Some account of John Duke of Argyll and his family

( 28 )
success. Not indulgence alone; for, exactly as you
have seen a school-boy teach his pony to lash out, and
his cur to snap at people's fingers, he took delight to
put her in a fury, crying, " Look ! look at Mary ! "
when she flew like a little tigress, screaming, scratching,
and tearing; then, after laughing heartily, he would
finish the improving lesson by coaxing her with sugar-
plums to kiss and be friends.
The timid reserve of the elder ladies did not last
long. Lord Strafford, a very young man of large for-
tune, happening to dine at their father's on his return
from his travels, was so charmed with the beauty of
the second, Lady Anne, that he immediately asked her
in marriage. After she was disposed of, all restrictions
seemed to cease — all bounds were broken down; the
others freely exalted the discordant voices which they
all inherited from their mother, and became the most
noisy, hoydening girls in London. In my own day,
when they were the most unmerciful censurers of young
people's dress and behaviour, my mother — who had
herself a mind far above laying an absurd stress upon
trifles — used to laugh at certain of her recollections,
and attribute their violent wrath against the gay world
to spleen at growing old, and envy of the pleasures they
could no longer partake.
I mention my own day. Ere that could well be said
to dawn, I remember having seen the last Earl of
Lichfield ; a red-faced old gentleman, shaking all over
with the palsy, who had almost drunk away his senses,
and seemed hardly to know what he was saying or