She accepted her place in society, reserving the right
to embellish it with the graces she had gathered in a higher sphere. In
her home, and in her person, she was little less elegant than a countess;
yet nothing more than a merchant-captain's wife; and she reared that
commander's children in a suburban villa, with the manners which adorn a
palace. When they happen to be there. She had a bugbear; Slang. Could not
endure the smart technicalities current; their multitude did not
overpower her distaste; she called them "jargon"--"slang" was too coarse
a word for her to apply to slang: she excluded many a good "racy idiom"
along with the real offenders; and monosyllables in general ran some risk
of' having to show their passports. If this was pedantry, it went no
further; she was open, free, and youthful with her young pupils; and had
the art to put herself on their level: often, when they were quite young,
she would feign infantine ignorance, in order to hunt trite truth in
couples with them, and detect, by joint experiment, that rainbows cannot,
or else will not, be walked into, nor Jack-o'-lantern be gathered like a
cowslip; and that, dissect we the vocal dog--whose hair is so like a
lamb's--never so skilfully, no fragment of palpable bark, no sediment of
tangible squeak, remains inside him to bless the inquisitive little
operator, &c.
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