Our Mutual Friend

“Talking of ideas, my Lizzie,” they were sitting side by side as they had sat at first, “I wonder how it happens that when I am work, work, working here, all alone in the summer-time, I smell flowers.”

“As a commonplace individual, I should say,” Eugene suggested languidly—for he was growing weary of the person of the house—“that you smell flowers because you do smell flowers.”

“No I don’t,” said the little creature, resting one arm upon the elbow of her chair, resting her chin upon that hand, and looking vacantly before her; “this is not a flowery neighbourhood. It’s anything but that. And yet as I sit at work, I smell miles of flowers. I smell roses, till I think I see the rose-leaves lying in heaps, bushels, on the floor.[…] I have seen very few flowers indeed, in my life.”

For it is not, in Christian countries, with the Jews as with other peoples. Men say, “This is a bad Greek, but there are good Greeks. This is a bad Turk, but there are good Turks.” Not so with the Jews. Men find the bad among us easily enough—among what peoples are the bad not easily found?—but they take the worst of us as samples of the best; they take the lowest of us as presentations of the highest; and they say “All Jews are alike.”

“But I have heard my birds sing,” cried the little creature, “and I have smelt my flowers. Yes, indeed I have! And both were most beautiful and most Divine!”

“Stay and help to nurse me,” said Eugene, quietly. “I should like you to have the fancy here, before I die.”