n
amusing me by his decisions--all of which were respectable, and some
surprisingly accurate--in this way for several minutes. Now, like has an
affinity to like, and in this natural attraction is to be found the
secret of the ordinary construction of society. You shall put two men of
superior minds in a room full of company, and they will find each other
out directly, and enjoy the accident. The same is true as to the mere
modes of thinking that characterize social castes; and it is truer in
this country, perhaps, than most others, from the mixed character of
our associations. Of the two, I am really of opinion that the man of
high intellect, who meets with one of moderate capacity, but of manners
and social opinions on a level with his own, has more pleasure in the
communication than with one of equal mind, but of inferior habits.

That Patt should cling to one like Mary Warren seemed to me quite as
natural as that she should be averse to much association with
Opportunity Newcome. The money of the latter, had my sister been in the
least liable to such an influence, was so much below what she had been
accustomed, all her life, to consider affluence, that it would have had
no effect, even had she been subject to so low a consideration in
regulating her intercourse with others. But this poor Tom Miller could
not understand. He could "only reason from what he knew," and he knew
little of the comparative notions of wealth, and less of the powers of
cultivation on the mind and manners. He was struck, however, with a fact
that did come completely within the circle of his own knowledge, and
that was the circumstance that Mary Warren, while admitted to be poor,
was the bosom friend of her whom he was pleased to call, sometimes, the
"Littlepage gal." It was easy to see he felt the force of this
circumstance; and it is to be hoped that, as he was certainly a wiser,
he also became a better man, on one of the most common of the weaknesses
of human frailty.

"Wa-a-l," he replied to my uncle's last remark, after fully a minute of
silent reflection, "I don't know! It would seem so, I vow; and yet it
hasn't been my wife's notion, nor is it Kitty's. You're quite upsetting
my idees about aristocrats; for though I like the Littlepages, I've
always set 'em down as desp'rate aristocrats."

"Nein, nein; dem as vat you calls dimigogues be der American
arisdograts. Dey gets all der money of der pooblic, and haf all der
power, but dey gets a