He boasted of having Beau
Brummell's antipathy to certain vegetables. During the early but brief
allotment mania he said that he feared he was to become "disgustingly
rich," one of his epi's which became a by-word, and scored him a decided
success. When some colonist, hearing him called by the name of Ebden,
asked him if he was related to "the great Mr. Ebden," his
humorously-delivered response, to the effect that he was himself that
happy individual, scored him another, perhaps smaller, success. I have
often seen him score yet another, which, perhaps, in his own view, was
not at all the least of that sort of thing, when, after writing in a
rather neat and most distinct hand, the pen seemed suddenly under
paralysis, and a sadly dilapidated signature was the result. He always
signed his name in that fanciful way.
Ebden's name was so well known in the earlier years--indeed his gait and
ways, his sayings and doings were so marked throughout--that to omit him
from my list would leave a decided blank. But if the man had consisted
of these little oddnesses just alluded to, whether first class or
second, little would have survived of him, as business-like John Bull
fails to appreciate people who have no more solid backing than that.
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