THE AMERICAN SENATOR

By Anthony Trollope




VOLUME I



CHAPTER I

Dillsborough


I never could understand why anybody should ever have begun to live
at Dillsborough, or why the population there should have been at
any time recruited by new comers. That a man with a family should
cling to a house in which he has once established himself is
intelligible. The butcher who supplied Dillsborough, or the baker,
or the ironmonger, though he might not drive what is called a
roaring trade, nevertheless found himself probably able to live,
and might well hesitate before he would encounter the dangers of a
more energetic locality. But how it came to pass that he first got
himself to Dillsborough, or his father, or his grandfather before
him, has always been a mystery to me. The town has no attractions,
and never had any. It does not stand on a bed of coal and has no
connection with iron. It has no water peculiarly adapted for beer,
or for dyeing, or for the cure of maladies. It is not surrounded by