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MacDonald, George, 1824-1905

"Weighed and Wanting"

The Father cannot bear
rudeness in his children any more than wrong:--my comparison is unfit,
for rudeness is a great and profound wrong, and that to the noblest part
of the human being, while a mere show of indifference is sometimes
almost as bad as the rudest words. And these are of those faults of
which the more guilty a man is, the less is he conscious of the same.
Vavasor did not move the deepest in Hester. How should he? With that
deepest he had no developed relation. There were worlds of thought and
feeling already in motion in Hester's universe, while the vaporous mass
in him had hardly yet begun to stir. To use another simile, he was
living on the surface of his being, the more exposed to earthquake and
volcanic eruption that he had never yet suspected the existence of the
depths profound whence they rise, while she was already a discoverer in
the abysses of the nature gradually yet swiftly unfolding in her--every
discovery attended with fresh light for the will, and a new sense of
power in the consciousness. When Vavasor was gone she turned with
greater diligence to her musical studies.
Amy Amber continued devoted to her, and when she was practicing would
hover about her as often and as long as she could.


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