Book account

Old Joseph had preserved the letters of his children. They were
emphatic evidences of their attitude toward him from first to last.
There was no such thing as going behind them. It might be possible to
produce proof that the testator was unsound of mind, but it would
never be possible to wipe out the written declarations of his mentally
perfect son and daughters. In these delectable missives they
completely disowned him as a father; they raked him fore and aft; they
riddled him with a hundred shafts of scorn; they repeatedly said that
they never wanted to see his face again; they put him out of their
lives and urgently requested him to put them out of his; they expected
nothing of him and they certainly did not want him to expect anything
of them; and so on and so forth. And in spite of all these bitter
rebukings, old Joseph had come back to New York ready and willing to
let bygones be bygones if they would only meet him half way.
Geoffrey declared in so many words that his father had played a scurvy
trick on all of them.


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