Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIII by Various
page 46 of 246 (18%)
page 46 of 246 (18%)
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"hussyskep" was nothing better than mercenary grubbing; her adhesion to
her hodden-grey was vulgar affectation; and as to her monologues, they were evidence of insanity. Such changes in reference to other objects happen to every one of us every day in the year, only we don't look at and examine them; nor, if we did, could we reconcile them to any theory of the mind--all that we can say being, that if we love a certain object, we hate any other which comes between us and our gratification; and thus, just as Mr. Thomas Dodds loved Mrs. Mary Blyth, so in an equal ratio he hated his good helpmate Jenny. And then began that other wonderful process called reconciliation, whereby the wish gradually overcomes scruples through the cunning mean of falsifying their aspects. Whereunto, again, the new mistress contributed in the adroit way of all such wretches--instilling into his ear the moral poison which deadened the apperception of these scruples at the same time that it brought out the advantages of disregarding them. The result of all which was, that Jenny's husband, of whom she had made a slave, for his own good and benefit, as she thought, and not without reason, arrived, by small degrees, and by relays of new motives, one after another, at the conclusion of actually removing her from this big world, and of course also from that little one to her so dear, even that of her household empire. A resolution this, which, terrible and revolting as it may appear to those who are happily beyond the influence of "the wish," was far more easily formed than executed; for Nature--although improvident herself of her children, swallowing them up in thousands by earthquakes, tearing them by machinery, and drowning them in the sea by shiploads--is very careful to defend one of them against another. Every scheme the husband could think of was surrounded with difficulties, and one by one was laid aside, till he came to that of precipitating his faithful Jenny, as if |
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