"Don't you like it, Forester?" said Henry.
"No, he does not like it," said Flora, smiling; "don't force him to say that he does."
"Force me to say I like what I don't like!" repeated Forester; "no, I defy any body to do that."
"But why," said Dr. Campbell, laughing, "why such a waste of energy and magnanimity about a trifle? If you were upon your trial for life or death, Mr. Forester, you could not look more resolutely guarded--more as if you had 'worked up each corporal agent' to the terrible feat!"
"Sir," said Forester, who bore the laugh that was raised against him with the air of a martyr, "I can bear even your ridicule in the cause of truth." The laugh continued at the solemnity with which he pronounced these words. "I think," pursued Forester, "that those who do not respect truth in trifles, will never respect it in matters of consequence."
Archibald Mackenzie laughed more loudly, and with affectation, at this speech: Henry and Dr. Campbell's laughter instantly ceased.
"Do not mistake us," said Dr. Campbell; "we did not laugh at your principles, we only laughed at your manner."
"And are not principles of rather more consequence than manners?"
"Of infinitely more consequence," said Dr. Campbell: "but why, to excellent principles, may we not add agreeable manners? Why should not truth be amiable, as well as respectable? You, who have such enlarged views for the good of the whole human race, are, I make no doubt, desirous that your fellow-creatures should love truth, as well as you love it yourself."
"Certainly, I wish they did," said Forester.
"And have your observations upon the feelings of others, and upon your own, led you to conclude, that we are most apt to like those things which always give us pain? And do you, upon this principle, wish to make truth as painful as possible, in order to increase our love for it?"
"I don't wish to make truth painful," said Forester; "but, at the same time, it is not my fault if people can't bear pain. I think people who can't bear pain, both of body and mind, cannot be good for any thing; for, in the first place, they will always," said Forester, glancing his eye at Flora and her flower-pot,--"they will always prefer flattery to truth, as all weak people do."