Excerpt from The Man of Fortune, Vol. 1 of 2: And Other Tales

His nearest relatives were cousins, the sons of uncles, who had tormented him with advice and interference in his youth. He hated the whole pack of them. They were the Master Goodchilds who had been set up as examples to his boy hood. Of their children he knew nothing, he wished to know nothing, chiefly because their injudicious parents were always tormenting him with letters concerning their merits and proficiencies; insulting him with a sight of their copy books, their themes, their school-prizes, and college idistinc tions. Sir Giles resented all this, less as a legacy trap than as a personal insult, intending to twit him with his folly in having refrained from matrimony; and his destitu tion, in his having no son of his own to write Latin exerci ses, and take honors at the University. By degrees his dislike assumed the morbid virulence of animosity. He could keep his troublesome relations out of his house, by ceasing to invite them. But even his abso lutism was unavailing against the intrusions of the post. They could write to him when they pleased; and write they did, 'with a pertinacity that seemed expressly intended to harass and annoy. As he never answered them, he was in hopes that his dogged silence would in the end wear out their perseverance. By no means l - They only wrote the more, to inquire why he 'never wrote. At length in his feverish irritation, he ceased to Open their letters. He was familiar with their several hand-writings. He had an intuitive perception of a cousinly letter, by the very man ner of its folding; and there was a large drawer in his old fashioned secretaire, to which; for the last ten years, he had consigned every note and epistle that bore evidence of em anating from any branch or Offset of the family of Cressmg ham. He almost allowed himself to rejoice on the arrival of one of these family missives, written on black-edged pa per, and closed with a mourning seal.

Meanwhile, the last will and testament remained unen grossed, and the lands and tenements of Stoke Paddocks undevised. Sir Giles Cressmgham appeared to conceive, that, by evading the question of inheritance, he might baulk his inheritors; - thus, though the most absolute of men.

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