For his post of Collectorship of the Royal Customs, Lieutenant Goodhouse was especially indebted to the patronage of Colonel Belford.  The worthy Collector had, some years before, come to that gentleman with a written recommendation from the Earl of Clandennie of a very unusual sort.  It was the Lieutenant’s good-fortune to save the life of the Honorable Frederick Dunburne, second son of the Earl—­a wild, rakish, undisciplined youth, much given to such mischievous enterprises as the twisting off of door-knockers, the beating of the watch, and the carrying away of tavern signs.

Having been a very famous swimmer at Eton, the Honorable Frederick undertook while at the Cowes to swim a certain considerable distance for a wager.  In the midst of this enterprise he was suddenly seized with a cramp, and would inevitably have drowned had not the Lieutenant, who happened in a boat close at hand, leaped overboard and rescued the young gentleman from the watery grave in which he was about to be engulfed, thus restoring him once more to the arms of his grateful family.

For this fortunate act of rescue the Earl of Clandennie presented to his son’s preserver a gold snuffbox filled with guineas, and inscribed with the following legend: 

“To Lieutenant Thomas Goodhouse, who, under the Ruling of Beneficent Providence, was the Happy Preserver of a Beautiful and Precious Life of Virtuous Precocity, this Box is presented by the Father of Him whom He saved as a grateful acknowledgment of His Services.

Thomas Monkhouse Dunburne, Viscount of
Dunburne and Earl of Clandennie.

August 17, 1752.”

Having thus satisfied the immediate demands of his gratitude, it is very possible that the Earl of Clandennie did not choose to assume so great a responsibility as the future of his son’s preserver entailed.  Nevertheless, feeling that something should be done for him, he obtained for Lieutenant Goodhouse a passage to the Americas, and wrote him a strong letter of recommendation to Colonel Belford.  That gentleman, desiring to please the legitimate head of his family, used his influence so successfully that the Lieutenant was presently granted the position of Collector of Customs in the place of Captain Maull, who had lately deceased.

The Lieutenant, somewhat to the surprise of his patrons, filled his new official position as Collector not only with vigor, but with a not unbecoming dignity.  He possessed an infinite appreciation of the responsibilities of his office, and he was more jealous to collect every farthing of the royal duties than he would have been had those moneys been gathered for his own emolument.

Under the old Collectorship of Captain Maull, it was no unusual thing for a barraco of superfine Hollands, a bolt of silk cloth, or a keg of brandy to find its way into the house of some influential merchant or Colonial dignitary.  But in no such manner was Lieutenant Goodhouse derelict in his duties.  He would have sacrificed his dearest friendship or his most precious attachment rather than fail in his duties to the Crown.  In the intermission of his duties it might please him to relax into the softer humors of conviviality, but at ten o’clock in the morning, whatever his condition of sobriety, he assumed at once all the sterner panoply of a Collector of the Royal Customs.