gift, a dangerous and
destructive thing in woman. Privately considering her relation to his
father, he was forced to the conclusion that their union was a most
distressing instance of the proneness of really great minds to leave
their deep channels and seek the shallow waters in the every-day
concerns of life. He felt vaguely that she was narrow and provincial;
for had she not always lived on the flats, a region bounded by the
Square on the north and by Stoke's furniture factory on the south? On
the west the flats extended as far as civilization itself extended in
that direction, that is, to the gas house and the creek bank, while on
the east they were roughly defined by Mitchell's tannery and the brick
slaughter-house, beyond which vacant lots merged into cow pastures, the
cow pastures yielding in their turn to the real country, where the level
valley rolled up into hills which tilted the great green fields to the
sun.

Mrs. Shrimplin had been born on the flats, and the flats had witnessed
her meeting and mating with Shrimplin, when that gentleman had first
appeared in Mount Hope in the interest of Whiting's celebrated
tooth-powder, to the use of which he was not personally committed. At
that time he was also an itinerant bill-poster and had his lodgings at
Maxy Schaffer's Railroad Hotel hard by the B. & O. tracks.

Mr. Shrimplin was five feet three, and narrow chested. A drooping flaxen
mustache shaded a sloping chin and a loose under lip, while a pair of
pale eyes looked sadly out upon the world from the shadow of a hooked
nose.

Mr. Joe Montgomery, Mrs. Shrimplin's brother-in-law, present on the
occasion of her marriage to the little bill-poster, had critically
surveyed the bridegroom and had been moved to say to a friend, "Shrimp
certainly do favor a peanut!"

Mr. Montgomery's comparative criticism of her husband's appearance had
in due season reached the ears of the bride, and had caused a rupture
in the family that the years had not healed, but her resentment had been
mo

The Just and the Unjust

Notka biograficzna

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