feel at home with ideas. They call themselves
practical for having an addiction to the palpable. It is a pretty wreath
they clap on their deficiencies. Practical dogs are for bones, horses
for corn. I want the practical Englishman to settle his muzzle in a
nosebag of ideas. When he has once got hold of them, he makes good stuff
of them. On the Continent ideas have wings and pay visits. Here, they're
stay-at-home. Then I want our fellows to have the habit of speaking from
the chest. They shall return to England with the whoop of the mountains
in them and ready to jump out. They shall have an Achillean roar; and
they shall sing by second nature. Don't fear: they'll give double for
anything they take. I've known Italians, to whom an Englishman's honesty
of mind and dealing was one of the dreams of a better humanity they
had put in a box. Frenchmen, too, who, when they came to know us, were
astonished at their epithet of perfide, and loved us.'

'Emile,' said Aminta. 'You remember Emile, Selina: the dear little
French boy at Mr. Cuper's?'

'Oh, I do,' Selina responded.

'He will work with Mr. Weyburn in Switzerland.'

'Oh, that will be nice!' the girl exclaimed.

Aminta squeezed Selina's hand. A shower of tears clouded her eyes. She
chose to fancy it was because of her envy of the modest, busy, peaceful
girl, who envied none. Conquers also sincerity in the sincerest. She was
vexed with her full breast, and had as little command of her thoughts as
of her feelings.

'Mr. Weyburn has ideas for the education of girls too,' she said.

'There's the task,' said he. 'It's to separate them as little as
possible. All the--passez-moi le mot--devilry between the sexes begins
at their separation. They 're foreigners when they meet; and their
alliances are not always binding. The chief object in life, if happiness
be the aim, and the growing better than we are, is to teach men and
women how to be one; for, if they 're not, then each is a morsel for
the other to prey on. Lady Charlotte Eglett's view is, that the greater
number of them on both sides hate one another.'

'Hate!' exclaimed Selina; and Aminta said: 'Is Lady Charlotte Eglett an
authority?'

'She has observed, and she thinks. She has in the abstract the justest
of minds: and that is the curious point about her. But one may say they
are trained at present to be hostile. Some of them fall in love and
strike a truce, and still they are foreigners. They have not the same