Beauty and the Beast, and Tales of HomeTaylor, Bayard
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Beauty and the Beast, and Tales of Home
Taylor, Bayard
Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Friend Mitchenor bought a small cottage adjacent to his son's farm, in a
community which consisted mostly of Friends, and not far from the large
old meeting-house in which the Quarterly Meetings were held. He at once
took his place on the upper seat, among the elders, most of whom he knew
already, from having met them, year after year, in Philadelphia. The
charge of a few acres of ground gave him sufficient occupation; the
money left to him after the sale of his farm was enough to support him
comfortably; and a late Indian summer of contentment seemed now to have
come to the old man. He was done with the earnest business of life.
Moses was gradually taking his place, as father and Friend; and Asenath
would be reasonably provided for at his death. As his bodily energies
decayed, his imperious temper softened, his mind became more accessible
to liberal influences, and he even cultivated a cordial friendship
with a neighboring farmer who was one of “the world's people.” Thus, at
seventy-five he was really younger, because tenderer of heart and more
considerate, than he had been at sixty.
Asenath was now a woman of thirty-five, and suitors had ceased to
approach her. Much of her beauty still remained, but her face had become
thin and wasted, and the inevitable lines were beginning to form around
her eyes. Her dress was plainer than ever, and she wore the scoop-bonnet
of drab silk, in which no woman can seem beautiful, unless she be very
old. She was calm and grave in her demeanor, save that her perfect
goodness and benevolence shone through and warmed her presence; but,
when earnestly interested, she had been known to speak her mind so
clearly and forcibly that it was generally surmised among the Friends
that she possessed “a gift,” which might, in time, raise her to honor
among them. To the children of Moses she was a good genius, and a word
from “Aunt 'Senath” oftentimes prevailed when the authority of the
parents was disregarded. In them she found a new source of happiness;
and when her old home on the Neshaminy had been removed a little farther
into the past, so that she no longer looked, with every morning's sun,
for some familiar feature of its scenery, her submission brightened into
a cheerful content with life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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