CHAPTER I.—TREATS OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.
Harry Coverdale stood six feet one in or out of his stockings, rode something over eleven stone, was unusually good, or, as young ladies term it, interesting-looking, numbered six-and-twenty years last grass, and lived at Coverdale Park when he was at home, with five thousand a-year to pay for his housekeeping, of which he spent about two. At the happy moment in which we have the pleasure of introducing him to our readers, he was not at home, at least not literally, though figuratively he appeared to be making himself so very decidedly.
He had arrived in London that morning, and had dined at his club, and strolled down to the Temple afterwards, where, finding that his friend, Arthur Hazlehurst, was expected to return every minute, he had taken possession of his vacant chambers, lighted a cigar, laid hands on a number of The Sporting Magazine, and flinging himself at full-length on the sofa (sofas do occasionally appear in the chambers of the briefless) looked, and was, especially comfortable. He was not, however, allowed to enjoy his position long in peace; for scarcely had he established himself, when a man’s footstep was heard running hastily up the interminable staircase, while a quick eager voice, addressing the small boy who did duty for clerk, exclaimed—
“Eh! a gentleman whom you don’t know lying on my sofa and smoking my last cigar! that’s coming to the point and no mistake; cool though—I wonder who the deuce it can be—not a client, of course.—Ah! Harry, my dear old boy, this is an unexpected pleasure; why I’m as glad to see you as if you were a client almost. I thought you were in the Red Sea, man, dredging for defunct Egyptians, or chipping old blocks with Layard, or some such slow thing; when did you return?”
Arthur Hazlehurst, the originator of the foregoing speech, was an old college chum of Coverdale’s, who, when his friend had taken his degree (a highly respectable one) and started on an enlarged edition of the grand tour, had gone to read with a special pleader. Having by a special slice of luck contrived to acquire a knowledge of the law from that process, instead of the more usual result of learning how to spend five hundred per annum out of an allowance of two, and possessing, moreover, an acute intellect, and a fair portion of industry, Arthur Hazlehurst was looked upon as a rising young man. In appearance he was, for a fair man, rather handsome than otherwise, but if his talent for rising could have been exercised bodily, as well as professionally, it would have been as well for him, for his friend had the advantage of him in stature by some three inches; his manner and way of speaking were quick and eager, and he had altogether a wide-awake look about him, as though he regarded society at large as perpetually in a witness-box, and was always prepared to cross-examine and be down upon it.
“I returned to England some three weeks since,” replied Coverdale, abstracting the cigar from his mouth, and lazily flipping off the ashes from the lighted end with his finger; “but I went quietly down to the Park, and have been plodding over accounts with the agent ever since. Shocking bad tobacco they make you put up with here; you shall try the glorious stuff I’ve brought back from Constantinople—your Turk is the boy to smoke. So you’ve become learned in the law, I hear, since I went abroad.”
“Eh! Yes, I believe I’ve picked up a thing or two,” returned Hazlehurst modestly; “I’ve found out the great secret of life; the next move is to make the knowledge pay, and that’s not so easy.”
“I didn’t know there was a great secret to find out,” observed Coverdale, stroking his curly black whiskers, “the rule of life seems easy enough to me—make up your mind what you want to do, and then quietly do it—that’s my recipe.”
“A very good one for you, my dear fellow, you’ve only to put your hand in your pocket, and, as your money rattles, difficulties disappear; but we’re not all born to £5000 a-year, worse luck; fathers have flinty hearts, and even the amenities of the nineteenth century have failed to macadamise them—‘I’ve given you an expensive education, sir, and I expect to see you turn it to account.’ That’s about the style of blessing we inherit now-a-day; however, my secret of life is this: everything has a culminating point, and the dodge is to hit upon it yourself, and bring others to it, with the least delay possible; in these four words—come to the point, is embodied the whole philosophy of existence.”
“Well, yes, I dare say there is something in it,” returned Coverdale, meditatively, “it never exactly struck me before, but there’s a beautiful simplicity about it that I rather admire—a little too railroadish, perhaps, unless a man’s in an awful hurry; you lose the bright sunny peeps and the jolly old road-side alehouses of life, by rushing so straight to your object.”