I have often seen, with a sad heart, in
the case of working people that manner, difficult to describe, which
comes of being what we in Scotland sometimes call _sair hadden down_. I
have seen the like in educated people, too. And not very many will take
the trouble to seek out and to draw out the modest merit that keeps
itself in the shade. The energetic, successful people of this world are
too busy in pushing each for himself to have time to do _that_. You will
find that people with abundant confidence, people who assume a good
deal, are not unfrequently taken at their own estimate of themselves. I
have seen a Queen's Counsel walk into court, after the case in which he
was engaged had been conducted so far by his junior, and conducted
as well as mortal could conduct it. But it was easy to see that the
complacent air of superior strength with which the Queen's Counsel took
the management out of his junior's hands conveyed to the jury, (a common
jury,) the belief that things were now to be managed in quite different
and vastly better style. And have you not known such a thing as that a
family, not a whit better, wealthier, or more respectable than all
the rest in the little country town or the country parish, do yet, by
carrying their heads higher, (no mortal could say why,) gradually elbow
themselves into a place of admitted social superiority? Everybody knows
exactly what they are, and from what they have sprung; but somehow,
by resolute assumption, by a quiet air of being better than their
neighbors, they draw ahead of them, and attain the glorious advantage
of one step higher on the delicately graduated social ladder of the
district.
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