This sally produced a heartless laugh; for, sooth to say, where one feels, under such circumstances, as reason, and justice, and revelation would tell them to feel, ten feel as the demons prompt.
“You cannot expect that a lady of fashion, who plays on the harp and talks French, will show her pretty face to be gazed at by common folk,” rejoined a shabby-genteel sort of personage, out of whose waistcoat-pocket obtruded the leaves of a small note-book, and the end of a gold pen. This man was a reporter, rendered malignant by meeting with opposition to his views of imagining that the universe was created to furnish paragraphs for newspapers. He was a half-educated European, who pronounced all his words in a sort of boarding-school dialect, as if abbreviation offended a taste ‘sicken’d over by learning.’
Another laugh succeeded this supercilious sneer; and three or four lads, half-grown and clamorous, called aloud the name of “Mary Monson,” demanding that she should show herself. At that moment the accused was on her knees, with Anna Updyke at her side, praying for that support which, as the crisis arrived, she found to be more and more necessary!
Changing from the scene to the open street, we find a pettifogger, one secretly prompted by Williams, spreading a report that had its origin no one knew where, but which was gradually finding its way to the ears of half the population of Duke’s, exciting prejudice and inflicting wrong.
“It’s the curi’stest story I ever heard,” said Sam Tongue, as the pettifogger was usually styled, though his real name was Hubbs; “and one so hard to believe, that, though I tell it, I call on no man to believe it. You see, gentlemen”—the little group around him was composed of suitors, witnesses, jurors, grand-jurors, and others of a stamp that usually mark these several classes of men—“that the account now is, that this Mary Monson was sent abroad for her schoolin’ when only ten years old; and that she staid in the old countries long enough to l’arn to play the harp, and other deviltries of the same natur’. It’s a misfortin’, as I say, for any young woman to be sent out of Ameriky for an edication. Edication, as everybody knows, is the great glory of our country; and a body would think that what can’t be l’arn’t here, isn’t worth knowin’.”
This sentiment was well received, as would be any opinion that asserted American superiority, with that particular class of listeners. Eye turned to eye, nod answered nod, and a murmur expressive of approbation passed through the little crowd.
“But there was no great harm in that,” put in a person named Hicks, who was accustomed to connect consequences with their causes, and to trace causes down to their consequences. “Anybody might have been edicated in France as well as Mary Monson. That will hardly tell ag’in her on the trial.”
“I didn’t say it would,” answered Sam Tongue; “though it’s gin’rally conceded that France is no country for religion or true freedom. Give me religion and freedom, say I; a body can get along with bad crops, or disapp’intments in gin’ral, so long as he has plenty of religion and plenty of freedom.”
Another murmur, another movement in the group, and other nods denoted the spirit in which this was received too.
“All this don’t make ag’in Mary Monson; ’specially as you say she was sent abroad so young. It wasn’t her fault if her parents——”