Still, His Family Held A Certain Rank And
Standing In Their Native County, Of Which His Evil Courses, Bad As
They Were, Could Not Wholly Deprive Them.
The young people - and a
very large family they made of sons and daughters, twelve in
number - were objects of interest and commiseration to all who knew
them, while the worthless father was justly held in contempt and
detestation.
Our hero was the youngest of the six sons; and from
his childhood he was famous for his nothing-to-doishness. He was
too indolent to engage heart and soul in the manly sports of his
comrades; and he never thought it necessary to commence learning
his lessons until the school had been in an hour. As he grew up
to man's estate, he might be seen dawdling about in a black
frock-coat, jean trousers, and white kid gloves, making lazy bows
to the pretty girls of his acquaintance; or dressed in a green
shooting-jacket, with a gun across his shoulder, sauntering down
the wooded lanes, with a brown spaniel dodging at his heels, and
looking as sleepy and indolent as his master.
The slowness of all Tom's movements was strangely contrasted with
his slight, and symmetrical figure; that looked as if it only
awaited the will of the owner to be the most active piece of human
machinery that ever responded to the impulses of youth and health.
But then, his face! What pencil could faithfully delineate features
at once so comical and lugubrious - features that one moment
expressed the most solemn seriousness, and the next, the most
grotesque and absurd abandonment to mirth?
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