nd dried response that is learned by rote.
And at times he would display an ignorance, a stupidity even, that was
fathomless in its abysses.

After graduation, he went abroad. England seemed to him like a rose in
bloom, but when autumn came and with it a succession of fogs, each more
depressing than the last, he fled to Italy, and wandered among her
ghosts and treasuries, and then drifted up again through Germany, to
Paris, where he gave his mornings to the Sorbonne and his evenings to
orchestra-stalls.

II.

It was after an absence of nearly five years that Tristrem Varick
returned to the States. He had wearied of foreign lands, and for some
time previous he had thought of New York in such wise that it had grown
in his mind, and in the growing it had assumed a variety of attractive
attributes. He was, therefore, much pleased at the prospect of renewing
his acquaintance with Fifth Avenue, and during the homeward journey he
pictured to himself the advantages which his native city possessed over
any other which he had visited.

He had not, however, been many hours on shore before he found that Fifth
Avenue had shrunk. In some unaccountable way the streets had lost their
charm, the city seemed provincial. He was perplexed at the discovery
that the uniform if depthless civility of older civilizations was rarely
observable; he was chagrined to find that the _minutiae_ which, abroad,
he had accepted as a matter of course, the thousand trifles which
amount, after all, to nothing particularly indispensable, but which
serve to make mere existence pleasant, were, when not overlooked,
inhibited by statute or custom.

In the course of a week he was surprised into reflecting that, while no
other country was more naturally and bountifully favored than his own,
there was yet no other where the art of living was as vexatiously
misunderstood.

Of these impressions he said nothing. His father asked him no questions,
nor did he manifest a desire for any larger sociological information
than that which he already possessed. His grandfather was too irascible
for anyone to venture with in safety through the shallows of European
refinements, and of other relatives Tristrem could not boast. Few of his
former friends were at once discoverable, and of those that he
encountered some had fallen into the rut and routine of business life,
some had married and sent in their resignations to everything but the
Humdrum, and some passed th