One wonders how he acquired it. His patriotic proclivity, his hostility
to national costumes other than English, his preference for uncoloured
complexions--this one may understand; but his aesthetic instinct is a
problem for Weismann. As the interpreter of the conventions, he is of a
cast-iron rigidity, for is he not a child of Mrs. Grundy--his mother's
own boy? He has no exceptions--it is "one law and one measure." He is the
scavenger of manners, as the Constantinople street-dog is of gutters; a
natural _police des moeurs_, infinitely more efficient than any
artificial organisation; an all-ramifying association created to keep the
bounds of social order, on duty at every street corner, alert to check
every outbreak of individuality. Do ladies aspire to ride bicycles? Or
wear bloomers? There is the small boy to face. It is a question for him.
Conciliate him, and you may laugh at the pragmatic. His, too, is a
healthy barbarism, beneficent in its action, that thinks scorn of
eyeglasses and spectacles, and leads him to denounce quadruple vision,
as, indeed, all departure from the simplicities of physical perfection. A
human scarecrow he abhors, and will follow such an one through six
streets to express his disapprobation.
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