ll she gets through makin' over her carpets. I brought the book home
done up to look like it was a pie, an' I will frankly state, Mrs.
Lathrop, as you could have dropped me dead out of any balloon when I
found out what it was about. It was n't the kind of book the postal card
would have led you to suppose a _tall_--it was about Asia, Mrs. Lathrop,
the far side or the near side, just accordin' to the way you face to get
the light while you read, an' so far from its bein' only intended for
men it's all right for any one at all to read as has got the time. Now
that I'm done it an' know I have n't never got to do it again, I don't
mind telling you in confidence that for a book as could n't possibly
have been meant to be interestin' it was about as agreeable readin' as I
ever struck in my life. There was lots in it as was new to me, for it's
a thick book, an' all I knowed about that part of the world before was
as Java coffee comes from Java an' the Philippines from Spain. But I
know it all now, an' Judge Fitch himself can't tell me nothin' from this
day on that the man who wrote that book ain't told me first. I'll bet I
know more about what that book 's about than any one in this community
does, an' now that I know it I see why the man said what he did on the
postal card for it _is_ a book as every man ought to read, an' I read in
the paper the other day as the main trouble with the men in America was
as they knowed all about what they did n't know nothin' about, an' did
n't know nothin' a _tall_ about the rest."

"What--" began Mrs. Lathrop.

"But I don't see how the man that wrote it is ever goin' to make any
money out of it," pursued her friend, "for it's pretty plain as it's
every bit written about things that Americans don't want to really learn
an' what the rest of the world learned long ago. If I was very patriotic
I don't believe I'd have read it clear through to the end myself, but I
ain't never felt any call to be patriotic since the boys throwed that
firecracker into my henhouse last Fourth of July. I will say this for
the hen, Mrs. Lathrop, an' that is that she took the firecracker a good
deal calmer'n I could, for I was awful mad, an' any one as seed me ought
to of felt what a good American was spoiled then an' there, for all I
asked was to hit somethin', whether it was him as throwed the cracker or
not an' that's what Judge Fitch always calls the real American spirit
when he makes them band-stand speeches of h