nd. I remember Lord--(you know
what an unpretending, good-natured fellow he is now) strutting into
the play-ground, a raw boy, with his chin up in the air, and burly Dick
Johnson (rather a tuft-hunter now, I'm afraid) coming up and saying,
'Well, sir, and who the deuce are you?' 'Lord ----,' says the poor devil
unconsciously, 'eldest son of the Marquis of ----.'

"'Oh, indeed!' cries Johnson; 'then there's one kick for my lord, and
two for the marquis!' I am not fond of kicking, but I doubt if anything
ever did--more good than those three kicks. But," continued Lord
Castleton, "when one flatters a boy for his cleverness, even Eton itself
cannot kick the conceit out of him. Let him be last in the form, and the
greatest dunce ever flogged, there are always people to say that your
public schools don't do for your great geniuses. And it is ten to one
but what the father is plagued into taking the boy home and giving him
a private tutor, who fixes him into a prig forever. A coxcomb in dress,"
said the marquis, smiling, "is a trifler it would ill become me to
condemn, and I own that I would rather see a youth a fop than a sloven;
but a coxcomb in ideas--why, the younger he is, the more unnatural and
disagreeable. Now, Albert, over that hedge, sir."

"That hedge, papa? The pony will never do it."

"Then," said Lord Castleton, taking off his hat with politeness. "I fear
you will deprive us of the pleasure of your company."

The boy laughed, and made gallantly for the hedge, though I saw by his
change of color that it a little alarmed him. The pony could not clear
the hedge, but it was a pony of tact and resources, and it scrambled
through like a cat, inflicting sundry rents and tears on a jacket of
Raphael blue.

Lord Castleton said, smiling, "You see, I teach them to get through
a difficulty one way or the other. Between you and me," he added
seriously, "I perceive a very different world rising round the next
generation from that in which I first went forth and took my pleasure.
I shall rear my boys accordingly. Rich noblemen must nowadays be useful
men; and if they can't leap over briers, they must scramble through
them. Don't you agree with me?"

"Yes, heartily."

"Marriage makes a man much wiser," said the marquis, after a pause. "I
smile now to think how often I sighed at the thought of growing old. Now
I reconcile myself to the gray hairs without dreams of a wig, and enjoy
youth still; for," pointing to his sons,