I can fancy a lovely woman playfully withdrawing the knife which he would abuse by making it an instrument for the conveyance of food,--or, failing in this kind artifice, sacrificing herself by imitating his use of that implement; how much harder than to plunge it into her bosom, like Lucretia! I can see her studying in his provincial dialect until she becomes the Champollion of New England or Western or Southern barbarisms.

She has learned that haow means what; that think-in' is the same thing as thinking, or she has found out the meaning of that extraordinary mono syllable, which no single-tongued phonographer can make legible, prevailing on the banks of the Hudson and at its embouchure, and elsewhere,--what they say when they think they say first, (fe-eest,--fe as in the French le),--or that cheer means chair,--or that urritation means irritation,--and so of other enormities.

Nothing surprises her.

The highest breeding, you know, comes round to the Indian standard,--to take everything coolly,--nil admirari,--if you happen to be learned and like the Roman phrase for the same thing.
If you like the company of people that stare at you from head to foot to see if there is a hole in your coat, or if you have not grown a little older, or if your eyes are not yellow with jaundice, or if your complexion is not a little faded, and so on, and then convey the fact to you, in the style in which the Poor Relation addressed the divinity-student,--go with them as much as you like.

I hate the sight of the wretches.