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- 4390
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4339
- text
- "Good morning, madam; good morning, sir;" said Mr. Falsgrave, in a
singularly mild, flute-like voice, turning to Mrs. Glendinning and her
son; the lady receiving him with answering cordiality, but Pierre too
embarrassed just then to be equally polite. As for one brief moment Mr.
Falsgrave stood before the pair, ere taking the offered chair from
Dates, his aspect was eminently attractive.
There are certain ever-to-be-cherished moments in the life of almost any
man, when a variety of little foregoing circumstances all unite to make
him temporarily oblivious of whatever may be hard and bitter in his
life, and also to make him most amiably and ruddily disposed; when the
scene and company immediately before him are highly agreeable; and if at
such a time he chance involuntarily to put himself into a scenically
favorable bodily posture; then, in that posture, however transient, thou
shalt catch the noble stature of his Better Angel; catch a heavenly
glimpse of the latent heavenliness of man. It was so with Mr. Falsgrave
now. Not a house within a circuit of fifty miles that he preferred
entering before the mansion-house of Saddle Meadows; and though the
business upon which he had that morning come, was any thing but
relishable to him, yet that subject was not in his memory then. Before
him stood united in one person, the most exalted lady and the most
storied beauty of all the country round; and the finest, most
intellectual, and most congenial youth he knew. Before him also, stood
the generous foundress and the untiring patroness of the beautiful
little marble church, consecrated by the good Bishop, not four years
gone by. Before him also, stood--though in polite disguise--the same
untiring benefactress, from whose purse, he could not help suspecting,
came a great part of his salary, nominally supplied by the rental of the
pews. He had been invited to breakfast; a meal, which, in a
well-appointed country family, is the most cheerful circumstance of
daily life; he smelt all Java's spices in the aroma from the silver
coffee-urn; and well he knew, what liquid deliciousness would soon come
from it. Besides all this, and many more minutenesses of the kind, he
was conscious that Mrs. Glendinning entertained a particular partiality
for him (though not enough to marry him, as he ten times knew by very
bitter experience), and that Pierre was not behindhand in his esteem.
And the clergyman was well worthy of it. Nature had been royally
bountiful to him in his person. In his happier moments, as the present,
his face was radiant with a courtly, but mild benevolence; his person
was nobly robust and dignified; while the remarkable smallness of his
feet, and the almost infantile delicacy, and vivid whiteness and purity
of his hands, strikingly contrasted with his fine girth and stature. For
in countries like America, where there is no distinct hereditary caste
of gentlemen, whose order is factitiously perpetuated as race-horses and
lords are in kingly lands; and especially, in those agricultural
districts, where, of a hundred hands, that drop a ballot for the
Presidency, ninety-nine shall be of the brownest and the brawniest; in
such districts, this daintiness of the fingers, when united with a
generally manly aspect, assumes a remarkableness unknown in European
nations.
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