Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/375

346 sewage. Or, to borrow another illustration, the first sentence is like Scott's Jeanie Deans; the second is like the average young lady of our day; the third is like Fielding's loathsome Bellaston woman. Something has been said earlier of the merits of stone, brick, and stucco.

I will end with a parable: — A maiden of Eastern birth came over the sea, and by sheer force installed herself in a Welshman's house. Her roughness was much abated after her baptism: some say the priest who christened her was an Italian, others will have it that he was an Irishman. Her garments were afterwards somewhat rumpled and torn in a struggle with a Danish rover, her own kinsman, who long worried her sorely. A French knight proved a still shrewder foe; he became lord of her house, settled himself in her parlour, and thrust her down into the scullery. There she abode many days, taking little thought for her dress, though she had once given the greatest heed to it. A begging friar now came in, who was listened to by knight and maiden alike; he persuaded the latter to throw away certain articles of her homespun raiment, brought by her from the East, and to replace these (a work of time) by an imitation of part of the knight's fine French apparel. What was worse, she became too proud to spin new garments, as she wanted them, out of her home materials. All this was wrong; her weeds now became parti-coloured, unlike those of her kinsmen on the main&shy;land. Not long after this great change in her attire,