But the person of
the larger kind makes no such effort. In everything Brent
said and did and wore, in all his movements, gestures,
expressions, there was the unmistakable hallmark of the man
worth while. The social life has banished simplicity from
even the most savage tribe. Indeed, savages, filled with
superstitions, their every movement the result of some notion
of proper ceremonial, are the most complex of all the human
kind. The effort toward simplicity is not a movement back to
nature, for there savage and lower animal are completely
enslaved by custom and instinct; it is a movement upward
toward the freedom of thought and action of which our best
intelligence has given us a conception and for which it has
given us a longing. Never had Susan met so simple a man; and
never had she seen one so far from all the silly ostentations
of rudeness, of unattractive dress, of eccentric or coarse
speech wherewith the cheap sort of man strives to proclaim
himself individual and free.
With her instinct for recognizing the best at first sight,
Susan at once understood. And she was like one who has been
stumbling about searching for the right road, and has it
suddenly shown to him. She fairly darted along this right
road. She was immediately busy, noting the mistakes in her
own ideas of manners and dress, of good and bad taste. She
realized how much she had to learn.
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