant.  "I was only
+trying to string together some ideas that came into my head this fine
+morning."
+
+"You are a poet, then?" said Kenelm, seating himself on the bench.
+
+"I dare not say poet.  I am a verse-maker."
+
+"Sir, I know there is a distinction.  Many poets of the present day,
+considered very good, are uncommonly bad verse-makers.  For my part, I
+could more readily imagine them to be good poets if they did not make
+verses at all.  But can I not hear the rest of the ballad?"
+
+"Alas! the rest of the ballad is not yet made.  It is rather a long
+subject, and my flights are very brief."
+
+"That is much in their favour, and very unlike the poetry in fashion.
+You do not belong, I think, to this neighbourhood.  Are you and your
+dog travelling far?"
+
+"It is my holiday time, and I ramble on through the summer.  I am
+travelling far, for I travel till September.  Life amid summer fields
+is a very joyous thing."
+
+"Is it indeed?" said Kenelm, with much /naivete/. "I should have
+thought that long before September you would have got very much bored
+with the fields and the dog and yourself altogether.  But, to be sure,
+you have the resource of verse-making, and that seems a very pleasant
+and absorbing occupation to those who practise it,--from our old
+friend Horace, kneading laboured Alcaics into honey in his summer
+rambles among the watered woodlands of Tibur, to Cardinal Richelieu,
+employing himself on French rhymes in the intervals between chopping
+off noblemen's heads.  It does not seem to signify much whether the
+verses be good or bad, so far as the pleasure of the verse-maker
+himself is concerned; for Richelieu was as much charmed with his
+occupation as Horace was, and his verses were certainly not Horatian."
+
+"Surely at your age, sir, and with your evident education--"
+
+"Say culture; that's the word in fashion nowadays."
+
+"Well, your evident culture, you must have made verses."
+
+"Latin verses, yes; and occasionally Greek.  I was obliged to do so at
+school.  It did not amuse me."
+
+"Try English."
+
+Kenelm shook his head.  "Not I.  Every cobbler should stick to his
+last."
+
+"Well, put aside the verse-making: don't you find a sensible enjoyment
+in those solitary summer walks, when you have Nature all to
+yourself,--enjoyment in marking all the mobile evanescent changes in
+her face,--her laugh, her smile, her tears, her very frown!"
+
+"Assuming that by Nature you mean a mechanical series of external
+phenomena, I object to your speaking of a machinery as if it were a
+person of the feminine gender,--/her/ laugh, /her/ smile, etc.  As
+well talk of the laugh and smile of a steam-engine.  But to descend to
+common-sense.  I grant there is some pleasure in solitary rambles in
+fine weather and amid varying scenery.  You say that it is a holiday
+excursion that you are enjoying.  I presume, therefore, that you have
+some practical occupation which consumes the time that you do not
+devote to a holiday?"
+
+"Yes; I am not altogether an idler.  I work sometimes, though not so
+hard as I ought.  'Life is earnest,' as the poet says.  But I and my
+dog are rested now, and as I have still a long walk before me I must
+wish you good-day."
+
+"I fear," said Kenelm, with a grave and sweet politeness of tone and
+manner, which he could command at times, and which, in its difference
+from merely conventional urbanity, was not without fascination,--"I
+fear that I have offended you by a question that must have seemed to
+you inquisitive, perhaps impertinent; accept my excuse: it is very
+rarely that I meet any one who interests me; and you do."  As he spoke
+he offered his hand, which the wayfarer shook very cordially.
+
+"I should be a churl indeed if your question could have given me
+offence.  It is rather perhaps I who am guilty of impertinence, if I
+take advantage of my seniority in years and tender you a counsel.  Do
+not despise Nature or regard her as a steam-engine; you will find in
+her a very agreeable and conversable friend if you will cultivate her
+intimacy.  And I don't know a better mode of doing so at your age, and
+with your strong limbs, than putting a knapsack on your shoulders and
+turning foot-traveller like myself."
+
+"Sir, I thank you for your counsel; and I trust we may meet again and
+interchange ideas as to the thing you call Nature,--a thing which
+science and art never appear to see with the same eyes.  If to an
+artist Nature has a soul, why, so has a steam-engine.  Art gifts with
+soul all matter that it contemplates: science turns all that is
+already gifted with soul into matter.  Good-day, sir."
