Yet to Mr. Arnold, who led him to these pastures, he still bears a
grudge. The day is perhaps not far oft when people will begin to
count MOLL FLANDERS, ay, or THE COUNTRY WIFE, more wholesome and
more pious diet than these guide-books to consistent egoism.

But the most inhuman of boys soon wearies of the inhumanity of
Obermann. And even while I still continued to be a haunter of the
graveyard, I began insensibly to turn my attention to the grave-
diggers, and was weaned out of myself to observe the conduct of
visitors. This was dayspring, indeed, to a lad in such great
darkness. Not that I began to see men, or to try to see them, from
within, nor to learn charity and modesty and justice from the
sight; but still stared at them externally from the prison windows
of my affectation. Once I remember to have observed two working-
women with a baby halting by a grave; there was something
monumental in the grouping, one upright carrying the child, the
other with bowed face crouching by her side. A wreath of
immortelles under a glass dome had thus attracted them; and,
drawing near, I overheard their judgment on that wonder. "Eh! what
extravagance!"

To a youth afflicted with the callosity of sentiment, this quaint
and pregnant saying appeared merely base.

My acquaintance with grave-diggers, considering its length, was
unremarkable. One, indeed, whom I found plying his spade in the
red evening, high above Allan Water and in the shadow of Dunblane
Cathedral, told me of his acquaintance with the birds that still
attended on his labours; how some would even perch about him,
waiting for their prey; and in a true Sexton's Calendar, how the