"He was an old Polish gentleman, who used to come to our house in the evening, he and a few others of his countrymen, to smoke and play chess. But always, some time during the evening, he would say, 'Gentlemen, a Pole is never ungrateful. I call on you to drink this toast: To the white chalk-line beyond the sea!'" And then she added, quickly, "If I were English, how proud I should be of England!"
"But why?" he said.
"Because she has kept liberty alive in Europe," said the girl, proudly; "because she offers an exile to the oppressed, no matter from whence they come; because she says to the tyrant, 'No, you cannot follow.' Why, when even your beer-men your dray-men know how to treat a Haynau, what must the spirit of the country be? If only those fine fellows could have caught Windischgratz too!"
Her father laughed at her vehemence; Brand did not. That strange vibration in the girl's voice penetrated him to the heart.
"But then," said he, after a second or two, "I have been amusing myself for some days back by reading a good deal of political writing, mostly by foreigners; and if I were to believe what they say, I should take it that England was the most superstitious, corrupt, enslaved nation on the face of the earth! What with its reverence for rank, its worship of the priesthood—oh, I cannot tell you what a frightful country it is!"
"Who were the writers?" Mr. Lind asked.
Brand named two or three, and instantly the attention of the others seemed arrested.
"Oh, that is the sort of literature you have been reading?" he said, with a quick glance.
"I have had some days' idleness."
"Excuse me," said the other, with a smile; "but I think you might have spent it better. That kind of literature only leads to disorder and anarchy. It may have been useful at one time; it is useful no longer. Enough of ploughing has been done: we want sowing done now—we want writers who will build up instead of pulling down. Those Nihilists," he added, almost with a sigh, "are becoming more and more impracticable. They aim at scarcely anything beyond destruction."