If he was not commonplace,
it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which was
simply clear and practical, but through some combination
of qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women
call him sweet--a word of theirs which conveys otherwise
indefinable excellences. Some of the more nervous and
excitable said that Tom Corey was as sweet as he could live;
but this perhaps meant no more than the word alone.
No man ever had a son less like him than Bromfield Corey.
If Tom Corey had ever said a witty thing, no one could
remember it; and yet the father had never said a witty
thing to a more sympathetic listener than his own son.
The clear mind which produced nothing but practical
results reflected everything with charming lucidity;
and it must have been this which endeared Tom Corey to every
one who spoke ten words with him. In a city where people
have good reason for liking to shine, a man who did
not care to shine must be little short of universally
acceptable without any other effort for popularity;
and those who admired and enjoyed Bromfield Corey loved
his son. Yet, when it came to accounting for Tom Corey,
as it often did in a community where every one's generation
is known to the remotest degrees of cousinship, they could
not trace his sweetness to his mother, for neither Anna
Bellingham nor any of her family, though they were so many
blocks of Wenham ice for purity and rectangularity, had ever
had any such savour; and, in fact, it was to his father,
whose habit of talk wronged it in himself, that they
had to turn for this quality of the son's.
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