Basil

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: can not know us; God alone judges, and knows too. Let my character appear -- as far as any human character can appear in its integrity in this world -- in my actions, when I describe the one eventful passage in my life which forms the basis of this narrative. In the mean time, it is first necessary that I should say more about the members of my family. Two of them, at least, will be found important to the progress of events in these pages. I make no attempt to judge their characters; I only describe them -- whether rightly or wrongly, I know not -- as they appeared to me. I Always considered my father -- I speak of him in the past tense, because we are now separated forever; because he is henceforth as dead to me as if the grave had closed over him -- I always considered my father to be the proudest man I ever knew; the proudest man I ever heard of. His was not that conventional pride which the popular notions are fond of characterizing by a stiff, stately carriage; by a rigid expression of features; by a hard, severe intonation of voice; by set speeches of contempt for poverty and rags, and rhapsodical braggadocio about rank and breeding. My father's pride had nothing of this about it. It was that quiet, negative, courteous, inbred pride, which only the closest observation could detect; which no ordinary observers ever detected at all. Who that observed him in communication with any of the farmers on any of his estates -- who that saw the manner in which he lifted his hat when he accidentally met any of those farmers' wives -- who that noticed his hearty welcome to the man of the people, when that man happened to be a man of genius -- would have thought him proud ? On such occasions as these, if he had any pride, it was impossible to detect it. But seeing him when, ...