ondition than ours at home. After they had
gone, Mr. Trowbridge told me that Mr. Engelhorn is the greatest
authority on geology in the State of Ohio, that he knows just as much
about botany, and is a fine Greek and Latin scholar, having picked up
all his knowledge himself without any University training. Americans
are wonderful!

Other people just as interesting in different ways have been, since,
and there was only one I didn't like. He came yesterday, and is a
dissenting parson, a Congregationalist, I think, though I don't know
what that means, or how it's different from a Methodist or a
Presbyterian. He and his wife arrived to noon dinner, and I had to be
civil because the Trowbridges respect them very much; but it was
difficult when the man said that England was the most immoral and
decaying country in the world, and his wife echoed him. He is a smug
old fellow with a fringe of grey fluff growing out all round under his
chin; and his upper lip, very long and shaved, is like the straight
cover you see on mantelpieces in country hotels.

I summoned courage to stand up for England, and the wife--a fat, sallow
creature with three chins and a dissenting-looking chignon--glared at
me as if she expected white bears to crawl out from under the table and
gobble me up.

"Why do you think England is such a wicked country?" I asked.

"Because, to mention only one reason [as if the others were too bad to
tell] your clergymen are put into their places by patronage, without
any regard to their qualifications as teachers of religion."

"At least they're gentlemen," I snapped.

"Superficially, they _may_ be," he admitted, as if to pry under the
surface would be worse than "scratching a Russian to find a Tartar."
"But they are Puppets and Sycophants."

Unluckily I don't know what a sycophant is exactly, so it would have
been dangerous to argue; and anyway, before I could get out another
word he had gone on again.

"Mrs. Panter and myself had a chance to go to Great Britain last year,"
he said. "Our congregation offered us the trip with Cook's tickets, for
ten weeks, to show their appreciation of my services. But after
reflection, we decided not to undertake the tour. I have no wish to see
England as it is to-day. Such illusions as are left to me I would
rather keep. It would depress me to visit a country which is going down
hill as Britain is, morally, financially and intellectually. Trade is
leaving her, and coming to us.