Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1864 Excerpt: ...a most affectionate greeting. I found her looking in better health than when she left us, although she had been assiduous in her capacity as nurse. The change and exciting incidents had diverted her mind from the morbid sorrow that was consuming her. Dijah Gray's services and accommodations had plainly been furnished with at least half an eye to the pay. The sum he might reasonably expect to clear on this off-hand speculation, would go far toward the winter support of his half-famished family. He was a short, spare, meagre-looking man, complexion durable drab, with hair and eyes but a shade darker. He had a cross, currish way of speaking--a sort of human growl--and in his scanty, many-colored fur coat, to which cat skins were the principal contributions, he made altogether a most wolfish and forlorn appearance. His wife was a tall, gaunt cadaverous woman, disgusting and ugly in the extreme. She wore a tattered, checked, linsey woolsey gown, evidently the cast-off relic of some house slave, a dingy apron, besmeared with grease and dirt, and a filthy, calico nightcap, which vainly essayed to keep in subjection her uncombed, oven-broomish hair. On our arrival, her attempt at a look of good humor overcame her habitual surliness so far only as to get her countenance into a grim and haggard grin. It was a strange relief to glance from the disagreeable parents to their children--little Tommy and Netty, ten and eight years old. The poor, thin little things, half fed and half clad, with their pensive, blue eyes, and curly, flaxen hair, had that peculiar, saddened look, that blighted blitheness of childhood, which long days and years of starvation and haxsh treatment alone can produce. "Dis sher yaccident makes us right smart out o' kilter," observed Mrs. G...
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