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Updated: May 16, 2025
I should say, then, that it shows no great moral obliquity on the part of parents if within certain limits they make their children's lives a burden to them. Granted that Mr Pontifex's was not a very exalted character, ordinary men are not required to have very exalted characters.
From that time she grew continually worse, and was never free from delirium till her death which took place less than a fortnight afterwards, to the inexpressible grief of those who knew and loved her. Letters had been written to Miss Pontifex's brothers and sisters, and one and all came post-haste to Roughborough.
Midland stock at the end of August 1850, when I sold out Miss Pontifex's debentures, stood at 32 pounds per 100 pounds. I invested the whole of Ernest's 15,000 pounds at this price, and did not change the investment till a few months before the time of which I have been writing lately that is to say until September 1861.
People will condemn the one, though they will resent being called upon to exert themselves to follow the other. The best example of Mr Pontifex's good sense in matters connected with his business which I can think of at this moment is the revolution which he effected in the style of advertising works published by the firm. When he first became a partner one of the firm's advertisements ran thus:
Two regulations only they must attend to; they must wipe their shoes well on coming into the house, and they must not overfeed Mr Pontifex's organ with wind, nor take the pipes out. By us at the Rectory there was no time so much looked forward to as the annual visit of the little Pontifexes to Paleham.
One of Miss Pontifex's first moves was to ask a dozen of the smartest and most gentlemanly boys to breakfast with her. From her seat in church she could see the faces of the upper-form boys, and soon made up her mind which of them it would be best to cultivate.
She said she had seen a cab drive up just as she was going to enter the staircase, and had seen Mr Pontifex's pa put his Beelzebub old head out of the window, so she had come on to me, for she hadn't greased her sides for no curtsey, not for the likes of him. She professed to be very much down on her luck.
Mr Pontifex's last couplet gave him a lot of trouble, and nearly every word has been erased and rewritten once at least. In the visitors' book at the Montanvert, however, he must have been obliged to commit himself definitely to one reading or another.
We will call Mr Pontifex's rector and you two gentlemen as witnesses for previous good character. These will be enough. Let us then make a profound apology and beg the magistrate to deal with the case summarily instead of sending it for trial. If you can get this, believe me, your young friend will be better out of it than he has any right to expect."
I do not say he drew well, but it was surprising he should draw as well as he did. My father, who took the living of Paleham about the year 1797, became possessed of a good many of old Mr Pontifex's drawings, which were always of local subjects, and so unaffectedly painstaking that they might have passed for the work of some good early master.
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