“Love mankind? Interest in posterity? Bless my soul, Cousin Peter, I hope you have no prospectuses in your pockets; no schemes for draining the Pontine Marshes out of pure love to mankind; no propositions for doubling the income-tax, as a reserve fund for posterity, should our coal-fields fail three thousand years hence. Love of mankind! Rubbish! This comes of living in the country.”
“But you do love the human race; you do care for the generations that are to come.”
“I! Not a bit of it. On the contrary, I rather dislike the human race, taking it altogether, and including the Australian bushmen; and I don’t believe any man who tells me that he would grieve half as much if ten millions of human beings were swallowed up by an earthquake at a considerable distance from his own residence, say Abyssinia, as he would for a rise in his butcher’s bills. As to posterity, who would consent to have a month’s fit of the gout or tic-douloureux in order that in the fourth thousand year, A. D., posterity should enjoy a perfect system of sewage?”
Sir Peter, who had recently been afflicted by a very sharp attack of neuralgia, shook his head, but was too conscientious not to keep silence.
“To turn the subject,” said Mivers, relighting the cigar which he had laid aside while delivering himself of his amiable opinions, “I think you would do well, while in town, to call on your old friend Travers, and be introduced to Cecilia. If you think as favourably of her as I do, why not ask father and daughter to pay you a visit at Exmundham? Girls think more about a man when they see the place which he can offer to them as a home, and Exmundham is an attractive place to girls,—picturesque and romantic.”
“A very good idea,” cried Sir Peter, heartily. “And I want also to make the acquaintance of Chillingly Gordon. Give me his address.”
“Here is his card on the chimney-piece, take it; you will always find him at home till two o’clock. He is too sensible to waste the forenoon in riding out in Hyde Park with young ladies.”
“Give me your frank opinion of that young kinsman. Kenelm tells me that he is clever and ambitious.”
“Kenelm speaks truly. He is not a man who will talk stuff about love of mankind and posterity. He is of our day, with large, keen, wide-awake eyes, that look only on such portions of mankind as can be of use to him, and do not spoil their sight by poring through cracked telescopes to catch a glimpse of posterity. Gordon is a man to be a Chancellor of the Exchequer, perhaps a Prime Minister.”
“And old Gordon’s son is cleverer than my boy,—than the namesake of Kenelm Digby!” and Sir Peter sighed.