This was
one of the things that commended Boston to Bromfield
Corey during the summer; and if his son had any qualms
about the life he had entered upon with such vigour,
it must have been a relief to him that there was scarcely
a soul left to wonder or pity. By the time people got back
to town the fact of his connection with the mineral paint
man would be an old story, heard afar off with different
degrees of surprise, and considered with different
degrees of indifference. A man has not reached the age
of twenty-six in any community where he was born and reared
without having had his capacity pretty well ascertained;
and in Boston the analysis is conducted with an unsparing
thoroughness which may fitly impress the un-Bostonian mind,
darkened by the popular superstition that the Bostonians
blindly admire one another. A man's qualities are sifted
as closely in Boston as they doubtless were in Florence
or Athens; and, if final mercy was shown in those cities
because a man was, with all his limitations, an Athenian
or Florentine, some abatement might as justly be made
in Boston for like reason. Corey's powers had been gauged
in college, and he had not given his world reason to think
very differently of him since he came out of college.
He was rated as an energetic fellow, a little indefinite
in aim, with the smallest amount of inspiration that can save
a man from being commonplace.
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