The Freemason's Daughter: A Novel — page 45: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

36 THE FREEMASONS DAUGHTER. of our mutual delinquency gives him to extort, to get drunk, insult and bully his employer at his pleasure ? The same conscientious, honest, moral Simon Gridley ! Go to, man—the devil himself must grin at such repentance. Once more, if you want money, take it; 1f you have debts at the tap-room, pay them; but cease to annoy me with qualms which last only while the fumes of the last debauch are expiring, and which the next one will bury in oblivion. But if,” he added, ‘‘ you have really anything serious or worthy of my attention to state, do so at once—I hate beating about the bush.” ‘* Poor Lawrence is dying,” said the clerk. “Well?” | ‘Well!’ repeated Gridley ; “I should have thought that the death of that poor boy might have caused even you a pang; you see it was not for the gratification of idle curiosity I asked youif you had a conscience.” “‘T can’t save him,” observed the merchant, brutally. ‘You might have done !” ‘“* How so?” ‘* By atonement.” ‘ Humph!” ejaculated Gilbert; ‘‘who knows? wealth is not always a means of health—many a man ruins his constitution from having the means of dissipation at his command; though some,” he muttered, “ have temperaments that no excess can shake.”’ ‘¢ Mine, for instance !”’ said the old man, with a bitter smile, for he doubted not that the indulgence in his ecomnuicloooks (SO