VOLUME I
4. CHAPTER IV
(continued)
"Which makes his good manners the more valuable. The older a
person grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners
should not be bad; the more glaring and disgusting any loudness,
or coarseness, or awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth
is detestable in later age. Mr. Martin is now awkward and abrupt;
what will he be at Mr. Weston's time of life?"
"There is no saying, indeed," replied Harriet rather solemnly.
"But there may be pretty good guessing. He will be a completely gross,
vulgar farmer, totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking
of nothing but profit and loss."
"Will he, indeed? That will be very bad."
"How much his business engrosses him already is very plain from the
circumstance of his forgetting to inquire for the book you recommended.
He was a great deal too full of the market to think of any thing
else--which is just as it should be, for a thriving man. What has
he to do with books? And I have no doubt that he will thrive,
and be a very rich man in time--and his being illiterate and coarse
need not disturb us."
"I wonder he did not remember the book"--was all Harriet's answer,
and spoken with a degree of grave displeasure which Emma thought might
be safely left to itself. She, therefore, said no more for some time.
Her next beginning was,
"In one respect, perhaps, Mr. Elton's manners are superior
to Mr. Knightley's or Mr. Weston's. They have more gentleness.
They might be more safely held up as a pattern. There is an openness,
a quickness, almost a bluntness in Mr. Weston, which every body
likes in him, because there is so much good-humour with it--but
that would not do to be copied. Neither would Mr. Knightley's
downright, decided, commanding sort of manner, though it suits
him very well; his figure, and look, and situation in life seem
to allow it; but if any young man were to set about copying him,
he would not be sufferable. On the contrary, I think a young man
might be very safely recommended to take Mr. Elton as a model.
Mr. Elton is good-humoured, cheerful, obliging, and gentle.
He seems to me to be grown particularly gentle of late. I do not
know whether he has any design of ingratiating himself with either
of us, Harriet, by additional softness, but it strikes me that his
manners are softer than they used to be. If he means any thing,
it must be to please you. Did not I tell you what he said of you
the other day?"
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