"I do not know whether it was discretion or vanity, grandmother," was my answer, "for I am conscious of feeling an unconquerable reluctance to passing for a common music-grinder in Miss Warren's eyes."
"Nay, Hugh," put in the saucy Patt, "I had told you before that you passed for a very uncommon music-grinder in her eyes. As for the grinding, she said but little; for it was of the flute, and of the manner in which it was played, that Miss Warren spoke the most eloquently."
The "Martha!" of Mary Warren, lowly, but half reproachfully uttered, showed that the charming girl was beginning to be really distressed, and my observant parent changed the discourse by a gentle and adroit expedient such as a woman alone knows thoroughly how to put in practice. It was simply handing Mr. Warren a plate of greengages; but the act was so performed as to change the discourse.
During the whole of that meal I felt certain there was a secret, mysterious communication between me and Mary Warren, which, while it probably did escape the notice of others, was perfectly evident to ourselves. This fact I felt to be true; while there was a consciousness betrayed in Mary's blushes, and even in her averted eyes, that I found extremely eloquent on the same subject.
CHAPTER XIX.
"With look, like patient Job's, eschewing evil;
With motions graceful as a bird's in air;
Thou art, in sober truth, the veriest devil
That e'er clinched fingers in a captive's hair."
—Red Jacket.
Although an immense progress has been made in liberating this country from the domination of England, in the way of opinion and usages, a good deal remains to be done yet. Still, he who can look back forty years must see the great changes that have occurred in very many things; and it is to be hoped that he who lives forty years hence will find very few remaining that have no better reasons for their existence among ourselves than the example of a people so remote, with a different climate, different social organization, and different wants. I am for no more condemning a usage, however, simply because it is English, than I am for approving it simply because it is English. I wish everything to stand on its own merits, and feel certain that no nation ever can become great, in the higher signification of the term, until it ceases to imitate, because it is imitation of a certain fixed model. One of the very greatest evils of this imitative spirit is even now developing itself in what is called the "progress" of the country, which is assailing principles that are as old as the existence of man, and which may almost be said to be eternal as social truths, at the very moment that notions derived from our ancestors are submitted to in the highest places, the Senate of the United States for example, that are founded in facts which not only have no existence among ourselves, but which are positively antagonistic to such as have. So much easier is it to join in the hurrah! of a "progress," than to ascertain whether it is making in the right direction, or whether it be progress at all. But, to return from things of moment to those of less concern.