Alas, she was an American heroine. She was an EDUCATED WOMAN. She KNEW all about IDEALS. She swallowed the IDEAL of EQUALITY with her first mouthful of KNOWLEDGE. Alas for her and that apple of Sodom that looked so rosy. Alas for all her knowing.
Mr. Dodge (in check knickerbockers): Well, feeling a little uncomfortable below the belt, are you, Miss Effingham?
Miss Effingham (with difficulty withdrawing her gaze from the INFINITE OCEAN): Good morning, Mr. Dodge. I was admiring the dark blue distance.
Mr. Dodge: Say, couldn't you admire something a bit nearer.
Think how easy it would have been for her to say "Go away!" or "Leave me, varlet!"—or "Hence, base-born knave!" Or just to turn her back on him.
But then he would simply have marched round to the other side of her.
Was she his superior, or wasn't she?
Why surely, intrinsically, she was. Intrinsically Fenimore Cooper was the superior of the Dodges of his day. He felt it. But he felt he ought not to feel it. And he never had it out with himself.
That is why one rather gets impatient with him. He feels he is superior, and feels he ought not to feel so, and is therefore rather snobbish, and at the same time a little apologetic. Which is surely tiresome.
If a man feels superior, he should have it out with himself. "Do I feel superior because I am superior? Or is it just the snobbishness of class, or education, or money?"