Therefore complain I
not of modern degeneracy, when, even from the open window of the small
unlovely farm-house, tenanted by the hard-handed man of bovine flavors
and the flat-patterned woman of broken-down countenance, issue the same
familiar sounds. For who knows that Almira, but for these keys, which
throb away her wild impulses in harmless discords, would not have been
floating, dead, in the brown stream which runs through the meadows by
her father's door,--or living, with that other current which runs
beneath the gas-lights over the slimy pavement, choking with wretched
weeds that were once in spotless flower?
Poor Elsie! She never sang nor played. She never shaped her inner life
in words: such utterance was as much denied to her nature as common
articulate speech to the deaf mute. Her only language must be in action.
Watch her well by day and by night, Old Sophy! watch her well! or the
long line of her honored name may close in shame, and the stately
mansion of the Dudleys remain a hissing and a reproach till its roof is
buried in its cellar!
CHAPTER XXIV.
ON HIS TRACKS.
"Abel!" said the old Doctor, one morning, "after you've harnessed
Caustic, come into the study a few minutes, will you?"
Abel nodded.
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