a present of one of
Stowe's Illustrated Self-Acting Bibles on Christmas, when she had n't
coal enough in the house to heat her gruel; and about a family behind
the church, a widow and six little children and three dogs; and he did
n't believe that any of them had known what it was to be warm in
three weeks, and as to food, the woman said, she could hardly beg cold
victuals enough to keep the dogs alive.

The Mistress slipped out into the kitchen to fill a basket with
provisions and send it somewhere; and when the Fire-Tender brought in
a new forestick, Mandeville, who always wants to talk, and had been
sitting drumming his feet and drawing deep sighs, attacked him.

MANDEVILLE. Speaking about culture and manners, did you ever notice how
extremes meet, and that the savage bears himself very much like the sort
of cultured persons we were talking of last night?

THE FIRE-TENDER. In what respect?

MANDEVILLE. Well, you take the North American Indian. He is never
interested in anything, never surprised at anything. He has by nature
that calmness and indifference which your people of culture have
acquired. If he should go into literature as a critic, he would scalp
and tomahawk with the same emotionless composure, and he would do
nothing else.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Then you think the red man is a born gentleman of the
highest breeding?

MANDEVILLE. I think he is calm.

THE FIRE-TENDER. How is it about the war-path and all that?

MANDEVILLE. Oh, these studiously calm and cultured people may have
malice underneath. It takes them to give the most effective "little
digs;" they know how to stick in the pine-splinters and set fire to
them.

HERBERT. But there is more in Mandeville's idea. You bring a red man
into a picture-gallery, or a city full of fine architecture, or into
a drawing-room crowded with objects of art and beauty, and he is
apparently insensible to them all. Now I have seen country people,--and
by country people I don't mean people necessarily who live in the
country, for everything is mixed in these days,--some of the best people
in the world, intelligent, honest, sincere, who acted as the Indian
would.

THE MISTRESS. Herbert, if I did n't know you were cynical, I should say
you were snobbish.

HERBERT. Such people think it a point of breeding never to speak of
anything in your house, nor to appear to notice it, however beautiful it
may be; even to slyly glance around strains their notion of etiquette.