LITMIR.BIZ

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your expense. Mark! Now to the profit. Orchards in Kent realize L100 an acre, some even L150; but let’s be moderate, say only L50 an acre, and your gross profit per year, from a capital of L1,550, will be L5,000,—L5,000 a-year. Think of that, brother Caxton! Deduct 10 per cent, or L500 a-year, for gardeners’ wages, manure, etc., and the net product is L4,500. Your fortune’s made, man,—it is made; I wish you joy!” And Uncle Jack rubbed his hands.

      “Bless me, father,” said eagerly the young Pisistratus, who had swallowed with ravished ears every syllable and figure of this inviting calculation, “why, we should be as rich as Squire Rollick; and then, you know, sir, you could keep a pack of fox-hounds.”

      “And buy a large library,” added Uncle Jack, with more subtle knowledge of human nature as to its appropriate temptations. “There’s my friend the archbishop’s collection to be sold.”

      Slowly recovering his breath, my father gently turned his eyes from one to the other; and then, laying his left hand on my head, while with the right he held up Erasmus rebukingly to Uncle Jack, said,—

      “See how easily you can sow covetousness and avidity in the youthful mind. Ah, brother!”

      “You are too severe, sir. See how the dear boy hangs his head! Fie! natural enthusiasm of his years,—‘gay hope by fancy fed,’ as the poet says. Why, for that fine boy’s sake you ought not to lose so certain an occasion of wealth, I may say, untold. For observe, you will form a nursery of crabs; each year you go on grafting and enlarging your plantation, renting,—nay, why not buying, more land? Gad, sir! in twenty years you might cover half the county; but say you stop short at 2,000 acres, why the net profit is L90,000 a-year. A duke’s income,—a duke’s; and going a-begging, as I may say.”

      “But stop,” said I, modestly; “the trees don’t grow in a year. I know when our last apple-tree was planted—it is five years ago—it was then three 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 mean while 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 is 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 L50 each, paying only an instalment of L2 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 is 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 laboring 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.”

      “Papae!” exclaimed my father; “to think that England can’t get on without turning Austin 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 recognizes 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 as 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 Painphagus 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 of 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 IV

      “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 neighborhood, 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 Saint 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!”

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