University of Virginia Library

PHILIP SLINGSBY, ESQ.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

It is now many years since I first knew the gentleman
whose name stands at the head of this chapter.
The papers which are to follow will record some of
the passages of his life—taken partly from a rambling
note-book of his own, and filled out by what additional
details I have gathered from his conversation.
Though my name stands in the title-page of this book
as the author, I can only take to myself that share of
the praise or blame which may attach to it as a literary
composition.

From my observation of Mr. Slingsby, and from
the slender experience of the world which has fallen
to my share, I am persuaded that be, and most other
men, may be said to possess two characters. One is
real, the other ideal. In the great proportion of men
the ideal character, (usually a heroic and romantic

one,) is stifled by a youth of care, and lies quite dormant,
or, pent till its impulses are ungovernable, it
becomes paramount in some striking action late in life,
and is called eccentricity, or insanity. In others
there is a never-ceasing struggle between the real and
the ideal, or the latter obtains the supremacy; stamping
the man, as he finds opportunity or not, a dreamer
or a hero. The supposed difference between men
consists, frequently, I am persuaded, more in the
different qualities predominant by education or circumstances.

Most of those who know Slingsby would define
him as a worldly, careless man, with more susceptibility
than feeling, some talent, and more self-confidence.
The reverse of his shield, seldom shown,
presents a chivalresque temperament, the most reckless
love of adventure, warm household affection, and
an intense idolatry of the beautiful, that has made
him by turns devout and voluptuous, by turns giddy
and poetical. With a perversity, arising, perhaps,
from being unappreciated in his youth, he cautiously
conceals his better qualities, and takes a pleasure in
referring their accidental sparkles to chance or calculation.
He professes rather worldly sentiments in
conversation, and confesses to have no ambition beyond
luxurious leisure, and no confidence in mankind.
Behind this stalking horse he watches his true game
with unsuspected vigilance and success. Adventure,
excitement and the passionate and dramatic materials

of romance, are sown more thickly in the common
walks of society, than is known to the unwatchful and
the sordid. Following the slightest lead, almost culpably
regardless of consequences, bold, sympathizing,
and impassioned, he is revealed, as by a secret magnetism,
to spirits like his own, and beneath the mask
of a trifler, and in the trodden thoroughfare of the
world, leads a life of varied and ever-renewing romance.

There is a vein of complaint against the world in
these papers, which I cannot well reconcile to the
uniform gayety and insouciance for which my friend's
ordinary deportment is remarkable. With a fair share
of success in pleasing, (as will appear in the reading
of his adventures,) his claim to good looks, it must
be acknowledged, has never been put forward even
by the most partial of his friends. This parsimony
of nature, and the rebuffs in his love which it has
possibly occasioned, have, I am led to suspect, rankled
more sorely in his mind than his pride would suffer
him to betray to the common eye. Hence, possibly,
those passages in which he rails against love and
friendship; and hence, (I must be permitted to premonish
the reader,) some slight exaggeration which
I trust my friends will find in my own portrait, drawn,
in these other wise veracious pages, under the name of
Forbearance Smith. I owe some portion of his devoted
attachment, I doubt not, to the consolatory contrast
afforded him by my own slighter pretensions in
this particular.

It will be seen, by many marks in the narratives
which follow, that they are not the work of imagination.
The dramas of real life are seldom well wound
up, and the imperfectness of plot which might be objected
to them as tales, will prove to the observant
reader that they are drawn more from memory than
fancy. It is because they are thus imperfect in dramatic
accomplishment, that I have called them by
the name under which they have been introduced.
They are rather intimations of what seemed to lead
to a romantic termination than complete romances—
in short, they are inklings of adventure.