years old, and it only bore one half bushel last autumn."
"What an intelligent lad it is! – Good head there. Oh, he'll do credit to his great fortune, brother," said Uncle Jack approvingly. "True, my boy. But in the meanwhile we could fill the ground, as they do in Kent, with gooseberries and currants, or onions and cabbages. Nevertheless, considering we are not great capitalists, I am afraid we must give up a share of our profits to diminish our outlay. So, harkye, Pisistratus – (look at him, brother – simple as he stands there, I think he's born with a silver spoon in his mouth) – harkye, now to the mysteries of speculation. Your father shall quietly buy the land, and then, presto! we will issue a prospectus, and start a company. Associations can wait five years for a return. Every year, meanwhile, increases the value of the shares. Your father takes, we say, fifty shares at £50 each, paying only an instalment of £2 a share. He sells 35 shares at cent per cent. He keeps the remaining 15, and his fortune's made all the same; only it's not quite so large as if he had kept the whole concern in his own hands. What say you now, brother Caxton? 'Visne edere pomum?' as we used to say at school."
"I don't want a shilling more than I have got," said my father, resolutely. "My wife would not love me better; my food would not nourish me more; my boy would not, in all probability, be half so hardy, or a tenth part so industrious; and – "
"But," interrupted Uncle Jack, pertinaciously, and reserving his grand argument for the last, "the good you would confer on the community – the progress given to the natural productions of your country, the wholesome beverage of cider, brought within cheap reach of the labouring classes. If it was only for your sake, should I have urged this question? should I now? is it in my character? But for the sake of the public! mankind! of our fellow-creatures! Why, sir, England could not get on if gentlemen like you had not a little philanthropy and speculation."
"Papæ!" exclaimed my father, "to think that England can't get on without turning Augustine Caxton into an apple-merchant! My dear Jack, listen. You remind me of a colloquy in this book; wait a bit – here it is —Pamphagus and Cocles– 'Cocles recognises his friend who had been absent for many years, by his eminent and remarkable nose. – Pamphagus says, rather irritably, that he is not ashamed of his nose. 'Ashamed of it! no, indeed,' says Cocles: 'I never saw a nose that could be put to so many uses!' 'Ha,' says Pamphagus, (whose curiosity is aroused,) 'uses! what uses?' Whereon (lepidissime frater!) Cocles, with eloquence rapid as yours, runs on with a countless list of the uses to which so vast a development of the organ can be applied. 'If the cellar was deep, it could sniff up the wine like an elephant's trunk, – if the bellows were missing, it could blow the fire, – if the lamp was too glaring, it could suffice for a shade, – it would serve as a speaking-trumpet to a herald, – it could sound a signal of battle in the field, – it would do for a wedge in wood-cutting, – a spade for digging, – a scythe for mowing, – an anchor in sailing; till Pamphagus cries out, 'Lucky dog that I am! and I never knew before what a useful piece of furniture I carried about with me.'" My father paused and strove to whistle, but that effort at harmony failed him – and he added, smiling, "So much for my apple trees, brother John. Leave them to their natural destination of filling tarts and dumplings."
Uncle Jack looked a little discomposed for a moment; but he then laughed with his usual heartiness, and saw that he had not yet got to my father's blind side. I confess that my revered parent rose in my estimation after that conference; and I began to see that a man may not be quite without common-sense, though he is a scholar. Indeed, whether it was that Uncle Jack's visit acted as a gentle stimulant to his relaxed faculties, or that I, now grown older and wiser, began to see his character more clearly, I date from those summer holidays the commencement of that familiar and endearing intimacy which ever after existed between my father and myself. Often I deserted the more extensive rambles of Uncle Jack, or the greater allurements of a cricket match in the village, or a day's fishing in Squire Rollick's preserves, for a quiet stroll with my father by the old peach wall; – sometimes silent, indeed, and already musing over the future, while he was busy with the past, but amply rewarded when, suspending his lecture, he would pour forth hoards of varied learning, rendered amusing by his quaint comments, and that Socratic satire which only fell short of wit because it never passed into malice. At some moments, indeed, the vein ran into eloquence; and with some fine heroic sentiment in his old books, his stooping form rose erect, his eye flashed; and you saw that he had not been originally formed and wholly meant for the obscure seclusion in which his harmless days now wore contentedly away.
