I must
waste my time and endure dullness.'
'As to waste of time,' said Anne, 'perhaps it is most usefully
employed in what is so irksome as you find being in company. Mamma
has always wished me to remember, that acquiring knowledge may after
all be but a selfish gratification, and many things ought to be
attended to first.'
'That doctrine would not do for everybody,' said Elizabeth.
'No,' said Anne, 'but it does for us; and you will see it plainer, if
you remember on what authority it is said that all knowledge is
profitable for nothing without charity.'
'Charity, yes,' said Elizabeth; 'but Christian love is a very
different thing from drawing-room civility.'
'Not very different from bearing and forbearing, as Helen said,'
answered Anne.
'Politeness is not great enough,' said Elizabeth, 'to belong to
charity.'
'You are not the person to say so,' said Anne.
'Because I dislike it so much,' said Elizabeth, 'but that is because
I despise it. It is such folly to sit a whole evening with your
hands before you doing nothing.'
'But do you not think,' said Anne, 'that enduring restraint, and
listening to what is not amusing, for the sake of pleasing others, is
doing something?'
'Passively, not actively,' said Elizabeth; 'but it is not to please
others, it is only that they may think you well bred, or rather that
they may not think about you at all.
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