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СКАЧАТЬ and that when he danced he so capered and kicked up behind, and rounded his elbows, and, in short, made himself so completely the butt and laughing-stock of the whole room, it was with difficulty that even his fifteen thousand per annum could procure him a partner.

      We rather suspect, however, that there were ladies who, though they shrank from sharing with Sir James the unprofitable ridicule of the hour, would have had no objection to share with him for life his fifteen thousand a-year, for, in that case, they could afford to be laughed at.

      Sir James had a brother, a very fine young man, remarkably handsome and equally clever; perhaps a little too hot-headed, but warm-hearted withal; an enthusiast in beauty, painting, music, scenery, every thing in short at which a glowing imagination takes fire; the very material for a frantic lover, yet condemned by his circumstances, either to lead a single life, or possibly at least contract a marriage with the purse of some old rich widow, fitter to be his mother than his wife. For Henry Lindsey was one of the many living sacrifices hourly immolated on the altars of pride, and how many a holocaust has been offered up upon those altars!

      How often have we heard persons, who could argue rationally enough on other subjects, gravely assert, in reply to every argument which good feeling or justice could urge, "A family must have a head."

      In this particular instance the head, or pride of the family, had proved its disgrace, yet standing laws and previously made settlements could not be altered. Fifteen thousand per annum, therefore, must be melted down, to make a golden image of poor little silly Sir James, while Henry, with the pittance which as a younger child was his portion, was obliged to purchase the privilege of being shot at; for the younger brother of an old baronet could not disgrace his family by doing any thing likely to provide comfortably for himself.

      Thus do the prejudices of society seem to have been invented for the express purpose of hunting down and crushing those whom its laws have robbed and oppressed.

      Children of the same parents must be defrauded of the birthright, by natural justice theirs, to heap all on one brother! And for what purpose? That he may keep alive, by being its living representative, that pride, that curse, which forbids to those so defrauded, the use of honest means for earning honest bread!

      If, instead of this, all property which had been a father's, were, at his death, equally divided among his offspring, without revolution or confiscation, extravagant disparity of station would gradually disappear, and with it pride, that destroys the happiness, with its whole array of prejudices, waging eternal warfare against rational contentment.

      How many are there who might still, even as the world now is, dwell within a very garden of Eden, of peaceful and natural delights, and yet who virtually turn themselves out of the same; and, at the mere mandate of some prejudice of society—some by-law of pride, become wanderers through the thistle-grown wildernesses of discontent, or weary pilgrims amid the thorny paths of petty mortification.

      But to return to our ball: by this time so fair a proportion of the company had arrived, that it was thought advisable to commence dancing. For this purpose Mr. Salter, with a feeling of exultation which made him forget, for the time, what the whole entertainment was likely to cost, led Lady Flamborough to the head of the room. Her ladyship had evidently been pretty in her youth; but though the remains of a fine woman may sometimes be viewed with a blending of admiration with our veneration, mere prettiness seldom grows old gracefully. In Lady Flamborough's case it certainly did not. Her once nicely rounded little figure had now outgrown all bounds, not excepting those of the drapery which ought to have concealed its exuberance. Her once infantine features were now nearly lost in the midst of a countenance disproportionally increased in its general dimensions; while in manner she still played off numberless once becoming, but now disgusting, airs of artless innocence; languishing, lisping, and rolling her eyes; and childishly twisting her fingers through the ringlets of her hair, while looking up in her partner's face, and saying silly things.

      Had it been possible to have checked coquetry in Lady Flamborough, the sight of the senseless bloated countenance on which she was thus casting away those interesting appeals of her visual orbs, one would have thought might have done so.

      Mr. Salter's head was in shape something like a sugar loaf: the region denominated fore-head, and appropriated by phrenologists to the intellectual faculties, being so confined, that it nearly came to a point, while the descent widened as it approached the organs of gustativeness, and all that called itself face, concluded without any distinct line of demarcation, in a jole, much resembling that of a cod-fish.

      The eyes were colourless, and owed all the brilliancy they possessed to an inflammation of the lids, which never forsook them. The efforts of their owner, on the present occasion, to give them a languishing roll, that should correspond with that of her ladyship's, was truly ludicrous. As to his mouth, it bisected his countenance from ear to ear, which rendered his endeavours to spread it wider by that bland movement designated a smile, nearly abortive.

      A few additional lines of circular or spherical trigonometry were conspicuously marked upon cheeks that yielded in carnation hue to nought save the nose; while this rallying point of the vital powers, like certain well-known altars of the ancients, never allowed the flame to go out.

      Mr. Salter was exceedingly proud of his legs, (not that he had seen them himself for the last ten years), and though short for his body, which by-the-by had precisely the appearance of a Brobdingnag melon on castors, the legs themselves, when you were distant enough to have a view of them beneath the inflated balloon that otherwise concealed them, were certainly formed according to the rules of beauty; that is to say, they had very large calves, and very small ankles.

      We suppose it must have been the combined effect of the personal charms and the elevated rank of his partner, which raised Mr. Salter's spirits to so inconvenient a degree, as to produce in his mind a most frisky longing to behold, once more, this long remembered attraction of his own—his said handsome legs. Accordingly, while setting to the lady, he made several kicks out in front, with accompanying jerks forward of the head, in the vain hope of catching a glimpse; but, alas, in one unfortunate effort more strenuous than the rest, he lost his balance; out flew his feet, and down he came on his back, so much to the amusement of the whole room that no one for a time had the presence of mind to pick him up: while there he lay, sprawling and puffing, his own endeavours to rise being quite as fruitless as those of a beetle usually are, when placed in the same reversed position by a mischievous school-boy. Neither was the evening by any means one of unmixed delight to the Misses Salter. It was but too evident that even on the present occasion, when, if ever compliment was due to them, that the gentlemen evinced any thing but impatience to secure the felicity of being their partners. On the contrary, it was generally when a quadrille was nearly made up, and the last added couple were in great distress for a vis-à-vis, that some one who had previously made up his mind not to dance, was pressed into the service, and given a hint that one of the Miss Salters was sitting down.

      Even Sir James, though he did dance a set with each sister, did not do so till he had been shaken off by nearly every other woman in the room.

      The Scotch proverb says, "It's a lucky lass that's like her father."

      But we must confess, we never could discover that it was any advantage to Miss Salter to be so strikingly like her father as she certainly was. Miss Grace Salter was altogether of a different style; she was under-sized, pitiably thin, and extremely dark, with an expression of countenance as if she had just swallowed something unseasonably bitter, and was making a face at its disagreeable flavour. The set with Sir James could not much sooth the vanity of either sister, for no sooner did he commence operations, than a ring was immediately formed for the avowed purpose of laughing at him; while he, mistaking the general attention he drew for admiration, seemed gratefully determined to spare no pains to give the greatest possible СКАЧАТЬ