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Either you slip out of service altogether, and become good for nothing, or you wear the harness and draw a good deal where your yoke-fellows pull you.

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(To Lydgate.)—Take care-experto crede-take care not to get hampered about money matters. I know, by a word you let fall one day, that you don't like my playing at cards so much for money. You are right enough there. But try and keep clear of wanting small sums that you haven't got. I am perhaps talking rather superfluously; but a man likes to assume superiority over himself, by holding up his bad example and sermonising on it.

Mary. What a brown patch I am by the side of you, Rosy! You are the most unbecoming companion.

Rosamond Vincy.-Oh no! No one thinks of your appearance, you are so sensible and useful, Mary. Beauty is of very little consequence in reality.

Mary. You mean 'my beauty.

Rosamond. What have you been doing lately? Mary.-I? Oh, minding the house-pouring out syrup - pretending to be amiable and contented— learning to have a bad opinion of everybody.

Rosamond. It is a wretched life for you.

Mary.-No. I think my life is pleasanter than your Miss Morgan's..

Rosamond.—Yes; but Miss Morgan is so uninteresting, and not young.

Mary. She is interesting to herself, I suppose; and I am not at all sure that everything gets easier as one gets older.

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I suppose we never quite understand why another dislikes what we like.

To me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her, and to whom she is grateful.

Fred Vincy.-I don't see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.

Mary. I think the goodness should come before he expects that.

Fred. You know better, Mary. Women don't love men for their goodness.

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Fred Vincy.-I suppose a woman is never in love with any one she has always known-ever since she can remember; as a man often is. It is always some new fellow who strikes a girl.

Mary.-Let me see. I must go back on my experience. There is Juliet-she seems an example of what you say. But then Ophelia had probably known Hamlet a long while; and Brenda Troil—she had known Mordaunt Merton ever since they were children; but then he seems to have been an estimable young man; and Minna was still more deeply in love with Cleveland, who was a stranger. Waverley was new to Flora MacIvor; but then she did not fall in love with him. And there are Olivia and Sophia Primrose, and Corinne-they may be said to have

fallen in love with new men. Altogether my experience is rather mixed.

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Fred Vincy.—I am not fit. to be a poor man. should not have made a bad fellow if I had been rich. Mary.—You would have done your duty in that state of life to which it has not pleased God to call

you.

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Mary. I could not love a man who is ridiculous. Fred has sense and knowledge enough to make him respectable, if he likes, in some good worldly business, but I can never imagine him preaching and exhorting, and pronouncing blessings, and praying by the sick, without feeling as if I were looking at a caricature. His being a clergyman would be only for gentility's sake, and I think there is nothing more contemptible than such imbecile gentility. I used to think that of Mr Crowse, with his empty face and neat umbrella and mincing little speeches. What right have such men to represent Christianity—as if it were an institution for getting up idiots genteelly—as if

Mr Farebrother.-Young women are severe; they don't feel the stress of action as men do, though perhaps I ought to make you an exception there. But you don't put Fred Vincy on so low a level as that.

Mary.-No, indeed; he has plenty of sense, but I think he would not show it as a clergyman. He would be a piece of professional affectation.

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Mr Farebrother.-Fred says frankly he is not fit for a clergyman, and I would do anything I could to hinder a man from the fatal step of choosing the

wrong profession. He quoted to me what you said, Miss Garth-do you remember it?

Mary.-I have said so many impertinent things to Fred-we are such old playfellows.

Mr Farebrother.—You said, according to him, that he would be one of those ridiculous clergymen who help to make the whole clergy ridiculous. Really, that was so cutting that I felt a little cut myself.

Caleb Garth. She gets her tongue from you, Susan, Mary.- Not its flippancy, father. It is rather too bad of Fred to repeat my flippant speeches to Mr Farebrother.

Mrs Garth. It was certainly a hasty speech, my dear. We should not value our Vicar the less because there was a ridiculous curate in the next parish.

Caleb.-There's something in what she says, though. A bad workman of any sort makes his fellows mistrusted. Things hang together.

Mr Farebrother.-Clearly. By being contemptible we set men's minds to the tune of contempt. I certainly agree with Miss Garth's view of the matter, whether I am condemned by it or not.

Mary. I don't love Fred because he is a fine match. Caleb.-What for then?

Mary.-Oh dear, because I have always loved him. I should never like scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in a husband.

Fred Vincy.-You do think I could do some good at this sort of work, if I were to try?

Caleb.-That depends. You must be sure of two things you must love your work, and not be always

looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honourable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There's this and there's that-if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is-I wouldn't give twopence for him, whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn't do well what he undertook to do.

Fred. I can never feel that I should do that in being a clergyman.

Caleb. Then let it alone, my boy, else you'll never be easy. Or, if you are easy, you'll be a poor stick.

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It makes me very happy, Mr Farebrother, that I've got an opportunity again with the letting of the land, and carrying out a notion or two with improvements. It's a most uncommonly cramping thing, as I've often told Susan, to sit on horseback, and look over the hedges at the wrong thing, and not be able to put your hand to it to make it right. What people do who go into politics I can't think it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few hundred

acres.

A man may do wrong, and his will may rise clear out of it, though he can't get his life clear. That's a bad punishment.

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Things may be bad for the poor man-bad they are; · but I want the lads here not to do what will make

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