_variety_ in England.
Things are not all on one level there--"'

'Our dogs have only one tail apiece,' said Merton, 'in spite of the
proverb "_as proud as a dog with two_ _tails_," and a plurality of heads
is unusual even among British subjects.'

'Yes,' answered Miss McCabe, 'but you have varieties among yourselves.
You have a King and a Queen; and your peerage is rich in differentiated
species. A Baronet is not a Marquis, nor is a Duke an Earl.'

'He may be both,' said Merton, but Miss McCabe continued to expose the
parental philosophy.

'Now Pappa would not hear of aristocratic distinctions in our country. He
was a Hail Columbia man, on the Democratic ticket. But _something_ is
wanted, he said, to get us out of grooves, and break the monotony. That
something, said Pappa, Nature has mercifully provided in Freaks. The
citizens feel this, unconsciously: that's why they spend their money at
Barnum's. But Barnum was not scientific, and Barnum was not straight
about his mermaid. So Pappa founded his Museum of Natural Varieties, all
of them honest Injun. Here the lecturers show off the freaks, and
explain how Nature works them, and how she can always see them and go one
better. We have the biggest gold nugget and the weeniest cunning least
gold nugget; the biggest diamond and the smallest diamond; the tallest
man and the smallest man; the whitest negro and the yellowest red man in
the world. We have the most eccentric beasts, and the queerest fishes,
and everything is explained by lecturers of world-wide reputation, on the
principles of evolution, as copyrighted by our Asa Gray and our Agassiz.
_That_ is what Pappa called popular education, and it hits our citizens
right where they live.'

Miss McCabe paused, in a flush of filial and patriotic enthusiasm. Merton
inwardly thought that among the queerest fishes the late Mr. McCabe must
have been pre-eminent. But what he said was, 'The scheme is most
original. Our educationists (to employ a term which they do not
disdain), such as Mr. Herbert Spencer, Sir Joshua Fitch, and others, have
I thought out nothing like this. Our capitalists never endow education
on this more than imperial scale.'

'Guess they are scaly varmints!' interposed Miss McCabe.

Merton bowed his acquiescence in the sentiment.

'But,' he went on, 'I still do not quite understand how your own
prospects in life are affected by Mr. McCabe's most original and, I hope,
promising experiment?'