That twenty-five thousand dollars, however, was as far away as the five thousand, and the life in the Church Street house was more penurious and uncomfortable than it had ever been on the old farm, which had provided a coarse plenty for many generations. The Clarks were obviously running out, and when the old man died in 1882 he must have had the bitter consciousness that the family destiny had dwindled in his hands. From being prosperous and respected farmers, living on their own land in their ancestral square wooden house with its one enormous chimney, they were living in real poverty in a small house on a dusty side street off the noisy Square, which was not what it had once been as a place of residence. And they did not even own this Church Street house--merely clung to it from inertia and bad habit. The only thing they did own was Clark's Field, and Mrs. John sometimes thought it would be better if that had gone the way of the rest of the Clark farm, so insidious was its moral influence upon the men as well as costly in the way of outgo.... If a man's accomplishment in this life is to be reckoned by the substantial gains he has made on his father's estate and condition, old Samuel Clark had nothing to be proud of when he was borne to his grave in the new cemetery a mile south of Clark's Field. He had left nothing to his children but the Field, encumbered with the undivided and indivisible half interest belonging to his brother Edward Stanley, were he alive at this date, and to his heirs if he had any. II