The Red Rover by James Fenimore Cooper
page 12 of 588 (02%)
page 12 of 588 (02%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
often felt in the American autumn; and the worthy mechanic laboured at his
calling, seated on his shop board, at an open window, far better satisfied with himself than many of those whose fortune it is to be placed in state, beneath canopies of velvet and gold. On the outer side of the little building, a tall, awkward, but vigorous and well-formed countryman was lounging, with one shoulder placed against the side of the shop, as if his legs found the task of supporting his heavy frame too grievous to be endured with out assistance, seemingly in waiting for the completion of the garment at which the other toiled, and with which he intended to adorn the graces of his person, in an adjoining parish, on the succeeding sabbath. In order to render the minutes shorter, and, possibly in indulgence to a powerful propensity to talk, of which he who wielded the needle was somewhat the subject, but few of the passing moments were suffered to escape without a word from one or the other of the parties. As the subject of their discourse had a direct reference to the principal matter of our tale, we shall take leave to give such portions of it to the reader as we deem most relevant to a clear exposition of that which is to follow. The latter will always bear in mind, that he who worked was a man drawing into the wane of life; that he bore about him the appearance of one who, either from incompetency or from some fatality of fortune, had been doomed to struggle through the world, keeping poverty from his residence only by the aid of great industry and rigid frugality; and that the idler was a youth of an age and condition that the acquisition of an entire set of habiliments formed to him a sort of era in his adventures. "Yes." exclaimed the indefatigable shaper of cloth, with a species of sigh which might have been equally construed into an evidence of the fulness of his mental enjoyment, or of the excess of his bodily labours; |
|