ou seen them? Have you seen Newport, for instance?" His diction
now (and I was to learn it was always in him a sign of heightening
intensity) grew more and more like the formal speech of his ancestors.
"You have seen Newport?" he said.

"Yes; now and then."

"But lately, sir? I knew we were behind the times down here, sir, but I
had not imagined how much. Not by any means! Kings Port has a long
road to go before she will consider marriage provincial and chastity
obsolete."

"Dear me, Mr. Mayrant! Well, I must tell you that it's not all quite
so--so advanced--as that, you know. That's not the whole of Newport."

He hastened to explain. "Certainly not, sir! I would not insult the
honorable families whom I had the pleasure to meet there, and to whom my
name was known because they had retained their good position since
the days when my great-uncle had a house and drove four horses there
himself. I noticed three kinds of Newport, sir."

"Three?"

"Yes. Because I took letters; and some of the letters were to people
who--who once had been, you know; it was sad to see the thing, sir, so
plain against the glaring proximity of the other thing. And so you can
divide Newport into those who leave to sell their old family pictures,
those who have to buy their old family pictures, and the lucky few who
need neither buy nor sell, who are neither goin' down nor bobbing up,
but who have kept their heads above the American tidal wave from the
beginning and continue to do so. And I don't believe that there are any
nicer people in the world than those."

"Nowhere!" I exclaimed. "When Near York does her best, what's
better?--If only those best set the pace!"

"If only!" he assented. "But it's the others who get into the papers,
who dine the drunken dukes, and make poor chambermaids envious a
thousand miles inland!"

"There should be a high tariff on drunken dukes," I said.

"You'll never get it!" he declared. "It's the Republican party whose
daughters marry them."

I rocked with enjoyment where I sat; he was so refreshing. And I agreed
with him so well. "You're every bit as good as Miss Beaufain," I cried.

"Oh, no; oh, no! But I often think if we could only deport the negroes
and Newport together to one of our distant islands, how happily our two
chief problems would be solved!"

I still rocked. "Newport would, indeed, enjoy your plan for it. Do go
on!" I entreated him But he had, for the moment, ceased; and I rose
to stret