Why,
girls, just think! a hundred thousand dollars for the privilege of being
called the wife of Monsieur le Comte de Rien, and of living, eventually,
in an attic on the outskirts of Paris!
Why is it that if a young man has not certain points of distinction
in the way he combs his hair, wears his collar, or affects the English
gentleman, some of the girls hesitate about receiving his attentions?
If they do finally accept his kindness, they feel obliged to excuse
his commonplace appearance, and exclaim to their friends apologetically,
"But, then, he is really good at heart, you know, and very agreeable!"
Oh, pride is a valuable characteristic sometimes, but is one of the
worst of evils when it tries to despise the ordinary.
Do you not think we should all be happier, girls, if we took more time
to appreciate the commonplace? I have observed in the lives of great
naturalists, that not only the stone which all other builders had
rejected became the head of the corner in their temple of knowledge,
but that the most patient observation of simplest things was the
material out of which the edifice was made. Thoreau wanted to account
for the fact that when a pine grove is cut down an oak forest often
grows up; so he went, each year, to visit a pine lot in Concord. In
his earliest observations he could see nothing except pines; but,
burrowing around in the leaf-mould, he found, at last, tiny oaks an inch
or two high.
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