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Indeed, not only do these three virtues not save a man from priggishness they sometimes even plunge him in irreclaimable depths of superiority. I suppose that when Christianity was first making itself felt in the world, the one quality needful was a deep-seated and enthusiastic earnestness. There is nothing that makes life so enjoyable as being in earnest.
We press far too heavily on the sense of responsibility; and if we begin by telling boys, as is too often done in sermons, that whatever they do or say is of far-reaching consequence, that every lightest word may produce an effect, that any carelessness of speech or example may have disastrous effects upon the character of another, we are doing our best to encourage the self-emphasis which is the very essence of priggishness.
To the superficial therefore, John Norton will appear but the incarnation of egotism and priggishness, but those who see deeper will have recognised that he is one who has suffered bitterly, as bitterly as the outcast who lies dead in his rags beneath the light of the policeman's lantern.
Or a commonplace woman will give a tea-party, and plume herself upon the eclat with which it went off. The materials are ready to hand in any life; the quality is not the same as priggishness, though it is closely akin to it; it no doubt exists in the minds of many really successful people, and if it is not flagrantly betrayed, it is often an important constituent of their success.
The recital really was interesting and entirely outside the priggishness of Science, but it was marred in consecutiveness and simplicity by Mrs. Rossiter's interruptions. "Michael dear, Lady Dombey's cup!" Or: "Mike, could you cut that cake and hand it round?"
It is not very idiomatic French, but it is amazingly flexible; and it is delicious to see the children at breakfast watching Maud as she opens the letters and smiles over them. Perhaps this is not a very exalted type of education; it certainly seems to fulfil its purpose very wonderfully in making them alert, inquisitive, eager, and without any shadow of priggishness.
How is it possible to delineate Dick, even with all profuse generosity of comment, without suggesting that he was not of the type to please himself, or tagging him with a priggishness afar from him? He certainly was not the sort of hero his dramatic poems described with a choppy vigor of detail, and whom there is no doubt he would have chosen to resemble.
How often she had cordially agreed to the statement that it was precisely because of its insistence upon this connection with the forms and relations of normal life that her college was so successfully free from the tomboyishness or the priggishness or the gaucherie of some of the others! And yet its very success came from begging the question, after all. She shook her head impatiently.
There was a so-called "Pi Squad," or Bible class, held weekly, but I only went once, and didn't like it. I was always peculiarly sensitive about priggishness in those who professed themselves to be religious openly, and generally thought I detected priggishness in any "Bible circle" or similar institution that I came across.
Now, as I look back, I think it was sheer priggishness to resist so human and yet so reverent an impulse. There is nothing sacred from reverence, and love's lovers have a right to regard themselves as the confidants of lovers, whenever they may chance to surprise either them or their letters.
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