“As to the last point, I don’t say that the Public, poor creatures, are as bad as that,” said Uncle Jack candidly; “but no simile holds good in all its points. And the public are not less Troggledummies, or whatever you call them, compared with what they will be when living under the full light of my Literary Times. Sir, it will be a revolution in the world. It will bring literature out of the clouds into the parlour, the cottage, the kitchen. The idlest dandy, the finest fine lady, will find something to her taste; the busiest man of the mart and counter will find some acquisition to his practical knowledge. The practical man will see the progress of divinity, medicine, nay, even law. Sir, the Indian will read me under the banyan; I shall be in the seraglios of the East; and over my sheets the American Indian will smoke the calumet of peace. We shall reduce politics to its proper level in the affairs of life—raise literature to its due place in the thoughts and business of men. It is a grand thought; and my heart swells with pride while I contemplate it!”
“My dear Jack,” said my father, seriously, and rising with emotion, “it is a grand thought, and I honour you for it! You are quite right—it would be a revolution! It would educate mankind insensibly. Upon my life, I should be proud to write a leader, or a paragraph. Jack, you will immortalise yourself!”
“I believe I shall,” said Uncle Jack, modestly; “but I have not said a word yet on the greatest attraction of all—”
“Ah! and that—”
“The Advertisements!” cried my uncle, spreading his hands, with all the fingers at angles, like the threads of a spider’s web. “The advertisements—oh, think of them!—a perfect El Dorado. The advertisements, sir, on the most moderate calculation, will bring us in £50,000 a-year. My dear Pisistratus, I shall never marry, you are my heir. Embrace me!”
So saying, my Uncle Jack threw himself upon me, and squeezed out of breath the prudential demur that was rising to my lips.
My poor mother, between laughing and sobbing, faltered out—“And it is my brother who will pay back to his son all, all he gave up for me!”
While my father walked to and fro’ the room, more excited than ever I saw him before, muttering,—“A sad useless dog I have been hitherto! I should like to serve the world! I should indeed!”
Uncle Jack had fairly done it this time! He had found out the only bait in the world to catch so shy a carp as my father—“hæret lethalis arundo.” I saw that the deadly hook was within an inch of my father’s nose, and that he was gazing at it with a fixed determination to swallow.
But if it amused my father? Boy that I was, I saw no further. I must own I myself was dazzled, and perhaps, with childlike malice, delighted at the perturbation of my betters. The young carp was pleased to see the waters so playfully in movement, when the old carp waved his tail, and swayed himself on his fins.