Still,
although this honest couple's integrity was known, there were many
significant looks turned upon Phelim, and many spirited prophecies
uttered with especial reference to him, all of which hinted at the
probability of his dying something in the shape of a perpendicular
death. This habit, then, of adding to their furniture, was one cause of
the hostility between him and his parents; we say one, for there were at
least, a good round dozen besides. His touch, for instance, was fatal to
crockery; he stripped his father's Sunday clothes of their buttons,
with great secrecy and skill; he was a dead shot at the panes of his
neighbors' windows; a perfect necromancer at sucking eggs through
pin-holes; took great delight in calling home the neighboring farmers'
workingmen to dinner an hour before it was ready; and was in fact a
perfect master in many other ingenious manifestations of character, ere
he reached his twelfth year.
Now, it was about this period that the small-pox made its appearance in
the village. Indescribable was the dismay of Phelim's parents, lest
he among others might become a victim to it. Vaccination, had not then
surmounted the prejudices with which every discovery beneficial to
mankind is at first met; and the people were left principally to the
imposture of quacks, or the cunning of certain persons called "fairy
men" or "sonsie women.
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