212520_The_Adve ... _Way_Through_The_World.pdf - OUDL Home

176 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
great deal too openly ; and Mr. Hunt had been an object of special
dislike to him ever since he had known Hunt. I tried to make the
best of the matter. Few men of kindly feeling and good station are
without a dependant or two. Men start together in the race of
life ; and Jack wins, and Tom falls by his side. The successful man
succours and reaches a friendly hand to the unfortunate competitor.
Remembrance of early times gives the latter a sort of right to call
on his luckier comrade; and a man finds himself pitying, then
enduring, then embracing a companion for whom, in old days,
perhaps, he never had any regard or esteem. A prosperous
man ought to have followers: if he has none, he has a hard
heart.
This philosophising was all very well. It was good for a man
not to desert the friends of his boyhood. But to live with such a
cad as that—with that creature, low, servile, swaggering, besotted
—"How could his father, who had fine tastes, and loved grand
company, put up with such a fellow ?" asked Phil. " I don't know
when the man is the more odious : when he is familiar, or when
he is respectful; when he is paying compliments to my father's
guests in Parr Street, or telling hideous old stale stories, as he did
at my call-supper."
The wine of which Mr. Hunt freely partook on that occasion
made him, as I have said, communicative. " Not a bad fellow, our
host," he remarked, on his part, when we came away together.
" Bumptious, good-looking, speaks his mind, hates me, and I don't
care. He must be well to do in the world, Master Philip."
I said I hoped and thought so.
" Brummell Firmin must make four or five thousand a year. He
was a wild fellow in my time, I can tell you—in the days of the
wild Prince and Poins—stuck at nothing, spent his own money,
ruined himself, fell on his legs somehow, and married a fortune.
Some of us have not been so lucky. I had nobody to pay my debts.
I missed my fellowship by idling and dissipating with those confounded
hats and silver-laced gowns. I liked good company in those
days—always did when I could get it. If you were to write my adventures,
now, you would have to tell some queer stories. I've been
everywhere; I've seen high and low—'specially low. I've tried
schoolmastering, bear-leading, newspapering, America, West Indies.
I've been in every city in Europe. I haven't been as lucky as
Brummell Firmin. He rolls in his coach, he does, and I walk in
my highlows. Guineas drop into his palm every day, and are
uncommonly scarce in mine, I can tell you ; and poor old Tufton
Hunt is not much better off at fifty odd than he was when he was
an undergraduate at eighteen. How do you do, old gentleman?