CHAPTER IX
"Egad, sir, the county is going to the dogs! Our sentiments are not represented in parliament or out of it. The County Mercury has ratted, and be hanged to it! and now we have not one newspaper in the whole shire to express the sentiments of the respectable part of the community!"
This speech was made on the occasion of one of the rare dinners given by Mr and Mrs Caxton to the grandees of the neighbourhood, and uttered by no less a person than Squire Rollick, of Rollick Hall, chairman of the quarter sessions.
I confess that I, (for I was permitted on that first occasion not only to dine with the guests, but to outstay the ladies, in virtue of my growing years, and my promise to abstain from the decanters) – I confess, I say, that I, poor innocent, was puzzled to conjecture what sudden interest in the county newspaper could cause Uncle Jack to prick up his ears like a warhorse at the sound of the drum, and rush so incontinently across the interval between Squire Rollick and himself. But the mind of that deep and truly knowing man was not to be plumbed by a chit of my age. You could not fish for the shy salmon in that pool with a crooked pin and a bobbin, as you would for minnows; or, to indulge in a more worthy illustration, you could not say of him, as St Gregory saith of the streams of Jordan, "a lamb could wade easily through that ford."
"Not a county newspaper to advocate the rights of – " here my uncle stopped, as if at a loss, and whispered in my ear, "What are his politics?" "Don't know," answered I. Uncle Jack intuitively took down from his memory the phrase most readily at hand, and added, with a nasal intonation, "the rights of our distressed fellow-creatures!"
My father scratched his eyebrow with his forefinger, as he was apt to do when doubtful; the rest of the company – a silent set – looked up.
"Fellow-creatures!" said Mr Rollick – "fellow-fiddlesticks!"
Uncle Jack was clearly in the wrong box. He drew out of it cautiously – "I mean," said he, "our respectable fellow-creatures;" and then suddenly it occurred to him that a "County Mercury" would naturally represent the agricultural interest, and that if Mr Rollick said that the "County Mercury ought to be hanged," he was one of those politicians who had already begun to call the agricultural interest "a Vampire." Flushed with that fancied discovery, Uncle Jack rushed on, intending to bear along with the stream, thus fortunately directed, all the "rubbish"1 subsequently shot into Covent Garden and the Hall of Commerce.
"Yes, respectable fellow-creatures, men of capital and enterprise! For what are these country squires compared to our wealthy merchants? What is this agricultural interest that professes to be the prop of the land?"
"Professes!" cried Squire Rollick, "It is the prop of the land, and as for those manufacturing fellows who have bought up the Mercury – "
"Bought up the Mercury, have they, the villains!" cried Uncle Jack, interrupting the Squire, and now bursting into full scent – "Depend upon it, sir, it is a part of a diabolical system of buying up, which must be exposed manfully. – Yes, as I was saying, what is that agricultural interest which they desire to ruin? which they declare to be so bloated – which they call 'a vampire!' they the true blood-suckers, the venomous millocrats! Fellow-creatures, sir! I may well call distressed fellow-creatures, the members of that much suffering class of which you yourself are an ornament. What can be more deserving of our best efforts for relief, than a country gentleman like yourself, we'll say – of a nominal £5000 a-year – compelled to keep up an establishment, pay for his fox-hounds, support the whole population by contributions to the poor rates, support the whole church by tithes; all justice, jails, and prosecutions by the county rates, all thoroughfares by the highway rates – ground down by mortgages, Jews, or jointures; having to provide for younger children; enormous expenses for cutting his woods,