No one had ever breathed a word of censure against the
peculiar man, who was never known to smile, and who seldom spoke except
he was spoken to, and who, with his long white hair falling around his
thin face, looked like some old picture of a saint, when on Sunday he
sat in his accustomed pew by the door, and like the publican, seemed
almost to smite upon his breast as he confessed himself to be a
miserable sinner.
Had Burton Jerrold remained at home and been content to till the barren
soil of his father's rocky farm, not his handsome face, or polished
manners, or adoration of herself as the queen of queens, could have won
a second thought from Geraldine, for she hated farmers, who smelled of
the barn and wore cowhide boots, and would sooner have died than been a
farmer's wife. But Burton had never tilled the soil, nor worn cowhide
boots nor smelled of the barn, for when he was a mere boy, his mother
died, and an old aunt, who lived in Boston, took him for her own, and
gave him all the advantages of a city education until he was old enough
to enter one of the principal banks as a clerk; then she died and left
him all her fortune, except a thousand dollars which she gave to his
sister Hannah, who still lived at home upon the farm, and was almost as
silent and peculiar as the father himself.
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