I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so eminently painful; but this theme of poor relationship is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep the account distinct without blending.  The earliest impressions which I received on this matter, are certainly not attended with anything painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling.  At my father’s table (no very splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance.  His deportment was of the essence of gravity; his words few or none; and I was not to make a noise in his presence.  I had little inclination to have done so—­for my cue was to admire in silence.  A particular elbow chair was appropriated to him, which was in no case to be violated.  A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the days of his coming.  I used to think him a prodigiously rich man.  All I could make out of him was, that he and my father had been schoolfellows a world ago at Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint.  The Mint I knew to be a place where all the money was coined—­and I thought he was the owner of all that money.  Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his presence.  He seemed above human infirmities and passions.  A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him.  From some inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning; a captive—­a stately being, let out of the Tower on Saturdays.  Often have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite of an habitual general respect which we all in common manifested towards him, would venture now and then to stand up against him in some argument, touching their youthful days.  The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my readers know) between the dwellers on the hill, and in the valley.  This marked distinction formed an obvious division between the boys who lived above (however brought together in a common school) and the boys whose paternal residence was on the plain; a sufficient cause of hostility in the code of these young Grotiuses.  My father had been a leading Mountaineer; and would still maintain the general superiority, in skill and hardihood, of the Above Boys (his own faction) over the Below Boys (so were they called), of which party his contemporary had been a chieftain.  Many and hot were the skirmishes on this topic—­the only one upon which the old gentleman was ever brought out—­and bad blood bred; even sometimes almost to the recommencement (so I expected) of actual hostilities.  But my father, who scorned to insist upon advantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation upon some adroit by-commendation of the old Minster; in the general preference of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the hill, and the plain-born,