turned about, and saw a woman who was examining the reverend revivalist
with much satisfaction. 'Well, you _have_ got him, to be sure,' she
said, returning my angry glance with one of admiration, and quite
unabashed. 'What'll you take for it? I've sat under him for five years;
and for taking texteses from one end of the Bible to the other, and
leading in prayer, and filling the mourners' bench in five minutes, I
will say he hasn't got his equal in the universe. He's got a towering
intellect, I tell you. I'll give you fifty cents for this, if you'll
color it up nice for me and throw in a frame.' Of course I took the
picture away from the brazen creature and told her what I thought of her
conduct. 'Well, you air techy,' she said, and walked off leisurely."
Before closing her letter, Mrs. Sykes remarked of her hostess, "Quite
good for nothing physically, and absurdly romantic. She has been abroad
a good deal, and bores me dreadfully with her European reminiscences.
She is always talking in a foolish, rapturous sort of way about 'dear
Melrose,' or 'noble Tintern Abbey,' or 'enchanting Warwick Castle;' and
she has read simply libraries of books about England, and puts me
through a sort of examination about dozens of places and events, as
though I could carry all England about in my head. I really know less of
it than of most other countries: there is nothing to be got by running
about it. If one knew every foot of it, everybody would think it a
matter of course; but to be able to talk of Siam and the Fiji Islands,
Cambodia and Alaska, and the like, is really an advantage in society.
One gets the name of being a great traveller, and all that, and is asked
about tremendously and taken up to a wonderful extent. I know a man that
didn't wish to go to the trouble and expense of rambling all over the
world, and wanted the reputation of having done it, so he went into
lodgings at intervals near the British Museum and got all the books that
were to be had about a particular country, and, having read them, would
come back to the West End and give out that he had been there. It