A Bloodsmoor Romance Read Free Page A

in the interests of conjugal peace. (The elegant brougham, adorned with the Kidde­master coat-of-arms on its sides—a demilion rampant, grasping an olive branch—was drawn by four high-stepping, and immaculately groomed, white geldings, with braided and beribboned manes and tails, and “treated” coats and hooves: the coats being whitened, and the hooves more emphatically blackened, by art, so that the noble steeds might offer a yet more dramatic appearance, when glimps’d in public, than they might have done otherwise. Thus John Quincy’s father-in-law, the retired Chief Justice Godfrey Kidde­master, indulged himself, in small ways, and harmless manifestations of pride: this desire for a striking public appearance being, perhaps, nothing more than an aspect of his Federalist heritage, for we must recall that President Washington himself similarly decreed that his horses be “treated,” with an eye toward exciting admiration amongst the common folk. And I cannot think but that it was a considerable pleasure, for these personages, to gaze upon the Kidde­master carriage as it passed, drawn by the beauteous horses, and swaying with luxuriant grace on its large C-springs—a properly attired Irish driver up front, and an attendant footman, in livery, perched high at the back, as rigidly perfect in posture as a statue.) “I fear we are a spectacle, being, after all, but Zinns, ” John Quincy quietly observed, “yet I suppose the Kidde­masters must be indulged; and it is, in any case, but a temporary endurance.”
    Whereupon his vivacious daughter Malvinia could not resist observing, to anyone who cared to hear: “Alas, dear Father, that it is but temporary: and tomorrow, if we venture forth, we shall be obliged to be carried in our own humble surrey, that hardly requires the Zinn coat-of-arms, to be identified as ours.”
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    IT IS NECESSARY, I believe, for me to interrupt my narrative at this point—the Zinns not yet arrived at the tea, the sky a feckless china blue, the dread abduction many hours hence—in order to quickly sketch a portrait of Mr. John Quincy Zinn, that the reader may become more adequately cognizant of him, in terms of his great value, in the eyes of his daughters, and his slow-growing reputation, in the eyes of the world.
    In this year of 1879, John Quincy’s fame lay all before him, and he was not yet popularly known by the initials J.Q.Z., as he came to be, in the closing years of the century. Yet, withal, he enjoy’d a considerable respect amongst his fellow inventors, men of science, and philosophers: witness the presence of the gentlemen from the American Philosophical Society, who wished simply to meet with him on an informal basis, and converse with him with an eye toward promoting his candidacy, as a member of their austere organization. (In his old age, what honors will be offered! From the Royal Society of the British Empire, for instance; and from other international organizations, as well as those in the States, that had, for a time, withheld recognition from the modest-temper’d Mr. Zinn.)
    A more respectful consideration of our subject, and his myriad achievements, will be offered elsewhere in this history: for I must limn, as clearly as possible, the biographical facts pertaining to this famous American, that his role—both tragic, and triumphant —will be adequately comprehended. Suffice it to say, for the present, that he rose from a humble rural background, in the mountains of southern Pennsylvania; that he enjoy’d a meteoric rise to prominence, in Philadelphia, in the 1850’s, as a consequence of his advanced pedagogical methods, in a rural common school in Mouth-of-Lebanon, Pennsylvania; that he fell most passionately in love with Miss Prudence Kidde­master, the daughter of the distinguished juror Godfrey Kiddemaster (then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of