Old times in middle Georgia Author:Richard Malcolm Johnston Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THEIR COUSIN LETHY It seemed to me, child as I was, rather pitiful that, as Mr. Pate grew harder of hearing, and older, people, although never meaning to be o... more »ffensive or impolite, kept themselves as much apart from his society as was possible to respectful friendly relations. This was on account of his increased garrulousness, and his frequent complainings of the little attention paid to his words, sometimes narrative, as often admonitory. A harmless egotist, honestly believing himself to be a very charitable and therefore a very useful gossip, his habit was, before his deafness came on, to find out, as a matter of simple neighborly duty, every possible thing about current neighborhood existence, and then, without ever dreaming of charging anything for it, to offer his counsel for its disposal or utilization. This counsel some might, others might not, accept. He was a man too well poised to be fretted by neglect of taking help gratuitously extended by one to whom so much wisdom had been imparted by Heaven, being accustomed at all times toreflect in entire calmness that his mission was only the giving of counsel, not the enforcing its adoption. The intimacy between him and me, notwithstanding the difference of more than threescore years in our ages, became only the closer as adult listeners who avoided his society increased in numbers. Somehow I became much interested in what he had to say, especially regarding things happening before my day. Not without some spirit of romance in his being, he told me several of his recollections in that line which sometimes I rather like to recall. These fond recurrings of old men to their young times seem to me of the dearest among the Almighty's tendernesses to second childhood in human existence. One afternoon, when he and I had become th...« less