Old Bailey.
CHAPTER I
the reader is introduced to Captain Whitefeather’s relations
It was a favourite conviction of my late respected uncle and godfather, Barabbas Whitefeather—he fell in the very flower of his age, at only forty-five, a premature victim to the insalubrity of Bermuda, where he was stationed in a very public capacity by the British Government—it was, I say, a pet belief of the sagacious Barabbas that every man had within him what I think heathen philosophers have called a particle of divine gold; but which my uncle, in the fine simplicity of his nature, and at the same time humanely accommodating his language to the lowest understanding of his species, denominated “a bit of the swindler.”
Discriminating reader, Barabbas Whitefeather was a man of homespun wit, who chewed not his words until they had lost all their original form and vigour; no, he flung them from him with the air of a man who knows he is laying down a guinea of the best mint gold, and not timidly and sneakingly, like a passer of gilt copper.
“Every man has within him a bit of the swindler!”
The sentence fell upon me in the days of my earliest childhood; yes, it was in that ductile, happy, and susceptible season of life that the words of my uncle Barabbas—precious seed!—dropped into my infant heart, where—but let me not boast, let me rather indulge in the luxury of memory—yes, suffer me, complying reader, to carry you into the presence of my sainted uncle: bear with me whilst with affectionate reverence I call up from the abyss of time the interesting shadow of Barabbas Whitefeather.
It was my birthday—I was six years old. I had been promised that that day should be distinguished by a circumstance which, as we advance in life and become involved in the meshes of the world, is apt to be forgotten, albeit of the first importance at the time—I was to be breeched. I was not. I can only remember that a cloud seemed suddenly to have fallen upon our house—that my father would come home long after the lamb had lain down to rest, and would still leave the domestic roof before the rising of the lark, that his temper, generally rough, became much rougher; and that, only a few days before my birthday, on expressing my infantine delights at the trumpets blown before the newly-arrived judges, he rebuked me with unwonted emphasis, at the same time wishing the trumpets and the judges, as I then conceived, very oddly incorporated with one another. I was then within a few days of six years old—I was a fine, tall, plump child, and on my birthday was to have been breeched. The neighbourhood called for it. I repeat it, my birthday came and passed, and found and left me still in coats.
That day, however, was ordained to be the most eventful of my life. It is that day which, if the world shall continue to remember the deeds of Captain Barabbas Whitefeather, must be held by posterity in especial respect. It is to that day that I owe everything; and what I owe, it would be the worst of affectation in the world to deny or to forget. To proceed with my history.
“Brab,”—it was thus my father was wont to tamper with the euphony of Barabbas,—“Brab, nunkey wants to see you; so you must toddle with me.”