There never was a shallower conceit
than that of establishing the sense attached to a word centuries ago, by
showing what it means _now_. Pity that hyper-fashionable mantuamakers
and milliners were not a little quicker at taking hints from some of our
Doctors of Divinity. How easily they could save their pious customers
all qualms of conscience about the weekly shiftings of fashion, by
demonstrating that the last importation of Parisian indecency, just now
flaunting here on promenade, was the identical style of dress in which
the pious Sarah kneaded cakes for the angels, the modest Rebecca drew
water for the camels of Abraham's servants. Since such fashions are rife
in Chestnut-street and Broadway _now_, they _must_ have been in Canaan
and Pandanaram four thousand years ago!
II. 1. The inference that the word buy, used to describe the procuring
of servants, means procuring them as _chattels_, seems based upon the
fallacy--that whatever _costs_ money _is_ money; that whatever or
whoever you pay money _for_, is an article of property, and the fact of
your paying for it _proves_ that it is property.
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