Lord Ormont and His Aminta — Volume 5 — John Shaqi
Lord Ormont and His Aminta — Volume 5Meredith, George
General
Lord Ormont and His Aminta — Volume 5
Meredith, George
English fiction -- 19th century
'Just to name a few of the things for interchange,' said Weyburn. 'As to
method, we shall be their disciples. But I look forward to our fellows
getting the lead. No hurry. Why will they? you ask in petto. Well,
they 're emulous, and they take a thrashing kindly. That 's the way to
learn a lesson. I 've seen our fellows beaten and beaten--never the
courage beaten out of them. In the end, they won and kept the field.
They have a lot to learn--principally not to be afraid of ideas. They
lose heaps of time before they can feel at home with ideas. They call
themselves practical for having an addiction to the palpable. It is a
pretty wreath they clap on their deficiencies. Practical dogs are for
bones, horses for corn. I want the practical Englishman to settle his
muzzle in a nosebag of ideas. When he has once got hold of them, he
makes good stuff of them. On the Continent ideas have wings and pay
visits. Here, they're stay-at-home. Then I want our fellows to have the
habit of speaking from the chest. They shall return to England with the
whoop of the mountains in them and ready to jump out. They shall have
an Achillean roar; and they shall sing by second nature. Don't fear:
they'll give double for anything they take. I've known Italians, to whom
an Englishman's honesty of mind and dealing was one of the dreams of a
better humanity they had put in a box. Frenchmen, too, who, when they
came to know us, were astonished at their epithet of perfide, and loved
us.'
'Emile,' said Aminta. 'You remember Emile, Selina: the dear little
French boy at Mr. Cuper's?'
'Oh, I do,' Selina responded.
'He will work with Mr. Weyburn in Switzerland.'
'Oh, that will be nice!' the girl exclaimed.
Aminta squeezed Selina's hand. A shower of tears clouded her eyes. She
chose to fancy it was because of her envy of the modest, busy, peaceful
girl, who envied none. Conquers also sincerity in the sincerest. She
was vexed with her full breast, and had as little command of her thoughts
as of her feelings.
'Mr. Weyburn has ideas for the education of girls too,' she said.
'There's the task,' said he. 'It's to separate them as little as
possible. All the--passez-moi le mot--devilry between the sexes begins
at their separation. They 're foreigners when they meet; and their
alliances are not always binding. The chief object in life, if happiness
be the aim, and the growing better than we are, is to teach men and women
how to be one; for, if they 're not, then each is a morsel for the other
to prey on. Lady Charlotte Eglett's view is, that the greater number of
them on both sides hate one another.'
'Hate!' exclaimed Selina; and Aminta said: 'Is Lady Charlotte Eglett an
authority?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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