And that was all Dr. Lavendar got out of the father....

This was thirty-two years ago. Sain Wright may have been hungry, but

he never spoke. Instead, he worked. Old Chester seethed with curiosity

for a while--to see Benjamin Wright pass his son with a contemptuous

stare, to see Sam pass his father without a glance was very exciting.

But excitement ebbs in thirty-two years. For one thing, old Mr. Wright

came less often into town--because he could not bear to meet his son,

people said; and Samuel never took the hill road out of Old Chester

for a corresponding reason. Furthermore, it was hard to connect Samuel

with anything so irrational as a quarrel, for every year he grew in

solemn common sense. Benjamin Wright's growth was all in the way of

temper; at least so his boy Simmons, a freckled mulatto of sixty

years, informed Old Chester.

"He 'ain't got no human feelin's, 'cept for them there canaries,"

Simmons used to say in an aggrieved voice; "he'll stand and look at

'em and chirp to 'em by the hour--an' 'en he'll turn round and swear

at you 'nough to take your leg off," Simmons said, bitterly. Simmons

did his best for the canaries which he detested, cleaning out the

cages and scraping the perches and seeing that the seed-trays and

bath-tubs were always full; he did his best conscientiously, and it

was hard to be "swore at when you 'ain't done nothin'." Perhaps

Benjamin Wright had some "human feelings" for his grandson, Sam; but

certainly Simmons's opinion was justified by his treatment of his

granddaughters. When by their father's orders the little girls came up

to the lonely house on the hill, the old man used to pitch small coins

to them and tell them to go and look at the canaries,--"and then clear

out. Simmons, give 'em some cake or something! Good-by. Good-by. Clear

out." Long before he had settled into such dreary living, the son with

whom he had quarrelled had made a life of his own. His slimness and

gayety had disappeared as well as his dreaminess and versifying

instincts. "Poetry?" he had been heard to say, "why, there isn't a

poem that was ever written that I'd take five minutes out of my

business to read!" It seemed as if the quarrel had wrenched him from

the grooves, physical and spiritual, in which Nature had meant him to

run and started him on lines of hard common sense. He was intensely

positive; heavy and pompous and painfully literal; inclined to lay

down the law to everybody; richer than most of us in Old Chester, and

full of solemn responsibilities as burgess and senior warden and

banker. His air of aggressive integrity used to make the honestest of

us feel as if we had been picking pockets! Yes; a good man, as Old

Chester said.




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