Dress, perfect in conduct, perfect in
filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; but at bottom he was a
prig; and as for the contents of his skull, they could have changed
place with the contents of a pie and nobody would have been the worse
off for it but the pie. This fellow's reproachlessness was a standing
reproach to every lad in the village. He was the admiration of all the
mothers, and the detestation of all their sons. I was told what became
of him, but as it was a disappointment to me, I will not enter into
details. He succeeded in life.
Chapter 55 A Vendetta and Other Things
DURING my three days' stay in the town, I woke up every morning with the
impression that I was a boy - for in my dreams the faces were all young
again, and looked as they had looked in the old times - but I went to bed
a hundred years old, every night - for meantime I had been seeing those
faces as they are now.
Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first, before I had become
adjusted to the changed state of things. I met young ladies who did not
seem to have changed at all; but they turned out to be the daughters of
the young ladies I had in mind - sometimes their grand-daughters.
