Amos Kilbright | Page 8

however, I think the case will be otherwise.
If there are changes there I shall notice them. In a little place like that,
however, I have hopes that the changes will not be great."
He was very conservative, and I could see that in many cases he
thought the old ways of doing things much better than the new ones. He
was, however, a polite and sensible man, and knew better than to make
criticisms to one who had befriended him; but in some cases he could
not conceal his disapprobation. He had seen a train of cars before I met
him, and I was not able to induce him to approach again a railroad track.
Whatever other feelings he may have had at first sight of a train in
motion were entirely swallowed up in his abhorrence of this mode of
travelling.
"We must not be in a hurry," said my wife when we talked of these
matters. "When he gets more accustomed to these things he will be
more surprised at them."
There were some changes, however, which truly did astonish him, and
these were the alterations--in his opinion entirely uncalled for and
unwarrantable--which had been made in the spelling of the words of
our language since he had gone to school. No steam-engine, no
application of electricity, none of the modern inventions which I
showed him, caused him the emotions of amazement which were
occasioned by the information that in this country "honor" was now
spelled without a u.
During this time Mr. Kilbright's interest in his grandson seemed to be
on the increase. He would frequently walk past the house of that old

gentleman merely for the purpose of looking at him as he sat by the
open window reading his newspaper or quietly smoking his evening
pipe on a bench in his side yard. When he had been with me about ten
days he said: "I now feel that I must go and make myself known to my
grandson. I am earning my own subsistence; and, however he may look
upon me, he need not fear that I am come to be a burden upon him.
You will not wonder, sir, that I long to meet with this son of the little
baby girl I left behind me."
I did not wonder, and my wife and I agreed to go with him that very
evening to old Mr. Scott's house. The old gentleman received us very
cordially in his little parlor.
"You are a stranger in this town, sir," he said to Kilbright. "I did not
exactly catch your name--Kilbright?" he said, when it had been
repeated to him, "that is one of my family names, but it is long since I
have heard of anyone bearing it. My mother was a Kilbright, but she
had no brothers, and no uncles of the name. My grandfather was the
last of our branch of the Kilbrights. His name was Amos, and he was a
Bixbury man. From what part of the country do you come, sir?"
"My name is Amos, and I was born in Bixbury."
Old Mr. Scott sat up very straight in his chair. "Young man, that seems
to me impossible!" he exclaimed. "How could there be any Kilbrights
in Bixbury and I not know of it?" Then taking a pair of big silver
spectacles from his pocket he put them on and attentively surveyed his
visitor, whose countenance during this scrutiny was filled with
emotion.
Presently the old gentleman took off his spectacles and, rising from his
chair, went into another room. Quickly returning, he brought with him
a small oil-painting in a narrow, old-fashioned frame. He stood it up on
a table in a position where a good light from the lamp fell upon it. It
was the portrait of a young man with a fresh, healthy face, dressed in an
old-style high-collared coat, with a wide cravat coming up under his
chin, and a bit of ruffle sticking out from his shirt-bosom. My wife and
I gazed at it with awe.
"That," said old Mr. Scott, "is the picture of my grandfather, Amos
Kilbright, taken at twenty-five. He was drowned at sea some years
afterward, but exactly how I do not know. My mother did not
remember him at all. And I must say," he continued, putting on his

spectacles again, "that there is something of a family likeness between
you, sir, and that picture. If it wasn't for the continental clothes in the
painting there would be a good deal of resemblance--yes, a very great
deal."
"It is my portrait," said Mr. Kilbright, his voice trembling as he spoke.
"It was painted by Tatlow Munson in the winter of seventeen eighty, in
payment for my surveying a large tract of land north