Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/232

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Mrs. Grundy's Mission.


It is a favorite theory of an eccentric speculator upon men and manners, that "all sorts of people" are needed to make up the social elements of a habitable and agreeable world; that the greater the variety of temperaments, customs and opinions, congregated upon the globe, the more likelihood there is of the arrival of that "good time" which Mackay has tunefully predicted as certainly "coming." Moreover, the moralizing individual, above mentioned, maintains that every man, woman, and child—though the man may be commonplace, the woman insignificant, the child un enfant terrible—has, in that same pleasant world, his or her especial "mission." We use the much ridiculed expression very reluctantly, and with a painful consciousness that it has hopelessly fallen from its high position in the English vocabulary.

Upon reflection, we are inclined seriously to agree with the philosophic theorist who puts forth the views, concerning the world's requisite occupants, which we have quoted.

The supernal powers, whose appointed office it

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