For a Frenchman I can make all fair
allowance, because he cannot help his birth. But for an Englishman to
turn Frenchman--"
"However reluctant we may be to allow it," the candid rector argued,
"they are the foremost nation in the world, just now, for energy,
valour, decision, discipline, and I fear I must add patriotism. The
most wonderful man who has appeared in the world for centuries is their
leader, and by land his success has been almost unbroken. If we must
have war again, as I fear we must, and very speedily, our chief hope
must be that the Lord will support His cause against the scoffer and the
infidel, the libertine and the assassin."
"You see how beautifully your father puts it, Eliza; but he never abuses
people. That is a habit in which, I am sorry to say, you indulge too
freely. You show no good feeling to anybody who differs from you in
opinion, and you talk as if Frenchmen had no religion, no principles,
and no humanity. And what do you know about them, pray? Have you ever
spoken to a Frenchman? Have you ever even seen one? Would you know one
if you even set eyes upon him?"
"Well, I am not at all sure that I should," the young lady replied,
being thoroughly truthful; "and I have no wish for the opportunity. But
I have seen a French woman, mother; and that is quite enough for me. If
they are so, what must the men be?"
"There is a name for this process of feminine reasoning, this cumulative
and syncopetic process of the mind, entirely feminine (but regarded by
itself as rational), a name which I used to know well in the days when I
had the ten Fallacies at my fingers' ends, more tenaciously perhaps
than the Decalogue.
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