I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced, had no existence.

Strict people as the phrase is, professors of a stern religion, their very religion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain for the security of their possessions.

Austere faces, inexorable discipline, penance in this world and terror in the next--nothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and the void in my cowed heart everywhere--this was my childhood, if I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning of life.' 'Really though ?' said Mr Meagles, made very uncomfortable by the picture offered to his imagination.

'That was a tough commencement.

But come! You must now study, and profit by, all that lies beyond it, like a practical man.' 'If the people who are usually called practical, were practical in your direction--' 'Why, so they are!' said Mr Meagles.
'Are they indeed ?' 'Well, I suppose so,' returned Mr Meagles, thinking about it.