Page:Stories told to a child.djvu/157

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I HAVE A RIGHT.

forth about his rights, did one's heart good, and made one proud of one's country. Everybody else's rights appeared flat and tame compared with his, and the best of it was, that no one was ever heard to dispute them.

Dear old man, he is dead now, but some of his rights survive him. I was on my way home to the neighborhood of that little country town wherein, for so many years, he might have been seen on a summer evening, standing in his shop door, and exercising the rights he loved, when it so happened that I heard some of my countrymen also discoursing about their rights, and the more they talked, the more petty and insignificant seemed their rights compared with those of Mr. Bryce, the baker.

We took our tickets at the London terminus of the Great Northern Railway, and entered an empty carriage; in a corner seat, however, a gentleman's greatcoat was lying; presently a lady got in, and now the two vacant seats were, it so happened, as far as possible, asunder.

The next arrivals were another lady with a little girl about four years old. Without any hesitation she took up the coat, and placing it in another corner seat, set her child in the division near herself.

Had she a right to do this? you inquire. Certainly not; and she was soon reminded of that fact, for just at the last minute a calm and rather supercilious looking young man entered, glanced coldly at her, and said, 'I must trouble you, madam, for that seat; I laid my coat on it some time ago, and also turned the cushion; I really must request you to leave it, as I have a right to it.'

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