They ought to
be reckoned mistaken, of course, transparently in error, yet neither son
nor daughter condemned him. Neither did his sister, in the pathetic
innocence and purity of her middle-age maidenhood.
This moved him to thankfulness, none the less genuine because shot with
self-mockery. For he was curious to observe how, as the last urgings of
ambition and thirst of power fell away from him,--he riding under escort
of Death, the black captain--all tributes of human tenderness and
approval gained in value.--Not the approval of notable personages, of
those high in office, nor even that of sympathetic critics and readers;
but of persons in his own immediate voisinage, bound to him by
friendship, by association, or the tie of blood.--Their good-will was
precious to him as never before. He craved to be in perfect amity with
every member of that restricted circle. Hence it vexed and fretted him to
know the circle incomplete, through the exclusion of one rather
flagrantly intimate example.
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