ip ("the kind, friends who I found and
whom took me in"), must have been re-written from a rough copy which
had probably undergone the supervision of a tutor or friend. The more
artless composition, No. 2, was not referred to the scholar who prepared
No. 1 for the maternal eye, and to whose corrections of "who" and "whom"
Mr. Warrington did not pay very close attention. Who knows how he
may have been disturbed? A pretty milliner may have attracted Harry's
attention out of window--a dancing bear with pipe and tabor may have
passed along the common--a jockey come under his windows to show off a
horse there? There are some days when any of us may be ungrammatical and
spell ill. Finally, suppose Harry did not care to spell so elegantly for
Mrs. Mountain as for his lady-mother, what affair is that of the
present biographer, century, reader? And as for your objection that Mr.
Warrington, in the above communication to his mother, showed some little
hypocrisy and reticence in his dealings with that venerable person, I
dare say, young folks, you in your time have written more than one prim
letter to your papas and mammas in which not quite all the transactions
of your lives were narrated, or if narrated, were exhibited in the most
favourable light for yourselves--I dare say, old folks! you, in your
time, were not altogether more candid. There must be a certain distance
between me and my son Jacky. There must be a respectful, an amiable, a
virtuous hypocrisy between us. I do not in the least wish that he should
treat me as his equal, that he should contradict me, take my arm-chair,
read the newspaper first at breakfast, ask unlimited friends to dine
when I have a party of my own, and so forth. No; where there is not
equality there must be hypocrisy. Continue to be blind to my faults; to
hush still as mice when I fall asleep after dinner; to laugh at my old
jokes; to admire my sayings; to be astonished at the impudence of those
unbelieving reviewers; to be dear filial humbugs, O my children! In my
castle I am king. Let all my royal household back before me. 'Tis not
their natural way of walking, I know: but a decorous, becoming, and
modest behaviour highly agreeable to me. Away from me they may do, nay,
they do do, what they like. They may jump, skip, dance, trot, tumble
over heads and heels, and kick about freely, when they are out of the
presence of my majesty. Do not then, my dear young friends, be surprised
at your mother and au