is held to be more detestable than disrespect of those to whom we owe
our existence."

"Quite right," he agreed, "it's a pleasure to hear it. It must be a
great country, yours; a country with a future, I should say. Now,
about that youngest lad of my son Henry's--the one that drops pet
lizards down my neck, and threatened to put rat poison into his
mother's tea when she wouldn't take him to the Military Turneyment;
what would they do to him by your laws?"

"If the assertion were well sustained by competent witnesses," I
replied, "it would probably be judged so execrable an offence, that a
new punishment would have to be contrived. Failing that, he would
certainly be wrapped round from head to foot in red-hot chains, and
thus exposed to public derision."

"Ah, red-hot chains!" said the aged person, as though the words formed
a pleasurable taste upon his palate. "The young beggar! Well, he'd
deserve it."

"Furthermore," I continued, gratified at having found one who so
intelligently appreciated the deficiencies of his own country and the
unblemished perfection of ours, "his parents and immediate
descendants, if any should exist, would be submitted to a fate as
inevitable but slightly less contemptuous--slow compression,
perchance; his parents once removed (thus enclosing your venerable
personality), and remoter offsprings would be merely put to the sword
without further ignominy, and those of less kinship to about the
fourth degree would doubtless escape with branding and a reprimand."