ty: from his experience they would once more prove to a gaping
world the truth of the maxim, the highest intelligible to a base soul,
that "honesty is the best policy." With his money he left to his son
the seeds of a varied meanness, which bore weeds enough, but curiously,
neither avarice nor, within the bounds of a modest prudence, any
unwillingness to part with money--a fact which will probably appear the
stranger when I have told the following anecdote concerning a brother
of the father, of whom few indeed mentioned in my narrative ever heard.

This man was a joiner, or working cabinet-maker, or something of the
sort. Having one day been set by his master to repair for an old lady
an escritoire which had been in her possession for a long time, he came
to her house in the evening with a five-pound note of a country bank,
which he had found in a secret drawer of the same, handing it to her
with the remark that he had always found honesty the best policy. She
gave him half a sovereign, and he took his leave well satisfied. _He
had been first to make inquiry, and had learned that the bank stopped
payment many years ago._ I can not help wondering, curious in the
statistics of honesty, how many of my readers will be more amused than
disgusted with the story. It is a great thing to come of decent people,
and Ferdinand Goldberg Redmain must not be judged like one who, of
honorable parentage, whether noble or peasant, takes himself across to
the shady side of the road. Much had been against Redmain. I do not
know of what sort his mother was, but from certain embryonic virtues in
him, which could hardly have been his father's, I should think she must
have been better than her husband. She died, however, while he was a
mere child; and his father married, some said did not _marry_ again.
The boy was sent to a certain public school, which at that time,
whatever it may or may not be now, was simply a hot-bed of the lowest
vices, and in devil-matters Redmain was an apt pupil. There is fresh
help for the world every time a youth starts clean upon manhood's race;
his very being is a hope of cleansing: this one started as foul as
youth could well be, and had not yet begun to repent. His character was
well known to his associates, for he was no hypocrite, and Hosper's
father knew it perfectly, and was therefore worse than he. Had Redmain
had a daughter, he would never have given her to a man like himself.
But, then, Mortimer was so poo