Homeward Bound - or, the Chase by James Fenimore Cooper
page 284 of 613 (46%)
page 284 of 613 (46%)
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European journal, he implicitely swallowed whole. One, who knew little of
the man, might have supposed he feigned credulity to answer his own purposes; but this would be doing injustice to his faith, which was perfect, being based on that provincial admiration, and provincial ignorance, that caused the countryman, who went to London for the first time, to express his astonishment at finding the king a man. As was due to his colonial origin, his secret awe and reverence for an Englishman was in proportion to his protestations of love for the people, and his deference for rank was graduated on a scale suited to the heart-burning and jealousies he entertained for all whom he felt to be his superiors. Indeed, one was the cause of the other; for they who really are indifferent to their own social position, are usually equally indifferent to that of others, so long as they are not made to feel the difference by direct assumptions of superiority. When Mr. Sharp, whom even Mr. Dodge had discovered to be a gentleman,--and an English gentleman of course,--entered into the trifling of the moment, therefore, so far from detecting the mystification, the latter was disposed to believe himself a subject of interest with this person, against whose exclusiveness and haughty reserve, notwithstanding, he had been making side-hits ever since the ship had sailed. But the avidity with which the Americans of Mr. Dodge's temperament are apt to swallow the crumbs of flattery that fall from the Englishman's table, is matter of history, and the editor himself was never so happy as when he could lay hold of a paragraph to republish, in which a few words of comfort were doled out by the condescending mother to the never-dying faith of the daughter. So far, therefore, from taking umbrage at what had been said, he continued the subject long after the captain had gone to his duty, and with so much perseverance that Paul Blunt, as soon as Mr. Sharp escaped, took an occasion to compliment that gentleman on his growing intimacy with |
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