sily vanquished and never overcome
Weak stomach is certainly more carnally virtuous than a full one
Wins everywhere back a reflection of its own kindliness

THE CASE OF GENERAL OPLE AND LADY CAMPER

By George Meredith

CHAPTER I

An excursion beyond the immediate suburbs of London, projected long
before his pony-carriage was hired to conduct him, in fact ever since
his retirement from active service, led General Ople across a famous
common, with which he fell in love at once, to a lofty highway along
the borders of a park, for which he promptly exchanged his heart, and
so gradually within a stone's-throw or so of the river-side, where he
determined not solely to bestow his affections but to settle for life.
It may be seen that he was of an adventurous temperament, though he had
thought fit to loosen his sword-belt. The pony-carriage, however, had
been hired for the very special purpose of helping him to pass in review
the lines of what he called country houses, cottages, or even sites for
building, not too remote from sweet London: and as when Coelebs goes
forth intending to pursue and obtain, there is no doubt of his bringing
home a wife, the circumstance that there stood a house to let, in an
airy situation, at a certain distance in hail of the metropolis he
worshipped, was enough to kindle the General's enthusiasm. He would
have taken the first he saw, had it not been for his daughter, who
accompanied him, and at the age of eighteen was about to undertake
the management of his house. Fortune, under Elizabeth Ople's guiding
restraint, directed him to an epitome of the comforts. The place he fell
upon is only to be described in the tongue of auctioneers, and for
the first week after taking it he modestly followed them by terming
it bijou. In time, when his own imagination, instigated by a state of
something more than mere contentment, had been at work on it, he chose
the happy phrase, 'a gentlemanly residence.' For it was, he declared,
a small estate. There was a lodge to it, resembling two sentry-boxes
forced into union, where in one half an old couple sat bent, in the
other half lay compressed; there was a backdrive to discoverable
stables; there was a bit of grass that would have appeared a meadow if
magnified; and there was a wall round the kitchen-garden and a strip
of wood round the flower-garden. The prying of the outside world was
impossible. Comfort, fortification; and gentlemanline