work I cheerfully recommend, will be
found a statement to the effect that Edmund Burke was one of the fifteen
children of his parents. Aside from the natural curiosity to know what
became of the fourteen, the matter is of small moment, and that its
truth or falsity should divide men is most absurd.

Of this, however, we know: the parents of Burke were plain people,
rescued from oblivion only through the excellence of this one son. The
father was a lawyer, and fees being scarce, he became chief clerk for
another barrister, and so lived his life and did his work.

When Edmund Burke was born at Dublin in the year Seventeen Hundred
Twenty-nine, that famous city was at its flood-tide of prosperity. It
was a metropolis of commerce, art, wit, oratory and literary culture.
The one name that looms large to us out of that time is that of Dean
Swift, but then there were dozens just as great as he--so-said.

Edmund must have been a bright, fine, attractive boy, for we hear that
certain friends of his parents combined with his father and they bent
themselves to the task of sending the lad to Trinity College. Before
this, however, he had spent some time at a private school kept by one
Abraham Shackleton, an Englishman and a member of the Society of
Friends. Shackleton was a rare, sweet soul and a most excellent teacher,
endowed with a grave, tranquil nature, constant and austere. Between his
son Richard and young Mr. Burke there sprang up a close and affectionate
friendship which neither time nor circumstance was able to dim.

Now, the elder Burke was a lawyer, but not a great lawyer.

What more natural, therefore, than that the boy Edmund should follow in
his father's footsteps and reap the fame and high honors which an unkind
Fate had withheld from his worthy parent?

There was another boy destined for fame at Trinity College while Burke
was there, but they did not get acquainted then. Some years later they
met in London, though, and talked it over.

In countenance these two young men had a certain marked resemblance.
Reynolds painted pictures of both Burke and Goldsmith, and when I looked
at these portraits this morning, side by side, I said, "Sir Joshua
hadn't quite got the Burke out of his brush before he painted the
Goldsmith." Burke is Goldsmith grown big.

Each had a weak chin, which was redeemed by the fine, full forehead and
brilliant eye.

In face and features, taken as a whole, Burke had a countenance of
surpass