A “Character.”
Old Dr. Standish was represented by our authority as “a huge, burly, surly, churlish old fellow, who died at an extremely advanced age in the year 1825.
“He was as unsociable, hoggish an old curmudgeon as ever rode a stout hack. Without a companion, save, occasionally, ‘poor Tom, a Thetford breeches maker,’ ‘he sat every night, for fifty years, in the chief parlor of the Holmnook, in drinking brandy and water, and smoking a “church warden.”’ Occasionally his wife, ‘a quiet, inoffensive little body,’ would object to the doctor’s ways, and, forgetting that she was a woman, offer an opinion of her own.
“On such occasions, Dr. Standish thrashed her soundly with a dog-whip.”
In consequence of too oft repetition of this unpleasantness, she ran away.
“Standish’s mode of riding was characteristic of the man. Straight on he went, at a lumbering, six-miles-an-hour gait, dash, dash, dash, through the muddy roads, sitting loosely in his saddle, heavy and shapeless as a bag of potatoes, looking down at his slouchy brown corduroy breeches and clay-colored boots, the toes of which pointed in opposite directions, with a perpetual scowl on his brow, never vouchsafing a word to a living creature.
“‘Good morning to you, doctor; ’tis a nice day,’ a friendly voice would exclaim.
“‘Ugh!’ Standish would grunt, while on, dash, dash, dash! he rode.
“He never turned out for a wayfarer.
“A frolicsome curate, who had met old Standish, and received nothing but a grunt in reply to his urbane greeting, arranged the following plan to make the doctor speak.