"By the o'wars!" he used to declare, "the older I am the faster and thicker my hair grows. As for my cloak--it's the only suitable thing, sir, for a gentleman's wear."
His house had always been the social centre of Oldfield. When his friends elected him to the office of jailer, deeming that the best and easiest way of providing for him, since it was the nearest to a sinecure afforded by county politics, his family became still more active leaders of society. In those good old days of the Pennyroyal Region, a gentleman of birth and breeding might engage in any honest avocation, without the slightest injury to his social position. The only difference that the colonel's election to the office of jailer made to his family and his neighbors was, that the salary enabled him to indulge his hospitable and generous inclinations more fully. The salary was small, to be sure, but it was more than he had ever had before. About this time, too, the colonel's five beautiful daughters--all famous beauties--were in the perfection of bloom, and none of them had yet married, thus beginning the breaking up of the happy home. Such dinners, such suppers, such dances as there were in that plain old house! The colonel's handsome, indolent, sweet-tempered wife used to say that they were always ready for company, because they had the best they could get every day. Usually there was not the slightest conflict between the colonel's large social obligations and his small official duties. On the contrary, the more fine dinners and suppers he gave the higher the prisoners lived, and the happier everybody was. In fact, the colored vagrant who managed to get into the jail when winter was near--when there were no vegetables in anybody's garden, no fruit in anybody's orchard, no green corn in anybody's field--was regarded by his fellows as very fortunate indeed.