OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. CBOOK L
true one, it is 'our first ominous experience of the
JEt.28. personal finery which will find reiterated mention, i*1 this
veritable history. In truth, however, the rejection is the
only absolute certainty. The man in black, it •will be
remembered, undergoes something of the same kind, remark-
ing, " my friends were now perfectly satisfied I was undone ;
" and yet they thought it a pity, for one that had not the
" least harm in him, and was so very goodnatured."
Uncle Oontarine, however, was far from thinking this. He
found a gentleman of his county, a Mr. Minn, in want1 of a
tutor, and recommended Oliver. The engagement continued
for a year, and ended, as it might have been easy to anti-
cipate, unsatisfactorily. His talent for card-playing, as well
as for teaching, is said to have been put in requisition Tby Mr,
Minn; and the separation took place 011 Goldsmith's accusing
one of the family of unfair play.* But when he left this
excellent Irish family and returned to Ballymahon, li© had
thirty pounds in his pocket, it is to be hoped the produce of
fairer play ; and was undisputed owner of a good plump 3aorse.
Within a few days, so furnished and mounted, he again, left
his mother's house (where, truth to say, things do not by this
time seem to have been made very comfortable to him), and
started for Cork, with another floating vision of America.
He returned in six weeks, with nothing in his pocket, and on
a lean beast to which he had given the name of Fiddle"back.
The nature of his reception at Ballymahon appears from the
simple remark he is said to have made to his mother. "And
" now, my dear mother, after having struggled so nard to
" long wig when I liked a short one, or a black coat when I generally dreaied In
" 'brown, I thought was such a restraint upon my li'bel'ty that I absolutely rejected
" the proposal . , , I rejected a life of luxury, indolence, and ease, from no other
" consideration but that boyish one of dress." Oitigen of the World, xxvja.
* Mrs. Hodson's narrative in the Percy Memoir, 9. And see Prior, i. 118,