For Markham’s sake and our own we must be allowed a short digression on the subject of bright faces and black suits. It is a piece of arrant foolery, and detestably silly cant, to make a sneering prating about the manner in which people bear or feel the loss of their friends or relatives. Sorrow is not to be measured by everlasting length of face: any one may assume dull, cold, melancholy looks, and heave sighs with every passing minute; but they who most regret the departed have oftentimes brighter and gayer looks than those who think they ought to be sorry, but feel that they are not. Markham regretted the loss of a good friend, of a cheerful companion, of a kind patron, and good adviser; but Markham had reason, good reason, to be pleased and satisfied with himself, that he had got rid of what might be a reproach, and that he possessed the means of saving his venerated and respected parents from the calamity of an old age of poverty and privation. He spent a very short time with his father and mother, and then hastened to town to give immediate attention to his professional duties, and to his business as executor. The intelligence of what was called his good fortune reached town long before him. Many and ridiculous were the rumors concerning the immense property which had devolved to him. So outrageous and unfounded were the tales told of his wealth, that had he been disposed to say it, he might have persuaded not a few that his riches were equal to or beyond the largest known property in the kingdom. At his chambers he found a myriad of cards. The little card-racks which Miss Henderson had painted for him were choked even to suffocation. Cards were on his chimney-piece, and cards were lying on his table. There also appeared a goodly host of prospectuses and syllabuses and proposals; and specimens and schemes; and catalogues and first numbers of new periodicals, and shop-bills, and addresses to the public, and cases of distress; and plans of estates, and notices of sale, and recommendatory letters and applications for places; and letters from coachmen, footmen, butlers, stable-boys, postilions, cooks, housemaids, housekeepers, kitchen-maids, valets, and a multitude of others too numerous to mention. There was a whole week’s work before him to read them all. At sight of all this he sighed, stared, shaked his head and smiled; and he thought to himself, that it was a very good thing that he was not prime minister, for then he should be pestered with myriads more applications, and with matters not so easy to be disposed of.