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.
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