James's Street, and his communications with his tenantry
were chiefly confined to dining with them twice a year in the great
entrance-hall, after Mr. Screwemtight had eased them of their cash in the
steward's room. Then Mr. Jawleyford would shine forth the very
impersonification of what a landlord ought to be. Dressed in the height of
the fashion, as if by his clothes to give the lie to his words, he would
expatiate on the delights of such meetings of equality; declare that, next
to those spent with his family, the only really happy moments of his life
were those when he was surrounded by his tenantry; he doated on the manly
character of the English farmer. Then he would advert to the great
antiquity of the Jawleyford family, many generations of whom looked down
upon them from the walls of the old hall; some on their war-steeds, some
armed _cap-a-pie_, some in court-dresses, some in Spanish ones, one in a
white dress with gold brocade breeches and a hat with an enormous plume,
old Jawleyford (father of the present one) in the Windsor uniform, and our
friend himself, the very prototype of what then stood before them.
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