Still, we accepted her one crowning achievement,
and never urged her to further proof. In Tiverton we never look genius
in the mouth. Nor did Hannah herself propose developing her gift.
Relieved from the spur of those two unquiet spirits who had begotten
her, she settled down to sit all day in the sun, learning new patterns
of crochet; and having cheerfully let her farm run down, she died at
last in a placid poverty.
Then there was Desire Baker, who belonged to the era of colonial
hardship, and who, through a redundant punctuation, is relegated to a
day still more remote. For some stone-cutter, scornful of working by
the card, or born with an inordinate taste for periods, set forth,
below her _obiit_, the astounding statement:--
"The first woman. She made the journey to Boston. By stage."
Here, too, are the ironies whereof departed life is prodigal. This is
the tidy lot of Peter Merrick, who had a desire to stand well with the
world, in leaving it, and whose purple and fine linen were embodied in
the pomp of death. He was a cobbler, and he put his small savings
together to erect a modest monument to his own memory. Every Sunday he
visited it, "after meetin'," and perhaps his day-dreams, as he sat
leather-aproned on his bench, were still of that white marble idealism.
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