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210 THROUGH NORWAY WITII A KNAPSACK.
of me. On looking up, I was startled by a strange
apparition. A tall, elegant, and most beautiful girl,
about eighteen years of age, was standing before me;
she held in one hand the end of a long stick, a young
pine-tree stem stripped of its bark; the other end
being-held by an old blind man, curved almost to the ground.
His abundant hair was perfectly white, long and
straight, and wild; his eyelids and lashes were also
very long and white, and his forehead high and deeply
wrinkled. His dress was very coarse and poor; and
his whole aspect was expressive of the deepest humility
and dependence, combined with a certain amount of
venerable gravity. She, on the contrary, was the
personification of absolute pride—of innate, unassuming
pride—a pride that is unconscious of its own existence,
that makes no effort at dignity, and has no thoughts
of dignity, but is instinctive dignity itself. 1 had
excited her curiosity; and when I looked up, she was
examining me. I was so much amazed, that I must
have stared at her considerably; but that made no
difference : she continued lier calm scrutiny, utterly
unmoved, as though I were a beast in a cage, or a
mineralogical specimen. One don’t mind the scrutiny
of rude peasantry, especially when it is accompanied
with wonder and admiration; but to be examined so
very calmly—to be treated as a " specimen" by such
a beautiful creature—stirred up the fragments of pride
that exist somewhere in my own constitution; and it
may be that I looked almost fiercely at her, but still
made 110 impression of any kind. She was neither
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