"The steamers from Cork had transferred their ragged, weeping, laughing, fighting cargoes; the last stray groups of English had been collected from the western counties; the Government officers had cleared and passed the ship. With the afternoon tide two hundred helpless, ignorant, destitute souls were to bid farewell to their native land. The delays consequent on miscalculating the emigrating taste of England had retarded until midwinter, a voyage which should have been commenced in autumn.
"In one of the shore-boats, sat a portly man—evidently neither an emigrant nor a sailor—wrapped in a great coat and comforters; his broad-brimmed beaver secured from the freezing blast by a coloured bandanna tied under the chin of a fat, whiskerless face. This portly personage was Mr. Joseph Lobbit, proprietor of 'The Shop,' farmer, miller, and chairman of the vestry of the rich rural parish of Duxmoor.
"At Duxmoor, the chief estate was in Chancery, the manor-house in ruins, the lord of it an outlaw, and the other landed proprietors absentees, or in debt; a curate preached, buried, married, and baptized, for the health of the rector compelled him to pass the summer in Switzerland, and the winter in Italy; so Mr. Lobbit was almost the greatest, as he was certainly the richest, man in the parish.
"Except that he did not care for any one but himself, and did not respect any one who had not plenty of money, he was not a bad sort of man. He had a jolly hearty way of talking and shaking hands, and slapping people on the back; and until you began to count money with him, he seemed a very pleasant, liberal fellow. He was fond of money, but more fond of importance; and therefore worked as zealously at parish-business as he did at his own farm, shop, and mill. He centred the whole powers of the vestry in one person, and would have been beadle, too, if it had been possible. He appointed the master and matron of the workhouse, who were relations of his wife; supplied all the rations and clothing for 'the house,' and fixed the prices in full vestry (viz. himself, and the clerk, his cousin,) assembled. He settled all the questions of out-door relief, and tried hard, more than once, to settle the rate of wages too.
"Ill-natured people did say that those who would not work on Master Lobbit's farm, at his wages, stood a very bad chance if they wanted any thing from the parish, or came for the doles of blankets, coals, bread, and linsey-woolsey petticoats, which, under the provisions of the tablets in Duxmoor church, are distributed every Christmas. Of course, Mr. Lobbit supplied these gifts, as chief shopkeeper, and dispensed them, as senior and perpetual churchwarden. Lobbit gave capital dinners; plenty smoked on his board, and pipes of negro-head with jorums of gin punch followed, without stint.
"The two attorneys dined with him—and were glad to come, for he had always money to lend, on good security, and his gin was unexceptionable. So did two or three bullfrog farmers, very rich and very ignorant. The doctor and curate came occasionally; they were poor, and in his debt at 'The Shop,' therefore bound to laugh at his jokes—which were not so bad, for he was no fool—so that, altogether, Mr. Lobbit had reason to believe himself a very popular man.
"But there was—where is there not?—a black drop in his overflowing cup of prosperity.
"He had a son whom he intended to make a gentleman; whom he hoped to see married to some lady of good family, installed in the manor-house of Duxmoor, (if it should be sold cheap, at the end of the Chancery suit,) and established as the squire of the parish. Robert Lobbit had no taste for learning, and a strong taste for drinking, which his father's customers did their best to encourage. Old Lobbit was decent in his private habits; but, as he made money wherever he could to advantage, he was always surrounded by a levee of scamps, of all degrees—some agents and assistants, some borrowers, and would-be borrowers. Young Lobbit found it easier to follow the example of his father's companions than to follow his father's advice. He was as selfish and greedy as his father, without being so agreeable or hospitable. In the school-room he was a dunce, in the play-ground a tyrant and bully; no one liked him; but, as he had plenty of money, many courted him.
"As a last resource his father sent him to Oxford; whence, after a short residence, he was expelled. He arrived home drunk, and in debt; without having lost one bad habit, or made one respectable friend. From that period he lived a sot, a village rake, the king of the taproom, and the patron of a crowd of blackguards, who drank his beer and his health; hated him for his insolence, and cheated him of his money.
"Yet Joseph Lobbit loved his son, and tried not to believe the stories good-natured friends told of him.