ome set him down as a sage, some as a fool. The neighboring clergy
respected him as a scholar, "breathing libraries;" the ladies despised
him as an absent pedant who had no more gallantry than a stock or a
stone. The poor loved him for his charities, but laughed at him as a
weak sort of man, easily taken in. Yet the squires and farmers found
that, in their own matters of rural business, he had always a fund of
curious information to impart; and whoever, young or old, gentle or
simple, learned or ignorant, asked his advice, it was given with not
more humility than wisdom. In the common affairs of life he seemed
incapable of acting for himself; he left all to my mother; or, if taken
unawares, was pretty sure to be the dupe. But in those very affairs, if
another consulted him, his eye brightened, his brow cleared, the desire
of serving made him a new being,--cautious, profound, practical. Too
lazy or too languid where only his own interests were at stake, touch
his benevolence, and all the wheels of the clock-work felt the impetus
of the master-spring. No wonder that, to others, the nut of such
a character was hard to crack! But in the eyes of my poor mother,
Augustine (familiarly Austin) Caxton was the best and the greatest of
human beings; and she ought to have known him well, for she studied him
with her whole heart, knew every trick of his face, and, nine times out
of ten, divined what he was going to say before he opened his lips. Yet
certainly there were deeps in his nature which the plummet of her tender
woman's wit had never sounded; and certainly it sometimes happened that,
even in his most domestic colloquialisms, my mother was in doubt whether
he was the simple, straightforward person he was mostly taken for.
There was, indeed, a kind of suppressed, subtle irony about him, too
unsubstantial to be popularly called humor, but dimly implying some sort
of jest, which he kept all to himself; and this was only noticeable when
he said something that sounded very grave, or appeared to the grave very
silly and irrational.

That I did not go to school--at least to what Mr. Squills understood by
the word "school"--quite so soon as intended, I need scarcely observe.
In fact, my mother managed so well--my nursery, by means of double
doors, was so placed out of hearing--that my father, for the most part,
was privileged, if he pleased, to forget my existence. He was once
vaguely recalled to it on the occasion of my christening.