Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/59

 accustomed to compliments. I may add, that I should be well contented to march in the front with you—that is, to put my name with yours on the title-page. I have the honour to be,

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1em Do not admire, that, notwithstanding the distance and ceremony of your address, I return an answer in the terms of familiarity. The truth is, your origin and native country are better known to me than even to yourself. You derive your respectable parentage, if I am not greatly mistaken, from a land which has afforded much pleasure, as well as profit, to those who have traded to it successfully, I mean that part of the terra incognita which is called the province of Utopia. Its productions, though censured by many (and some who use tea and tobacco without scruple) as idle and unsubstantial luxuries, have nevertheless, like many other luxuries, a general acceptation, and are secretly enjoyed even by those who express the greatest scorn and dislike of them in public. The dram-drinker is often the first to be shocked at the smell of spirits; it is not unusual to hear old maiden ladies declaim against scandal; the private book-cases of some grave-seeming men would not 