Pointview. No han'some foreign gent could marry any one in this
village, unless it was a chambermaid in a hotel.

"That was the end of the first heat of the race with Lizzie in
Pointview. Aleck had folded up his bluff an' silently sneaked
away. I heard no more of him save from a lady with blond, curly
hair an' a face done in water-colors, who called at my office one
day to ask about him, an' who proved to my satisfaction that she
was his wife, an' who remarked with real, patrician accent when I
told her the truth about him: 'Ah, g'wan, yer kiddin' me.'

"I began to explore the mind of Lizzie, an' she acted as my guide
in the matter. For her troubles the girl was about equally
indebted to her parents an' the Smythe school. Now the Smythe
school had been founded by the Reverend Hopkins Smythe, an
Englishman who for years had been pastor of the First
Congregational Church--a soothin' man an' a favorite of the rich
New-Yorkers. People who hadn't slept for weeks found repose in the
First Congregational Church an' Sanitarium of Pointview. They
slept an' snored while the Reverend Hopkins wept an' roared. His
rhetoric was better than bromide or sulphonal. In grateful
recollection of their slumbers, they set him up in business.

"Now I'm agoin' to talk as mean as I feel. Sometimes I get tired
o' bein' a gentleman an' knock off for a season o' rest an'
refreshment. Here goes! The school has some good girls in it, but
most of 'em are indolent candy-eaters. Their life is one long,
sweet dream broken by nightmares of indigestion. Their study is
mainly a bluff; their books a merry jest; their teachers a butt of
ridicule. They're the veriest little pagans. Their religion is,