lie and wallow and belch on
the banks. You work so hard that you have all but one aim, and that is
fatness and ease!'

'Pardon me, Herr Professor,' I interposed, 'I see your drift. Still
I think we are the only people on earth who have shown mankind a
representation of freedom. And as to our aristocracy, I must, with due
deference to you, maintain that it is widely respected.'

I could not conceive why he went on worrying me in this manner with his
jealous outburst of Continental bile.

'Widely!' he repeated. 'It is widely respected; and you respect it: and
why do you respect it?'

'We have illustrious names in our aristocracy.'

'We beat you in illustrious names and in the age of the lines, my good
young man.'

'But not in a race of nobles who have stood for the country's
liberties.'

'So long as it imperilled their own! Any longer?'

'Well, they have known how to yield. They have helped to build our
Constitution.'

'Reverence their ancestors, then! The worse for such descendants. But
you have touched the exact stamp of the English mind:--it is, to accept
whatsoever is bequeathed it, without inquiry whether there is any change
in the matter. Nobles in very fact you would not let them be if they
could. Nobles in name, with a remote recommendation to posterity--that
suits you!'

He sat himself up to stuff a fresh bowl of tobacco, while he pursued:
'Yes, yes: you worship your aristocracy. It is notorious. You have a
sort of sagacity. I am not prepared to contest the statement that you
have a political instinct. Here it is chiefly social. You worship your
so-called aristocracy perforce in order to preserve an ideal of contrast
to the vulgarity of the nation.'

This was downright insolence.

It was intolerable. I jumped on my feet. 'The weapons I would use
in reply to such remarks I cannot address to you, Herr Professor.
Therefore, excuse me.'

He sent out quick spirts of smoke rolling into big volumes. 'Nay, my
good young Englishman, but on the other hand you have not answered me.
And hear me: yes, you have shown us a representation of freedom. True.
But you are content with it in a world that moves by computation some
considerable sum upwards of sixty thousand miles an hour.'

'Not on a fresh journey--a recurring course!' said I.

'Good!' he applauded, and I was flattered.

'I grant you the physical illustration,' the Professor continued, and
with a warm gaze on me, I thought. 'The mind journeys some