Chapter 3

OPINIONS OF OUR AUTHOR'S ANCESTOR, TOGETHER WITH SOME OF HIS OWN,
AND SOME OF OTHER PEOPLE'S.

Dr. Etherington was both a pious man and a gentleman. The second son
of a baronet of ancient lineage, he had been educated in most of the
opinions of his caste, and possibly he was not entirely above its
prejudices; but, this much admitted, few divines were more willing
to defer to the ethics and principles of the Bible than himself. His
humility had, of course, a decent regard to station; his charity was
judiciously regulated by the articles of faith; and his philanthropy
was of the discriminating character that became a warm supporter of
church and state.

In accepting the trust which he was now obliged to assume, he had
yielded purely to a benevolent wish to smooth the dying pillow of my
mother. Acquainted with the character of her husband, he had
committed a sort of pious fraud, in attaching the condition of the
endowment to his consent; for, notwithstanding the becoming language
of his own rebuke, the promise, and all the other little attendant
circumstances of the night, it might be questioned which felt the
most surprise after the draft was presented and duly honored, he who
found himself in possession, or he who found himself deprived, of
the sum of ten thousand pounds sterling. Still Dr. Etherington acted
with the most scrupulous integrity in the whole affair; and although
I am aware that a writer who has so many wonders to relate, as must
of necessity adorn the succeeding pages of this manuscript, should
observe a guarded discretion in drawing on the credulity of his
readers, truth compels me to add, that every farthing of the money
was duly invested with a single eye to the wishes of the dying
Christian, who, under Providence, had been the means of bestowing so
much gold on the poor and unlettered. As to the manner in which the
charity was finally improved, I shall say nothing, since no inquiry
on my part has ever enabled me to obtain such information as would
justify my speaking with authority.

As for myself, I shall have little more to add touching the events
of the succeeding twenty years. I was baptized, nursed, breeched,
schooled, horsed, confirmed, sent to the university, and graduated,
much as befalls all gentlemen of the established church in the
united kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, or, in other words, of
the land of my ancestor. During these pregnant years, Dr.
Etherington acquitted himself of a duty that, judging by a very
predominant feeling of human nature (which, singularly enough,
renders us uniformly averse to being troubled with other people's
affairs), I think he must have found sufficiently vexatious, quite
as well as my good mother had any right to