Human joys.”
Then wet with the ocean spray and evening dew, return to my bed, merely to avoid the intrusive civilities of Mr. Clendinning. Thus wear the hours away.”
I had heard that the neighbourhood about M———— house was good: I can answer for its being populous. Although I took every precaution to prevent my arrival being known, yet the natives have come down on me in hordes, and this in all the form of haut ton, as the innumerable cards of the clans of Os and Macs evince. I have, however, neither been visible to the visitants, nor accepted their invitations: for “man delights me not, nor woman either.” Nor woman either! Oh! uncertainty of all human propensities! Yet so it is, that every letter that composes the word woman! seems cabalistical, and rouses every principle of aversion and disgust within me; while I often ask myself with Tasso,
“Se pur ve nelle amor alcun dileito.”
It is certain, that the diminutive body of our worthy steward, is the abode of the transmigrated soul of some West Indian planter. I have been engaged these two days in listening to, and retributing those injuries his tyranny has inflicted, in spite of his rage, eloquence, and threats, none of which have been spared. The victims of his oppression haunt me in my walks, fearful lest their complaints should come to the knowledge of this puissant major domo.
“But why,” said I to one of the sufferers, after a detail of seized geese, pounded cows, extra labour cruelly extorted, ejectments, &c. &c.. given in all the tedious circumlocution of Irish oratory,—“why not complain to my father when he comes among you?”
“Becaise, please your Honour, my Lord stays but a few days at a time here together, nor that same neither; besides, we be loth to trouble his Lordship, for feard it would be after coming to Measther Clendinning’s ears, which would be the ruination of us all; and then when my Lord is at the Lodge, which he mostly is, he is always out amongst the quality, so he is.”
“What Lodge?” said I.
“Why, please your Honour, where my Lord mostly takes up when he comes here, the place that belonged to Measther Clendinning, who call ed it the Lodge, becaise the good old Irish name that was upon it did not suit his fancy.”
In the evening I asked Mr. Clendinning if my father did not sometimes reside at the Lodge? He seemed surprised at my information, and said, that was the name he had given to a ruinous old place which, with a few acres of indifferent land, he had purchased of his hard labour, and which his Lord having taken an unaccountable liking to, rented from him, and was actually the tenant of his own steward.