He
was a man of the finest moral traits, of incorruptible probity, of
scrupulous honor, of an exacting conscientiousness, and of a sincere
piety. But he had begun life with nothing; his whole standing in the
world had been gained inch by inch by the most unremitting economy and
self-denial, and he was a man of little capacity for hope, of whom it was
said, in popular phraseology, that he "took things hard." He was never
sanguine of good, always expectant of evil, and seemed to view life like
a sentinel forbidden to sleep and constantly under arms.
For such a man to be harassed by a mortgage upon his homestead was a
steady wear and drain upon his vitality. There were times when a positive
horror of darkness came down upon him--when his wife's untroubled,
patient hopefulness seemed to him like recklessness, when the smallest
item of expense was an intolerable burden, and the very daily bread of
life was full of bitterness; and when these paroxysms were upon him, one
of the heaviest of his burdens was the support of his son in college. It
was true that he was proud of his son's talents and sympathized with his
love for learning--he had to the full that sense of the value of
education which is the very vital force of the New England mind--and in
an hour when things looked brighter to him he had given his consent to
the scheme of a college education freely.
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