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A POOR Relation -- is the most irrelevant thing in nature, -- a pieperti corresponden odious approximation, -- a haunting sce, -- a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity, -- an unwele remembrancer, -- a perpetually recurring mortification, -- a drain on your purse, -- a more intolerable dun upon your pride, -- a drawback upon success, -- a rebuke to your rising, -- a stain in your blood, -- a blot on your scut, -- a rent in yarment, -- a deaths head at your ba, -- Agathocles pot, -- a Mordecai in yate, -- a Lazarus at your door, -- a lion in your path, -- a frog in your chamber, -- a fly in your oi, -- a mote in your eye, -- a triumph to your enemy, an apology to your friends, -- the ohing not needful, -- the hail in harvest, -- the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet.He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you "That is Mr. ----." A rap, between familiarity and respect; that demands, and, at the same time, seems to despair of eai. He eh smiling, and -- embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and draweth it back again. He casually looketh in about diime -- wheable is full. He offereth to go away, seeing you have pany -- but is io stay. He filleth a chair, and your visiters two children are aodated at a side table. He never eth upon open days, when your wife says with some c<big></big>omplacy, "My dear, perhaps Mr.---- will drop in to-day." He remembereth birth-days -- and professeth he is fortuo have stumbled upon one. He declareth against fish, the turbot being small -- yet suffereth himself to he importuned into a slice against his first resolutioicketh by the port -- yet will he prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. The guests think "they have seen him before." Every one speculateth upon his dition; and the most part take him to be a tide-waiter. He calleth you by your Christian o imply that his other is the same with our own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With half the familiarity he might pass for a casual depe; with more boldness he would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend, yet taketh on him more state thas a t. He is a wuest than a try tenant, inasmuch as he brih up -- yet `tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, that yuests take him for one. He is asked to make o the whist table; refuseth on the score of poverty, and -- resents bei out. When the pany break up, he proffereth to go for a coach -- ahe servant go. He recollects yrandfather; and will thrust in some mean, and quite unimportant ae of -- the family. He k when it was not quite so flourishing as "he is blest in seeing it now." He reviveth past situations, to institute what he calleth -- favourable parisons. With a refleg sort of gratulation, he will inquire the price of your furniture; and insults you with a special endation of your window-curtains. He is of opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape, but, after all, there was something more fortable about the old tea-kettle -- whiust remember. He dare say you must find a great venien having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. Inquireth ~if you have had your arms done on vellum yet; and did not know till lately, that sud-such had been the crest of the family. His memory is unseasonable; his pliments perverse; his talk a trouble; his stay pertinacious; and when he goeth away, you dismiss his chair into a er, as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid of two nuisances.
There is a worse evil uhe sun, and that -- a is female Poor Relation. You may do something with the other; you may pass him off tolerably well; but your i she-relative is hopeless. "He is an old humourist," you may say, "and affects to go threadbare. His circumstances are better than folks would take them to he. You are fond of having a Character at your table, and truly he is one." But in the indications of female poverty there be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself from caprice. The truth must out without shuffling. "She is plainly related to the L----s; or what does she at their house?" She is, in all probability, your wifes cousin. imes out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is somethiween a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He may require to he repressed sometimes -- aliquando sufflaminandus erat -- but there is no raising her. You send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped -- after the gentlemen. Mr. ---- requests the honour of taking wih her; she hesitates between Port and Madeira, and chooses the former -- because he does. She calls the servant Sir; and insists on not troubling him to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronizes her. The childrens goverakes upoo correct her, when she has mistaken the piano for a harpsichord.
Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance of the disadvao which this chimeriotion of affinity stituting a claim to acquaintance, may subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a lady of great estate. His stars are perpetually crossed by the malignant maternity of an old woman, who persists in calling him "her son Dick." But she has wherewithal in the end to repense his indignities, and float him again upon the brilliant surface, under which it had been her seeming business, and pleasure all along to sink him. All men, besides, are not of Dicks temperament. I knew an Amlet in real life, who, wanting Dicks buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W---- was of my own standing at Christs, a fine classid a youth of Promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much pride; but its actuality was inoffe was not of that sort which hardens the heart, and serves to keep inferiors at a dista only sought to ward off derogation from itself. It was the principle of self-respect carried as far as it could go, without infringing upon that respect, which he would have every one else equally maintain for himself. He would have you to think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel have I had with him, when we were rather older boys, and our tallness made us more obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes, because I would not thread the alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude notice, when we have been out together on a holiday ireets of this sneering and pryiropolis. W---- went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, where the dignity and sweetness of a scholars life, meeting with the alloy of a humble introdu, wrought in him a passionate devotion to the place, with a profound aversion from the society. The servitown (worse than his school array) g to him with Nessian venom. He thought himself ridiculous in a garb, under which Latimer must have walked erect; and in which Hooker, in his young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no disendable vanity. In the depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor student shrunk from observation. He found shelter among books, whisult not; and studies, that ask no questions of a youths finances. He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for looking out beyond his domains. The healing influence of studious pursuits on him, to soothe and to abstract. He was alm<s>９9lｉｂ?</s>ost a healthy man; when the waywardness of his fate broke out against him with a sed and worse malignity. The father of W---- had hitherto exercised the humble profession of housepai N----, near Oxford. A supposed i with some of the heads of the colleges had now induced him to take up his abode in that city, with the hope of being employed upon some public works which were talked of. From that moment I read in the tenance of the young man, the determination which at length tore him from academical pursuits for ever. To a person unacquainted with our Uies, the distaween the gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called -- the trading part of the latter especially -- is carried to an excess that would appear harsh and incredible. The temperament of W----`s father was diametrically the reverse of his own. Old W---- was a little, busy, ging tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to any-thing that bore the semblance of a gown -- iive to the winks and opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously dug. Such a state of things could not last. W---- must ge the air of Oxford or be suffocated. He chose the former; ahe sturdy moralist, who strains the point of the filial duties as high as they bear, sure the dereli; he ot estimate the struggle. I stood with W----, the last afternoon I ever saw him, uhe eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the High. street to the back of ***** college, where W---- kept his rooms. He seemed thoughtful, and more reciled. I veo rally him -- finding him in a better mood -- upon a representation of the Artist Eva, which the old man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had caused to he set up in a splendid sort of frame over his really handsome shop, either as a token of prosperity, or badge of gratitude to his saint. W---- looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, "knew his mounted sign -- and fled." A letter on his fathers table the m, annouhat he had accepted a ission in a regiment about to embark for Pal. He was among the first who perished before the walls of St. Sebastian.
I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so emily painful; but this theme of poor relationship is replete with so much matter fic as well as ic associations, that it is difficult to keep the at distinct without blending. The earliest impressions which I received on this matter, are certainly not attended with anything painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At my fathers table (no very splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed i black, of a sad yet ely appearance. His deportment was of the essence of gravity; his words few or none; and I was not to make a noise in his presence. I had little ination to have done so -- for my cue was to admire in silence., A particular elbow chair ropriated to him, which was in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the days of his ing. I used to think him a prodigiously rich man. All I could make out of him was, that he and my father had been<bdi></bdi> schoolfellows a world ago at Lin, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint I ko be a place where all the money was ed -- and I thought he was the owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twihemselves about his presence. He seemed above human infirmities and passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur ied him. From some inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about in aernal suit of m; a captive -- a stately being, let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I wo the temerity of my father, who, in spite of an habitual general respect which we all in aed towards him, would venture now and then to stand up against him in some argument, toug their youthful days. The houses of the a city of Lin are divided (as most of my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill, and in the valley. This marked distin formed an obvious divisioween the boys who lived above (however brought together in a on school) and the boys whose paternal residence was on the plain; a suffit cause of hostility in the code of these young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading Mountaineer; and would still maintain the general superiority, in skill and hardihood, of the above Boys (his own fa) over the Below Boys (so were they called), of which party his porary had been a chieftain. Many and hot were the skirmishes on this topic -- the only one upon which the old gentleman was ever brought out -- and bad blood bred; even sometimes almost to the ree (so I expected) of actual hostilities. But my father, who sed to insist upon advantages, generally trived to turn the versation upon some adroit by-endation of the old Minster; in the general preference of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the hill, and the plainborn, could meet on a ciliating level, and lay down their less important differences. Only I saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I remembered with anguish the thought that came over me: "Perhaps he will never e here again." He had been pressed to take another plate of the viand, which I have already mentioned as the indispensable itant of his visits. He had refused, with a resistance amounting tour -- when my aunt, an old Linian, but who had something of this, in on with my cousin Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out of season -- uttered the fol<u>.</u>lowing memorable application -- " Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding every day." The old gentleman said nothing at the time -- but he took occasion in the course of the evening, when some argument had intervened betweeo utter with an emphasis which chilled the pany, and which chills me now as I write it -- "Woman, you are superannuated." John Billet did not survive long, after the digesting of this affront; but he survived long enough to assure me that peace was actually restored! and, if I remember aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted in the place of that which had occasiohe offence. He died at the Mint (Anno 1781) where he had long held, what he ated, a fortable independence; and with five pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were found in his escrutoire after his decease, left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpehis was -- a Poor Relation.
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