ith whom
the world has gone hardly, he liked to brood over his misfortunes,
and magnify them to himself. In this way he opened a little bank of
compassion that answered every draft he drew on it. Over and over to
himself--like a miser revelling over his hoarded wealth--did he count
all the hardships of his destiny. He loved thus to hug his misery in
solitude, while he whispered to his heart, "You are a courageous fellow,
Paul Kellett; there are not many who could carry your cheerful face, or
walk with a head as high as you do to-day. The man that owned Kellett's
Court, and was one of the first in his county, living in a poor cottage,
with sixty pounds a year!--that's the test of what stuff a man's made
of. Show me another man in Ireland could do it! Show me one that could
meet the world as uncomplainingly, and all the while never cease to be
what he was born,--a gentleman." This was the philosophy he practised;
this the lesson he taught; this the paean he chanted in his own heart
The various extremities to which he might--being anything other than
what he was--have been tempted, the excesses he might have fallen into,
the low associates he might have kept, the base habits he might have
contracted, all the possible and impossible contingencies that might
have befallen him, and all his difficulties therein, formed a little
fiction world that he gloried to lose himself in contemplating.

It is not often that selfishness can take a form so blameless; nor is it
always that self-deception can be so harmless. In this indulgence we now
leave him.

CHAPTER V. THE WORLD'S CHANGES.

While Mr. Davenport Dunn's residence was in Merrion Square, his house
of business was in Henrietta Street,--one of those roomy old mansions
which, before the days of the Union, lodged the aristocracy of Ireland,
but which have now fallen into utter neglect and decay. Far more
spacious in extent, and more ornate in decoration, than anything modern
Dublin can boast, they remain, in their massive doors of dark
mahogany, their richly stuccoed ceilings, and their handsome marble
chimney-pieces, the last witnesses of a period when Dublin was a real
metropolis.

From the spacious dinner-room below to the attics above, all this vast
edifice was now converted into offices, and members of Mr. Dunn's staff
were located even in the building at the rear, where the stables once
had stood. Nothing can so briefly convey the varied occupations of his
life as