Walter's father that he would give his son an adequate sum for his
maintenance at the University, and he was looking forward to a
quick-coming time when a scholarship should be vacant, for which he
was certain Walter had a most excellent chance, when Mrs. Joyce had a
fit and died.
From that time forth Andrew Joyce was a changed man. He had loved his
wife in his grim, sour, puritanical way, loved her sufficiently to
strive against this grimness and puritanism to the extent of his
consenting to live for the most part from the ordinary fashion of
the world. But when that gentle influence was once removed, when the
hard-headed, narrow-minded man had no longer the soft answer to turn
away his wrath, the soft face to look appealingly up against his harsh
judgment, the quick intellect to combat his one-sided dogmatisms, he
fell away at once, and blossomed out as the bitter bigot into which he
had gradually but surely been growing. No college education for his
son then; no assistance from him for a bloated hierarchy, as he
remarked at a public meeting, glancing at Mr. Sifton, the curate, who
had eighty pounds a year and four children; no money of his to be
spent by his son in a dissolute and debauched career at the
University. Mr. Stoker had not been at any university--as, indeed, he
had not, having picked up most of his limited education from a
travelling tinker, who combined pot-mending and knife-grinding with
Bible and tract selling;--and where would you meet with a better
preacher of the Gawspel, a more shining light, or a comelier vessel?
Mr. Stoker was all in all to Andrew Joyce then, and when Andrew Joyce
died, six months afterwards, it was found that, with the exception of
the legacy of a couple of hundred pounds to his son, he had left all
his money to Mr. Stoker, and to the chapel and charities represented
by that erudite divine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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