+
+Here Kenelm turned back abruptly, and the traveller went his way,
+silently and thoughtfully.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+KENELM retraced his steps homeward under the shade of his "old
+hereditary trees."  One might have thought his path along the
+greenswards, and by the side of the babbling rivulet, was pleasanter
+and more conducive to peaceful thoughts than the broad, dusty
+thoroughfare along which plodded the wanderer he had quitted.  But the
+man addicted to revery forms his own landscapes and colours his own
+skies.
+
+"It is," soliloquized Kenelm Chillingly, "a strange yearning I have
+long felt,--to get out of myself, to get, as it were, into another
+man's skin, and have a little variety of thought and emotion.  One's
+self is always the same self; and that is why I yawn so often.  But if
+I can't get into another man's skin, the next best thing is to get as
+unlike myself as I possibly can do.  Let me see what is myself.
+Myself is Kenelm Chillingly, son and heir to a rich gentleman.  But a
+fellow with a knapsack on his back, sleeping at wayside inns, is not
+at all like Kenelm Chillingly; especially if he is very short of money
+and may come to want a dinner.  Perhaps that sort of fellow may take a
+livelier view of things: he can't take a duller one.  Courage, Myself:
+you and I can but try."
+
+For the next two days Kenelm was observed to be unusually pleasant.
+He yawned much less frequently, walked with his father, played piquet
+with his mother, was more like other people.  Sir Peter was charmed:
+he ascribed this happy change to the preparations he was making for
+Kenelm's travelling in style.  The proud father was in active
+correspondence with his great London friends, seeking letters of
+introduction for Kenelm to all the courts of Europe.  Portmanteaus,
+with every modern convenience, were ordered; an experienced courier,
+who could talk all languages and cook French dishes if required, was
+invited to name his terms.  In short, every arrangement worthy a young
+patrician's entrance into the great world was in rapid progress, when
+suddenly Kenelm Chillingly disappeared, leaving behind him on Sir
+Peter's library table the following letter:--
+
+
+MY VERY DEAR FATHER,--Obedient to your desire, I depart in search of
+real life and real persons, or of the best imitations of them.
+Forgive me, I beseech you, if I commence that search in my own way.  I
+have seen enough of ladies and gentlemen for the present: they must be
+all very much alike in every part of the world.  You desired me to be
+amused.  I go to try if that be possible.  Ladies and gentlemen are
+not amusing; the more ladylike or gentlemanlike they are, the more
+insipid I find them.  My dear father, I go in quest of adventure like
+Amadis of Gaul, like Don Quixote, like Gil Blas, like Roderick Random;
+like, in short, the only people seeking real life, the people who
+never existed except in books.  I go on foot; I go alone.  I have
+provided myself with a larger amount of money than I ought to spend,
+because every man must buy experience, and the first fees are heavy.
+In fact, I have put fifty pounds into my pocket-book and into my purse
+five sovereigns and seventeen shillings.  This sum ought to last me a
+year; but I dare say inexperience will do me out of it in a month, so
+we will count it as nothing.  Since you have asked me to fix my own
+allowance, I will beg you kindly to commence it this day in advance,
+by an order to your banker to cash my checks to the amount of five
+pounds, and to the same amount monthly; namely, at the rate of sixty
+pounds a year.  With that sum I can't starve, and if I want more it
+may be amusing to work for it.  Pray don't send after me, or institute
+inquiries, or disturb the household and set all the neighbourhood
+talking, by any mention either of my project or of your surprise at
+it.  I will not fail to write to you from time to time. You will judge
+best what to say to my dear mother.  If you tell her the truth, which
+of course I should do did I tell her anything, my request is virtually
+frustrated, and I shall be the talk of the county.  You, I know, don't
+think telling fibs is immoral when it happens to be convenient, as it
+would be in this case.
+
+I expect to be absent a year or eighteen months; if I prolong my
+travels it shall be in the way you proposed.  I will then take my
+place in polite society, call upon you to pay all expenses, and fib on
+my own account to any extent required by that world of fiction which
+is peopled by illusions and governed by shams.
+
+Heaven bless you, my dear Father, and be quite sure that if I get into
+any trouble requiring a friend, it is to you I shall turn.  As yet I
+have no other friend on earth, and with prudence and good luck I may
+escape the infliction of any other friend.
