Litchfield

( David ). Deaf, rich man, married to a wife young enough to be his child. He thinks and feels much, but says little. His dry humor, harmle cynicism, and benevolent schemes for the needy, make him a man of mark. His mother-in-law, a manœuverer of the first water, bends over his dying bed with strained solicitude, mentally reckoning up the amount he will leave her daughter. “He looked up in her face; he was almost smiling. ‘ A—watched—pot—never—boils! ’ he said, slowly and with difficulty, and then once more closed his eyes.” Ellen Olney Kirke, A Daughter of Eve (1889).