An awkward silence ensued. At length Jordan said reproachfully, "You have killed Miss Sabine's favorite bird."
"I am sorry for it," replied Fink, drawing a chair to the table. Then turning to Sabine, "I did not know that you extended your sympathy to this class of rogues. I really believed that I deserved the thanks of the house for disposing of the young thief."
"The poor little fellow!" said Sabine, mournfully; "his mother is calling for him; do you hear her?"
"She will get over it," rejoined Fink; "I consider it overdone to expend more feeling upon a sparrow than his own relatives do. But I know you like to consider all around you in a tender and pathetic light."
"If you have not this peculiarity yourself, why ridicule it in others?" asked Sabine, with a quivering lip.
"Why," cried Fink, "because this eternal feeling, which here I meet with every where, expended on what does not deserve it, makes people at length weak and trivial. He who is always getting up emotions about trifles will have none to give when a strong attachment demands them."
"And he who ever looks on all around him with cold unconcern, will not he too be wanting in emotion when a strong attachment becomes a duty?" returned Sabine, with a mournful glance.
"It would be impolite to contradict you," said Fink, shrugging his shoulders. "At all events, it is better that a man should be too hard than too effeminate."
"But just look at the people of this country," said he, after another uncomfortable pause. "One loves the copper kettle in which his mother has boiled sausages; another loves his broken pipe, his faded coat, and with these a thousand obsolete customs. Just look at the German emigrants! What a heap of rubbish they take away with them—old birdcages, worm-eaten furniture, and every kind of lumber! I once knew a fellow who took a journey of eight days merely to eat sauer-kraut. And when once a poor devil has squatted in an unhealthy district, and lived there a few years, he has spun such a web of sentimentalism about it that you can not stir him, even though he, his wife and children, should die there of fever. Commend me to what you call the insensibility of the Yankee. He works like two Germans, but he is not in love with his cottage or his gear. What he has is worth its equivalent in dollars, and no more. 'How low! how material!' you will say. Now, I like this. It has created a free and powerful state. If America had been peopled by Germans, they would be still drinking chicory instead of coffee, at whatever rate of duty the paternal governments of Europe liked to impose."
"And you would require a woman to be thus minded?" asked Sabine.