gners." That was how Pappa put it. _I_ say that
he dead-headed creation!'

'Truly Republican munificence,' said Merton, 'worthy of your great
country.'

'Well, I should smile,' said Miss McCabe.

'But--excuse my insular ignorance--I do not exactly understand how a
museum of freaks, admirably organised as no doubt it is, contributes to
the cause of popular education.'

'You have museums even in London?' asked Miss McCabe.

Merton assented.

'Are they not educational?'

'The British Museum is mainly used by the children of the poor, as a
place where they play a kind of subdued hide-and-seek,' said Merton.

'That's because they are not interested in tinned Egyptian corpses and
broken Greek statuary ware,' answered the fair Republican. 'Now, Mr.
Merton, did you ever see or hear of a _popular_ museum, a museum that the
People would give its cents to see?'

'I have heard of Mr. Barnum's museum,' said Merton.

'That's the idea: it is right there,' said Miss McCabe. 'But old man
Barnum was not scientific. He saw what our people wanted, but he did not
see, Pappa said, how to educate them through their natural instincts.
Barnum's mermaid was not genuine business. It confused the popular mind,
and fostered superstition--and got found out. The result was scepticism,
both religious and scientific. Now, Pappa used to argue, the lives of
our citizens are monotonous. They see yellow dogs, say, but each yellow
dog has only one tail. They see men and women, but almost all of them
have only one head: and even a hand with six fingers is not common. This
is why the popular mind runs into grooves. This causes what they call
"the dead level of democracy." Even our men of genius, Pappa allowed
(for he was a very fair-minded man), do not go ahead of the European
ticket, but rather the reverse. Your Tennyson has the inner tracks of
our Longfellow: your Thackeray gives our Bertha Runkle his dust. The
papers called Pappa unpatriotic, and a bad American. But he was _not_:
he was a white man. When he saw his country's faults he put his finger
on them, right there, and tried to cure them.'

'A noble policy,' murmured Merton.

Miss McCabe was really so pretty and unusual, that he did not care how
long she was in coming to the point.

'Well, Pappa argued that there was more genius, or had been since the
Declaration of Independence, even in England, than in the States. "And
why?" he asked. "Why, because they have more