Brothertoft used to ride, and Prince Rupert’s men to run from.
“Squire Dewitt told me you were going to trudge to York,” said Sam.
“I was,” replied the orphan; “my legs will take me there finely.”
“It was in my lease,” said Sam, “to pay a mare-colt every year over and above my rent, besides a six-year-old mare for a harriet, whenever the new heir came in.”
“Heriot, I suppose you mean, Sam.”
“We call ’em heriots when they’re horses, and harriets when they’re mares. Well, your father wouldn’t take the colts since twelve year. He said he was agin tribute, and struck the colts and the harriets all out of my lease. So I put the price of a colt aside for him every year, in case hard times come. There’s twelve colts in this buckskin bag, and this mare is the token that I count you the rightful owner of my farm and the whole Manor. I’ve changed her name to Harriet, bein’ one. She’s a stepper, as any man can see with half a blinker. The dollars and the beast is yourn, Mister Edwin.”
Edwin shook his head. “You are very kind, Sam; but I am my father’s son, and against tribute in any form.”
“I haven’t loved your father forty year to see his son go afoot. Ride the mare down, anyhow. She don’t get motion enough, now that I’m too heavy for her, bein’ seventeen stone three pound and a quarter with my coat off.”
Edwin’s pride melted under this loyalty.
“I will ride her then, Sam, and thank you. And give me a luck-penny out of the bag.”
“You’ll not take the whole?” pleaded Galsworthy.
No. And when the root-doctor heard this, he stood Hendrecus Canady junior in a receptive position, and dosed him with a bolus of wisdom, as follows:—
“Men is divided into three factions. Them that grabs their chances. Them that chucks away their chances. And them that lets their chances slide. The Brothertofts have alluz ben of the lettin’-slide faction. This one has jined the Chuckin’-Aways. He’ll never come to nothin’. You just swaller that remark, my son, and keep a digestin’ of it, if you want to come to anything yourself.”
Next morning Edwin took leave of home, and sorrowfully rode away.
A harsh, loud March wind chased him, blowing Harriet Heriot’s tail between her legs. The omens were bad.
But when, early the second morning, the orphan crossed King’s Bridge, and trod the island of his new career, a Gulf Stream wind, smelling of bananas and sounding of palm-leaves, met him, breathing welcome and success.
Chapter V.
With youth, good looks, an English education, the manners and heart of a gentleman, and the Puritan Colonel’s sword, Edwin Brothertoft went to New York to open his oyster.
“Hushed in grim repose,” the world, the oyster, lay with its lips tight locked against the brutal oyster-knives of blackguards.
But at our young blade’s first tap on the shell the oyster gaped.
How pleasant it is to a youth when his oyster gapes, and indolently offers him the succulent morsel within! His oyster is always uneasy at the hinge until it is generously open for an Edwin Brothertoft. He was that fine rarity, a thorough gentleman.
How rare they were then, and are now! rare as great poets, great painters, great seers, great doers. The fingers of my right hand seem too many when I begin to number off the thorough gentlemen of my own day. But were I ten times Briareus, did another hand sprout whenever I wanted a new tally, I never could count the thorough blackguards among my contemporaries. So much shade does it take to make sunshine!
The Colonial world gave attention when it heard a young Brothertoft was about to descend into the arena and wrestle for life.
“So that is he!” was the cry. “How handsome! how graceful! how chivalrous! how brilliant! what a bow he makes! his manners disarm every antagonist! He will not take advantages, they say. He is generous, and has visionary notions about fair play. He thinks a beaten foe should not be trampled on or scalped. He thinks enemies ought to be forgiven, and friends to be sustained, through thick and thin. Well, well! such fancies are venial errors in a young aristocrat.”
The city received him as kindly as it does the same manner of youth now, when its population has increased one hundred-fold.
The chief lawyer said, “Come into my office and copy papers, at a pound a week, and in a year you will be a Hortensius.”
The chief merchant said, “If you like the smell of rum, codfish, and beaver-skins, take a place in my counting-house, at a hundred pounds a year, and correct the spelling of my letters. I promise nothing; but I may want a partner by and by.”
The Governor of the Province and Mayor of the town, dullards, as officials are wont to be, each took the young gentleman aside, and said, “Here is a proclamation of mine! Now punctuate it, and put in some fine writing—about Greece and Rome, you know, and Magna Charta, with a Latin quotation or two—and I will find, you a fat job and plenty of pickings!”
The Livingston party proposed to him to go to the Assembly on their votes and fight the De Lanceys. The De Lanceys, in turn, said, “Represent us, and talk those radical Livingstons down.”
Lord London, Commander-in-Chief, swore that Brothertoft was the only gentleman he had seen among the dashed Provincials. “And,” says he, “you speak Iroquois and French, and all that sort of thing. Be my secretary, and I’ll get you a commission in the army—dashed if I don’t!”
King’s College, just established, to increase the baker’s dozen of educated men in the Colony, offered the young Oxonian a professorship, Metaphysics, Mathematics, Languages, Belles-Lettres—in fact whatever he pleased; none of the Trustees knew them apart.
Indeed, the Provincial world prostrated itself before this fortunate youth and prayed him—
“Be the representative Young American! Convince our unappreciative Mother England:
“That we do not talk through our noses;“That our language is not lingo;“That we are not slaves of the Almighty Wampum;“That we can produce the Finest Gentlemen, as well as the Biggest Lakes, the Longest Rivers, the Vastest Antres, and the Widest Wildernesses in the World.”
What an oyster-bed, indeed, surrounded our hero!
Alas for him! He presently found a Pearl.
Chapter VI.
Handsome Jane Billop wanted a husband.
She looked into the glass, and saw Beauty. Into the schedules of her father’s will, and saw Heiress.
She determined to throw her handkerchief, as soon as she could discover the right person to pick it up.
“He
