He had been married fifty-four years.

He had many children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and also even posterity, they all said-- thousands--yet the boy to whom I had told the cat story when we were callow juveniles was still present in that cheerful little old man.
Artimisia Briggs got married not long after refusing me.

She married Richmond, the stone mason, who was my Methodist Sunday-school teacher in the earliest days, and he had one distinction which I envied him: at some time or other he had hit his thumb with his hammer and the result was a thumb nail which remained permanently twisted and distorted and curved and pointed, like a parrot's beak.

I should not consider it an ornament now, I suppose, but it had a fascination for me then, and a vast value, because it was the only one in the town.

He was a very kindly and considerate Sunday-school teacher, and patient and compassionate, so he was the favorite teacher with us little chaps.