Ellen Clifford
by Sarah Carter Edgarton Mayo (9780217828505)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. ' To be, or not to be: that is the question? Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against assailing troubles, And, by opposing, end them.' Hamlet. Edred Clifford was a man of very easy, credulous disposition, and as naturally pliable in character as was ever clay in the hands of a potter. Wild and volatile in youth, he had mingled with companions who had all his habits of dissipation, with very little of his amiability of heart; and, intoxicated by their caresses and applause, he had plunged into scenes of vice from which his natural feelings would have revolted. The voice of his pure-hearted Margaret won him awhile from the seductions of the charmer, and he vowed a reformation?but his jovial propensities again led him astray, and this time secretly. It is possible, had Mr?. Clifford been conscious of his earliest renewed aberrations from rectitude, she might have saved him; but to a natural timidity of mind that shrunk from a deepscrutiny into the habits and actions of others, she added an undoubting trust in those she loved?a trust that long outlived the worth it reposed in. When at length awakened to his condition she found him sunk, past her redemption, in the lowest degradation. Honor, virtue, property were gone?love was faded, and ambition dead; yet, lost as he was to reason and uprightness, he never directly injured, or spoke harshly to a member of his household; and he would have resented any intimation that he was an unkind or unfaithful guardian to his family. He could not comprehend how a habit, whose effects, as he thought, were confined to his own person, could, in any way, bring misery upon his dependants, so long as he toiled for their sustenance, and was good-tem...

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