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