Mark Hurdlestone

Mark Hurdlestone, by Susanna
Moodie

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Title: Mark Hurdlestone Or, The Two Brothers
Author: Susanna Moodie
Release Date: October 9, 2005 [EBook #16836]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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HURDLESTONE ***

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MARK HURDLESTONE:
OR,

THE TWO BROTHERS.
BY MRS. MOODIE,
(Sister of Agnes Strickland.)
AUTHOR OF "ROUGHING IT IN THE BUSH," "ENTHUSIASM,"
ETC
The fire burns low, these winter nights are cold; I'd fain to bed, and
take my usual rest, But duty cries, "There's work for thee to do; Stir up
the embers, fetch another log, To cheer the empty hearth. This is the
hour When fancy calls to life her busy train, And thou must note the
vision ere it flies."
* * * * *
COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME.
* * * * *
THIRD EDITION.
NEW YORK:
DE WITT & DAVENPORT, PUBLISHERS,
162 NASSAU STREET.

MARK HURDLESTONE;
OR,
THE TWO BROTHERS.
CHAPTER I.

Say, who art thou--thou lean and haggard wretch! Thou living satire on
the name of man! Thou that hast made a god of sordid gold, And to
thine idol offered up thy soul? Oh, how I pity thee thy wasted years:
Age without comfort--youth that had no prime. To thy dull gaze the
earth was never green; The face of nature wore no cheering smile, For
ever groping, groping in the dark; Making the soulless object of thy
search The grave of all enjoyment.--S.M.
Towards the close of the last century, there lived in the extensive parish
of Ashton, in the county of ----, a hard-hearted, eccentric old man,
called Mark Hurdlestone, the lord of the manor, the wealthy owner of
Oak Hall and its wide demesne, the richest commoner in England, the
celebrated miser.
Mark Hurdlestone was the wonder of the place; people were never tired
of talking about him--of describing his strange appearance, his odd
ways and penurious habits. He formed a lasting theme of conversation
to the gossips of the village, with whom the great man at the Hall
enjoyed no enviable notoriety. That Mark Hurdlestone was an object of
curiosity, fear, and hatred, to his humble dependents, created no feeling
of surprise in those who were acquainted with him, and had studied the
repulsive features of his singular character.
There was not a drop of the milk of human kindness in his composition.
Regardless of his own physical wants, he despised the same wants in
others. Charity sued to him in vain, and the tear of sorrow made no
impression on his stony heart. Passion he had felt--cruel, ungovernable
passion. Tenderness was foreign to his nature--the sweet influences of
the social virtues he had never known.
Mark Hurdlestone hated society, and never mingled in festive scenes.
To his neighbors he was a stranger; and he had no friends. With power
to command, and wealth to purchase enjoyment, he had never travelled
a hundred miles beyond the smoke of his own chimneys; and was as
much a stranger to the world and its usages as a savage, born and
brought up in the wilderness. There were very few persons in his native
place with whom he had exchanged a friendly greeting; and though his
person was as well known as the village spire or the town pump, no one

could boast that he had shaken hands with him.
One passion, for the last fifty years of his unhonored life, had absorbed
every faculty of his mind, and, like Aaron's serpent, had swallowed all
the rest. His money-chest was his world; there the gold he worshipped
so devoutly was enshrined; and his heart, if ever he possessed one, was
buried with it: waking or sleeping, his spirit for ever hovered around
this mysterious spot. There nightly he knelt, but not to pray: prayer had
never enlightened the darkened soul of the gold-worshipper. Favored
by the solitude and silence of the night, he stole thither, to gloat over
his hidden treasure. There, during the day, he sat for hours entranced,
gazing upon the enormous mass of useless metal, which he had
accumulated through a long worthless life, to wish it more, and to lay
fresh schemes for its increase. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," saith
the preacher; but this hoarding of money is the very madness of vanity.
Mark Hurdlestone's remarkable person would have formed a good
subject for a painter--it