FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116  
117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   >>  
great way from the chimney, in the nook between two of the gables. {142} They were called Alice's Posies. The tradition was, that a certain Alice Pyncheon had flung up the seeds in sport, and that the dust of the street and the decay of the roof gradually formed a kind of soil for them, out of which they grew, when Alice had long been in her grave. However the flowers might have come there, it was both sad and sweet to observe how nature adopted to herself this desolate, decaying, gusty, rusty old house of the Pyncheon family; and how the ever-returning summer did her best to gladden it with tender beauty, and grew melancholy in the effort. There is one other feature, very essential to be noticed, but which, we greatly fear, may damage any picturesque and romantic impression which we have been willing to throw over our sketch of this respectable edifice. In the front gable, under the impending brow of the second story, and contiguous to the street, was a shop-door, divided horizontally in the midst, and with a window for its upper segment, such as is often seen in dwellings of a somewhat ancient date. This same shop-door had been a subject of no slight mortification to the present occupant of the august Pyncheon-house, as well as to some of her predecessors. The matter is disagreeably delicate to handle; but, since the reader must needs be let into the secret, he will please to understand, that about a century ago, the head of the Pyncheons found himself involved in serious financial difficulties. The fellow (gentleman, as he styled himself) can hardly have been other than a spurious interloper; for, instead of seeking office from the king or the royal governor, or urging his hereditary claim to eastern lands, he bethought {143} himself of no better avenue to wealth than by cutting a shop-door through the side of his ancestral residence. It was the custom of the time, indeed, for merchants to store their goods and transact business in their own dwellings. But there was something pitifully small in this old Pyncheon's mode of setting about his commercial operations; it was whispered, that, with his own hands, all be-ruffled as they were, he used to give change for a shilling, and would turn a half-penny twice over, to make sure that it was a good one. Beyond all question, he had the blood of a petty huckster in his veins, through whatever channel it may have found its way there. Immediately on his death, the
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116  
117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   >>  



Top keywords:

Pyncheon

 

dwellings

 

street

 

styled

 

huckster

 

gentleman

 

fellow

 
financial
 

difficulties

 

spurious


office
 

governor

 

seeking

 

involved

 
interloper
 
channel
 

reader

 

disagreeably

 

delicate

 

handle


secret

 

urging

 

Pyncheons

 

century

 
understand
 

Immediately

 

hereditary

 
change
 

shilling

 

transact


business

 

merchants

 

matter

 

setting

 

commercial

 

operations

 

ruffled

 

pitifully

 
custom
 

bethought


eastern

 

Beyond

 

whispered

 

ancestral

 

residence

 

cutting

 

avenue

 

wealth

 
question
 

window