Explore "Caleb West" by Francis Hopkinson Smith on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Sanford dropped into a brown leather chair, and Sam, with the fawning droop of a water-spaniel, placed the morning paper before him, moved a small table nearer, on which his master could lay the morning's mail as it was opened, adjusted the curtains so as to keep the glare from his paper, and with noiseless tread withdrew to the kitchen. Whatever the faults of this product of reconstruction might have been, -- and Sam had many, -- neglect of Sanford's comfort was not one of them.
According to his lights he was scrupulously honest. Although he dressed with more care on Sunday afternoons than his master, -- generally in that gentleman's cast-off clothes, and always in his discarded neckties and gloves, -- smoked his tobacco, purloined his cigars, and occasionally drank his wine, whenever the demands of his social life made such inroads on Sanford's private stock necessary to maintain a certain prestige among his ebonized brethren, he invariably drew the line at his master's loose change and his shirt-studs. This was due, doubtless, to some drops of blood, trickling through his veins and inherited from an old family butler of an ancestor, which, while they permitted him the free use of everything his master ate, drank, and wore, -- a common privilege of the slave days, -- debarred him completely from greater crimes.