Her pronounced individuality forbade the intrusion even of a fancy of
comparison with anything else, and equally forbade the possibility of
rivalry. There was only one thought in the mind of the frequenters of
her parlor,--that of gratitude for the pleasure and opportunity she
gave them, and a genuine wish to please her and to become her friends.
She possessed the keen instincts of a child with regard to people. If
they were unlovable to her, if they were for any reason unsympathetic,
nothing could bring her to overcome her dislike. She was in this
particular more like some wild thing than a creature of the nineteenth
century; indeed, one of her marked traits was a curious intractability
of nature. I believe that no worldly motive ever influenced her
relation with any human creature. Of course these native qualities
made her more ardently devoted in her friendships; but it went hardly
with her to ingratiate those persons for whom she felt a natural
repulsion, or even sometimes to be gentle with them. Later in life she
learned to call no man "common or unclean;" but coming into the world,
as she did, full grown, like Minerva in the legend, with keen eyes,
and every sense alive to discern pretension, untruth, ungodliness in
guise of the church, and all the uncleanness of the earth, these
things were as much a surprise to her as it was, on the other hand, to
find the wondrous world of art and the lives of the saints.
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