not speak of payment
Intellectual contempt of easy dupes
Invite indecision to exhaust their scruples
Is not one month of brightness as much as we can ask for?
No flattery for me at the expense of my sisters
Nothing desirable will you have which is not coveted
Primitive appetite for noise
She might turn out good, if well guarded for a time
The alternative is, a garter and the bedpost
They miss their pleasure in pursuing it
This mania of young people for pleasure, eternal pleasure
Wits, which are ordinarily less productive than land

THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH

By George Meredith A REALISTIC TALE

CHAPTER I

The experience of great officials who have laid down their dignities
before death, or have had the philosophic mind to review themselves
while still wielding the deputy sceptre, teaches them that in the
exercise of authority over men an eccentric behaviour in trifles has
most exposed them to hostile criticism and gone farthest to jeopardize
their popularity. It is their Achilles' heel; the place where
their mother Nature holds them as she dips them in our waters. The
eccentricity of common persons is the entertainment of the multitude,
and the maternal hand is perceived for a cherishing and endearing sign
upon them; but rarely can this be found suitable for the august in
station; only, indeed, when their sceptre is no more fearful than a
grandmother's birch; and these must learn from it sooner or later that
they are uncomfortably mortal.

When herrings are at auction on a beach, for example, the man of chief
distinction in the town should not step in among a poor fraternity to
take advantage of an occasion of cheapness, though it be done, as he
may protest, to relieve the fishermen of a burden; nor should such
a dignitary as the bailiff of a Cinque Port carry home the spoil of
victorious bargaining on his arm in a basket. It is not that his
conduct is in itself objectionable, so much as that it causes him to be
popularly weighed; and during life, until the best of all advocates can
plead before our fellow Englishmen that we are out of their way, it is
prudent to avoid the process.

Mr. Tinman, however, this high-stepping person in question, happened to
have come of a marketing mother. She had started him from a small shop
to a big one. He, by the practice of her virtues, had been enabled to
start himself as a gentleman. He was a man of this ambit