It matters little where a man may be
at this moment; the point is whether he is growing. The next
point will be, whether he is growing at the ratio given him. The
key to the whole thing is _obedience_, and nothing else.
What the gift of such an instructor was to Joseph, my reader may
be requested to imagine. He was like a man seated on the grass
outside the heavenly gate, from which, slow-opening every evening
as the sun went down, came an angel to teach, and teach, until he
too should be fit to enter in: an hour would arrive when she
would no longer have to come out to him where he sat. Under such
an influence all that was gentlest and sweetest in his nature
might well develop with rapidity, and every accidental roughness
--and in him there was no other--by swift degrees vanish from both
speech and manners. The angels do not want tailors to make their
clothes: their habits come out of themselves. But we are often
too hard upon our fellows; for many of those in the higher ranks
of life--no, no, I mean of society--whose insolence wakens ours,
as growl wakes growl in the forest, are not yet so far removed
from the savage--I mean in their personal history--as some in the
lowest ranks. When a nobleman mistakes the love of right in
another for a hatred of refinement, he can not be far from
mistaking insolence for good manners. Of such a nobility, good
Lord, deliver us from all envy!
As to falling in love with a lady like Mary, such a thing was as
far from Jasper's consciousness as if she had been a duchess.
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