- end_line
- 12348
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 12295
- text
- leaped from his bed, impatient to meet the earliest sun, and lose no
sweet drop of his life, now hating the beams he once so dearly loved;
turning round in his bed to the wall to avoid them; and still postponing
the foot which should bring him back to the dismal day; when the sun is
not gold, but copper; and the sky is not blue, but gray; and the blood,
like Rhenish wine, too long unquaffed by Death, grows thin and sour in
the veins.
Pierre had not forgotten that the augmented penury of the Millthorpe's
was, at the time we now retrospectively treat of, gravely imputed by the
gossiping frequenters of the Black Swan Inn, to certain insinuated moral
derelictions of the farmer. "The old man tipped his elbow too often,"
once said in Pierre's hearing an old bottle-necked fellow, performing
the identical same act with a half-emptied glass in his hand. But though
the form of old Millthorpe was broken, his countenance, however sad and
thin, betrayed no slightest sign of the sot, either past or present. He
never was publicly known to frequent the inn, and seldom quitted the few
acres he cultivated with his son. And though, alas, indigent enough, yet
was he most punctually honest in paying his little debts of shillings
and pence for his groceries. And though, heaven knows, he had plenty of
occasion for all the money he could possibly earn, yet Pierre
remembered, that when, one autumn, a hog was bought of him for the
servants' hall at the Mansion, the old man never called for his money
till the midwinter following; and then, as with trembling fingers he
eagerly clutched the silver, he unsteadily said, "I have no use for it
now; it might just as well have stood over." It was then, that chancing
to overhear this, Mrs. Glendinning had looked at the old man, with a
kindly and benignantly interested eye to the _povertiresque_; and
murmured, "Ah! the old English Knight is not yet out of his blood.
Bravo, old man!"
One day, in Pierre's sight, nine silent figures emerged from the door of
old Millthorpe; a coffin was put into a neighbor's farm-wagon; and a
procession, some thirty feet long, including the elongated pole and box
of the wagon, wound along Saddle Meadows to a hill, where, at last, old
Millthorpe was laid down in a bed, where the rising sun should affront
him no more. Oh, softest and daintiest of Holland linen is the motherly
earth! There, beneath the sublime tester of the infinite sky, like
emperors and kings, sleep, in grand state, the beggars and paupers of
earth! I joy that Death is this Democrat; and hopeless of all other real
and permanent democracies, still hug the thought, that though in life
some heads are crowned with gold, and some bound round with thorns, yet
chisel them how they will, head-stones are all alike.
This somewhat particular account of the father of young Millthorpe, will
better set forth the less immature condition and character of the son,
on whom had now descended the maintenance of his mother and sisters.
But, though the son of a farmer, Charles was peculiarly averse to hard
labor. It was not impossible that by resolute hard labor he might
eventually have succeeded in placing his family in a far more
comfortable situation than he had ever remembered them. But it was not
so fated; the benevolent State had in its great wisdom decreed
otherwise.
- title
- Chunk 3