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Article MASONIC REMINISCENCES. ← Page 3 of 5 →
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Masonic Reminiscences.
Phn s father was a good easy man with a large unencumbered estate , and a very satisfactory account ivith his bankers , who solely occupied himself with watching the variations in the money market , and arresting the gout in its progress towards that citadel of his body , the stomach , by the imbibition of unlimited bottles of dry crusted old port , familiarly termed by him black strap .
He saw that the hope of his house ( for lie had but him ) the young Phil , grow apace and flourished , without the aid of the doctors , and beyond this he troubled not his head , but left the sole management of this and all other mundane matters to his wife , in which lady ' s opinion , learning was not only useless , but a bore , and reading a great preventive of digestion ; she further saw how thin and pale the poor curate of the parish
was , who she had heard was a very learned person ( the good lady in her unsophisticated innocence never dreamed ho > v difficult it is to grow fat and sleek upon seventy pounds a year ) and who always threw her into a state of nervous alarm whenever he spoke to Phil about what he was
reading , and when he intended to prepare for College . ^.Phil was by no means an idiot ; there seemed to be no organic want or sensible derangement in the original construction of his mental faculties , indeed the astute people in the neighbourhood attributed his want of sharpness to an over indulgent mother ' s administering too strong doses of a peculiar species of food termed by them " Fapdoodle" and which it is
, supposed has a tendency to counteract the development of the intellectual faculties . The late able and beautiful writer , Mr . Maxwell , defined this food to be what they " feed fools on in Connaught ; " but whether it be moral , intellectual or material , that deponent said not , and we must leave the point to be decided by M . Soyer , or the metaphysicians .
Phil had now reached that very interesting period of life in the feminine calendar , his " teens , " knowing little of this great world beyond what pertained to ponies , poodles , and plum cake , when Simpson Hall was honored by a visit from his maternal uncle , Col . B—w , an officer on half-pay , who had amassed a considerable fortune in India , and who was looked up to ( as it is termed ) by the family , and who intended to make Phil his heir ,
never having had courage to try his own luck in the lottery of wedlock . Col . B . had not seen his nephew for years and was quite pleased with his stout frame , and florid health , but was thrown into a very paroxysm of amazement when that innocent young gentleman put the interrogatory , " Uncle , do all Colonels travel with priests for servants ?" The Colonel stared first at him , then at his mother , then at the father ,
and . at last sternly asked , "What the d—1 does the boy mean ?" Mr . Simpson ; passively said , "I really don't know , better ask his mother , she understands him , I have something else to think of with this horrid gout . " ' . y ; The uncle appealed to her for an explanation . She confessed her inability , but requested her dearest Phil to explain to his uncle , why he had asked the question ; and to beg his pardon , for though she could not- at the moment see it , she was sure there must be something wrong in it to
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Masonic Reminiscences.
Phn s father was a good easy man with a large unencumbered estate , and a very satisfactory account ivith his bankers , who solely occupied himself with watching the variations in the money market , and arresting the gout in its progress towards that citadel of his body , the stomach , by the imbibition of unlimited bottles of dry crusted old port , familiarly termed by him black strap .
He saw that the hope of his house ( for lie had but him ) the young Phil , grow apace and flourished , without the aid of the doctors , and beyond this he troubled not his head , but left the sole management of this and all other mundane matters to his wife , in which lady ' s opinion , learning was not only useless , but a bore , and reading a great preventive of digestion ; she further saw how thin and pale the poor curate of the parish
was , who she had heard was a very learned person ( the good lady in her unsophisticated innocence never dreamed ho > v difficult it is to grow fat and sleek upon seventy pounds a year ) and who always threw her into a state of nervous alarm whenever he spoke to Phil about what he was
reading , and when he intended to prepare for College . ^.Phil was by no means an idiot ; there seemed to be no organic want or sensible derangement in the original construction of his mental faculties , indeed the astute people in the neighbourhood attributed his want of sharpness to an over indulgent mother ' s administering too strong doses of a peculiar species of food termed by them " Fapdoodle" and which it is
, supposed has a tendency to counteract the development of the intellectual faculties . The late able and beautiful writer , Mr . Maxwell , defined this food to be what they " feed fools on in Connaught ; " but whether it be moral , intellectual or material , that deponent said not , and we must leave the point to be decided by M . Soyer , or the metaphysicians .
Phil had now reached that very interesting period of life in the feminine calendar , his " teens , " knowing little of this great world beyond what pertained to ponies , poodles , and plum cake , when Simpson Hall was honored by a visit from his maternal uncle , Col . B—w , an officer on half-pay , who had amassed a considerable fortune in India , and who was looked up to ( as it is termed ) by the family , and who intended to make Phil his heir ,
never having had courage to try his own luck in the lottery of wedlock . Col . B . had not seen his nephew for years and was quite pleased with his stout frame , and florid health , but was thrown into a very paroxysm of amazement when that innocent young gentleman put the interrogatory , " Uncle , do all Colonels travel with priests for servants ?" The Colonel stared first at him , then at his mother , then at the father ,
and . at last sternly asked , "What the d—1 does the boy mean ?" Mr . Simpson ; passively said , "I really don't know , better ask his mother , she understands him , I have something else to think of with this horrid gout . " ' . y ; The uncle appealed to her for an explanation . She confessed her inability , but requested her dearest Phil to explain to his uncle , why he had asked the question ; and to beg his pardon , for though she could not- at the moment see it , she was sure there must be something wrong in it to