I
cannot help feeling that this is a great and terrible mistake. I cannot
help wishing that you would examine and reconsider."
"My dear child, I am extremely grateful to you for your remark, and
appreciate fully the purity of the source from which it springs.
Unfortunately, our intellectual beliefs are not subject to the control
of our will. I have examined, and the examination has, I regret to say,
not had the effect you would desire."
Mary looked at him wistfully; he smiled and bowed,--all himself again;
and stopping at the door, he said, with a proud humility,--
"Do me the favor to present my devoted regard to your friend; believe
me, that hereafter you shall have less reason to complain of me."
He bowed, and was gone.
An eye-witness of the scene has related, that, when Burr resigned his
seat as President of his country's Senate, an object of peculiar
political bitterness and obloquy, almost all who listened to him had
made up their minds that he was an utterly faithless, unprincipled man;
and yet, such was his singular and peculiar personal power, that his
short farewell-address melted the whole assembly into tears, and his
most embittered adversaries were charmed into a momentary enthusiasm of
admiration.
Pages:
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91