VASILI. You do not like your city?

PIKE [not with braggadocio, but earnestly, almost pathetically]. Like
it? Well, sir, for public buildings and architecture, I wouldn't trade
our State insane asylum for the worst-ruined ruin in Europe--not for
hygiene and real comfort.

VASILI. And your people?

PIKE. The best on earth. Out _my_ way folks are neighbors.

[HORACE snaps his paper sharply.]

VASILI. But you have no leisure class.

[VASILI is looking keenly at HAWCASTLE and HORACE as he speaks.]

PIKE. Got a pretty good-sized colored population.

VASILI. I mean no aristocracy--no great old families such as we have,
that go back and back to the Middle Ages.

PIKE [genially]. Well, I expect if they go back that far they might just
as well set down and stay there. No, sir, the poor in my country don't
have to pay taxes for a lot of useless kings and earls and first grooms
of the bedchamber and second ladies in waiting, and I don't know what
all. If anybody wants _our_ money for nothin' he has to show energy
enough to steal it. I wonder a man like you doesn't emigrate.