Robert had been early placed in the office of a lawyer of eminence, and was considered a youth of great talents and promise. Their mother had been dead for some years, and of her little is known in the annals of the family. When speculating upon the subject, I have imagined her to have been a plain, quiet, matter-of-fact body, who never did or said anything worth recording.
When a man's position in life is marked out for him by others, and he is left no voice in the matter, in nine cases out of ten, he is totally unfitted by nature and inclination for the post he is called to fill. So it was with my father, Edward Moncton. A person less adapted to fill an important place in the mercantile world, could scarcely have been found. He had a genius for spending, not for making money; and was so easy and credulous that any artful villain might dupe him out of it. Had he been heir to the title and the old family estates, he would have made a first rate country gentleman; for he possessed a fine manly person, was frank and generous, and excelled in all athletic sports.
My Uncle Robert was the very reverse of my father--stern, shrewd, and secretive; no one could see more of his mind than he was willing to show; and, like my grandfather, he had a great love for money, and a natural talent for acquiring it. An old servant of my grandfather's, Nicholas Banks, used jocosely to say of him: "Had Master Robert been born a beggar, he would have converted his ragged wrap-rascal into a velvet gown. The art of making money was born in him."
Uncle Robert was very successful in his profession; and such is the respect that men of common minds pay to wealth for its own sake, that my uncle was as much courted by persons of his class, as if he had been Lord Chancellor of England. He was called the _honest lawyer_: wherefore, I never could determine, except that he was the _rich_ lawyer; and people could not imagine that the envied possessor of five thousand per annum, could have any inducement to play the rogue, or cheat his clients. The dependent slave who was chained all day to the desk, in Robert Moncton's office, knew him to be a dishonest man; but his practice daily increased, and his reputation and fortune increased in proportion.