but the differences of natural groups of
human beings are as proper subjects of remark as those of different
breeds of horses, and if horses were Houyhnhnms I don't think they would
quarrel with us because we made a distinction between a "Morgan" and a
"Messenger." The truth is, Sir, the lean sandy soil and the droughts and
the long winters and the east-winds and the cold storms, and all sorts of
unknown local influences that we can't make out quite so plainly as
these, have a tendency to roughen the human organization and make it
coarse, something as it is with the tree I mentioned. Some spots and
some strains of blood fight against these influences, but if I should say
right out what I think, it would be that the finest human fruit, on the
whole; and especially the finest women that we get in New England are
raised under glass.

--Good gracious!--exclaimed the Landlady, under glass!

--Give me cowcumbers raised in the open air, said the Capitalist, who was
a little hard of hearing.

--Perhaps,--I remarked,--it might be as well if you would explain this
last expression of yours. Raising human beings under glass I take to be
a metaphorical rather than a literal statement of your meaning.

--No, Sir!--replied the Master, with energy,--I mean just what I say,
Sir. Under glass, and with a south exposure. During the hard season, of
course,--for in the heats of summer the tenderest hot-house plants are
not afraid of the open air. Protection is what the transplanted Aryan
requires in this New England climate. Keep him, and especially keep her,
in a wide street of a well-built city eight months of the year; good
solid brick walls behind her, good sheets of plate-glass, with the sun
shining warm through them, in front of her, and you have put her in the
condition of the pine-apple, from the land of which, and not from that of
the other kind of pine, her race started on its travels. People don't
know what a gain there is to health by living in cities, the best parts
of them of course, for we know too well what the worst parts are. In the
first place you get rid of the noxious emanations which poison so many
country localities with typhoid fever and dysentery, not wholly rid of
them, of course, but to a surprising degree. Let me tell you a doctor's
story. I was visiting a Western city a good many years ago; it was in
the autumn, the time when all sorts of malarious diseases are about. The
doctor I was speaking of to