It was not then alone any details of dress,
but a certain distinction in air and bearing about Perez, which had
struck them. The discipline of military responsibility, and the
officer's constant necessity of maintaining an aspect of authority and
dignity, before his men, had left refining marks upon his face, which
distinguished it as a different sort from the countenances about him
with their expressions of pathetic stolidity, or boorish shrewdness.
In a word, although they knew old Elnathan Hamlin to be one of
themselves, they instinctively felt that this son of his had become a
gentleman.
At any time this consciousness would have produced constraint, and
checked spontaneous conversation, but now, just at the moment when the
demarcation of classes was taking the character of open hostility, it
produced a sentiment of repulsion and enmity. His place was on the
other side; not with the people, but with the gentlemen, the lawyers,
the parsons, and the judges. Why did he come spying among them?
Perez, without guessing the reason of it, began to be conscious of the
unsympathetic atmosphere, and was about moving away, when Israel
Goodrich remarked, with the air of wishing to avoid an appearance of
churlishness.
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