Christian fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Very beautiful was the long vista of the elm-arched street. So
irresistibly did it woo the eye to linger among its gray columns and
green arches, or wander adown its fair, temple-like perspective to the
hazy vanishing point, that the wayfarer might easily forget to observe
what sort of dwellings were ranged along its sides. Nor did they seek
to force themselves upon his notice. They were all plain, substantial
structures, with no obtrusive marks of ostentation or of meanness about
them; and they all stood a little back from the street, leaving room
for a trim grass-plot, or a thicket of flowering shrubs, between them
and the passer-by. They would impress him, collectively, as genuine,
well-to-do homes, free alike from the struggles of poverty and the
temptations of wealth, without troubling him to recognize them
individually, or diverting his gaze from the over-arching elms that
were so much better worth his looking at.
Such, at least, would be the fact, until he came to a certain corner;
where a large square structure of stuccoed brick, coming boldly forward
to the pavement, and planting its heavy steps thereon, would be sure to
arrest his glance, and, perhaps, faintly stir his curiosity. It was
too large for a private building, and too unpretending for a public
one,--what was it? If he had put the inquiry into audible words, he
would have been told that it was the Medical College. And if his
interlocutor had chanced to be a white-haired, genial-faced old man,
long ago flung aside from the stream of active life, and, consequently,
with time on his hands for a little chat with a stranger,--he would,
doubtless, have woven into his answer the popular witticism;--
"Everything here, sir, is arranged just as it should be. The divinity
school is on the road to the poorhouse; the law-school adjoins the
jail; and the medical college--this building before you, sir--is hard
by the cemetery;--you can see the monuments rising above the hedge
yonder."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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