be understood by those whose habitat is below a
certain level. Just as the exquisite sea-anemones and all the graceful
ocean-flowers die out at some fathoms below the surface, the elegances
and suavities of life die out one by one as we sink through the social
scale. Fortunately, the virtues are more tenacious of life, and last
pretty well until we get down to the mud of absolute pauperism, where
they do not flourish greatly.
--I had almost forgotten about our boarders. As the Model of all the
Virtues is about to leave us, I find myself wondering what is the reason
we are not all very sorry. Surely we all like good persons. She is a
good person. Therefore we like her.--Only we don't.
This brief syllogism, and its briefer negative, involving the principle
which some English conveyancer borrowed from a French wit and embodied in
the lines by which Dr. Fell is made unamiably immortal, this syllogism, I
say, is one that most persons have had occasion to construct and
demolish, respecting somebody or other, as I have done for the Model.
"Pious and painefull." Why has that excellent old phrase gone out of
use? Simply because these good painefull or painstaking persons proved
to be such nuisances in the long run, that the word "painefull" came,
before people thought of it, to mean pain-giving instead of painstaking.
--So, the old fellah's off to-morrah,--said the young man John.
Old fellow?--said I,--whom do you mean?
Why, the one that came with our little beauty, the old fellah in
petticoats.
--Now that means something,--said I to myself.--These rough young rascals
very often hit the nail on the head, if they do strike with their eyes
shut. A real woman does a great many things without knowing why she does
them; but these pattern machines mix up their intellects with everything
they do, just like men. They can't help it, no doubt; but we can't help
getting sick of them, either. Intellect is to a woman's nature what her
watch-spring skirt is to her dress; it ought to underlie her silks and
embroideries, but not to show itself too staringly on the outside.---You
don't know, perhaps, but I will tell you; the brain is the palest of all
the internal organs, and the heart the reddest. Whatever comes from the
brain carries the hue of the place it came from, and whatever comes from
the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace.
The young man John did not hear my soliloquy, of course, but sent up one
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