Страница 30 из 108
And the clergyman was well worthy of it. Nature had been j 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.
This most prepossessing form of the clergyman lost nothing by the character of his ma
Such was this Mr. Palsgrave, who now sat at Mrs. Glendi
"Pray, Mr. Palsgrave," said Mrs. Glendi
Whether or not his sacerdotal experiences had strangely refined and spiritualized so simple a process as breaking bread or whether it was from the spotless aspect of his hands: certain it is that Mr. Palsgrave acquitted himself on this little, occasion, in a ma
"Pray, Mr. Glendi
"Mr. Palsgrave," said the hostess-"Your cup is empty. Dates! — We were talking yesterday, Mr. Palsgrave, concerning that vile fellow, Ned."
"Well, Madam," responded the gentleman, a very little uneasily.
"He shall not stay on any ground of mine; my mind is made up, sir. Infamous man! — did he not have a wife as virtuous and beautiful now, as when I first gave her away at your altar? — It was the sheerest and most gratuitous profligacy."
The clergyman mournfully and assentingly moved his head.
"Such men," continued the lady, flushing with the sincerest indignation-"are to my way of thinking more detestable than murderers."
"That is being a little hard upon them, my dear Madam," said Mr. Palsgrave, mildly.
"Do you not think so, Pierre?" — now, said the lady, turning earnestly upon her son-"is not the man, who has si
"My dear Madam," said the clergyman, whose eyes having followed Mrs. Glendi
"I will not think now of the man," said Pierre, slowly, and looking away from both his auditors-"let us speak of Delly and her infant-she has, or had one, I have loosely heard;- their case is miserable indeed."
"The mother deserves it," said the lady, inflexibly-"and the child-reverend sir, what are the words of the Bible?"
" The sins of the father shall be visited upon the children to the third generation,'" said Mr. Palsgrave, with some slight reluctance in his tones. "But Madam, that does not mean, that the community is in any way to take the infamy of the children into their own voluntary hands, as the conscious delegated stewards of God's inscrutable dispensations. Because it is declared that the infamous consequences of sin shall be hereditary, it does not follow that our personal and active loathing of sin, should descend from the sinful si
"I understand you, sir," said Mrs. Glendi