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CHAPTER XLI . By swaggering could I never thrive , For the rain it raineth every day . — Twelfth Night . The transactions referred to by Caleb Garth as having gone forward between Mr . Bulstrode and Mr . Joshua Rigg Featherstone concerning the land attached to Stone Court , had occasioned the interchange of a letter or two between these personages . Who shall tell what may be the effect of writing ? If it happens to have been cut in stone , though it lie face down - most for ages on a forsaken beach , or “ rest quietly under the drums and tramplings of many conquests , ” it may end by letting us into the secret of usurpations and other scandals gossiped about long empires ago : — this world being apparently a huge whispering - gallery . Such conditions are often minutely represented in our petty lifetimes . As the stone which has been kicked by generations of clowns may come by curious little links of effect under the eyes of a scholar , through whose labors it may at last fix the date of invasions and unlock religions , so a bit of ink and paper which has long been an innocent wrapping or stop - gap may at last be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have knowledge enough to turn it into the opening of a catastrophe . To Uriel watching the progress of planetary history from the sun , the one result would be just as much of a coincidence as the other . Having made this rather lofty comparison I am less uneasy in calling attention to the existence of low people by whose interference , however little we may like it , the course of the world is very much determined . It would be well , certainly , if we could help to reduce their number , and something might perhaps be done by not lightly giving occasion to their existence . Socially speaking , Joshua Rigg would have been generally pronounced a superfluity . But those who like Peter Featherstone never had a copy of themselves demanded , are the very last to wait for such a request either in prose or verse . The copy in this case bore more of outside resemblance to the mother , in whose sex frog - features , accompanied with fresh - colored cheeks and a well - rounded figure , are compatible with much charm for a certain order of admirers . The result is sometimes a frog - faced male , desirable , surely , to no order of intelligent beings . Especially when he is suddenly brought into evidence to frustrate other people’s expectations — the very lowest aspect in which a social superfluity can present himself .
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