{"product_id":"2940013158245","title":"THROCKMORTON","description":"CHAPTER I.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a lowland Virginia neighborhood, strangely cut off from the rest of\u003cbr\u003ethe world geographically, and wrapped in a profound and charming\u003cbr\u003estillness, a little universe exists. It has its oracles of law,\u003cbr\u003emedicine, and divinity; its wars and alliances. Free from that outward\u003cbr\u003econtact which makes an intolerable sameness among people, its types\u003cbr\u003edevelop quaintly. There is peace, and elbow-room for everybody's\u003cbr\u003epeculiarities.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSuch was the Severn neighborhood--called so from Severn church. Every\u003cbr\u003ebrick in this old pile had been brought from green England two hundred\u003cbr\u003eyears before. It seemed as if, in those early days, nothing made with\u003cbr\u003ehands should be without picturesqueness; and so this ancient church,\u003cbr\u003epaid for in hogsheads of black tobacco, which was also the currency in\u003cbr\u003ewhich the hard-riding, hard-drinking parsons took their dues, was peaked\u003cbr\u003eand gabled most beautifully. The bricks, mellowed by two centuries, had\u003cbr\u003ebecome a rich, dull red, upon which, year after year, in the enchanted\u003cbr\u003eSouthern summers and the fitful Southern winters, mosses and gray\u003cbr\u003elichens laid their clinging fingers. It was set far back from the broad,\u003cbr\u003ewhite road, and gnarled live-oaks and silver beeches and the melancholy\u003cbr\u003eweeping-willows grew about the churchyard. Their roots had pushed, with\u003cbr\u003egentle persistence, through the crumbling brick wall that surrounded it,\u003cbr\u003ewhere most of the tombstones rested peacefully upon the ground as they\u003cbr\u003echanced to fall. Within the church itself, modern low-backed pews had\u003cbr\u003esupplanted the ancient square boxes during an outbreak of philistinism\u003cbr\u003ein the fifties. At the same time, a wooden flooring had been laid over\u003cbr\u003ethe flat stones in the aisles, under which dead and gone vicars--for the\u003cbr\u003eparish had a vicar in colonial days--slept quietly. The interior was\u003cbr\u003edarkened by the branches of the trees that pressed against the wall and\u003cbr\u003epeered curiously through the small, clear panes of the oblong windows;\u003cbr\u003eand over all the singular, unbroken peace and silence of the region\u003cbr\u003ebrooded.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe country round about was fruitful and tame, the slightly rolling\u003cbr\u003elandscape becoming as flat as Holland toward the rich river-bottoms. The\u003cbr\u003erivers were really estuaries, making in from the salt ocean bays, and as\u003cbr\u003ebriny as the sea itself. Next the church was the parsonage land, still\u003cbr\u003eknown as the Glebe, although glebes and tithes had been dead these\u003cbr\u003ehundred years. The Glebe house, which was originally plain and\u003cbr\u003eold-fashioned, had been smartened up by the rector, the Rev. Edmund\u003cbr\u003eMorford, until it looked like an old country-woman masquerading in a\u003cbr\u003eballet costume; but the Rev. Edmund thought it beautiful, and only\u003cbr\u003ewatched his chance to lay sacrilegious hands on the old church and to\u003cbr\u003eplaster it all over with ecclesiastical knickknacks of various sorts.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47147504730352,"sku":"2940013158245","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013158245_p0.jpg?v=1763577615","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013158245","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}