University of Virginia Library

1. THE PROLOGUE.

It was one of those charming spring mornings, so
peculiar to our western clime, when the light, cheering
sunshine invites abroad to taste the balmy air,
but when, if you chance to accept the invitation, you
will be saluted by a killing, piercing, sea monster
of a breeze, which chills the genial current of the
soul, and drives you shivering to the fire-side to
warm your fingers, and complain for the hundredth
time of the backwardness of the season. In short,
it was a non-descript day, too hot for a great coat,
and too cool to go without one; when one side of
the street was broiling in the sun, the other freezing
in the shade.

Mr. Lightfoot Lee was seated at the breakfast
table, with his only daughter, Miss Lucia Lightfoot
Lee, one of the prettiest alliterations ever seen.
She was making up her opinions for the day, from
the latest number of the London Literary Gazette,
and marking with a gold self-sharpening pencil a list
of books approved by that infallible oracle, for
the circulating library. Mr. Lee was occupied with
matters of more importance. He held his watch in
one hand, a newspaper in the other. By the way,
if I wished to identify a North American beyond all
question, I would exhibit him reading a newspaper.
But at present Mr. Lee seemed employed in studying
his watch, rather than the paper. He had good
reasons for it.

Mr. Lightfoot Lee was exceedingly particular in
boiling his eggs, which he was accustomed to say
required more discretion than any other branch of
the great art of cookery. The preparations for
this critical affair were always made with due solemnity.
First, Mr. Lee sat with his watch in his
hand, and the parlour door, as well as all the other
doors down to the kitchen, wide open. At the parlour
door stood Juba, his oldest, most confidential
servant. At the end of the hall leading to the
kitchen, stood Pomp, the coachman; at the foot of
the kitchen stairs stood Benjamin, the footman;
and Dolly, the cook, was watching the skillet. “It
boils,” cried Dolly: “It boils,” said Benjamin:
“It boils,” said Pompey the great: and “It boils,”

echoed Juba, Prince of Numidia. “Put them in,”
said Mr. Lee: “Put them in,” said Juba: “Put
them in,” said Pomp; and “Put them in,” cries
Dolly, as she dropt the eggs into the skillet. Exactly
a minute and a half afterwards, by his stop
watch, Mr. Lee called out “Done;” and done was
repeated from mouth to mouth as before. The perfection
of the whole process consisted in Dolly's
whipping out the eggs in half a second, from the
last echo of the critical “done.”

The eggs were boiled to his satisfaction, and Mr.
Lee ate and pondered over the newspaper by turns.
At length, all at once he started up in a violent commotion,
and stumped about the room, exclaiming in
an under tone to himself, “Too bad; too bad.”

“What is the matter, father?” said Lucia; “is
your egg overdone, or are you suffering the excruciating
pangs of the gout, or enduring the deadly
infliction of a hepatic paroxysm?”

“Hepatic fiddlestick! I wish to heaven you
would talk English, Lucia.”

“My dear sir, you know English now is very
different from what it it was when you learned it.”

“I know it, I know it,” said he; “it is as different
as a quaker bonnet and a French hat. I see I mus
go to school again. You and Mr. Goshawk talk
Greek to me.”

“Mr. Goshawk is a poet, sir.”

“Well, there is no particular reason why a poet

should not talk like other people, at least on common
subjects.”

“Ah! sir, the poet's eye is always in a fine frenzy
rolling. He sees differently from other people—to
him the sky is peopled with airy beings.”

“Ay; gnats, flies, and devil's darning-needles,”
said Mr. Lee, pettishly. Lucia was half angry, and
put up a lip as red as a cherry.

“Ah! too bad, too bad,” continued Mr. Lee,
stumping about again with his hands behind him.

“What is too bad, sir?” said Lucia, anxiously.

“What is too bad?” cried he, furiously advancing
towards her with his fist doubled; “that puppy, Highfield,
has not got the first honour after all, I see by
the paper. The blockhead! I had set my heart
upon it, and see here! he is at the tail of his class.”

“Is that all? why father I am glad to hear it,
Mr. Goshawk assures me that genius despises the
trammels of scholastic rust, and soars on wings of
polish'd”—

“Wings of a goose,” cried the old gentleman.
He had a provoking way of interrupting Lucia in
her flights; and, had she not been one of the best
natured of the azure tribe, she would have sometimes
lost her temper.

“He'll be home to-morrow—I've a great mind to
kick him out of doors.”

“Who, dear father?”

“Why, Highfield, to be sure.”

“For what, sir?”

“For not getting the first honour; the puppy, I
wouldn't care a stiver, if I hadn't set my heart upon
it? And away the good man stumped, again ejaculating,
“Too bad, too bad, I shall certainly turn
him out of doors.”

“Ah! but if you do, sir, I shall certainly let him
in again. I shall be glad to see my dear, good natured
cousin Charles once more, though he has not
got the first honour,” said Lucia, smiling.

What more might have been said on this subject
was cut short, by the entrance, without ceremony,
of Mr. Diodorus Fairweather, a neighbour, and
most particular friend and associate of Mr. Lee.
These two gentlemen had a sincere regard for each
other, kept up in all its pristine vigour, by the force
of contrast. One took every thing seriously; the
other considered the world, and all things in it a
jest. One worshipped the ancients; the other maintained
they were not worthy of tying the shoe-strings
of the moderns. One insisted that the world was going
backwards; the other, that it was rolling onwards
in the path of improvement, beyond all former example.
One was a violent federalist; the other a
raging democrat. They never opened their mouths
without disagreeing, and this was the cement of
their friendship. The mind of Mr. Lee was not
fruitful, and that of Mr. Fairweather was somewhat
sluggish in suggesting topics of conversation.
Had they agreed in every thing they must have required

a succession of subjects; but uniformly differing,
as they did on all occasions, it was only necesary
to say a single word, whether it conveyed a proposition
or not, and there was matter at once, for the
day.

“A glorious morning,” said Mr. Fairweather,
rubbing his hands.

“I differ with you,” said Mr. Lee.

“It is a beautiful sunshine.”

“But, my good sir, if you observe, there is a
cold, wet, damp, hazy, opake sky, through which
the sun cannot penetrate; 'tis as cold as December.”

“'Tis as warm as June,” said Mr. Fairweather,
laughing.

“Pish!” said Mr. Lee, taking up his hat mechanically,
and following his friend to the door. They
sallied forth without saying a word. At every
corner, however, they halted, to renew the discussion;
they disputed their way through a dozen different
streets, and finally returned home, the best
friends in the world, for they had assisted each other
in getting through the morning. Mr. Lee invited
Mr. Fairweather to return to dinner, and he accepted.

“Well, it does not signify,” said Mr. Lee, bobbing
his chin up and down, as was his custom when
uttering what he considered an infallible dictum. “It
does not signify, that Fairweather is enough to provoke
a saint. I never saw such an absurd, obstinate,
illnatured, passionate”—

“O father” said Lucia, “every body says Mr.
Fairweather was never in a passion in his life.”

“Well, but he is the cause of passion in others,
and that is the worst kind of illnature.”