Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1883-04-25

BY GILBERT A'BECKETT,

Poor fellow! he seems Ill this time
and In a deal of trouble. What a pity
1t Is he will write so grand and not keep
to nature"
Mrs. Give, number three, passed a
letter across the breakfast-tabIe and
took some clotted cream. Her husband
clawed up his brothers handwriting with
glare.
keep to nature! Stick to business
you mean. Confound the fellow! He
never makes abalf penny by mis- wretched
scribbling, or keeps it if ne does. Only
few years ago they came bothering me
for five pounds to bury the boy, and
now the daughter writes for five more
| suppose to bury him. I'm sick of it:
they must manage with two :"
Mr.. Bartholomew Give, of the firm
OF Harbinger, Harbinger & Give, wrote
the check and sent it. payable to order,
aud carefully crossed, to his elder broth
er. He had managed, by iudicious con-
duct III the course of family quarrel.
many years ago, to GUST the latter from
his blrthright; but it is only fair to him
to say that he had hated him honestly
and cordially ever since. Having,
moreover, In the course of his matri-
monlaI experiences, led to the altar the
heiress to a great tallow interest, sub
scrIoed regularly to several missionary
societies, locked up rich relative in a
madhouse, earned a reputation for as
sIstlng real, but solvent, suffering,
wherever met with, at the moderate rate
OF go per cent, and married three wives.
all three for their money, it is superhu-
Gus to add that he was widely known as
altogether " safe man."
OF a different mold was his elder
brother Anthony. He did not believe
in taIIow; but he twice in his life beg
CARED himself to his last halfpenny to
save friend. He was cursed with that
amiable leprosy which people, who
know nothing about it, call an artistic
nature. He wept like a child when his
father, who had wronged him, died. He
fargave the brother who had robbed
him. He had, too, vague theories that
life was meant for something nobler than
the SHINING of society for what could be
got out oft. Moreover, he wrote. In
a word, he was altogether an unsafe man.
But there was Grub Street in those
days, and most of those who Iounged up
and down it, out at elbows, knew
Anthony. He did not make much of a
figure IN their literary world-it was so
Stupendous. Yet they had done what
they could for him-they had made him
one of themselves. They had done this
by giving him long clay pipe, pot of
porter, and showing him the way to
ParnasSus; that classic mount was as
cended 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 fssome-
body" he was Familiarity slapped on the
back III club with a guinea entrance
fee, and hailed by some of the first intel
lects of the time, and by good many of
the second, as Tony" Before him,
therefore, was future of no common
order. Many contributors of verses to
provincial papers would have given their
eyes for such an opening. Tony recog-
nized this sterling fact, and was CRATE
ful. Here he was Instructing certain
sometimes an uncertain-portion of
the British public at the rate of seven
shllllngs and slxpence column. Hay
ing, notwithstanding his method of as
cending Parnassus, considerable depth
and culture, and withal quiet sense of
humor, it struck him that, undeniably
glorious as was this work, it was not ex-
actlJ of the kind which he had purposed
TO himself short time since, when tax
ing his degree at Cambridge. He had
looked to a more exalted platform. A.
perpetual lounge IN the company OF
Steele, Addison, Goldsmith, Thackeray,
and Macaulay, was what that magic
phrase g a literary career" had con
cured up for him. Literature was not
only to supply him with a comfortable
competency-this obviously as matter
of course-but was to sweeten, adorn,
and elevate his life. Confident of its
power to do this, he married a gentle
girl who, with even purer and nobler as
pirations, hoped with all his hopes, and
saw all with his eyes. Indeed. with