The unusual may take on an exaggeration of these; an
excess of money, an excess of piety, is understood; but
idiosyncrasy susceptible to no common translation is
regarded with the hostility earned by the white crow,
modified among law-abiding humans into tacit repudiation.
It is a sound enough social principle to distrust that
which is not understood, like the strain of temperament
inarticulate but vaguely manifest in the Murchisons. Such
a strain may any day produce an eccentric or a genius,
emancipated from the common interests, possibly inimical
to the general good; and when, later on, your genius
takes flight or your eccentric sells all that he has and
gives it to the poor, his fellow townsmen exchange shrewd
nods before the vindicating fact.
Nobody knew it at all in Elgin, but this was the Murchisons'
case. They had produced nothing abnormal, but they had
to prove that they weren't going to, and Stella was the
last and most convincing demonstration. Advena, bookish
and unconventional, was regarded with dubiety. She was
out of the type; she had queer satisfactions and
enthusiasms. Once as a little girl she had taken a papoose
from a drunken squaw and brought it home for her mother
to adopt. Mrs Murchison's reception of the suggested duty
may be imagined, also the comments of acquaintances--a
trick like that! The inevitable hour arrived when she
should be instructed on the piano, and the second time
the music teacher came her pupil was discovered on the
roof of the house, with the ladder drawn up after her.
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