that study; no one, indeed, who has studied the Ten
Commandments in the vernacular,--commits the mistake of supposing that
'the old governor' is a synonymous expression for 'father.' In the
second place, since you pretend to the superior enlightenment which
results from a superior education, learn to know better your own self
before you set up as a teacher of mankind. Excuse the liberty I take,
as your sincere well-wisher, when I tell you that you are at present
a conceited fool,--in short, that which makes one boy call another an
'ass.' But when one has a poor head he may redeem the average balance of
humanity by increasing the wealth of the heart. Try and increase yours.
Your father consents to your choice of your lot at the sacrifice of
all his own inclinations. This is a sore trial to a father's pride, a
father's affection; and few fathers make such sacrifices with a good
grace. I have thus kept my promise to you, and enforced your wishes on
Mr. Saunderson's judgment, because I am sure you would have been a very
bad farmer. It now remains for you to show that you can be a very good
tradesman. You are bound in honour to me and to your father to try your
best to be so; and meanwhile leave the task of upsetting the world
to those who have no shop in it, which would go crash in the general
tumble. And so good-night to you."

To these admonitory words, _sacro digna silentio_, Saunderson junior
listened with a dropping jaw and fascinated staring eyes. He felt like
an infant to whom the nurse has given a hasty shake, and who is too
stupefied by that operation to know whether he is hurt or not.

A minute after Kenelm had quitted the room he reappeared at the door,
and said in a conciliatory whisper, "Don't take it to heart that I
called you a conceited fool and an ass. These terms are no doubt just as
applicable to myself. But there is a more conceited fool and a greater
ass than either of us; and that is the Age in which we have the
misfortune to be born,--an Age of Progress, Mr. Saunderson, junior!--an
Age of Prigs."

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

IF there were a woman in the world who might be formed and fitted
to reconcile Kenelm Chillingly to the sweet troubles of love and the
pleasant bickerings of wedded life, one might reasonably suppose that
that woman could be found in Cecilia Travers. An only daughter and
losing her mother in childhood, she had been raised to the mistress-ship
of a household at an age i