ess.

I spent ten hours in that huge wilderness, wandering through scores of
miles of these terrible streets and jostling some few hundred thousand
of these terrible people who talked paisa bat through their noses.

The cabman left me; but after awhile I picked up another man, who was
full of figures, and into my ears he poured them as occasion required or
the big blank factories suggested. Here they turned out so many hundred
thousand dollars' worth of such and such an article; there so many
million other things; this house was worth so many million dollars;
that one so many million, more or less. It was like listening to a child
babbling of its hoard of shells. It was like watching a fool playing
with buttons. But I was expected to do more than listen or watch.
He demanded that I should admire; and the utmost that I could say
was:--"Are these things so? Then I am very sorry for you."

That made him angry, and he said that insular envy made me unresponsive.
So, you see, I could not make him understand.

About four and a half hours after Adam was turned out of the Garden of
Eden he felt hungry, and so, bidding Eve take care that her head was not
broken by the descending fruit, shinned up a cocoanut-palm. That hurt
his legs, cut his breast, and made him breathe heavily, and Eve was
tormented with fear lest her lord should miss his footing, and so bring
the tragedy of this world to an end ere the curtain had fairly risen.
Had I met Adam then, I should have been sorry for him. To-day I find
eleven hundred thousand of his sons just as far advanced as their father
in the art of getting food, and immeasurably inferior to him in
that they think that their palm-trees lead straight to the skies.
Consequently, I am sorry in rather more than a million different ways.

In the East bread comes naturally, even to the poorest, by a little
scratching or the gift of a friend not quite so poor. In less favored
countries one is apt to forget. Then I went to bed. And that was on a
Saturday night.

Sunday brought me the queerest experiences of all--a revelation of
barbarism complete. I found a place that was officially described as a
church. It was a circus really, but that the worshippers did not know.
There were flowers all about the building, which was fitted up
with plush and stained oak and much luxury, including twisted brass
candlesticks of severest Gothic design.

To these things and a congregation of savages entered suddenly