Between exclamations, designed to waken louder from him, and not so successful as her cormorant hunger for praise of Steignton required, she plied him to confirm with his opinion an opinion that her reasoning mind had almost formed in the close neighbourhood of the beloved and honoured person providing it; for abstract ideas were unknown to her.

She put it, however, as in the abstract:-- 'How is it we meet people brave as lions before an enemy, and rank cowards where there's a botheration among their friends at home?
And tell me, too, if you've thought the thing over, what's the meaning of this?
I 've met men in high places, and they've risen to distinction by their own efforts, and they head the nation.

Right enough, you'd say.
Well, I talk with them, and I find they've left their brains on the ladder that led them up; they've only the ideas of their grandfather on general subjects.

I come across a common peasant or craftsman, and he down there has a mind more open--he's wiser in his intelligence than his rulers and lawgivers up above him.

He understands what I say, and I learn from him.