Margaret Wolfe Hamilton Hungerford

From the book:The professor, sitting before his untasted breakfast, is looking thevery picture of dismay. Two letters lie before him; one is in his hand, the other is on the table-cloth. Both are open; but of one, the opening lines - that tell of the death of his old friend - are all he has read; whereas he has read the other from start to finish, already three times. It is from the old friend himself, written a week before his death, and very urgent and very pleading. The professor has mastered its contents with ever-increasing consternation. Indeed so great a revolution has it created in his mind, that his face - (the index of that excellent part of him) - has, for the moment, undergone a complete change. Any ordinary acquaintance now entering the professor's rooms (and those acquaintances might be whittled down to quite a little few), would hardly have known him. For the abstraction that, as a rule, characterizes his features - the way he has of looking at you, as if he doesn't see you, that harasses the simple, and enrages the others - is all gone! Not a trace of it remains. It has given place to terror, open and unrestrained.

Book digitized by Google from the library of the University of Michigan and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.

Book digitized by Google from the library of the University of Michigan and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.