+
+     Yours ever affectionately,
+
+          KENELM.
+
+P. S.--Dear Father, I open my letter in your library to say again
+"Bless you," and to tell you how fondly I kissed your old beaver
+gloves, which I found on the table.
+
+
+When Sir Peter came to that postscript he took off his spectacles and
+wiped them: they were very moist.
+
+Then he fell into a profound meditation.  Sir Peter was, as I have
+said, a learned man; he was also in some things a sensible man, and he
+had a strong sympathy with the humorous side of his son's crotchety
+character.  What was to be said to Lady Chillingly?  That matron was
+quite guiltless of any crime which should deprive her of a husband's
+confidence in a matter relating to her only son.  She was a virtuous
+matron; morals irreproachable, manners dignified, and /she-baronety/.
+Any one seeing her for the first time would intuitively say, "Your
+ladyship."  Was this a matron to be suppressed in any well-ordered
+domestic circle?  Sir Peter's conscience loudly answered, "No;" but
+when, putting conscience into his pocket, he regarded the question at
+issue as a man of the world, Sir Peter felt that to communicate the
+contents of his son's letter to Lady Chillingly would be the
+foolishest thing he could possibly do.  Did she know that Kenelm had
+absconded with the family dignity invested in his very name, no
+marital authority short of such abuses of power as constitute the
+offence of cruelty in a wife's action for divorce from social board
+and nuptial bed could prevent Lady Chillingly from summoning all the
+grooms, sending them in all directions with strict orders to bring
+back the runaway dead or alive; the walls would be placarded with
+hand-bills, "Strayed from his home," etc.; the police would be
+telegraphing private instructions from town to town; the scandal would
+stick to Kenelm Chillingly for life, accompanied with vague hints of
+criminal propensities and insane hallucinations; he would be ever
+afterwards pointed out as "THE MAN WHO HAD DISAPPEARED."  And to
+disappear and to turn up again, instead of being murdered, is the most
+hateful thing a man can do: all the newspapers bark at him, "Tray,
+Blanche, Sweetheart, and all;" strict explanations of the unseemly
+fact of his safe existence are demanded in the name of public decorum,
+and no explanations are accepted; it is life saved, character lost.
+
+Sir Peter seized his hat and walked forth, not to deliberate whether
+to fib or not to fib to the wife of his bosom, but to consider what
+kind of fib would the most quickly sink into the bosom of his wife.
+
+A few turns to and fro on the terrace sufficed for the conception and
+maturing of the fib selected; a proof that Sir Peter was a practised
+fibber.  He re-entered the house, passed into her ladyship's habitual
+sitting-room, and said with careless gayety, "My old friend the Duke
+of Clareville is just setting off on a tour to Switzerland with his
+family.  His youngest daughter, Lady Jane, is a pretty girl, and would
+not be a bad match for Kenelm."
+
+"Lady Jane, the youngest daughter with fair hair, whom I saw last as a
+very charming child, nursing a lovely doll presented to her by the
+Empress Eugenie,--a good match indeed for Kenelm."
+
+"I am glad you agree with me.  Would it not be a favourable step
+towards that alliance, and an excellent thing for Kenelm generally, if
+he were to visit the Continent as one of the Duke's travelling party?"
+
+"Of course it would."
+
+"Then you approve what I have done; the Duke starts the day after
+to-morrow, and I have packed Kenelm off to town, with a letter to my
+old friend.  You will excuse all leave taking.  You know that though
+the best of sons he is an odd fellow; and seeing that I had talked him
+into it, I struck while the iron was hot, and sent him off by the
+express at nine o'clock this morning, for fear that if I allowed any
+delay he would talk himself out of it."
+
+"Do you mean to say Kenelm is actually gone?  Good gracious."
+
+Sir Peter stole softly from the room, and summoning his valet, said,
+"I have sent Mr. Chillingly to London.  Pack up the clothes he is
+likely to want, so that he can have them sent at once, whenever he
+writes for them."
+
+And thus, by a judicious violation of truth on the part of his father,
+that exemplary truth-teller Kenelm Chillingly saved the honour of his
+house and his own reputation from the breath of scandal and the
+inquisition of the police.  He was not "THE MAN WHO HAD DISAPPEARED."
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILLINGLY, LYTTON, BOOK 1 ***
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