You cannot build well without first laying a good foundation; and for you to enter upon a business which you have not patiently and thoroughly learned, and to marry before you have won a character, or even the reasonable prospect of a competence, is ultimately to bring your house down about the ears of Angelina Matilda, and such pretty children as she may give you. If, at the age of thirty years, you find yourself established in a business which pays you with certainty a living income, you are to remember that God has blessed you beyond the majority of men.
DINAH THE METHODIST.
By George Eliot.
The works of Marian Evans Cross created unusual interest when first published in England. Her “Adam Bede,” “The Mill on the Floss” and “Silas Marner,” immediately placed her in the highest rank of the writers of fiction. For some time her identity was concealed, yet there were critics who suspected that “George Eliot” was the assumed name of a female author. Her writings are characterized by a keen insight into character, intellectual vigor and sympathy with the advanced thought of the day. She was born in 1819, and died in 1880. The selection from “Adam Bede,” here given, is an excellent specimen from one of her well-known works.
Several of the men followed Ben’s lead, and the traveler pushed his horse on to the Green, as Dinah walked rather quickly, and in advance of her companions, toward the cart under the maple tree. While she was near Seth’s tall figure she looked short, but when she had mounted the cart, and was away from all comparison, she seemed above the middle height of woman, though in reality she did not exceed it—an effect which was due to the slimness of her figure, and the simple line of her black stuff dress.
The stranger was struck with surprise as he saw her approach and mount the cart—surprise, not so much for the feminine delicacy of her appearance, as at the total absence of self-consciousness in her demeanor. He had made up his mind to see her advance with a measured step, and a demure solemnity of countenance; he had felt sure that her face would be mantled with a smile of conscious saintship, or else charged with denunciatory bitterness. He knew but two types of Methodist—the ecstatic and the bilious.
But Dinah walked as simply as if she were going to market, and seemed as unconscious of her outward appearance as a little boy; there was no blush, no tremulousness, which said, “I know you think me a pretty woman, too young to preach;” no casting up or down of the eyelids, no compression of the lips, no attitude of the arms, that said, “But you must think of me as a saint.”
She held no book in her ungloved hands, but let them hang down lightly crossed before her, as she stood and turned her grey eyes on the people. There was no keenness in her eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations; they had the liquid look which tells that the mind is full of what it has to give out, rather than impressed by external objects.