Benjamin's
mess was five times so much as any of theirs."

And I think of Menelaus in the _Odyssey_ sending a piece of meat to
Telemachus and Pisistratus when they supped with him at Lacedaemon; and
of Ulysses, at supper in the palace of Alcinous, sending a piece of meat
to Demodocus to thank him for his singing, in spite of the pain his lays
had caused him.

I always accept the gift, after deprecating the honour with words and
gestures, and a little later, in accordance with what I believe to be the
modern practice, return the compliment.

The professor was pleased to have an opportunity of improving his
knowledge of England and asked me many questions. I am afraid he only
pretended to believe some of the things I told him. I said that in
England a man who is the proprietor of the house he lives in is not on
that account necessarily a rich man; he may or may not be, it all
depends. He was surprised to hear that I had travelled from London to
Castellinaria in less than three weeks; that the channel passage takes
under twelve hours and has been known to be smooth; that London is not
actually on the coast but a few miles inland and on a river; that we have
other towns even more inland and that after the death of Queen Victoria,
England did not become a republic.

I had the professor at a disadvantage because, being a Sicilian, his
natural politeness would not permit him to show that in his opinion I was
drawing upon my imagination after the manner of travellers. Moreover
Peppino declared that all I said was quite true and added that what in
Sicily is like this (holding his hand out with the palm upwards) in
England is like that (holding it with the palm downwards). Nevertheless
I was beginning to feel that I had gone far enough and had better be
careful, so when he asserted that England refuses Home Rule to New
Zealand, and grinds her colonies down under the iron heel of the
oppressor because she cannot afford to lose the amount they pay us in our
iniquitous income tax, I did not contradict him. It is possible that I
misunderstood him, or he may have guessed I did not agree, or there may
have been even more confusion in his mind than I suspected, for he
afterwards said that the income tax paid by the colonies went into the
private pocket of Mr. Chamberlain, and that explained why the Secretary
for the Colonies was so rich.

"My dear professor," I said, "permit me to tell you something; my poor
mother had a co