Chapter 5 - Page 2

village, where everybody knew everybody, and claimed the privilege to
know and discuss their characters, and where there were few topics of
public interest to take off their attention, a very considerable
portion of town talk and criticism fell upon him. The old town had a
certain provincialism, which is less the characteristic of towns in
these days, when society circulates so freely, than then: besides, it
was a very rude epoch, just when the country had come through the war
of the Revolution, and while the surges of that commotion were still
seething and swelling, and while the habits and morals of every
individual in the community still felt its influence; and especially
the contest was too recent for an Englishman to be in very good odor,
unless he should cease to be English, and become more American than the
Americans themselves in repudiating British prejudices or principles,
habits, mode of thought, and everything that distinguishes Britons at
home or abroad. As Doctor Grim did not see fit to do this, and as,
moreover, he was a very doubtful, questionable, morose, unamiable old
fellow, not seeking to make himself liked nor deserving to be so, he
was a very unpopular person in the town where he had chosen to reside.
Nobody thought very well of him; the respectable people had heard of
his pipe and brandy-bottle; the religious community knew that he never
showed himself at church or meeting; so that he had not that very
desirable strength (in a society split up into many sects) of being
able to rely upon the party sympathies of any one of them. The mob
hated him with the blind sentiment that makes one surly cur hostile to
another surly cur. He was the most isolated individual to be found
anywhere; and, being so unsupported, everybody was his enemy.

The town, as it happened, had been pleased to interest itself much in
this matter of Doctor Grim and the two children, insomuch as he never
sent them to school, nor came with them to meeting of any kind, but was
bringing them up ignorant heathen to all appearances, and, as many
believed, was devoting them in some way to the great spider, to which
he had bartered his own soul. It had been mooted among the selectmen,
the fathers of the town, whether their duty did not require them to put
the children under more suitable guardianship; a measure which, it may
be, was chiefly hindered by the consideration that, in that case, the
cost of supporting them would probably be transferred from the grim
Doctor's shoulders to those of the community. Nevertheless, they did
what they could. Maidenly ladies, prim and starched, in one or two
instances called upon the Doctor--the two children meanwhile being in
the graveyard at play--to give him Christian advice as to the