The Queen of Sheba / My Cousin the Colonel | Page 5

intimate with Edward
Lynde for twelve years or more, first at the boarding-school at Flatbush,
and afterwards at college. Though several years my junior, he was in
the same classes with me, and, if the truth must be told, generally
carried off all the honors. He is not only the most accomplished young
fellow I know, but a fellow of inexhaustible modesty and amiability,
and I think it was singularly malicious of destiny to pick him out as a
victim, when there are so many worthless young men (the name of
John Flemming will instantly occur to you) who deserve nothing better
than rough treatment. You see, I am taking point-blank aim at your
sympathy.
When Lynde was seven or eight years old he had the misfortune to lose
his mother; his father was already dead. The child's nearest relative was
an uncle, David Lynde, a rich merchant of New York, a bachelor, and a
character. Old Lynde--I call him old Lynde not out of disrespect, but to
distinguish him from young Lynde--was at that period in his sixtieth
year, a gentleman of unsullied commercial reputation, and of regular if
somewhat peculiar habits. He was at his counting-room precisely at
eight in the morning, and was the last to leave in the evening, working
as many hours each day as he had done in those first years when he
entered as office-boy into the employment of Briggs &
Livingstone--the firm at the time of which I am now writing was Lynde,

Livingstone & Co. Mr. David Lynde lived in a set of chambers up town,
and dined at his club, where he usually passed the evenings at chess
with some brother antediluvian. A visit to the theatre, when some old
English comedy or some new English ballet happened to be on the
boards, was the periphery of his dissipation. What is called society saw
nothing of him. He was a rough, breezy, thickset old gentleman,
betrothed from his birth to apoplexy, enjoying life in his own secluded
manner, and insisting on having everybody about him happy. He would
strangle an old friend rather than not have him happy. A characteristic
story is told of a quarrel he had with a chum of thirty or forty years'
standing, Ripley Sturdevant Sen. Sturdevant came to grief in the
financial panic of 1857. Lynde held a mortgage on Sturdevant's house,
and insisted on cancelling it. Sturdevant refused to accept the sacrifice.
They both were fiery old gentlemen, arcades ambo. High words ensued.
What happened never definitely transpired; but Sturdevant was found
lying across the office lounge, with a slight bruise over one eyebrow
and the torn mortgage thrust into his shirt-bosom. It was conjectured
that Lynde had actually knocked him down and forced the cancelled
mortgage upon him!
In short, David Lynde was warm-hearted and generous to the verge of
violence, but a man in every way unfitted by temperament, experience,
and mode of life to undertake the guardianship of a child. To have an
infant dropped into his arms was as excellent an imitation of a calamity
as could well happen to him. I am told that no one could have been
more sensible of this than David Lynde himself, and that there was
something extremely touching in the alacrity and cheerfulness with
which he assumed the novel responsibility.
Immediately after the funeral--Mrs. Lynde had resided in Philadelphia--
the uncle brought the boy to New York. It was impossible to make a
permanent home for young Lynde in bachelor chambers, or to dine him
at the club. After a week of inconvenience and wretchedness,
complicated by the sinister suspicions of his landlady, David Lynde
concluded to send the orphan to boarding-school.
It was at Flatbush, Long Island, that I made the acquaintance of the

forlorn little fellow. His cot was next to mine in the dormitory; we
became close friends. We passed our examinations, left Flatbush at the
same time, and entered college together. In the meanwhile the boy's
relations with his guardian were limited to a weekly exchange of letters,
those of the uncle invariably beginning with "Yours of Saturday duly at
hand," and ending with "Enclosed please find." In respect to
pocket-money young Lynde was a prince. My friend spent the long
vacations with me at Newburgh, running down to New York
occasionally to pass a day or so with the uncle. In these visits their
intimacy ripened. Old Lynde was now become very proud of his bright
young charge, giving him astonishing dinners at Delmonico's, taking
him to Wallack's, and introducing him to the old fossils at the club as
"my boy Ned."
It was at the beginning of Lynde's last term at college that his uncle
retired from business, bought a house in Madison Avenue, and turned it
into a