Be
satisfied with all your lowliness on earth, and keep your just ambitions
for another world. Flee strong liquors and ill company. Nurse no heated
hopes, no will-o'-the-wisp bright wishes: rather let your warmest hopes
be temperately these--health, work, wages: and as for wishing, mates,
wish any thing you will--sooner than to find a crock of gold."
CHAPTER LIII.
ROGER'S TRIUMPH.
THE steeples rang out merrily, full chime; High street was gay with
streamers; the town-band busily assembling; a host of happy urchins from
emancipated schools, were shouting in all manner of keys all manner of
gleeful noises: every body seemed a-stir.
A proud man that day was Roger Acton; not of his deserts--they were
worse than none, he knew it; not of the procession--no silly child was
he, to be caught with toy and tinsel; God wot, he was meek enough in
self--and as for other pride, he knew from old electioneerings, what a
humbling thing is triumph.
But when he saw from the windows of the Swan, those crowds of new-made
friends trooping up in holiday suits with flags, and wands, and
corporation badges--when the band for a commencement struck up the
heart-stirring hymn 'God save the Queen,'--when the horsemen, and
carriages, and gigs, and carts assembled--when the baronet's own
barouche and four, dashing up to the door, had come from Hurstley Hall
for _him_--when Sir John, the happiest of the happy, alighting with his
two friends, had displaced them for Roger and Grace, while the kind
gentlemen took horse, and headed the procession--when Ben Burke (as
clean as soap could get him, and bedecked in new attire) was ordered to
sit beside Jonathan in the rumble-tumble--when the cheering, and the
merry-going bells, and the quick-march 'British Grenadiers,' rapidly
succeeding the national anthem--when all these tokens of a generous
sympathy smote upon his ears, his eyes, his heart, Roger Acton wept
aloud--he wept for very pride and joy: proud and glad was he that day of
his country, of his countrymen, of his generous landlord, of his gentle
Grace, of his vindicated innocence, and of God, "who had done so great
things for him.
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