Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the strain held him entranced, and he had a painful double consciousness, as if something in himself answered to the dictum of the song. And where are we to find the person who has not often experienced a sudden inner reaction, from the noble to the mean ? where is the one who has never revolted against himself in acknowledging that tendency of his mind to gravitate towards low desires, as hia feet to the earth ? CHAPTER III. DODGE. MRS. GREATOREX believed that "those Browns" would be highly gratified by a call from the rectory. She felt in her heart that it was a condescension on her part, which ought to give pleasure. All over the civilized world is there not an anxiety to be visited by the right people; that is, by our superiors? Not by angels or archangels, understand, but by rank and fashion. And what a deal of trouble we take to accomplish this end ! We should be pretty sure of entering the gates of heaven, if we practiced the same humility, self-control, and self- sacrifice we do to get within the park gates of the greatest man within our reach. Not that this bastard sort of hero-worship makes us unnatural in our affections or distorts us into monsters; its worst effect in general, being, the making us poor-folks forget, not our humble friends, but to cut our coat according to our cloth. Now Mrs. Greatorex, a lady whose father belonged to one of those fine old French families designated, Leg grands chevaux de Lorraine, the wife of a reverend gentleman of family and fortune, imagined, and as the world goes, had a right to imagine, she was about to confer a signal favour on a Mrs. Brown, who apparently had neither fortune nor friends. "I think," mused Mrs. Greatorex, "that she is probably a person who will be gratified if I go rather smart." It might be for ... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.