In my passage through life I have known one man who possessed the invaluable qualities of resignation and gentleness of temper, in an eminent and almost miraculous degree. This was Mr. J. W., a Mediterranean merchant. I met him for the first time at Cadiz, and afterwards at Seville, Malaga, and at other places higher up the Midland sea. I have seen him subjected to very rude trials and most painful tests, but I never once heard a harsh or passionate expression drop from his lips. To a severe trial he would say: “It is rather disagreeable,” or “It is very disagreeable,” and the strongest expression he ever let drop was, “It is very disgusting.” It was out of the power of prosperity to elate or inflate him; and it was equally out of the power of adversity to depress or embitter him. He had been tempted in more ways than the patient Job:
“For Satan, now grown wiser than of yore, Tempts men by making rich, not making poor.” |
He had been tried both ways, and in one way he had been tried twice; for he began life as a very poor unfriended youth, he became a rich man, and then died a very poor one.
A friend to whom he was showing a valuable Italian picture slipped on the
waxed, very slippery floor of the apartment, fell forward, and knocked his hand right
through the canvas and the principal figure. Turning to me, W. said,
sotto voce, “Mac,
| 278 | AN ENGLISH MERCHANT | [CHAP. XXVIII |
A few years before the final coup, some house in London, in one of our periodical panics, went to the bad, and he lost some thousands. “This,” said he, “is unpleasant, but it would have been much worse if they had failed last year, for then I must have lost twice as much by them.”
There can have been but few more hospitable men. In his prosperity he very
frequently gave excellent dinners with the best of wines, and he entertained at his table
Colonels, Generals, Diplomatists, and English travellers of all degrees, not excepting the
highest. Afterwards I have known him not to have money enough to pay for a dinner, and not
to know where, in that desolating “populous solitude” of London, to seek
for one; yet I never heard him complain, or say any more than “it was rather
unpleasant.” A few of his high-class friends, by small joint contributions,
kept him clear from anything like absolute want; but he rather felt the dependency, and
said that “it was rather disgusting.” I need scarcely add that his soul
was sustained by “the means of
| CHAP. XXVIII] | THE BRUNELS | 279 |
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