his web, and conscience rips such webs as his endways, and Daniel would
have none of that. And the servants who had reared the youth had no
conscience to give him; for it was made definite and certain in that
home that they were paid for what they did, so they did what they were
paid for, and bestowing consciences upon young gentlemen is no part of
the duty of the "help" in a home like that.
As for his daughter, Anne, again one of God's miracles was wrought.
There she was growing in the dead atmosphere of that home--where she had
known two mothers before she was ten and she saw with a child's shrewd
eyes that another was coming. Yet in some subsoil of the life about her
the roots of her life were finding a moral sense. Her hazel eyes were
questioning so curiously the old man who fathered her that he felt
uncomfortable when she was near him. Yet for all the money he had won
and all that money had made him, he was reckoned among the fit. Then
there was the fit Mr. Van Dorn and the fit Mr. Calvin. Mr. Calvin never
missed a Sunday in church, gave his tithe, and revered the law. He
adjusted his halo and sang feelingly in prayer meeting about his cross
and hoped ultimately for his crown as full and complete payment and
return, the same being the legal and just equivalent for said
hereinbefore named cross as aforesaid, and Mr. Calvin was counted among
the fit, and the Doctor smiled as he put him in the list. And Mr. Van
Dorn had confessed that he was among the fit and his fitness consisted
in getting everything that he could without being caught.
But these reflections were vain and unprofitable to Dr. Nesbit, and so
he turned himself to the consideration of the business in hand: namely,
to make his calling and reelection sure to the State Senate that
November. So he went over Greeley County behind his motherly sorrel
mare, visiting the people, telling them stories, prescribing for their
ailments, eating their fried chicken, cream gravy and mashed potatoes,
and putting to rout the forces of the loathed opposition who maintained
that the Doctor beat his wife, by sometimes showing said wife as exhibit
"A" without comment in those remote parts of the county where her proud
figure was unknown.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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