rofound appreciation together
with the tooth's panic dread of tartness. They were by no means tart;
only, as you know, the tooth is apprehensively nervous; an uninviting
sign will set it on edge. Even the pen which would sketch them has a
spell on it and must don its coat of office, walk the liveried footman
behind them.

Their wealth, their deeds of charity, their modesty, their built grey
locks, their high repute; a 'Chippendale elegance' in a quaintly formal
correctness, that they had, as Colney Durance called it; gave them some
queenliness, and allowed them to claim the ear as an oracle and banish
rebellious argument. Intuitive knowledge, assisted by the Rev. Stuart
Rem and the Rev. Abram Posterley, enabled them to pronounce upon men and
things; not without effect; their country owned it; the foreigner beheld
it. Nor were they corrupted by the servility of the surrounding ear.
They were good women, striving to be humbly good. They might, for all
the little errors they nightly unrolled to then perceptions, have stood
before the world for a study in the white of our humanity. And this may
be but a washed wall, it is true: revolutionary sceptics are measuring
the depths of it. But the hue refreshes, the world admires; and we
know it an object of aim to the bettermost of the wealthy. If, happily,
complacent circumstances have lifted us to the clean paved platform out
of grip of puddled clay and bespattering wheeltracks, we get our chance
of coming to it.

Possessing, for example, nine thousand pounds per annum in Consols, and
not expending the whole of it upon our luxuries, we are, without further
privation, near to kindling the world's enthusiasm for whiteness. Yet
there, too, we find, that character has its problems to solve; there are
shades in salt. We must be charitable, but we should be just; we give to
the poor of the land, but we are eminently the friends of our servants;
duty to mankind diverts us not from the love we bear to our dog; and
with a pathetic sorrow for silt, we discard it from sight and hearing.
We hate dirt. Having said so much, having shown it, by sealing the
mouth of Mr. Stuart Rem and iceing the veins of Mr. Abram Posterley, in
relation to a dreadful public case and a melancholy private, we have a
pleased sense of entry into the world's ideal.

At the same time, we protest our unworthiness. Acknowledgeing that they
were not purely spotless, these ladies genuinely took the tiny fly-spot
for a