bright hazel eyes and finely curling hair, prematurely white;
he was a distinguished classical scholar, and he was also
acutely sensitive to the construction of an English sentence.
He taught all his own children in their early years, and one
of his sons till the latter became of university age, and he
augmented his income by taking pupils into the house,
three and four at a time until his own family grew too large
for them to be accommodated. The Rector enjoyed a state
of rational, almost ideal happiness. He lived the life of a
scholar, devoting the greater portion of the time that was
left over from his parish duties to his books, and at the same
time he preserved a simplicity complete enough for perfect
freedom yet compatible with every reasonable comfort. He
had his strawberry beds, his elm walk, his home meadows,
his position in a pleasant neighborhood as a much-respected
country gentleman; but though he kept his carriage, the
interior of the Rectory had in some respects the plainness of
a cottage; the walls and ceiling were joined without any
cornice, and some of the walls were whitewashed; the sun-
light which struck through the plantation or the fire and
candlelight at night brought out nothing rich, merely the
essentials of a living room in an age that made nothing crude
or mean; chairs and a table, a pier glass, a glass-fronted cup-
board with a gilt china tea service behind its panes. In a
small front parlor to the right of the front door, Mrs. Austen
with her aristocratic nose was usually to be found, darning
the family stockings whether visitors were there or no. She
might, strong in the consciousness of her own, be "amusingly
particular" about other people's noses, but with a growing
family on her hands, she had no idea of giving in to fine lady-
ism, and people were welcome to call provided they did not
expect her to put away the mending. She always said that
she was no beauty: her sister Jane was beautiful, but she

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