Previous - Next

like what you expected? What do you think of him? Do you think him
so very plain?"

"He is very plain, undoubtedly--remarkably plain:--but that is
nothing compared with his entire want of gentility. I had no
right to expect much, and I did not expect much; but I had no
idea that he could be so very clownish, so totally without air.
I had imagined him, I confess, a degree or two nearer gentility."

"To be sure," said Harriet, in a mortified voice, "he is not
so genteel as real gentlemen."

"I think, Harriet, since your acquaintance with us, you have been
repeatedly in the company of some such very real gentlemen,
that you must yourself be struck with the difference in Mr. Martin.
At Hartfield, you have had very good specimens of well educated,
well bred men. I should be surprized if, after seeing them,
you could be in company with Mr. Martin again without perceiving
him to be a very inferior creature--and rather wondering at
yourself for having ever thought him at all agreeable before.
Do not you begin to feel that now? Were not you struck? I am sure
you must have been struck by his awkward look and abrupt manner,
and the uncouthness of a voice which I heard to be wholly unmodulated
as I stood here."

"Certainly, he is not like Mr. Knightley. He has not such a fine
air and way of walking as Mr. Knightley. I see the difference
plain enough. But Mr. Knightley is so very fine a man!"

"Mr. Knightley's air is so remarkably good that it is not fair
to compare Mr. Martin with _him_. You might not see one in a hundred
with _gentleman_ so plainly written as in Mr. Knightley. But he is
not the only gentleman you have been lately used to. What say you
to Mr. Weston and Mr. Elton? Compare Mr. Martin with either of _them_.
Compare their manner of carrying themselves; of walking; of speaking;
of being silent. You must see the difference."

"Oh yes!--there is a great difference. But Mr. Weston is almost
an old man. Mr. Weston must be between forty and fifty."

"Which makes his good manners the more valuable. The older a
person grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners
should not be bad; the more glaring and disgusting any loudness,
or coarseness, or awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth
is detestable in later age. Mr. Martin is now awkward and abrupt;
what will he be at Mr. Weston's time of life?"

"There is no saying, indeed," replied Harriet rather solemnly.

"But there may be pretty good guessing. He will be a completely gross,
vulgar farmer, totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking
of nothing but profit and loss."

"Will he, indeed? That will be very bad."

"How much his business engrosses him already is very plain from the
circumstance of his forgetting to inquire for the book you recommended.
He was a great deal too full of the market to think of any thing
else--which is just as it should be, for a thriving man. What has
he to do with books? And I have no doubt that he _will_ thrive,
and be a very rich man in time--and his being illiterate and coarse

Previous - Next