who sold the so expensive violets at the bottom of the road that
leads to the station, was cheating me or no; I can't say whether the
porter who carried our traps across the station at Leghorn was a
thief or no when he said that the regular tariff was a lira a parcel.
The instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are
just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty. After forty-five
years of mixing with one's kind, one ought to have acquired the
habit of being able to know something about one's fellow beings.
But one doesn't.

I think the modern civilized habit--the modern English habit of
taking every one for granted--is a good deal to blame for this. I
have observed this matter long enough to know the queer, subtle
thing that it is; to know how the faculty, for what it is worth, never
lets you down.

Mind, I am not saying that this is not the most desirable type of life
in the world; that it is not an almost unreasonably high standard.
For it is really nauseating, when you detest it, to have to eat every
day several slices of thin, tepid, pink india rubber, and it is
disagreeable to have to drink brandy when you would prefer to be
cheered up by warm, sweet Kümmel. And it is nasty to have to
take a cold bath in the morning when what you want is really a hot
one at night. And it stirs a little of the faith of your fathers that is
deep down within you to have to have it taken for granted that you
are an Episcopalian when really you are an old-fashioned
Philadelphia Quaker.

But these things have to be done; it is the cock that the whole of
this society owes to Æsculapius.