The
machinery will be imitated by other nations, but those nations can not
create coal-fields. Should those ever be exhausted, our ingenuity will be
imitated by larger nations, our territory will remain small, and we shall
be a second-rate power; so I say that every man who reads and thinks
about his own c--country ought to be able to say, 'I have been
d--d--down a coal mine.'"
"Well," said the Colonel, loftily, "and can't you say you have been down
a coal mine? I could say that and sit here. Well, sir, you have been
reading the newspapers, and learning them off by heart as if they were
the Epistle and Gospel; of course _you_ must go down a coal mine; but if
you do, have a little mercy on the fair, and go down by yourself. In the
mean while, Walter, you can take your cousin and give her a walk in the
woods, and show her the primroses."
Now Julia was surprised and pleased at Percy's good sense, and she did
not care whether he got it from the newspapers or where he got it from;
it was there; so she resisted, and said, coldly and firmly, "Thank you,
uncle, but I don't want the primroses, and Walter does not want me.
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