Guerndale; An Old Story (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. " All men are born free and equal."?Old Soti-. TIME went on, change succeeded change, fortunes were made and lost, families were founded and dispersed, the little settlement of Guerndale grew slowly into a country town, and yet no change came in the fortunes of the family that gave the place its name. It ever seemed that they lived only in the past, and had their hopes buried with their fortunes, at that fatal date in the early part of the eighteenth century. To be sure, the square old country-house was left them; but land, wealth, and position were gone. The disgrace of the family remained, and stamped itself upon the nature of the descendants of Guyon the murderer. From father to son they lived a life of dreams; absorbed in books and contemplation, that strain of ambition and action, which had been so evilly used, seemed to be ended and buried with its last possessor. His son, who came into the world at that dark moment, struck the key-note of the lonely, introspective nature which remained dominant in the lives of his descendants. Each in turn wrung from the soil the scanty subsistence he required, married in due time, without love, and died in course, leaving, at most, two sons to perpetuate themisfortunes of their race. Family pride they had, but this served rather as a motive for holding aloof and brooding on the past, than for taking part in the stirring events of their day. In the Revolution they were Tories, but took no active part, and were easily overlooked in the confiscation which followed. In brief, they all seemed born under a cloud; each felt . it his duty to marry, and usually married beneath his station. Unknown among the later aristocracy growing up in New England, they refused to face the trials and rebuffs which they would unavoidably meet...