The Penn's Grove record., 1883-06-09
His First and Last Success.

"Poor fellow he seems i'll this time
and in distress. What a pity IT is ne
will write so grandly and not keep to
nature
Mrs. Give, number three, passed a
tstter across the breakfast table and
took some clotted cream. Her husband
clawed up his brothers. handwriting
with a glare.
"Keep to nature. Keep to business,
you mean. Confound the fellow. He
never makes a half-penny by his wretched
scribbling, or keeps it if he does. Only
a few years ago they came bothering me
for five pounds to bury the boy, and now
The daughter writes for five pounds
more-I suppose to bury him. Pm sick
of it they must manage with two"
MI. Bartholomew Give, of the firm of
Harbinger, H~arbinger & Give, wrote
the check and sent it, payable to order
and carefully crossed, to his eldest
brother. He had managed by j~udicious
conduct in the course of a family quar-
rel, many years ago, to GUST the latter
from his birthright but it is only fair to
him to say thai he had hated him hon
estly and cordially ever since. Having,
moreover, in the course of his matri-
monial experiences, led to the altar the
heiress to a great tallow interest, sub
scribed regularly to several missionary
societies, locked up a rich relative in a
nad house, earned a reputation for
assisting real, but solvent, suffering,
wherever met with, at the moderate
rate of so per cent, and married three
wives, all three for their money, it is
superfuous to add that he was widely
known as altogether a ''safe man."
OF a different mold was his elder
brother, Anthony. He did not believe
in tallow but he twice beggared himself
to his last h~alf-penny to ave a friend.
He was cursed with that amiable leprosy
which people who know about it call an
artistic nature. He wept like a child
Wien his father, who had wronged him,
died. He forgave the brother who had
robbed him. He had, too, vague theories
that life was meant for something no
bier than the skinning of society for
what could be got out of it. Moreover,
he wrote. In a word, he "a altogether
an unsafe man.
But there was a Grub Street in those
days and NEST of those who lounged
up and down it out at elbows, knew
Anthony. He did not make much of a
figure in their literary world-it was SC
~stupendous. Yet they had done what
they could for him-they had made him
one of themselves. They had done this
by giving him a long clay pipe, a pot
of porter and showing him the way
to Parnassus that classic. mount
was assembled thus in those days.
So Anthony looked upward, with a
long clay pipe and pot of porter, and
found himself, at the ripe age of five
and-twenty somebody" AS 'some'
body" he was Familiarity slapped on the
back in the club with a guinea entrance
fee, and hailed by some of the first intel,
ects of the time, and by a good many
of the second as Ebony" Before him,
therefore, was a future of no common
order. Many contributors of verses t
| provincial papers would have giyer
their eyes for such an opening. Tony
recognized this sterling fact and was
grateful. Here he was ~instructing &
| certain - sometimes an uncertain
| portion of the British public at the rate
of Is. Cd. a column. Having, notwith,
standing his method of ascending
Parnassus, considerable depth anC
culture, and withal a quiet sense o.
humor, it struck him that, u~ndeniabl,
| glorious as was this work, it was no
exactly OF a kind which he had proposed
to himself a short time since, wher
taking his degree at Cambridge. HI
had looked to a more exalted platform
A perpetual lounge in the company o
Steele, Addison, Goldsmith, Thackera,
and Macaulay, was what that magic
phrase, a LITERARY career had con
ured up for him. Literature was no
only to supply him 9th a comfortable
competency-this obviously, as a matte
Of course but was to sweeten, adorn
and elevate his life. Confident Of it
power to do this, he married a gentl
girl, who with eve purer and noble
aspirations, hoped with all his hope
and saw all with his eyes. Indeed
with them she saw yet more than h
for she would never for a moment hav
consented to his making himself thor
oughly comfortable on the ideal plat
form prepared for him, until room ha
been found, if necessary, even some
where at the back, for Shakespear
himself.
50, love and sympathy could hav
given substance to his vision, Tony ha
lived royalty to the end. Unhappily
love and sympathy, useful things i
their way, were powerless for thii
They helped him, it is true, when h
had to bury his boy for IS. But mat
tsrs did not better with the fieetin
years, and so it came to pass that wheH
after twenty of them had shuddere
away-his gentle wife having long sine