Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/289

 JOHN HOWARD 195 may fairly be allowed to conclude that more was due to an inherited temperament for slow methodical action. Before reaching his seventeenth year, the death of his father released him from the grocery business, for which he had evidently no affection, and left him in possession of 7,000 in ready cash, beside land, plate, house, etc.. This fortune was left under the management of guardians, it being his father's wish that he should not control it until his twenty-fourth year. But his course of life g'ses to show that he had wonderfully easy trustees, as he immediately bought himself off the grocery business, and made a long tour of the Continent for the benefit of his health. Returning to England, he dropped into the little village of Stoke Newington, a mere hamlet, where he had some possessions. That a young man of wealth and free from all ties of family or business, should have voluntarily chosen such a home, and been contented to remain there, in a state of idle inactivity, for the space of seven or eight years, can be accounted for only by remembering his feeble health. When twenty-five, his health entirely failed, and he was prostrated by a severe fit of illness, through which he was nursed by his landlady, Mrs. Loidore. Upon his recovery he made her his wife, in testimony of his gratitude, though history records that she had neither beauty, money, nor health, having been an invalid for twenty-two years, and was twenty-seven years his senior. Two or three years after this seemingly ill-suited marriage, which, strange to say, seems to have been a not unhappy one, Mrs. Howard died. Immediately Mr. Howard, then twenty-eight or nine years of age, again left England for a second extended tour. This being the year of the great earthquake of Lisbon, he naturally turned his steps thitherward. Setting sail from England for Spain, he was captured on the high seas by a French privateer, and for two months suffered the hardships and indignities of prison life in those times. Upon his release he used all his influence to secure the exchange of the remainder of his vessel's company, and was successful. This prison experience he never forgot. Three years later (1758) he married Henrietta Leeds, a lady of fine character, and one to whom he was sincerely attached. Indeed, so fearful was he that their married life might not be entirely without jars, that he made a bargain with her, in advance of their marriage, that on all disputed points the adjustment should be according to his judgment. One is at a loss which member of a couple the most to admire, the man who could make such a proposition, or the woman who would bind herself with such bonds ! But, like his first marriage, his strange contract with his second wife seems to have led only to happy re- sults. They settled in Cardington, upon the Howard estate, and for the next seven years led the uneventful life of landed gen'try of the times. The husband and wife were united in their efforts to improve the morals and general condition of their tenantry. Rightly believing that the beginning of all reform was to im- prove the physical condition, Howard spared no expense in rearing new cot-