s he became well acquainted
and popular amongst the poor in the neighbourhood early, for there was
not a cabin at which he had not stopped some morning or other, along
with the huntsman, to drink a glass of burnt whisky out of an eggshell,
to do him good and warm his heart and drive the cold out of his stomach.
The old people always told him he was a great likeness of Sir Patrick,
which made him first have an ambition to take after him, as far as his
fortune should allow. He left us when of an age to enter the college,
and there completed his education and nineteenth year, for as he was not
born to an estate, his friends thought it incumbent on them to give him
the best education which could be had for love or money, and a great
deal of money consequently was spent upon him at College and Temple.
He was a very little altered for the worse by what he saw there of the
great world, for when he came down into the country to pay us a visit,
we thought him just the same man as ever--hand and glove with every one,
and as far from high, though not without his own proper share of family
pride, as any man ever you see. Latterly, seeing how Sir Kit and the
Jewish lived together, and that there was no one between him and the
Castle Rackrent estate, he neglected to apply to the law as much as was
expected of him, and secretly many of the tenants and others advanced
him cash upon his note of hand value received, promising bargains of
leases and lawful interest, should he ever come into the estate. All
this was kept a great secret for fear the present man, hearing of it,
should take it into his head to take it ill of poor Condy, and so should
cut him off for ever by levying a fine, and suffering a recovery to dock
the entail [See GLOSSARY 24]. Sir Murtagh would have been the man for
that; but Sir Kit was too much taken up philandering to consider the law
in this case, or any other. These practices I have mentioned to account
for the state of his affairs--I mean Sir Condy's upon his coming into
the Castle Rackrent estate. He could not command a penny of his first
year's income, which, and keeping no accounts, and the great sight of
company he did, with many other causes too numerous to mention, was the
origin of his distresses. My son Jason, who was now established agent,
and knew everything, explained matters out of the face to Sir Conolly,
and made him sensible of his embarrassed situation. With a great nominal
rent-roll, it was almost