Elinor Wyllys; Or, The Young Folk of Longbridge: A Tale. Volume 1Cooper, Susan Fenimore
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Elinor Wyllys; Or, The Young Folk of Longbridge: A Tale. Volume 1
Cooper, Susan Fenimore
Frontier and pioneer life -- United States -- Fiction; Historical fiction
Still, there remained in the family two younger daughters, and
Charlie, besides Miss Patsey and Mrs. Hubbard. By the exertions
and guidance of Patsey, the assistance of friends, and their own
good conduct, the young people, in due time, were all growing up,
endowed with good principles, good educations, and with
respectable prospects opening before them. At the period of our
narrative, the third daughter hoped shortly to become an
under-governess in the school where she had been educated; and
Mary, the youngest of the family, had such a decided taste for
music, that it was thought she would have no difficulty in
supporting herself, by giving lessons, in the course of two or
three years. Of all the family, Charlie was the one that caused
his friends the most anxiety. He was a fine, spirited,
intelligent boy; and Uncle Josie had promised to procure a
situation for him, with his son-in-law, a commission-merchant and
auctioneer, in New York. This plan was very pleasing to Mrs.
Hubbard and Miss Patsey; but, unfortunately, Charlie seemed to
have no taste for making money, and a fondness for pictures and
pencils, that amounted almost to a passion. Here was an
unexpected obstacle; Charlie was the pet and spoiled child of the
family. All the rest of the young people had been quite satisfied
with the different means of support that had offered for each;
and they had followed their respective careers with so much quiet
good sense, that Charlie's remonstrances against the
counting-house, and his strong fancy for an artist's life, was
something quite new, and which Miss Patsey scarcely knew how to
answer. There was nothing in the least poetical or romantic about
Patsey Hubbard, who was all honest kindness and straight-forward
common sense. She had no feeling whatever for the fine arts;
never read a work of imagination; scarcely knew one tune from
another; and had never looked with pleasure at any picture, but
one, a portrait of her own respected father, which still occupied
the place of honour in their little parlour, nearly covering one
side of the wall. This painting, to speak frankly, was anything
but a valuable work of art, or a good likeness of the worthy
minister. The face was flat and unmeaning, entirely devoid of
expression or relief; the body was stiff and hard, like
sheet-iron, having, also, much the color of that material, so far
as it was covered by the black ministerial coat. One arm was
stretched across a table, conspicuous from a carrot-coloured
cloth, and the hand was extended over a pile of folios; but it
looked quite unequal to the task of opening them. The other arm
was disposed of in some manner satisfactory to the artist, no
doubt, but by no means easy for the spectator to discover, since
the brick-coloured drapery which formed the back-ground to the
whole, certainly encroached on the side where nature had placed
it. Such as it was, however, Miss Patsey admired this painting
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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