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No matter. I will not admit that he has failed in life. Another man, who has never laughed thus, may be buried in Westminster Abbey, leaving more than a million pounds overhead. What then? I regard him as a failure. Nor does it seem to me to matter one jot how such laughter is achieved. Humour may rollick on high planes of fantasy or in depths of silliness.
Rollick was of a querulous nature; that the compliment was meant, not to please my mother, but to spite the professed cook and housekeeper, to whom the butler would be sure to repeat the invidious apology.
"Your namesake Pisistratus was wiser than you, then," said my father. "And now let us feed the duck. Where's your uncle?" "He has borrowed Mr. Squills's mare, sir, and gone with Squire Rollick to the great lord they were talking of." "Oho!" said my father; "brother Jack is going to print his butter!"
Rollick grumbles, and declares that it is full of theories, and that it puzzles the farmers. Uncle Jack, in reply, contends that he creates an audience, not addresses one, and sighs that his genius is thrown away in a provincial town. In fact, he really is a very clever man, and might do much in London, I dare say. He often comes over to dine and sleep, returning the next morning.
What no merits of his could give, the land which he had chosen gave, Mesopotamia pretty soon proving herself a treasury of mineral riches: here is bdellium and the onyx- stone; and where the streaming Pison, dawdling, draws his twine of waters over that happy valley of Havilah, there is gold hoard stored from before the Eozoic, as misers bury for their heirs, in mine and friable quarry, rollick rain: "and the gold of that land is good".
He drew out of it cautiously, "I mean," said he, "our respectable fellow-creatures;" and then suddenly it occurred to him that a "County Mercury" would naturally represent the agricultural interest, and that if Mr. Rollick said that the "'County Mercury' ought to be hanged," he was one of those politicians who had already begun to call the agricultural interest "a Vampire."
Squire Rollick, who had interrupted the speech by sundry approving exclamations, particularly at the mention of poor-rates, tithes, county- rates, mortgages, and poachers, here pushed the bottle to Uncle Jack, and said, civilly: "There's a great deal of truth in what you say, Mr. Tibbets. The agricultural interest is going to ruin; and when it does, I would not give that for Old England!" and Mr.
Rollick grumbles, and declares that it is full of theories, and that it puzzles the farmers. Uncle Jack, in reply, contends that he creates an audience, not addresses one, and sighs that his genius is thrown away in a provincial town. In fact, he really is a very clever man, and might do much in London, I dare say. He often comes over to dine and sleep, returning the next morning.
My father scratched his eyebrow with his fore-finger, as he was apt to do when doubtful; the rest of the company a silent set-looked up. "Fellow-creatures!" said Mr. Rollick, "fellow-fiddlesticks!" Uncle Jack was clearly in the wrong box.
And he had a good strong voice with a rollick in it.
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