No wonder
the men-folks die, or move away, like Justin Peabody; a place with such a mess
o' women-folks ain't healthy to live in, whatever Lobelia Brewster may say."
III
Justin Peabody had once faithfully struggled with the practical difficulties
of life in Edgewood, or so he had thought, in those old days of which Nancy
Wentworth was thinking when she wiped the paint of the Peabody pew. Work in
the mills did not attract him; he had no capital to invest in a stock of goods
for store-keeping; school-teaching offered him only a pittance; there remained
then only the farm, if he were to stay at home and keep his mother company.
"Justin don't seem to take no holt of things," said the neighbors.
"Good Heavens!" It seemed to him that there were no things to take hold of!
That was his first thought; later he grew to think that the trouble all lay in
himself, and both thoughts bred weakness.
The farm had somehow supported the family in the old Deacon's time, but Justin
seemed unable to coax a competence from the soil. He could, and did, rise
early and work late; till the earth, sow crops; but he could not make the rain
fall nor the sun shine at the times he needed them, and the elements, however
much they might seem to favor his neighbors, seldom smiled on his enterprises.
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