your time." "Yes," I answer. "That's pretty from you; you are
patriotic aren't you, with your liveries and illimitable expenses, and
your low bows to money, and your immense intimacy with all lords and
ladies that honor the city by visiting it. You are prodigiously
patriotic with your inane imitations of a splendor impossible to you
in the nature of things. You are the ideal American woman, aren't you,
Mrs. Potiphar?"

Then I run, for I'm afraid of myself, as much as of her. I am sick of
this universal plea of patriotism. It is used to excuse all the
follies that outrage it. I am not patriotic if I do not do this and
that, which, if done, is a ludicrous caricature of something
foreign. I am not up to the time if I persist in having my own comfort
in my own way. I try to resist the irresistible march of improvement,
if I decline to build a great house, which, when it is built, is a
puny copy of a bad model. I am very unpatriotic if I am not trying to
outspend foreign noblemen, and if I don't affect, without education,
or taste, or habit, what is only beautiful, when it is the result of
the three.

However, this is merely my grumble. I knew, the first morning
Mrs. Potiphar spoke of a new house, that I must build it. What she
said was perfectly true; we were getting down town, there was no doubt
of the growing inconvenience of our situation. It was becoming a
dusty noisy region. The congregation of the Rev. Far Niente had sold
their church and moved up town. Now doesn't it really seem as if we
were a cross between the Arabs who dwell in tents and those who live
in cities, for we are migratory in the city? A directory is a more
imperative annual necessity here than in any other civilized
region. My wife says it is a constant pleasure to her to go round and