What a pretty rascal history
might be read in yonder greasy day-book, which never left the
miser!--he never read in any other. Of what a treasure were yonder
keys and purse the keepers! not a shilling they guarded but was
picked from the pocket of necessity, plundered from needy
wantonness, or pitilessly squeezed from starvation. "A fool, a
miser, and a coward! Why was I bound to this wretch?" thought
Catherine: "I, who am high-spirited and beautiful (did not HE tell
me so?); I who, born a beggar, have raised myself to competence, and
might have mounted--who knows whither?--if cursed Fortune had not
baulked me!"
As Mrs. Cat did not utter these sentiments, but only thought them,
we have a right to clothe her thoughts in the genteelest possible
language; and, to the best of our power, have done so. If the
reader examines Mrs. Hayes's train of reasoning, he will not, we
should think, fail to perceive how ingeniously she managed to fix
all the wrong upon her husband, and yet to twist out some
consolatory arguments for her own vanity. This perverse
argumentation we have all of us, no doubt, employed in our time.
How often have we,--we poets, politicians, philosophers,
family-men,--found charming excuses for our own rascalities in the
monstrous wickedness of the world about us; how loudly have we
abused the times and our neighbours! All this devil's logic did
Mrs.
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