[156] “Stand aside, you Old Sinner! We are holier than thou!”—Our Comment.
[157] So italicized in the article.
THE HOUSE OF YORKE.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE TOWN-MEETING.
Before allowing her husband to go to the town-meeting, Mrs. Yorke had given him a word of admonition, not the usual wifely charge to keep himself out of danger, but an exhortation to justice and reason.
“Justice and reason!” he exclaimed. “Why, for what else have I been contending, Mrs. Yorke?”
“True!” she answered gently. “But may it not be possible that there is more cause than you will allow for this upheaval, and that it is not a superficial excitement which can be easily soothed or beaten down? These sailor friends of ours have told me that, when the water is dimpled and green, it has a sand bottom, and, when it is black and easily fretted into foam, there are rocks underneath. Now, this anti-Catholic excitement is dark and bitter enough to show that there is some fixed obstacle, which breath, though it be ever so wisely syllabled, will not remove.”