"So you do not feel inclined to favor any preference on my part towards Miss Marygold?" he said, looking steadily into his mother's face.
"I do not, Henry," was the frank reply.
"Why not?"
"There is something too common about her, if I may so express myself."
"Too common! What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that there is no distinctive character about her. She is, like the large mass around us, a mere made-up girl."
"Speaking in riddles."
"I mean then, Henry, that her character has been formed, or made up, by mere external accretions from the common-place, vague, and often too false notions of things that prevail in society, instead of by the force of sound internal principles, seen to be true from a rational intuition, and acted upon because they are true. Cannot you perceive the difference?"
"O yes, plainly. And this is why you use the word 'common,' in speaking of her?"
"The reason. And now my son, can you not see that there is force in my objection to her—that she really possess any character distinctively her own, that is founded upon a clear and rational appreciation of abstractly correct principles of action?"