Four squares farther on, the roar of commerce swelled and surged, in
storehouse and counting-room, on mart and shipboard and quay; but here
all was quiet, calm, secluded, as in the country, miles beyond.
Two houses besides our own shared the whole square between them, though
ours, the central one, possessed the largest inclosure, and was the
finest residence of the three, architecturally speaking; and the inmates
of these dwellings, with very few exceptions, constituted for years our
whole circle of friends and visitors.
So it will be seen how secluded was the life we led, how narrow the
sphere we moved in, despite our acknowledged wealth, which, with some
other attributes we possessed, had not failed, if desired, to confer on
us both power and position in the society we shunned rather than shared.
To my father's nature, however, retirement was as essential as routine.
He was one of those outwardly calm and inwardly excitable and nervous
people we sometimes encounter without detecting the fire beneath the
marble, the ever-burning lamp in the sarcophagus, unless we lift the lid
of rock to find it--an effort scarcely worth the making in any case, for
at best it lights only a tomb.
Extremely mild and self-contained in manner, and chary of opinion and
expression, he was at the same time a man of strong and implacable
prejudices and even bitter animosities when once engendered.
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