FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132  
133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   >>  
effect is equal to the cause and resembles it. The cause of a flat curl on the masculine forehead, such as might be seen when George the Fourth was king, must have been widely different in quality and intensity from the impression made by that small scroll of hair on the organ of the beholder. Merely to maintain an attitude and gait which I notice in certain club men, and especially an inflation of the chest accompanying very small remarks, there goes, I am convinced, an expenditure of psychical energy little appreciated by the multitude--a mental vision of Self and deeply impressed beholders which is quite without antitype in what we call the effect produced by that hidden process. No! there is no need to admit that women would carry away the prize of vanity in a competition where differences of custom were fairly considered. A man cannot show his vanity in a tight skirt which forces him to walk sideways down the staircase; but let the match be between the respective vanities of largest beard and tightest skirt, and here too the battle would be to the strong. XVI. MORAL SWINDLERS. It is a familiar example of irony in the degradation of words that "what a man is worth" has come to mean how much money he possesses; but there seems a deeper and more melancholy irony in the shrunken meaning that popular or polite speech assigns to "morality" and "morals." The poor part these words are made to play recalls the fate of those pagan divinities who, after being understood to rule the powers of the air and the destinies of men, came down to the level of insignificant demons, or were even made a farcical show for the amusement of the multitude. Talking to Melissa in a time of commercial trouble, I found her disposed to speak pathetically of the disgrace which had fallen on Sir Gavial Mantrap, because of his conduct in relation to the Eocene Mines, and to other companies ingeniously devised by him for the punishment of ignorance in people of small means: a disgrace by which the poor titled gentleman was actually reduced to live in comparative obscurity on his wife's settlement of one or two hundred thousand in the consols. "Surely your pity is misapplied," said I, rather dubiously, for I like the comfort of trusting that a correct moral judgment is the strong point in woman (seeing that she has a majority of about a million in our islands), and I imagined that Melissa might have some unexpressed grounds for h
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132  
133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   >>  



Top keywords:
multitude
 

strong

 

Melissa

 

disgrace

 

effect

 
vanity
 
disposed
 

demons

 
amusement
 

commercial


trouble

 

Talking

 
farcical
 

insignificant

 
morality
 

assigns

 
morals
 
speech
 

polite

 

melancholy


shrunken

 

meaning

 

popular

 

understood

 

powers

 

recalls

 

pathetically

 

divinities

 

destinies

 

ingeniously


dubiously

 
comfort
 

trusting

 

correct

 

consols

 
thousand
 

Surely

 
misapplied
 

judgment

 
imagined

islands
 

unexpressed

 
grounds
 
million
 

majority

 

hundred

 
Eocene
 

companies

 
devised
 

deeper