He went to Dartmouth College, travelled a little, showed a
disposition to read--and even to write--verses. As a teacher he probably
would have been successful; but his father was determined that he should
become a farmer, and Howard had neither the energy nor the disposition to
oppose him; he proved a complete failure. He married young, and, it was
generally considered, beneath him; for Mary Austin, with a heart of gold
and a disposition like sunshine, had little wealth or breeding and less
education to commend her; and she was herself too easy-going and
contented to prove the prod that Howard sadly needed in his wife.
Children came thick and fast; the eldest, James, had now gone South; the
second daughter, Ruth, was already married to a struggling storekeeper
living in White Water; Sally taught school; but the others were all still
at home, and all, except Austin, too young to be self-supporting--Thomas,
Molly, Katherine, and Edith. They had all caught their father's facility
for correct speech, rare in northern New England; most of them his love
of books, his formless and unfulfilled ambitions; more than one the
shiftlessness and incompetence that come partly from natural bent and
partly from hopelessness; while Sally and Thomas alone possessed the
sunny disposition and the ability to see the bright side of everything
and the good in everybody which was their mother's legacy to them.
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