for luxury. To be honest, to be brave, to be kind and generous, to seek to know what is right, and to do it; to be loving and tender to others, and to care little for our comfort and ease, and even for our very lives, is perhaps to be somewhat old-fashioned and behind the age; but these are, after all, the things which distinguish us from the brute beasts which perish, and which justify our aspirations towards eternity. p. 61 p. 62A STORY. THE READING PARTY. p. 62 CHAPTER I.—THE COACH. Charles Porkington, M.A., sometime fellow of St. Swithin, was born of humble parents. He was educated, with a due regard for economy, in the mathematics by his father, and in the prevailing theology of the district by his mother. The village schoolmaster had also assisted in the completion of his education by teaching him a little bad Latin. He was ultimately sent to college, his parents inferring that he would make a success of the study of books, because he had always shown a singular inaptitude for anything else. At college he had read hard. The common sights and sounds of University life had been unheeded by him. They passed before his eyes, and they entered into his ears, but his mind refused to receive any impression from them. After taking a high degree, and being elected a fellow, he had written a novel of a strongly melodramatic cast, describing college life, and showing such an intimate acquaintance with the obscurer parts of it, that a great many ladies declared that “they always thought so;—it was just as they supposed.” The novel, however, did not meet with much success, and he then turned to the more lucrative p. 63but far less noble occupation of “coaching.” He could not be said to be absolutely unintellectual. As he had not profited by the experience of life, so he had not been contaminated by it. He was moral, chiefly in a negative sense, and was not inclined to irreligion. The faith of his parents sat, perhaps, uncomfortably upon him; and he had not sufficient strength of mind to adopt a new pattern. He was in short an amiable mathematician, and a feeble classic; and I think that is all that could be said of him with any certainty. There seemed to be an absence of character which might be called characteristic, and a feebleness of will so absolute as to disarm contempt. p. 63 A portion of Porkington’s hard earned gains was transmitted regularly to his two aged parents, while he himself, partly from habit and partly from indifference, lived as frugally
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