Florida -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction; Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction
The poor young mother, when death so soon came to her, begged that the
little son she was leaving behind might be called Evert, after her only
and dearly loved brother, Evert Beekman, who had died not long before.
Andrew Winthrop had consented. But he was resolved, at the same time,
that no Beekman, but only Winthrop, methods should be used in the
education of the child. The Winthrop methods were used; and with good
effect. But the boy learned something of the Beekman ways, after all, in
the delightful indulgence and petting he received from his aunt Katrina
when he went to visit her at vacation times, either at her city home or
at her old country-house on the Sound; he learned it in her affectionate
words, in the smiling freedom from rules and punishments which prevailed
at both places, in the wonderful toys, and, later, the dogs and gun,
saddle-horse and skiff, possessed by his fortunate cousin Lanse.
Andrew Winthrop was not that almost universal thing in his day for a man
in his position in New England, a lawyer; he owned and carried on an
iron-foundery, as his father had done before him. He had begun with some
money, and he had made more; he knew that he was rich (rich for his day
and neighborhood); but save for his good horses and his observatory, he
lived as though he were poor. He gave his son Evert, however, the best
education (according to his idea of what the best education consisted
in), which money and careful attention could procure; but he did not
send him to college, and at sixteen the boy was put regularly to work
for a part of the day in the iron-foundery, being required to begin at
the beginning and learn the whole business practically, from the keeping
of books to the proper mixture of ores for the furnaces--those furnaces
which had seemed to the child almost as much a part of nature as the
sunshine itself, since he had seen their red light against the sky at
night ever since he was born. In the mean time his education in books
went steadily forward also, under his father's eye--a severe one.
Fortunately the lad had sturdy health and nerves which were seldom
shaken, so that these double tasks did not break him down. For one
thing, Andrew Winthrop never required, or even desired, rapid progress;
Evert might be as slow as he pleased, if he would but be thorough. And
thorough he was. Even if he had not been naturally inclined towards it,
he would have acquired it from the system which his father had pursued
with him from babyhood; but he was naturally inclined towards it; his
knowledge, therefore, as far as it went, was very complete.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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