Mille hominum species, et rerum discolor usus:
Velle suum cuique est, nee voto vivitur uno.
Persius.
In mind and taste men differ as in frame:
Each has his special will, and few the same.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. It strikes me as singular that, with such a house, you should have only female domestics.
Mr. Falconer. It is not less singular perhaps that they are seven sisters, all the children of two old servants of my father and mother. The eldest is about my own age, twenty-six, so that they have all grown up with me in time and place. They live in great harmony together, and divide among them the charge of all the household duties. Those whom you saw are the two youngest.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. If the others acquit themselves as well, you have a very efficient staff; but seven young women as the establishment of one young bachelor, for such I presume you to be (Mr. Falconer assented), is something new and strange. The world is not over charitable.
Mr. Falconer. The world will never suppose a good motive where it can suppose a bad one. I would not willingly offend any of its prejudices. I would not affect eccentricity. At the same time, I do not feel disposed to be put out of my way because it is not the way of the world—Le Chemin du Monde, as a Frenchman entitled Congreve's comedy{1}—but I assure you these seven young women live here as they might do in the temple of Vesta.
1 Congreve, le meilleur auteur comique d'Angleterre: ses
pièces les plus estimées sont Le Fourbe, Le Vieux Garçon,
Amour pour Amour, L Epouse du Matin, Le Chemin du Monde.—
Manuel Bibliographique. Par G. Peignot. Paris, 1800.
It was a singular combination of circumstances that induced and enabled me to form such an establishment; but I would not give it up, nor alter it, nor diminish it, nor increase it, for any earthly consideration.
The Rev. Dr. Opimian. You hinted that, besides Milton's verses, you had another association of ideas with living in the top of a tower.