Some public service of modest nature they had performed, not seeking it,
not shirking; accomplishing it cleanly when it was intrusted to them.
His forefathers had been, as a rule, professional men--physicians and
lawyers; his grandfather died under the walls of Chapultepec Castle
while twisting a tourniquet for a cursing dragoon; an uncle remained
indefinitely at Malvern Hill; an only brother at Montauk Point having
sickened in the trenches before Santiago.
His father's services as division medical officer in Sheridan's cavalry
had been, perhaps, no more devoted, no more loyal than the services of
thousands of officers and troopers; and his reward was a pension offer,
declined. He practised until his wife died, then retired to his country
home, from which house his daughter Nina was married to Austin Gerard.
Mr. Selwyn, senior, continued to pay his taxes on his father's house in
Tenth Street, voted in that district, spent a month every year with the
Gerards, read a Republican morning newspaper, and judiciously enlarged
the family reservation in Greenwood--whither he retired, in due time,
without other ostentation than half a column in the _Evening Post_,
which paper he had, in life, avoided.
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