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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 557
briefs might come. At chambers he likewise conducted the chief
business of his Review ; and, at the accustomed hour of his return,
that usual little procession of mother and child and nurse would be
seen on the watch for him ; and the young woman—the happiest
young woman in Christendom—would walk back clinging on her
husband's arm.
All this while letters came from Philip's dear father at New
York, where, it appeared, he was engaged not only in his profession,
but in various speculations, with which he was always about to
make his fortune. One day Philip got a newspaper advertising a
new insurance company, and saw, to his astonishment, the announcement
of "Counsel in London, Philip Firmin, Esq., Parchment
Buildings, Temple." A paternal letter promised Philip great fees
out of this insurance company, but I never heard that poor Philip
was any the richer. In fact his friends advised him to have nothing
to do with this insurance company, and to make no allusion to it in
his letters. " They feared the Danai, and the gifts they brought,"
as old Firmin would have said. They had to impress upon Philip
an abiding mistrust of that wily old Greek, his father. Firmin
senior always wrote hopefully and magnificently, and persisted in
believing or declaring that ere very long he should have to announce
to Philip that his fortune was made. He speculated in Wall Street,
I don't know in what shares, inventions, mines, railways. One
day, some few months after his migration to Milman Street, Philip,
blushing and hanging down his head, had to tell me that his father
had drawn upon him again. Had he not paid up his shares in a
certain mine, they would have been forfeited, and he and his son
after him would have lost a certain fortune, old Danaus said. I
fear an artful, a long-bow-pulling Danaus. What, shall a man have
birth, wealth, friends, high position, and end so that we dare not
leave him alone in the room with our spoons ? " And you have
paid this bill which the old man drew ?" we asked. Yes, Philip
had paid the bill. He vowed he would pay no more. But it was
not difficult to see that the Doctor would draw more bills upon this
accommodating banker. " I dread the letters which begin with a
flourish about the fortune which he is just going to make," Philip
said. He knew that the old parent prefaced his demands for money
in that way.
Mention has been made of a great medical discovery which he
had announced to his correspondent, Mrs. Brandon, and by which
the Doctor declared as usual that he was about to make a fortune.
In New York and Boston he had tried experiments which had been
attended with the most astonishing success. A remedy was discovered,
the mere sale of which in Europe and America must bring