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AMONG the deaths in our obituary -- or this month, I observe with "At his cottage oh road, Captain Ja." The name and attribution are on enough; but a feeling like reproach persuades me, that this could have been no other in fact than my dear old friend, who so<s>?</s>me five-and-twenty years ago rented a te, which he leased to dignify with the appellation here used, about a mile from Westbreen. Alack, how good men, and the good turns they do us, slide out of memory, and are recalled but by the surprise of some such sad memento as that whiow lies before us!He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, with a wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he maintained with the port and notions of gentlewomen upon that slender professional allowance. ely girls they were too.
And was I in danger of fetting this man ? -- his cheerful suppers -- the one of hospitality, when first you set your foot itage -- the anxious ministerings about you, where little or nothing (God knows) was to be ministered. -- Altheas horn in a poor platter -- the power of self-entment, by which, in his magnifit wishes to eain you, he multiplied his means to bounties.
You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a bare scrag -- cold savings from the fone meal -- remnant hardly suffit to send a mendit from the door tented. But in the copious will -- the revelling imagination of your host -- the "mind, the mind, Master Shallow," whole beeves were spread before you -- hebs -- no end appeared to the profusion.
It was the widows cruse -- the loaves and fishes; carving could not lessen nor helping diminish it -- the stamina were left -- the elemental boill flourished, divested of its acts.
"Let us live while we ," methinks I hear the open-handed creature exclaim; "while we have, let us not want," "here is plenty left;" "want for nothing " -- with many more such hospitable sayings, the spurs of appetite, and old itants of smoaking boards, a-oppressed chargers. Then sliding a slender ratio of Single Gloucester upon his wifes plate, or the daughters, he would vey the rema rind into his own, with a merry quirk of "the he bone," &c., and declaring that he universally preferred the outside. For we had our table distins, you are to know, and some of us in a manner sate above the salt. his guest uests dreamed of tasting flesh luxuries at night, the fragments were vere hospitibus sacra. But of ohing or ahere was always enough, and leavings: only he would sometimes finish the remainder crust, to show that he wished no savings.
Wine he had none; nor, except on very rare occasions, spirits; but the sensation of wine was there. Some thin kind of ale I remember -- " British beverage," he would say! "Push about, my boys;" "Drink to your sweethearts, girls." At every meagre draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All the forms of good liquor were there, with none of the effects wanting. Shut your eyes, and you would swear a capacious bowl of punch was foaming in the tre, with beams of generous Port or Madeira radiating to it from each of the table ers. You got flustered, without knowing wheipsy upon words; and reeled uhe of his unperf Baalian encements.
We had our songs -- " Why, Soldiers, Why " -- and the "British Grenadiers " -- in which last we were all obliged to bear chorus. Both the daughters sang. Their proficy was a nightly theme -- the masters he had given them -- the &<mark></mark>quot;no-expence" which he spared to aplish them in a sce "so necessary to young women." But then -- they could not sing "without the instrument."
Sacred, and by me, o-be violated, Secrets of Poverty Should I disclose your ho aims at grandeur, your makeshift efforts of magnifice? Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, if one of the bunch be extant; thrummed by a thousand aral thumbs ; dear, cracked spi of dearer Louisa ! Without mention of mine, be dumb, thou thin apanier of her thinner warble! A veil be spread over the dear delighted face of the well-deluded father, who noly listening to cherubiotes, scarce feels sincerer pleasure than when she awakehy time-shaken chords respoo the twitterings of that slender image of a voice.
We were not without our literary talk either. It did end far, but as far as it went, it was good. It was bottomed well; had good grounds to go upon. Itage was a room, which tradition authenticated to have been the same in which Glover, in his occasional retirements, had pehe greater part of his Leonidas. This circumstance was nightly quoted, though none of the present ihat I could discover, appeared ever to have met with the poem iion. But that was no matter. Glover had written there, and the ae ressed into the at of the family importa diffused a learned air through the apartment, the little side casement of which (the poets study window), opening upon a superb view as far as to the pretty spire of Harrow, over domains and patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square yard whereof our host could call his ow gave occasion to an immoderate expansion of vanity shall I call it ? -- in his bosom, as he showed them in a glowing summer evening. It was all his, he <mark>?9９liｂ.</mark>took it all in, and unicated rich portions of it to his guests. It art of his largess, his hospitality; it was going over his grounds; he was lord for the time of showing them, and you the implicit lookers-up to his magnifice.
He was a juggler, who threw mists before your eyes -- you had no time to detect his fallacies. He would say "hahe silver sugar tongs;" and, before you could discover it was a single spoon, and that plated, he would disturb and captivate your imagination by a misnomer of "the urn" for a tea kettle; or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich men direct you to their furniture, poor ones divert you from it; he her did one nor the other, but by simply assuming that everything was handsome about him, you were positively at a demur what you did, or did not see, at the cottage. With nothing to live on, he seemed to live ohing. He had a stock of wealth in his mind; not that which is properly termed tent, for in truth he was not to be tai all, but overflowed all bounds by the force of a magnifit self-delusion.
Enthusiasm is catg; and even his wife, a sober native of North Britain, who generally saw things more as they were, was not proof against the tinual collision of his credulity. Her daughters were rational and discreet young women; in the main, perhaps, not insensible to their true circumstances. I have seen them assume a thoughtful air at times. But such was the prepoing opulence of his fancy, that I am persuaded not for any half hether, did they ever look their own prospects fairly in the face. There was ing the vortex of his temperament. His riotous imagination jured up handsome settlements before their eyes, which kept them up in the eye of the world too, and seem at last to have realised themselves; for they both have married since, I am told, more than respectably.
It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some subjects, or I should wish to vey some notion of the manner in which the pleasant creature described the circumstances of his own wedding-day I faintly remember something of a chaise and four, in which he made his entry into Glasgow on that m to fetch the bride home, or carry her thither, I fet which. It so pletely made out the stanza of the old ballad --
When we came down through Glasgow town,
We were a ely sight to see;
My love was clad in black velvet,
And I myself in cramasie.
I suppose it was the only occasion, upon which his own actual splendour at all corresponded with the worlds notions on that subject. In homely cart, or travelling caravan, by whatever humble vehicle they ced to be transported in less prosperous days, the ride through Glasgow came back upon his fanot as a humiliating trast, but as a fair occasion for reverting to that one days state. It seemed an "equipage etern" from whio power of fate or fortune, once mounted, had power thereafter to dislodge him.
There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon i circumstao bull and swagger away the sense of them before strangers may be not always disendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even wheed, have more of our admiration than pt. But for a man to put the cheat upon himself; to play the Bobadil at home; and, steeped in poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all the while -deep in riches, is a strain of stitutional philosophy, and a mastery over fortune, which was reserved for my old friend Captain Ja.
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