I have lately received a visit from an old acquaintance who floated in my direction on such a sea of trouble that I have been in low spirits ever since. Moreover, as it was a family affair, I could not interfere in any way, and the knowledge of my own impotence has only increased my depression. My only hope of keeping my thoughts from what is, after all, no business of mine lies in passing on the tale--if such a mournful recital of family dissensions can be called a tale--and thus making others share the burden.
I cannot remember, for the moment, when and where I first met old Tom Cribcrack, my late visitor, but we have been acquainted for a good many years. He must be past fifty now (how the time goes on!), but being a fine upstanding fellow, closely shaved and with his bristly hair always cropped short, he looks considerably younger. His father, a dear old man--I met him once--was in the coining business in its best days, but such a sedentary occupation did not suit young Cribcrack, and he was soon apprenticed to a successful burglar. In his own way, Tom was an enthusiastic, clever lad, and it was not long before he became an expert craftsman himself. He decided to devote his life to the profession, and though, like other men, he has had his bad times, he has been on the whole a very successful practitioner, respected by all workers in the same field. He has had a good connection, mostly among the upper middle-class, and has always preferred a rather slow but steady run of business to a few brilliant coups; he has kept away from the showy work, and has never had the slightest desire for publicity, which is probably the reason why his name is not so well known to the general public as that of many an inferior craftsman. ‘No fancy work for Tom Cribcrack,’ he has said more than once in my hearing. ‘Punctuality, neat workmanship, despatch--that’s the motto for a man what wants to get on in my line.’ In short, he was a good specimen of the modest self-made Englishman, and is still, to this day, though now subdued in spirit by a great disappointment, as you shall learn.
It was not until Cribcrack was thirty or so and had got on to his feet that he did what most sensible men do sooner or later--he took a wife. This was a Miss Judy Graggins, eldest daughter of ‘Basher’ Graggins, of Cod’s Alley, a well-known character in his day. The result of this happy union was a family of several daughters but only one son, greatly to the disappointment of both parents. Looking back, as Cribcrack pointed out the other day, one cannot help noticing how small things have often an important bearing on the future; for whereas there had been no difficulty about the girls’ names, when it came to naming the boy there was for a time some difference between the doting parents. The father wished to give the boy a plain, sturdy sort of name, Jem or Bill, such as all the Cribcracks had borne; but, greatly to his surprise, his wife, for no apparent reason, but from sheer feminine perversity, would have none of these, and insisted on the child being called Ernest, a name unknown to the Cribcrack family and one which the father himself regarded with the greatest contempt. In the end, the mother’s whim prevailed, and the boy was known henceforth as Ernest Cribcrack.