Page:Selection of amusing and entertaining Irish stories.pdf/14

14 GOOD COMPANY.

“ Be sure, Frederick, always keep good company,” was the final admonition of Mr. Lofty on dismissing his son to the university.

“I entreat you, Henry,,always to choose good company,” said Mr. Manly, on parting with his son to an apprenticeship in a neighbouring town.

But it is impossible for two people to mean more differently by the same words. In Mr. Lofty’s idea, good company was that of persons superior to ourselves in rank and fortune. By this alone he estimated it; and the degrees of comparison, better and best, were made exactly to correspond to such a scale. Thus, if an esquire was good company, a baronet was better, and a lord was best of all, provided that he was not a poor lord; for in that case, a rich gentleman might be, at least, as good. For as, according to Mr. Lofty’s maxim, the great purpose for which companions were to be chosen, was to advance a young man in the world by their credit and interest; those were to be preferred who afforded the best prospects in this respect.

Mr. Manly, on the other hand, understood by good company, that which was improving to the morals and understanding; and by the best, that which, to a high degree of these qualities, added true politeness of manners. As superior advantages in education to a certain point accompany superiority of condition, he wished his son to prefer as companions, those whose situation in life had afforded them the opportunity of being well educated; but he was far from desiring him to shun connexions with worth and talents, wherever he should find them.

Mr. Lofty had an utter aversion to low company; by which he meant inferiors, people of no fashion and figure, shabby fellows, whom nobody knows. Mr. Manly equally disliked low company; understanding by it, persons of mean habits and vulgar conversation. A great part of Mr. Manly’s good company, was Mr. Lofty’s low company; and not a few of Mr. Lofty’s very best company, were Mr. Manly’s very worst.

Each of the sons understood his father’s meaning, and followed his advice. Frederick, from the time of his entrance at the university, commenced what is called a tuft-hunter, from the tuft in the cap worn by young noblemen. He took pains to insinuate himself into the good graces of all the young men of high fashion in his college, and became a constant companion in their schemes of frolic and dissipation. They treated him with an insolent familiarity, often bordering upon contempt; but, following another maxim of his father’s, “ One must stoop to rise,” he took it all in good part. He totally neglected study