He kept a poor
larder but a rich cellar; almost always without money, he yet
contrived to hold his bins replenished, and that from the farther
end: he might have been expecting to live to a hundred and twenty
for of visitors he had none, except an occasional time-belated
companion of his youth, whom the faint, muddled memories of old
sins would bring to his door, when they would spend a day or two
together, soaking, and telling bad stories, at times hardly
restrained until Joan left the room--that is, if her brother was
not present, before whom her father was on his good behaviour.
The old man was in bad repute with the neighbours, and they never
called upon him--which they would have found it hard to justify,
seeing some who were not better were quite respectable. No doubt he
was the dilapidated old reprobate they counted him, but if he had
not made himself poor, they would have found his morals no business
of theirs. They pitied the daughter, or at least spoke pityingly of
her, but could not for her sake countenance the father! Neglecting
their duty towards her, they began to regard her with a blame which
was the shadow of their neglect, thinking of her as defiled in her
father's defilement. The creeping things--those which God hath not
yet cleansed--call the pure things unclean. But it was better to be
so judged than to run the risk of growing after the pattern of her
judges. I suspect the man who leads a dissolute, and the man who
leads a commonly selfish life, will land from the great jump pretty
nearly in the same spot.
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