Like a judicious lawyer, he
had endeavored to make his way easier by prepossessing the girl's
parents in his favor; but when he began to pass the lines of pleasing
civility, within which he had long known the judge and his wife, he was
surprised to find an undercurrent of seriousness, the existence of
which in the Prency family he never had suspected. The judge appeared
to estimate everything from the stand-point of religion and
righteousness; so did his wife; so, though in less measure, did the
daughter.
Such nonsense, as the self-sufficient youth regarded it, was annoying.
To visit a pleasant family with the intention of making a general
conquest and find himself confronted by a line of obstacles which he
always had regarded as trifling, yet which he was unable to overcome,
and to be told that religion was a reality because it had changed Sam
Kimper, one of the most insignificant wretches in town, from a lazy,
thievish drunkard to an honest, sober, industrious citizen,--all this
was to make war upon Reynolds Bartram's constitutional opinions as to
the fitness of things.
A change of opinion somewhere was necessary: so it must occur in the
Prency family, and as soon as it could be brought about. This was
Bartram's first conclusion, after an hour of deep thought.
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