Page:Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question.djvu/10

1849.] discover where the fox’s den is, and kill the fox? Most thinking people, you know the fox and his den; there he is,—kill him, and discharge your cruisers and police-watchers!

Oh, my friends, I feel there is an immense fund of Human Stupidity circulating among us, and much clogging our affairs for some time past! A certain man has called us, ‘of all peoples the wisest in action;’ but he added, ‘the stupidest in speech:’—and it is a sore thing, in these constitutional times, times mainly of universal Parliamentary and other Eloquence, that the ‘speakers’ have all first to emit, in such tumultuous volumes, their human stupor, as the indispensable preliminary, and everywhere we must first see that and its results out, before beginning any business! (Explicit MS.) 



OOR Jack Faunce was certainly in love, and of course felt as deeply the sudden blighting of his budding wishes. I will not concede to any hero of romance whatsoever, not even to one of Mr. Rabbit's faultless monsters (who could no more commit an impropriety than could one of those other waxen and whiskered works of art that ﬂourish in hairdressers' windows), a greater capacity for adoring an earthly goddess than John wed, nor a more total absence of the terrestrial utility of prudence in lavishing his admiration, nor a keener perception of a disappointment such as this late one of his. But I grieve to say that his mode of exhibiting his feelings wan not at all what romance writers, down to these very practical days of ours, have prescribed as proper for heroes in his situation. For he neither wandered away into shady woods, lost for days together to society and to himself, nor fell on his knees registering vows of any description whatsoever in heaven, nor shewed any other symptom of having sent his reason to attend the obsequies of his perished hopes; but behaved like an ordinary human being, only a little more subdued and gentle than was his wont. lie conducted his arran cuts with as much discretion as usual—which, after all, was nothing to boast of—set out on his journey in proper time, did not omit to pay for his railway ticket, put the change in his pocket, and got into the right carriage.

Nevertheless it is not to he denied, that on ﬁnding himself alone and beginning to ruminate he gave vent to a few eccentricities, such as frequent interjections, some of them profane, and all incoherent at first, but towards the conclusion of the journey taking the form of blank verse; also occasional violent stamps and reckless kickings, indicative of disregard for the furniture of the carriage he sat in, and frequent abrupt and uncalled-for changes of position, showing similar carelessness of his own head and limbs; so that a timid old lady, who (unconsciously to him) was his travelling companion for half-a-dozen miles, precipitately quitted the carriage on the first opportunity, imagining him to be not quite right in his mind. But on again mingling with his fellow-creatures he relapsed into the usages of every-day life, his Ætna wearing outwardly such a molehill-like aspect that none with whom he came in contact suspected themselves to be in the neighbourhood of a volcano.

He found his father as on a former occasion pacing the breakfast—room of the hotel. Since their last meeting both had been changed by contact with the outer world, but the process that was licking John into shape was flaying the poor Vicar. He received his son with all his usual affection,—perhaps more, but the old smile and the latent joyousness of tone were gone; and as they gazed in each other's faces John thought he looked harassed and careworn,