Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864 -- Friends and associates; Novelists, American -- 19th century -- Biography
anything calculated to assist any of you towards a right comprehension
of our Christian responsibilities towards our fellow-man, I entreat that
you take it into your hearts and bosoms, and may it be sanctified unto
you. I have done."
This report may be relied upon as substantially accurate, for the
reporter made a note of the apologue and exhortation soon afterwards.
Mrs. Hall, like her husband, was of Irish birth, and an agreeable
and clever woman. They were both born in 1800, and died, she in her
eighty-second, he in his ninetieth year. He remained the same Hall to
the very end of his long chapter, and really, if no one was the better
because he had lived, I don't know that any one was the worse, in the
long run, either; and there have been Pecksniffs of whom as much could
hardly be affirmed. There is, however, an anecdote of Hall which my
father tells, and seems to have credited; if it be true, it would appear
that once at least in his life he could hardly have implored the Throne
of Grace for a blessing on the deeds of the day. "He told me," writes my
father, "(laughing at the folly of the affair, but, nevertheless, fully
appreciating his own chivalry) how he and Charles Lever, about ten years
since, had been on the point of fighting a duel. The quarrel was made
up, however, and they parted good friends, Lever returning to Ireland,
whence Mr. Hall's challenge had summoned him." I suspect good Mr. Hall
must have once more appropriated somebody else's adventure; it was not
in the heat of youth that the bloody-minded and unchristian episode is
supposed to have occurred, but when Mr. Hall was in his forty-seventh
year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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