The condition of the Landlady's family is, from what I learn, such as to
make the connection I have alluded to, I hope with delicacy, desirable
for incidental as well as direct reasons, provided a fitting match could
be found. I was startled at hearing her address by the familiar name of
Benjamin the young physician I have referred to, until I found on
inquiry, what I might have guessed by the size of his slices of pie and
other little marks of favoritism, that he was her son. He has recently
come back from Europe, where he has topped off his home training with a
first-class foreign finish. As the Landlady could never have educated
him in this way out of the profits of keeping boarders, I was not
surprised when I was told that she had received a pretty little property
in the form of a bequest from a former boarder, a very kind-hearted,
worthy old gentleman who had been long with her and seen how hard she
worked for food and clothes for herself and this son of hers, Benjamin
Franklin by his baptismal name. Her daughter had also married well, to a
member of what we may call the post-medical profession, that, namely,
which deals with the mortal frame after the practitioners of the healing
art have done with it and taken their leave. So thriving had this
son-in-law of hers been in his business, that his wife drove about in her
own carriage, drawn by a pair of jet-black horses of most dignified
demeanor, whose only fault was a tendency to relapse at once into a walk
after every application of a stimulus that quickened their pace to a
trot; which application always caused them to look round upon the driver
with a surprised and offended air, as if he had been guilty of a grave
indecorum.
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