Traits And Travesties Social And Political

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 58 III. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS. I Am in the unfortunate position of being the fourth son of an impecunious peer. My eldest brother went into the Guards, my second into the Church, my third into the Navy, and I into?the City. I might, if it were not for the scrupulous regard for truth which characterises me, have said, into business; but although my avocations take me a good deal into the City, I don't do much business there, in the strict sense of the term. My wants are small, and I manage, thanks to the handle to my name, and an unusual allowance of mother-wit, to pick up about a thousand a-year out of the financial street- sweepings. It is not necessary for me to describe exactly how I do this?partly because I don't want to reveal my methods to other young men in my own needy circumstances, and partly because I am a victim to horrible doubts as to whether those methods are strictly right and honourable. The fact is, that my second brother and I mistook our vocations in life. I have been tortured from infancy with an extremely sensitive conscience?an articleof the greatest possible value in. the Church, but decidedly in the way in the City. My brother, the Honourable and Reverend Sydney Lyesant, who is known amongst us familiarly as the Hon. and Rev., was born, if I may so express it, with a slight obliquity of moral vision, which would have been. of the greatest service to him in the City, but which, to a certain extent, tends to impair his usefulness as a parish priest. I do not for a moment wish to insinuate that he is not an excellent, hard-working, and devoted ecclesiastic; on the contrary, he is a slave to his parishioners, and most punctilious in the performance of his duties; but there is a casuistry about his way of putting things, ?and I may even say ...