THE TURNING-POINT
Kimball, sole living heir of the original Caleb, himself a Dalton Righter, and contemporary of Tristram Dalton.
Neither of these personages took any interest in pedigree or genealogy. They knew that their ancestors had lived and died on the same acres now possessed by them, but the acres had dwindled sadly, and the ancestors had seemingly left little for which to be grateful. Indeed, in Caleb’s case they had been a distinct disadvantage, since the local sense of humor, proverbially strong in York County, had always preserved a set of Kimball stories among its most cherished possessions. Some of them might have been forgotten in the century and a half that had elapsed, if the Caleb of our story had not been the inheritor of certain family traits famous in their day and generation.
Caleb the first had been the “cuss” of his fellow farmers, because in coming from Scarboro to join the Dalton Righters he had brought whiteweed with the bundle of hay for his cattle when he was clearing the land.
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