 whose labours 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-coloured 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.
    But Mr. Rigg Featherstone's low characteristics were all of the sober,
water-drinking kind. From the earliest to the latest hour of the day he was
always as sleek, neat, and cool as the frog he resembled, and old Peter had
secretly chuckled over an offshoot almost more calculating, and far more
imperturbable, than himself. I will add that his finger-nails were scrupulously
attended to, and that he meant to marry a well-educated young lady (as yet
unspecified) whose person was good, and whose connections, in a solid
middle-class way, were undeniable. Thus his nails and modesty were comparable to
those of most gentlemen; though his ambition had been educated only by the
opportunities of a clerk and accountant in the smaller commercial houses of a
seaport. He thought the rural Featherstones very simple absurd people, and they
in their turn regarded his »bringing up« in a seaport town as an exaggeration of
the monstrosity that their brother Peter, and still more Peter's property,
should have had such belongings.
