THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT HIS RELATIVES, FRIENDS, AND ENEMIES. COMPRISING ALL HIS WILLS AND HIS WAYS: WITH AN HISTORICAL RECORD OF WHAT HE DID, SHOWING, MOREOVER, WHO INHERITED THE FAMILY PLATE, WHO CAME IN FOR THE SILVER THE WHOLE FORMING A COMPLETE KEY TO THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. CHAPTER I. Introductory, concerning the pedigree of the Chuzzlewit Family. As no lady or gentleman, with any claims to polite breeding, can possibly sympathise with the Chuzzlewit Family without being first assured of the extreme antiquity of the race, it is a great satisfaction to know that it undoubtedly descended in a direct line from Adam and Eve; and was, in the very earliest times, closely connected with the agricultural interest. If it should ever be urged by grudging and malicious persons, that a Chuzzlewit, in any period of the family history, displayed an overweening amount of family pride, surely the weakness will be considered not only pardonable but laudable, when the immense superiority of the house to the rest of mankind, in respect of this its ancient origin, is taken into account. It is remarkable that as there was, in the oldest family of which we have any record, a murderer and a vagabond, so we never fail to meet, in the records of all old families, with innumerable repetitions of the same phase of character. Indeed, it may be laid down as a general principle, that the more extended the ancestry, the greater the amount of violence and vagabondism; for in ancient days, those two amusements, combining a wholesome excitement with a promising means of repairing shattered fortunes, were at Martin Chuzzlewit. I. 1 |