Veritée looks pleadingly at her mother, as if saying: "Some things are so hard to bear unmoved." And Frederick tells her he will listen to all she has to say, "even if distressing as that last information, without again transgressing."
Smiling kindly at them, she desires Frederick to examine the further case, adding: "And patiently—remember a progressed state of thought is always patient with the ignorant."
Not being of this advanced age myself, I cannot help bitterly contrasting the mechanic's noble "comrade"—so exalted in nature, benevolently reviewing the misdeeds of our time—with some of our fashionable mothers. How are their mornings passed? In dressing, reading silly novels, or otherwise ignobly wasting time in paying and receiving visits. Simply an interchange of communication, without intellect, love or friendship! where, too often, the absent are smirched with the polite filth of scandal-loving tongues, and where the estimable of human kind are judged by their incomes. The children of such poor fools, where are they? If very young, their tender lives are in the care of paid attendants—strangers. If of school age, the daughters are undergoing a veneering of education, and the practice of unnatural attitude—which is supposed by some to be particularly expressive of superfine breeding.
The sons are learning to become Solomons and Davids, both by the quality of their classical studies and their early experience in male liberty—that is, the extensive indulgence shown to all excesses and frivolity—when committed by their sex.
Thus we cling to the disgraceful "morality" of the past, and perform our utmost to preserve what of brute remains
