The effect is not so absolute when it is a second name that can be tucked
away if unpresentable, but even then it is a misfortune. There is C----,
now, who won't marry, I believe, chiefly because of the insane "Annie"
with which she was smitten at the baptismal font by an afterthought. She
regards it as a taint in her constitution which orders her to a lonely
life lest worse might follow. And apply the consideration more publicly:
do you imagine the Prince of Wales will be the same sort of king if, when
he comes to the throne, he calls himself King Albert Edward in florid
Continental fashion, instead of "Edward the Seventh," with a right hope
that an Edward the Eighth may follow after him, to make a neck-and-neck
race of it with the Henries? I don't know anything that would do more to
knit up the English constitution: but whenever I pass the Albert Memorial
I tremble lest filial piety will not allow the thing to be done.
Now of all this I had an instance in the village the day before yesterday.
At the corner house by the post-office, as I went by, a bird opened his
bill and sang a note, and down, down, down, down he went over a golden
scale: pitched afresh, and dropped down another; and then up, up, up, over
the range of both. Then he flung back his shaggy head and laughed. "In all
my father's realm there are no such bells as these!" It was the laughing
jackass.
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