of Saint Lucie, the
fact being that he had a couple of volumes of the 'Annual Register' in
his bedroom, which he sedulously studied. It is thus a well-regulated
man will accommodate himself to circumstances, and show himself calmly
superior to fortune.

Pen sometimes took the box at backgammon of a night, or would listen to
his mother's simple music of summer evenings--but he was very restless
and wretched in spite of all: and has been known to be up before the
early daylight even; and down at a carp-pond in Clavering Park, a
dreary pool with innumerable whispering rushes and green alders, where
a milkmaid drowned herself in the Baronet's grandfather's time, and her
ghost was said to walk still. But Pen did not drown himself, as perhaps
his mother fancied might be his intention. He liked to go and fish
there, and think and think at leisure, as the float quivered in the
little eddies of the pond, and the fish flapped about him. If he got a
bite he was excited enough: and in this way occasionally brought home
carps, tenches, and eels, which the Major cooked in the Continental
fashion.

By this pond, and under a tree, which was his favourite resort, Pen
composed a number of poems suitable to his circumstances over which
verses he blushed in after days, wondering how he could ever have
invented such rubbish. And as for the tree, why it is in a hollow of
this very tree, where he used to put his tin-box of ground-bait, and
other fishing commodities, that he afterwards--but we are advancing
matters. Suffice it to say, he wrote poems and relieved himself very
much. When a man's grief or passion is at this point, it may be loud,
but it is not very severe. When a gentleman is cudgelling his brain to
find any rhyme for sorrow, besides borrow and to-morrow, his woes are
nearer at an end than he thinks for. So were Pen's. He had his hot
and cold fits, his days of sullenness and peevishness, and of blank
resignation and despondency, and occasional mad paroxysms of rage and
longing, in which fits Rebecca would be saddled and galloped fiercely
about the country, or into Chatteris, her rider gesticulating wildly on
her back, and astonishing carters and turnpikemen as he passed, crying
out the name of the false one.

Mr. Foker became a very frequent and welcome visitor at Fairoaks during
this period, where his good spirits and oddities always amused the Major
and Pendennis, while they astonished the widow and little Laura not a
littl