The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Far Country, Book 3, by Winston Churchill

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Title: A Far Country, Book 3

Author: Winston Churchill

Release Date: October 17, 2004 [EBook #3738]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FAR COUNTRY, BOOK 3 ***

Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger

A FAR COUNTRY

By Winston Churchill

BOOK 3.

XVIII.

As the name of our city grew to be more and more a byword for sudden and
fabulous wealth, not only were the Huns and the Slavs, the Czechs and the
Greeks drawn to us, but it became the fashion for distinguished
Englishmen and Frenchmen and sometimes Germans and Italians to pay us a
visit when they made the grand tour of America. They had been told that
they must not miss us; scarcely a week went by in our community--so it
was said--in which a full-fledged millionaire was not turned out. Our
visitors did not always remain a week,--since their rapid journeyings
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to the Gulf rarely occupied
more than four,--but in the books embodying their mature comments on the
manners, customs and crudities of American civilization no less than a
chapter was usually devoted to us; and most of the adjectives in their
various languages were exhausted in the attempt to prove how symptomatic
we were of the ambitions and ideals of the Republic. The fact that many
of these gentlemen--literary and otherwise--returned to their own shores
better fed and with larger balances in the banks than when they departed
is neither here nor there. Egyptians are proverbially created to be
spoiled.

The wiser and more fortunate of these travellers and students of life
brought letters to Mr. and Mrs. Hambleton Durrett. That household was
symptomatic--if they liked--of the new order of things; and it was rare
indeed when both members of it were at home to entertain them. If Mr.
Durrett were in the city, and they did not happen to be Britons with
sporting proclivities, they simply were not entertained: when Mrs.
Durrett received them dinners were given in their honour on the Durrett
gold plate, and they spent cosey and delightful hours conversin