----It was one of the old square palaces of the North, in which Bernard
Langdon, the son of Wentworth, was born. If he had had the luck to be
an only child, he might have lived as his father had done, letting his
meagre competence smoulder on almost without consuming, like the fuel
in an air-tight stove. But after Master Bernard came Miss Dorothea
Wentworth Langdon, and then Master William Pepperell Langdon, and
others, equally well named,--a string of them, looking, when they stood
in a row in prayer-time, as if they would fit a set of Pandean pipes, of
from three feet upward in dimensions. The door of the air-tight store
has to be opened, under such circumstances, you may well suppose! So it
happened that our young man had been obliged, from an early period, to
do something to support himself, and found himself stopped short in his
studies by the inability of the good people at home to furnish him the
present means of support as a student.
You will understand now why the young man wanted me to give him a
certificate of his fitness to teach, and why. I did not choose to urge
him to accept the aid which a meek country-boy from a family without
ante-Revolutionary recollections would have thankfully received.
Pages:
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303