Saunterings by Charles Dudley Warner
page 55 of 272 (20%)
page 55 of 272 (20%)
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is more popular, it is believed that there is no bottom to his
pocket. There was a sprig of the Church of England on the steamboat on Lake Leman, who spread himself upon a center bench, and discoursed very instructively to his friends,--a stout, fat-faced young man in a white cravat, whose voice was at once loud and melodious, and whom our manly Oxford student set down as a man who had just rubbed through the university, and got into a scanty living. "I met an American on the boat yesterday," the oracle was saying to his friends, "who was really quite a pleasant fellow. He--ah really was, you know, quite a sensible man. I asked him if they had anything like this in America; and he was obliged to say that they had n't anything like it in his country; they really had n't. He was really quite a sensible fellow; said he was over here to do the European tour, as he called it." Small, sympathetic laugh from the attentive, wiry, red-faced woman on the oracle's left, and also a chuckle, at the expense of the American, from the thin Englishman on his right, who wore a large white waistcoat, a blue veil on his hat, and a face as red as a live coal. "Quite an admission, was n't it, from an American? But I think they have changed since the wah, you know." At the next landing, the smooth and beaming churchman was left by his friends; and he soon retired to the cabin, where I saw him self-sacrificingly denying himself the views on deck, and consoling |
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