"Never mind," answered Barker, rather irrelevantly; I will see him
before he sails, and tell you what I think about it. He is dead sure to
give himself away, somehow, before he gets off."

"Well, sail in, young man," said Screw, biting off the end of a cigar.
"_I_ don't want to see him again, you can take your oath."

"All right; that settles it. I came about something else, though. I know
you can tell me all about this suit against the Western Union, can't
you?"

So the two men sat in their arm-chairs and talked steadily, as only
Americans can talk, without showing any more signs of fatigue than if
they were snoring; and it cost them nothing. If the Greeks of the time
of Pericles could be brought to life in America, they would be very like
modern Americans in respect of their love of talking and of their
politics. Terrible chatterers in the market-place, and great wranglers
in the council--the greatest talkers living, but also on occasion the
greatest orators, with a redundant vivacity of public life in their
political veins, that magnifies and inflames the diseases of the parts,
even while it gives an unparalleled harmony to the whole. The Greeks had
more, for their activity, hampered by the narrow limits of their
political sphere, broke out in every variety of intellectual effort,
carried into every branch of science and art. In spite of the whole
modern school of impressionists, aesthetes, and aphrodisiac poets, the
most prominent features of Greek art are its intellectuality, its
well-reasoned science, and its accurate conception of the ideal. The
resemblance between Americans of to-day and Greeks of the age of
Pericles does not extend to matters of art as yet, though America bids
fair to surpass all earlier and contemporary nations in the progressive
departments of science. But as talkers they are pre-eminent, these rapid
business men with their quick tongues and their sharp eyes and their
millions.

When Barker left Screw he had learned a great deal about the suit of
which he inquired, but Screw had learned nothing whatever about
Claudius.

As for the Doctor, as soon as he had despatched his letter he sent to
secure a passage in Wednesday's steamer, and set himself to prepare his
effects for the voyage, as he only intended returning from Newport in
time to go on board. He was provided with money enough, for before
leaving Germany he had realised the whole of his own little fortune, not
wishing to draw upon