So
he had retired to Walton, and before Continental money had depreciated
more than half had bought acres by the thousand, and become
generalissimo of flocks and herds. Through the admiration of his
townsmen for his wounds, he rapidly and easily attained the rank
of Colonel, without the discomfort of fighting for it; and from his
excellent sense and the executive ability induced by military
habits, became, in turn, justice of the peace, deacon of the church,
town-clerk, and manager-general of Walton.
Nobody--that is to say, nobody in the family--spoke, when Colonel Fox
was in the house, unless first spoken to,--not even Dorcas. Such were
the domestic tactics of the last century, and Colonel Fox held fast to
old notions.
The social ones were far more liberal,--so very liberal, indeed, so
very free and easy, in the rural districts especially, that only a
knowledge of the primitive conditions under which such manners grew
up could possibly reconcile with them any impressions of purity and
discretion. In hearing of manners, therefore, it is always necessary
to remember that the children of country Puritans are and were wholly
different _in the grain_ from Paris or London society of the same
period,--as different, for example, as the Goddess of Reason from
our first mother, though at first glance one might think those two
similar.
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