Doctor Grimshawe's Secret

natural refinement about him, although he scarcely appeared to be technically and as to worldly position what we call a gentleman; plain in dress and simple in manner, not giving the idea of rema

ression, which, unless you looked at him with the very purpose of seeing

hawe, putting forth his hand to grasp that of the stranger, and giving

at in air, with a faint delight in my sensations. The grossness, the roughness, the too great angularity of the actual, is removed from me. It is a state that I like well. It ma

e in him which he disliked to break by putting any of his sensations into words. His

the operation of which was said to be of a soothing influence, causing a delightful silkiness of sensation; but I know not whether it was considered good for concussions of the

tor quaffed off a tumbl

scene of violence and this great peace that has come over m

l stroke, you took them as unflinchingly as ever I saw a man, and so turned the fortune of the battle better than if you smote with a sledge-hammer. Two things puzzle me in the affair. First, whence came my assailants, all in t

assing through the street to my little school, when I saw yo

n angel's office for me, and I shall do what an earthly man ma

be of a very delicate organization, had seemed sensible of the disagreeable effect on the atmosphere of the room. The restraint lasted, however, only till (in the course of the day) crusty Hannah had fitted up a little bedroom on t

tor, so shaggy, grizzly, and uncouth, in the midst of these surroundings, with a perceptible sense of something very strange in it all. His mild, gentle regard dwelt too on the two beautiful children, evidently with a sense of quiet wonder how they should be here, and a

e one?" said he, holding ou

ose whom she affected. "And you, my little man," added the stranger, quietly, and looking to Ned, who likewise

e stranger, "that it is my business in li

Ned, perhaps conscious of a want of

, and also a great horror, to the use of the rod, and I have not been gifted with a harsh voice and a stern brow; so that, af

characteristics that were not attractive to himself, yet in which he acknowledged, as he saw them here, a certain charm; nor did he know, scarcely, whether to despise the one in whom he saw them, or to yield to a strange sense of reverence. So he watched the c

,-a simple healthfulness that did not run into disease as stronger constitutions might. It did not apparently require much to crush down such a being as this,-not m

but soon came back, announcing in a very quiet and undisturbed way that, during his withdrawal from duty, the schola

ng a gruff curse at those who had so r

re rude and contentious beyond my power to cope with them. I have been taught, long ago," he added, with a peaceful smile, "that my business in life does not lie with grown-up and con

all have the benefit of you the longer. Here is this boy to be instructed. I have made some attempts myself; but having no art of instructing, no skill, no temper I suppose, I make but an indifferent hand at it:

them. The lad, I see, has a singular spirit of aspiration and pride,-no ungentle pride,

said the Doctor, rather surprised. "I could not have done it

he rough, uncouth, animal Doctor, whose faith was in his own right arm, so full of the old Adam as he was, so sturdily a hater, so hotly impulsive, so deep, subtle, and crooked, so obstructed by his animal nature, so given to his pipe and black bottle, so wrathful and pugnacious and wicked,-and this mild spiritual creature, so milky, with so unforceful a grasp; and it was singular to see how they stood apart and eyed each other, each tacitly acknowledg

acter, with its human warmth,-an element which he seemed not to possess in his own character. He was capable only of gentle and mild regard,-that was his warmest affection; and the warmest, too, that he was capable of exciting in others. So that he was doomed as much apparently as the Doctor himself to be a lonely creature, without any very deep companionship in the world, though not incapable, when he, by some rare chance, met a soul distantly akin, of holding a certain high spiritual communion. With the children, however, he succeeded in establishing some good and available relations; his simple and passionless character coincided with their simplicity, and their as yet unawakened passions: they appeared to understand him better

eached middle age without absolutely vanishing away in his contact with more positive substances than himself; how the world had given him a subsistence, if indeed he recognized anything more dense than fragrance, like a certain people whom Pliny mentioned in Africa,-a p

nglander, the descendant of an ancient race of settlers, the last of them; for, once pretty numerous in their quar

are a fair specimen of the race. You do not clothe yourself in substance. Your souls are not

ble enough to afford a narrative. There seemed, from what he said, to have always been a certain kind of refinement in his race, a nicety of conscience, a nicety of h

adition among us of our first emigrant, and the causes that brought him to the New World; and it was said that he had suffered so much, before quitting his nativ