I like dealers in
out-of-the-way things,--traders in bigotry and virtue are too
common,--and so I went in. The gem of the collection was a terrier,--a
perfect beauty, uglier than philanthropy itself, and hairier, as a
Cockney would say, than the 'ole British hairystocracy. "A'n't he a
stunner?" said my disrespectable friend, the master of the shop. "Ah,
you should see him worry a rat! He does it like a puffic Christian!"
Since then, the world has been divided for me into Christians and
perfect Christians; and I find so many of the latter species in
proportion to the former, that I begin to pity the rats. They (the rats)
have at least one virtue,--they are not eloquent.
It is, I think, a universally recognized truth of natural history, that
a young lady is sure to fall in love with a young man for whom she feels
at first an unconquerable aversion; and it must be on the same principle
that the first symptoms of love for our neighbor almost always manifest
themselves in a violent disgust at the world in general, on the part of
the apostles of that gospel. They give every token of hating their
neighbors consumedly; _argal_, they are going to be madly enamored of
them.
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