Cecil, who knew this was one of the magnificent aphorisms of the "earnest" school, paused for a reply. Seeing him hesitate, Mr. Jukes, a sickly red-haired republican, with a feeble falsetto voice, stammered forth—
"Is it p-p-p-possible, Mr. Ch-ch-chamberlayne, you can hesitate to p-p-pronounce that e-e-every man should have a p-p-p-purpose?"
There was something so marvellously ludicrous in the feebleness of the individual, contrasted with the apparent vigour of his doctrine, that Cecil could with difficulty restrain his laughter, and hastened to say—
"By no means—by no means. I presume every one has a purpose; but, then, the question is—what purpose?"
"If you admit," said Hester, "that a man must have a Purpose, it is surely unreasonable to wish him not to be distinctly conscious of it: then, only, can he best fulfil it; otherwise, he is a mere machine in the hands of fortune. I say, therefore, that the consciousness of our age is the consciousness of progress; each man of any real eminence has a Mission, and he knows it; that Mission is to get the broad principles of Humanity in its entire Developments fully recognised. That Mission," she continued, with rising warmth, "is to sweep from the face of the earth the worn-out sophisms which enslave it; to give Mind its high Prerogatives; to cut from the heart of society the cancer of Conventionalism which corrupts it; to place Man in majestic antagonism to Convention; to erect the Banner of Progress, and give the democratic Mind of Europe its unfettered sphere of action."
"A grand scheme," replied Cecil, smiling; "but how is all this to be accomplished?"
"By indomitable re-re-resolution; b-b-b-by f-f-f-ixity of p-p-purpose," suggested Jukes.
"By a recognition of the rights of women," sternly remarked the philosophical Mrs. Fuller.
"The Greeks," began Mrs. James Murch, "whose literature——"
Here she was interrupted by Miss Stoking, who thought that if readers were not so fond of "trash," and would only look into the "Chronicles," something considerable might result.