etc. Ah, my
pretty, my sprightly Miss Hopkins, be gentle in your judgment of your
neighbours!
CHAPTER XLVII
Contains two or three Acts of a Little Comedy
All this story is told by one, who, if he was not actually present at the
circumstances here narrated, yet had information concerning them, and
could supply such a narrative of facts and conversations as is, indeed,
not less authentic than the details we have of other histories. How can I
tell the feelings in a young lady's mind; the thoughts in a young
gentleman's bosom?--As Professor Owen or Professor Agassiz takes a
fragment of a bone, and builds an enormous forgotten monster out of it,
wallowing in primeval quagmires, tearing down leaves and branches of
plants that flourished thousands of years ago, and perhaps may be coal by
this time--so the novelist puts this and that together: from the
footprint finds the foot; from the foot, the brute who trod on it; from
the brute, the plant he browsed on, the marsh in which he swam--and thus
in his humble way a physiologist too, depicts the habits, size,
appearance of the beings whereof he has to treat;--traces this slimy
reptile through the mud, and describes his habits filthy and rapacious;
prods down this butterfly with a pin, and depicts his beautiful coat and
embroidered waistcoat; points out the singular structure of yonder more
important animal, the megatherium of his history.
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