Young Halpin was of a dreamy, indolent and
rather romantic turn, somewhat more addicted to
literature than law, the profession to which he was
bred. Among those of his relations who professed
the modern faith of heredity it was well understood
that in him the character of the late Myron Bayne,
a maternal great-grandfather, had revisited the
glimpses of the moon--by which orb Bayne had
in his lifetime been sufficiently affected to be a poet
of no small Colonial distinction. If not specially ob-
served, it was observable that while a Frayser who
was not the proud possessor of a sumptuous copy
of the ancestral 'poetical works' (printed at the
family expense, and long ago withdrawn from an
inhospitable market) was a rare Frayser indeed,
there was an illogical indisposition to honour the
great deceased in the person of his spiritual succes-
sor. Halpin was pretty generally deprecated as an
intellectual black sheep who was likely at any mo-
ment to disgrace the flock by bleating in metre. The
Tennessee Fraysers were a practical folk--not
practical in the popular sense of devotion to sordid
pursuits, but having a robust contempt for any
qualities unfitting a man for the wholesome voca-
tion of politics.
In justice to young Halpin it should be said that
while in him were pretty faithfully reproduced most
of the mental and moral characteristics ascribed by
history and family tradition to the famous Colonial
bard, his succession to the gift and faculty divine
was purely inferential.
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