laugh over Swift’s gall and wormwood, and would never be brought by my mother to acknowledge the defects in the Dean’s character.  Why?  He had once met the Dean in a London drawing-room, when my grandfather was a young spark at Christ Church, Oxford.  He never tired of relating that interview.  The hostess was a very great lady indeed, and actually stood waiting for a word with his Reverence, whose whim it was rather to talk to the young provincial.  He was a forbidding figure, in his black gown and periwig, so my grandfather said, with a piercing blue eye and shaggy brow.  He made the mighty to come to him, while young Carvel stood between laughter and fear of the great lady’s displeasure.

“I knew of your father,” said the Dean, “before he went to the colonies.  He had done better at home, sir.  He was a man of parts.”

“He has done indifferently well in Maryland, sir,” said Mr. Carvel, making his bow.

“He hath gained wealth, forsooth,” says the Dean, wrathfully, “and might have had both wealth and fame had his love for King James not turned his head.  I have heard much of the colonies, and have read that doggerel ‘Sot Weed Factor’ which tells of the gluttonous life of ease you lead in your own province.  You can have no men of mark from such conditions, Mr. Carvel.  Tell me,” he adds contemptuously, “is genius honoured among you?”

“Faith, it is honoured, your Reverence,” said my grandfather, “but never encouraged.”

This answer so pleased the Dean that he bade Mr. Carvel dine with him next day at Button’s Coffee House, where they drank mulled wine and old sack, for which young Mr. Carvel paid.  On which occasion his Reverence endeavoured to persuade the young man to remain in England, and even went so far as to promise his influence to obtain him preferment.  But Mr. Carvel chose rather (wisely or not, who can judge?) to come back to Carvel Hall and to the lands of which he was to be master, and to play the country squire and provincial magnate rather than follow the varying fortunes of a political party at home.  And he was a man much looked up to in the province before the Revolution, and sat at the council board of his Excellency the Governor, as his father had done before him, and represented the crown in more matters than one when the French and savages were upon our frontiers.

Although a lover of good cheer, Mr. Carvel was never intemperate.  To the end of his days he enjoyed his bottle after dinner, nay, could scarce get along without it; and mixed a punch or a posset as well as any in our colony.  He chose a good London-brewed ale or porter, and his ships brought Madeira from that island by the pipe, and sack from Spain and Portugal, and red wine from France when there was peace.  And puncheons of rum from Jamaica and the Indies for his people, holding that no gentleman ever drank rum in the raw, though fairly supportable as punch.