But the hour had never come as yet, and the ring had remained in
the little drawer beneath his looking-glass. It need hardly be said
that she now accepted the gift.
CHAPTER XXVI
Conclusion
The Senator for Mickewa, whose name we have taken for a book which
might perhaps have been better called "The Chronicle of a Winter at
Dillsborough"--did not stay long in London after the unfortunate
close of his lecture. He was a man not very pervious to criticism,
nor afraid of it, but he did not like the treatment he had received
at St. James's Hall, nor the remarks which his lecture produced in
the newspapers. He was angry because people were unreasonable with
him, which was surely unreasonable in him who accused Englishmen
generally of want of reason. One ought to take it as a matter of
course that a bull should use his horns, and a wolf his teeth. The
Senator read everything that was said of him, and then wrote
numerous letters to the different journals which had condemned him.
Had any one accused him of an untruth? Or had his inaccuracies been
glaring? Had he not always expressed his readiness to acknowledge
his own mistake if convicted of ignorance? But when he was told
that he had persistently trodden upon all the corns of his English
cousins, he declared that corns were evil things which should be
abolished, and that with corns such as these there was no mode of
abolition so efficacious as treading on them.
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