CHAPTER I.

THE PARADOXICAL SOCIETY.

'All concord's born of contraries.'

BEN JONSON, Cynthia's Revels.

AT the time when our tale commences the Paradoxical Society had almost arrived at the mature age of fifty years, having been brought into being in 1826 by the well-known Isaac Fairbank.

On so solemn an occasion the timehonoured custom of celebrating by a feast multiples and sub-multiples of centuries of life could not of course be omitted.

The founder of the society had long since been gathered to his fathers, but his only son Stephen was allowed on all sides to be no unworthy descendant of that sagacious old lover of truth and fair play.

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Stephen had in his youth achieved distinction in one of our great English Universities, and as a logical consequence he was not disposed to pass the remainder of his life without taking an active part in the work of the world.

Indeed his father Isaac had always looked to his son to maintain the credit of a large industrial concern which would naturally revert to him as a species of patrimony.

What now was Stephen to do with this inheritance? Sell its fixtures and good-will, buy acres and hunt? Such a course did not recommend itself to the son, nor indeed would his father have readily suffered its adoption. 'If Stephen inherits my means he also inherits my duties,' the old man was heard to say; and so after his university career, this worthy son of a true alma mater, nothing loth, settled himself down in his father's counting-house, and buckled on his commercial armour just before business hours.

Such filial piety did not remain unrewarded, and the son's hours of leisure were soon solaced