Volume Ii Part 16 (1/2)
”Unfit them for the duties of their station, and make them discontented with it.”
”By making it pleasanter?”
”No, no ? not by making it pleasanter.”
”By what then, Mr. Stackpole?” said Thorn, to draw him on, and to draw her out, Fleda was sure.
”By lifting them out of it.”
”And what objection to lifting them out of it?” said Thorn.
”You can't lift every body out of it,” said the gentleman, with a little irritation in his manner ? ”that station must be filled ? there must always be poor people.”
”And what degree of poverty ought to debar a man from the pleasures of education and a cultivated taste, such as he can attain?”
”No, no, not that,” said Mr. Stackpole; ”but it all goes to fill them with absurd notions about their place in society, inconsistent with proper subordination.”
Fleda looked at him, but shook her head slightly, and was silent.
”Things are in very different order on our side the water,”
said Mr. Stackpole, hugging himself.
”Are they?” said Fleda.
”Yes ? we understand how to keep things in their places a little better.”
”I did not know,” said Fleda, quietly, ”that it was by _design_ of the rulers of England that so many of her lower cla.s.s are in the intellectual condition of our slaves.”
”Mr. Carleton,” said Mrs. Evelyn, laughing, ”what do you say to that, Sir?”
Fleda's face turned suddenly to him with a quick look of apology, which she immediately knew was not needed.
”But this kind of thing don't make the people any happier,”
pursued Mr. Stackpole; ? ”only serves to give them uppish and dissatisfied longings that cannot be gratified.”
”Somebody says,” observed Thorn, ”that 'under a despotism all are contented, because none can get on, and in a republic, none are contented, because all can get on.' ”
”Precisely,” said Mr. Stackpole.
”That might do very well if the world were in a state of perfection,” said Fleda. ”As it is, commend me to discontent and getting on. And the uppishness, I am afraid, is a national fault, Sir; you know our state motto is 'Excelsior.' ”
”We are at liberty to suppose,” said Thorn, ”that Miss Ringgan has followed the example of her friends, the farmers'
daughters? ? or led them in it?”
”It is dangerous to make surmises,” said Fleda, colouring.
”It is a pleasant way of running into danger,” said Mr. Thorn, who was leisurely pruning the p.r.i.c.kles from the stem of a rose.
”I was talking to a gentleman once,” said Fleda, ”about the birds and flowers we find in our wilds; and he told me afterwards gravely, that he was afraid I was studying too many things at once! ? when I was innocent of all ornithology but what my eyes and ears had picked up in the wood, except some childish reminiscences of Audubon.”
”That is just the right sort of learning for a lady,” said Mr.