Bourne would
have preferred him for bookkeeper a moment sooner upon that account.
In truth, I have observed, down town, that the fact of your ancestors
doing nothing is not considered good proof that you can do anything.
But Prue and her sex regard sentiment more than action, and I
understand easily enough why she is never tired of hearing me read of
Prince Charlie. If Titbottom had been only a little younger, a little
handsomer, a little more gallantly dressed--in fact, a little more of
the Prince Charlie, I am sure her eyes would not have fallen again
upon her work so tranquilly, as he resumed his story.
"I can remember my grandfather Titbottom, although I was a very young
child, and he was a very old man. My young mother and my young
grandmother are very distinct figures in my memory, ministering to the
old gentleman, wrapped in his dressing-gown, and seated upon the
piazza. I remember his white hair and his calm smile, and how, not
long before he died, he called me to him, and laying his hand upon my
head, said to me:
"My child, the world is not this great sunny piazza, nor life the
fairy stories which the women tell you here as you sit in their laps.
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