a lively book. But France is the same. The difference is in
ourselves."

Halicarnassus glowered at me. I think I am not using strained
or extravagant language when I say that he glowered at me.
Then he growled out,--

"So your book of travels is just to put yourself into pickle."

"Say, rather," I answered, with sweet humility,--"say, rather,
it is to shrine myself in amber. As the insignificant fly,
encompassed with molten glory, passes into a crystallized
immortality, his own littleness uplifted into loveliness by the
beauty in which he is imprisoned, so I, wrapped around by the
glory of my land, may find myself niched into a fame which my
unattended and naked merit could never have claimed."

Halicarnassus was a little stunned, but presently recovering
himself, suggested that I had travelled enough already to make
out a quite sizable book.

"Travelled!" I said, looking him steadily in the face,--
"travelled! I went once up to Tudiz huckleberrying; and once,
when there was a freshet, you took a superannuated broom and
paddled me around the orchard in a leaky pig's-trough!"

He could not deny it; so he laughed, and said,--

"Ah, well!--ah, well! Suit yourself. Take your trunk and
pitch into Vesuvius, if you like. I won't stand in your way."