He had a good healthy sense of _meum_, and as little of _tuum_ as he could help. Brought up much in the open air in one of the best situated and

healthiest vil ages in England, his little limbs had fair play, and in those days children's brains were not overtasked as they now are; perhaps it was for this very reason that the boy showed an avidity to learn. At seven or eight years old he could read, write and sum better than any

other boy of his age in the vil age. My father was not yet rector of Paleham, and did not remember George Pontifex's childhood, but I have Page 4

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heard neighbours tel him that the boy was looked upon as unusual y quick and forward. His father and mother were natural y proud of their

offspring, and his mother was determined that he should one day become one of the kings and council ors of the earth.It is one thing however to resolve that one's son shal win some of life's larger prizes, and another to square matters with fortune in this respect. George Pontifex might have been brought up as a carpenter and succeeded in no other way than as succeeding his father as one of the minor magnates of Paleham, and yet have been a more truly successful man than he actual y was--for I take it there is not much more solid success in this world than what fel to the lot of old Mr and Mrs Pontifex; it

happened, however, that about the year 1780, when George was a boy of fifteen, a sister of Mrs Pontifex's, who had married a Mr Fairlie, came to pay a few days'

visit at Paleham. Mr Fairlie was a publisher, chiefly of religious works, and had an establishment in Paternoster Row; he had risen in life, and his wife had risen with him. No very close relations had been maintained between the sisters for some years, and I forget

exactly how it came about that Mr and Mrs Fairlie were guests in the quiet but exceedingly comfortable house of their sister and brother-inlaw; but for some reason or other the visit was paid, and little George soon succeeded in making his way into his uncle and aunt's good graces. A quick, intel igent boy with a good address, a sound constitution, and

coming of respectable parents, has a potential value which a practised business man who has need of many subordinates is little likely to overlook. Before his visit was over Mr Fairlie proposed to the lad's father and mother that he should put him into his own business, at the same time promising that if the boy did wel he should not want some one to bring him forward. Mrs Pontifex had her son's interest too much at

heart to refuse such an offer, so the matter was soon arranged, and about a fortnight after the Fairlies had left, George was sent up by coach to London, where he was met by his uncle and aunt, with whom it was arranged that he should live.This was George's great start in life. He now wore more fashionable clothes than he had yet been accustomed to, and any little rusticity of gait or pronunciation which he had brought from Paleham, was so quickly and completely lost that it was ere long impossible to detect that he had not been born and bred among people of what is commonly cal ed education. The boy paid great attention to his work, and more than justified the favourable opinion which Mr Fairlie had formed concerning him. Sometimes Mr Fairlie would send him down to Paleham for a few days' holiday, and

ere long his parents perceived that he had acquired an air and manner of talking different from any that he had taken with him from Paleham. They were proud of him, and soon fel into their proper places, resigning al appearance of a parental control, for which indeed there was no kind of necessity. In return, George was always kindly to them, and to the end

of his life retained a more affectionate feeling towards his father and mother than I imagine him ever to have felt again for man, woman, or

child.George's visits to Paleham were never long, for the distance from London was under fifty miles and there was a direct coach, so that the journey was easy; there was not time, therefore, for the novelty to wear off

either on the part of the young man or of his parents. George liked the fresh country air and green fields after the darkness to which he had

been so long accustomed in Paternoster Row, which then, as now, was a Page 5

Butler, Samuel: The Way of All Flesh

narrow gloomy lane rather than a street. Independently of the pleasure of seeing the familiar faces of the farmers and vil agers, he liked also being seen and being congratulated on growing up such a fine-looking and fortunate young fel ow, for he was not the youth to hide his light under a bushel. His uncle had had him taught Latin and Greek of an evening; he had taken kindly to these languages and had rapidly and easily mastered what many boys take years in acquiring. I suppose his knowledge gave him a self-confidence which made itself felt whether he intended it or not; at any rate, he soon began to pose as a judge of literature, and from

this to being a judge of art, architecture, music and everything else, the path was easy. Like his father, he knew the value of money, but he was at once more ostentatious and less liberal than his father; while yet a boy he was a thorough little man of the world, and did wel rather upon principles which he had tested by personal experiment, and recognised as principles, than from those profounder convictions which in his father

were so instinctive that he could give no account concerning them.His father, as I have said, wondered at him and let him alone. His son

had fairly distanced him, and in an inarticulate way the father knew it perfectly wel . After a few years he took to wearing his best clothes

whenever his son came to stay with him, nor would he discard them for his ordinary ones til the young man had returned to London. I believe old

Mr Pontifex, along with his pride and affection, felt also a certain fear of his son, as though of something which he could not thoroughly

understand, and whose ways, notwithstanding outward agreement, were nevertheless not as his ways. Mrs Pontifex felt nothing of this; to her George was pure and absolute perfection, and she saw, or thought she saw, with pleasure, that he resembled her and her family in feature as wel as in disposition rather than her husband and his.When George was about twenty-five years old his uncle took him into partnership on very liberal terms. He had little cause to regret this step. The young man infused fresh vigour into a concern that was already vigorous, and by the time he was thirty found himself in the receipt of not less than 1500 pounds a year as his share of the profits. Two years later he married a lady about seven years younger than himself, who

brought him a handsome dowry. She died in 1805, when her youngest child Alethea was born, and her husband did not marry again.CHAPTER I I n the early years of the century five little children and a couple of

nurses began to make periodical visits to Paleham. It is needless to say they were a rising generation of Pontifexes, towards whom the old couple, their grandparents, were as tenderly deferential as they would have been to the children of the Lord Lieutenant of the County.