And
they are given to looking in the glass. They must see that something ails
them. How much even the better order of them will endure, without a
thought of the defensive, when the person afflicting them is protected
from satire, we read in Memoirs of a Preceding Age, where the vulgarly
tyrannous hostess of a great house of reception shuffled the guests and
played them like a pack of cards, with her exact estimate of the strength
of each one printed on them: and still this house continued to be the
most popular in England; nor did the lady ever appear in print or on the
boards as the comic type that she was.
It has been suggested that they have not yet spiritually comprehended the
signification of living in society; for who are cheerfuller, brisker of
wit, in the fields, and as explorers, colonisers, backwoodsmen? They are
happy in rough exercise, and also in complete repose. The intermediate
condition, when they are called upon to talk to one another, upon other
than affairs of business or their hobbies, reveals them wearing a curious
look of vacancy, as it were the socket of an eye wanting.
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