'
'But how would you choose your standard?' said Anne; 'everyone would
take their own degree of sense as a measure.'
'Let them,' said Elizabeth; 'there would be a set of measures like
the bolters in a mill, one for the pastry-flour, one for the bread-
flour, one for the blues, one for the bran.'
'I am glad you put the blues after the bread,' said Anne; 'there is
hope of you yet, Lizzie.'
Elizabeth was too far advanced in her career of nonsense to be easily
checked, even by Anne; and she continued, 'Sir Walter Scott says in
one of his letters, that he wishes there could be a whole village of
poets and antiquaries isolated from the rest of the world. That must
be like what I mean.'
'I do not think he meant what he said there,' said Helen.
'And pray remember,' said Anne, 'that your favourite brown bread is
made of all those kinds mixed--bran, and pastry-flour, and all.'
'Yes,' said Helen, 'all the world would turn idiots if there were not
a few sensible people to raise the others.'
'Well,' said Elizabeth, 'you know the Veillees du Chateau says, there
is a village where all the people do turn idiots at fourteen.
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