somebody's sweetness? Richard Turpin went
forth, singing "Money or life" to the world: Richard Feverel has done the
same, substituting "Happiness" for "Money," frequently synonyms. The coin
he wanted he would have, and was just as much a highway robber as his
fellow Dick, so that those who have failed to recognize him as a hero
before, may now regard him in that light. Meanwhile the world he has
squeezed looks exceedingly patient and beautiful. His coin chinks
delicious music to him. Nature and the order of things on earth have no
warmer admirer than a jolly brigand or a young man made happy by the
Jews.

CHAPTER XXXIII

And now the author of the System was on trial under the eyes of the lady
who loved him. What so kind as they? Yet are they very rigorous, those
soft watchful woman's eyes. If you are below the measure they have made
of you, you will feel it in the fulness of time. She cannot but show you
that she took you for a giant, and has had to come down a bit. You feel
yourself strangely diminishing in those sweet mirrors, till at last they
drop on you complacently level. But, oh beware, vain man, of ever waxing
enamoured of that wonderful elongation of a male creature you saw
reflected in her adoring upcast orbs! Beware of assisting to delude her!
A woman who is not quite a fool will forgive your being but a man, if you
are surely that: she will haply learn to acknowledge that no mortal
tailor could have fitted that figure she made of you respectably, and
that practically (though she sighs to think it) her ideal of you was on
the pattern of an overgrown charity-boy in the regulation jacket and
breech. For this she first scorns the narrow capacities of the tailor,
and then smiles at herself. But shouldst thou, when the hour says
plainly, Be thyself, and the woman is willing to take thee as thou art,
shouldst thou still aspire to be that thing of shanks and wrests, wilt
thou not seem contemptible as well as ridiculous? And when the fall
comes, will it not be flat on thy face, instead of to the common height
of men? You may fall miles below her measure of you, and be safe: nothing
is damaged save an overgrown charity-boy; but if you fall below the
common height of men, you must make up your mind to see her rustle her
gown, spy at the looking-glass, and transfer her allegiance. The moral of
which is, that if we pretend to be what we are not, woman, for whose
amusement the farce is performed, will find us out a