They were so fond of me that they almost quarrelled about me.

My uncle, the bishop, would have had me in orders, and offered me a living; my uncle, the merchant, would have put me into a counting-house, and proposed to give me a share in the thriving concern of Mannering and Marshall, in Lombard Street.

So, between these two stools, or rather these two soft, easy, well-stuffed chairs of divinity and commerce, my unfortunate person slipped down, and pitched upon a dragoon saddle.

Again, the bishop wished me to marry the niece and heiress of the Dean of Lincoln; and my uncle, the alderman, proposed to me the only daughter of old Sloethorn, the great wine-merchant, rich enough to play at span-counter with moidores and make thread-papers of bank-notes; and somehow I slipped my neck out of both nooses, and married--poor, poor Sophia Wellwood.
'You will say, my military career in India, when I followed my regiment there, should have given me some satisfaction; and so it assuredly has.
You will remind me also, that if I disappointed the hopes of my guardians, I did not incur their displeasure; that the bishop, at his death, bequeathed me his blessing, his manuscript sermons, and a curious portfolio containing the heads of eminent divines of the church of England; and that my uncle, Sir Paul Mannering, left me sole heir and executor to his large fortune.

Yet this availeth me nothing; I told you I had that upon my mind which I should carry to my grave with me, a perpetual aloes in the draught of existence.