Heaven knows how
they paid the turnpikes they pushed them through! But these were none of
your simple Susans, that think their eyes are good for nothing but to
look at their husbands, or their fingers but to sew baby-clothes. Depend
on it, you must give up your matrimony, or your views of preferment. If
you wilfully tie a clog round your throat, never think of running a
race; but do not suppose that your breaking off with the lass will make
any very terrible catastrophe. A scene there may be at parting; but you
will soon forget her among the native girls, and she will fall in love
with Mr. Tapeitout, the minister's assistant and successor. She is not
goods for the Indian market, I assure you."
Among the capricious weaknesses of humanity, that one is particularly
remarkable which inclines us to esteem persons and things not by their
real value, or even by our own judgment, so much as by the opinion of
others, who are often very incompetent judges. Dick Middlemas had been
urged forward, in his suit to Menie Gray, by his observing how much her
partner, a booby laird, had been captivated by her; and she was now
lowered in his esteem, because an impudent low-lived coxcomb had
presumed to talk of her with disparagement. Either of these worthy
gentlemen would have been as capable of enjoying the beauties of Homer,
as judging of the merits of Menie Gray.
Indeed the ascendency which this bold-talking, promise-making soldier
had acquired over Dick Middlemas, wilful as he was in general, was of a
despotic nature; because the Captain, though greatly inferior in
information and talent to the youth whose opinions he swayed, had skill
in suggesting those tempting views of rank and wealth, to which
Richard's imagination had been from childhood most accessible.
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