Agricultural distress prevails, and all your
farms are thrown up; so much for neglected tenants. Harassed by leases,
renewals, railroads, fines, and mines, you are determined that life
shall not be worn out by these continual and petty cares. Thinking it
somewhat hard, that, because you have two hundred thousand a-year, you
have neither ease nor enjoyment, you find a remarkably clever man, who
manages everything for you. Enchanted with his energy, his acuteness,
and his foresight, fascinated by your increasing rent-roll, and the
total disappearance of arrears, you dub him your right hand, introduce
him to all your friends, and put him into Parliament; and then, fired
by the ambition of rivalling his patron, he disburses, embezzles, and
decamps.
But where is our hero? Is he forgotten? Never! But in the dumps, blue
devils, and so on. A little bilious, it may be, and dull. He scarcely
would amuse you at this moment. So we come forward with a graceful bow;
the Jack Pudding of our doctor, who is behind.
In short, that is to say, in long--for what is true use of this affected
brevity? When this tale is done, what have you got? So let us make it
last.
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