I was somewhere about sixteen when, on going home for the holidays, I found my mother's brother settled among the household Lares.

Uncle Jack, as he was familiarly called, was a light-hearted, plausible, enthusiastic, talkative fellow, who had spent three small fortunes in trying to make a large one.
Uncle Jack was a great speculator; but in all his speculations he never affected to think of himself,--it was always the good of his fellow-creatures that he had at heart, and in this ungrateful world fellow-creatures are not to be relied upon! On coming of age, he inherited L6,000, from his maternal grandfather.

It seemed to him then that his fellow-creatures were sadly imposed upon by their tailors.
Those ninth parts of humanity notoriously eked out their fractional existence by asking nine times too much for the clothing which civilization, and perhaps a change of climate, render more necessary to us than to our predecessors, the Picts.

Out of pure philanthropy, Uncle Jack started a "Grand National Benevolent Clothing Company," which undertook to supply the public with inexpressibles of the best Saxon cloth at 7s.6d.a pair; coats, superfine, L1 18s.; and waistcoats at so much per dozen,--they were all to be worked off by steam.

Thus the rascally tailors were to be put down, humanity clad, and the philanthropists rewarded (but that was a secondary consideration) with a clear return of thirty per cent.