tons; when
lo! upon a fine spring morning a little Benjamin was ushered into
existence, and I was the God-send. My father never could be persuaded
that there was a gentlemanly profession in the world but one, and
that was the trade of arms. My brothers, as they grew up, entirely
coincided with him in opinion, and both would be soldiers. William
died sword in hand, crowning the great breach at Rodrigo; and Henry,
after demolishing three or four cuirassiers of the Imperial Guards,
found his last resting-place on "red Waterloo." When they were named,
my father's eyes would kindle, and my mother's be suffused with tears.
He played a fictitious part, enacted the Roman, and would persuade you
that he exulted in their deaths; but my mother played the true one,
the woman's.

It was an autumnal evening, just when you smell the first indication
of winter in a rarefied atmosphere, and see it in the clear curling
of the smoke, as its woolly flakes rise from the cottage chimney and
gradually are lost in the clear blue sky. Although not a cold evening,
a log fire was extremely welcome. My father, Heaven rest him! had a
slight touch in the toe of what finished him afterward in the stomach,
namely, gout.

"James," said my lady mother, "it is time we came to some decision
regarding what we have been talking of for the last twelve months.
Frank will be eighteen next Wednesday."

"Faith! it is time, my dear Mary; the premises are true, but the
difficulty is to come at the conclusion."

"You know, my love, that only for your pension and half-pay, from the
tremendous depreciation in agricultural property since the peace, we
should be obliged to lay down the old carriage, as you had to part
with the harriers the year after Waterloo."

That to my father was a heavy hit. "It was a devil of a sacrifice,
Mary,"--and he sighed, "to give up the sweetest pack that ever man
rode to; one, that for a mile's run you could have covered with
a blanket--heigh-ho! God's will be done;" and after that pious
adjuration, my father turned down his tumbler No. 3, to the bottom.
The memory of the lost harriers was always a painful recollection, and
brought its silent evidence that the fortunes of the Hamiltons were
not what they were a hundred years ago.

"With all my care," continued my mother, "and, as you know, I
economize to the best of my judgement, and after all is done that can
be done, our income barely will defray the outlay of our household."