Page:Romance & Reality 1.pdf/195

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ROMANCE AND REALITY.
189

to marry,—whether the masculine part of the creation with that attention to business, their great moral duty, calculate on pecuniary futurities, either in the shape of legacy or loan, we know not; but assuredly the magna charta of social life accords much to this privileged class.

Mr. Lushington was one of the number. As a child, he cried over his pap, his washing, and dressing, and himself to sleep—for the mere sake, as his nurse asserted, of plaguing her: at school, though neither tyrant nor tell-tale, he was hated,—for his comrades always found his opinion opposite to theirs, a shadow thrown over their hopes, and a sneer affixed to their pleasures. At a very early age he went to India; lived for years in a remote station, where he was equally decided and disliked; and finally came home to adjust the balance of comfort between a hundred thousand pounds and a liver complaint. He made morning calls, for the express purpose of telling the ladies of the house how ill they looked after the fatigues of the night before, and dwelt emphatically on the evils of late hours and ruined complexions; he dined out to insinuate the badness of the dinner, and take an opposite side in politics to