Privately considering her relation to his father, he was forced to the conclusion that their union was a most distressing instance of the proneness of really great minds to leave their deep channels and seek the shallow waters in the every-day concerns of life.

He felt vaguely that she was narrow and provincial; for had she not always lived on the flats, a region bounded by the Square on the north and by Stoke's furniture factory on the south?
On the west the flats extended as far as civilization itself extended in that direction, that is, to the gas house and the creek bank, while on the east they were roughly defined by Mitchell's tannery and the brick slaughter-house, beyond which vacant lots merged into cow pastures, the cow pastures yielding in their turn to the real country, where the level valley rolled up into hills which tilted the great green fields to the sun.
Mrs.Shrimplin had been born on the flats, and the flats had witnessed her meeting and mating with Shrimplin, when that gentleman had first appeared in Mount Hope in the interest of Whiting's celebrated tooth-powder, to the use of which he was not personally committed.

At that time he was also an itinerant bill-poster and had his lodgings at Maxy Schaffer's Railroad Hotel hard by the B.& O.tracks.
Mr.Shrimplin was five feet three, and narrow chested.

A drooping flaxen mustache shaded a sloping chin and a loose under lip, while a pair of pale eyes looked sadly out upon the world from the shadow of a hooked nose.
Mr.Joe Montgomery, Mrs.Shrimplin's brother-in-law, present on the occasion of her marriage to the little bill-poster, had critically surveyed the bridegroom and had been moved to say to a friend, "Shrimp certainly do favor a peanut!" Mr.Montgomery's comparative criticism of her husband's appearance had in due season reached the ears of the bride, and had caused a rupture in the family that the years had not healed, but her resentment had been more a matter of justice to herself than that she felt the criticism to be wholly inapt.
Mr.Shrimplin had now become a public servant, for certain gasolene lamps in the town of Mount Hope were his proud and particular care.

Any night he could be seen seated in his high two-wheeled cart drawn by a horse large in promise of speed but small in achievement, a hissing gasolene torch held between his knees, making his way through that part of the town where gas-lamps were as yet unknown.