urse, or
you wouldn't be talking the English language--though I've heard they
talk it better in Boston than they do in England, and in Chicago they're
making new English every day and improving on the patent. If Chicago
can't have the newest thing, she won't have anything. 'High hopes that
burn like stars sublime,' has Chicago. She won't let Shakespeare or
Milton be standards much longer. She won't have it--simply won't have
England swaggering over the English language. Oh, she's dizzy, is
Chicago--simply dizzy. I was born there. Parents, one Philadelphy, one
New York, one Pawtucket--the Pawtucket one was the step-mother. Father
liked his wives from the original States; but I was born in Chicago. My
name is Lacey--Thomas Tilman Lacey of Chicago."

"I thank thee," said David.

"And you, sir?"

"David Claridge."

"Of--?"

"Of Hamley."

"Mr. Claridge of Hamley. Mr. Claridge, I am glad to meet you." They
shook hands. "Been here long, Mr. Claridge?"

"A few months only."

"Queer place--gilt-edged dust-bin; get anything you like here, from a
fresh gutter-snipe to old Haroun-al-Raschid. It's the biggest jack-pot
on earth. Barnum's the man for this place--P. T. Barnum. Golly, how
the whole thing glitters and stews! Out of Shoobra his High Jinks Pasha
kennels with his lions and lives with his cellars of gold, as if he
was going to take them with him where he's going--and he's going fast.
Here--down here, the people, the real people, sweat and drudge between
a cake of dourha, an onion, and a balass of water at one end of the day,
and a hemp collar and their feet off the ground at the other."

"You have seen much of Egypt?" asked David, feeling a strange confidence
in the garrulous man, whose frankness was united to shrewdness and a
quick, observant eye.

"How much of Egypt I've seen, the Egypt where more men get lost,
strayed, and stolen than die in their beds every day, the Egypt where
a eunuch is more powerful than a minister, where an official will toss
away a life as I'd toss this cigar down there where the last Mameluke
captain made his great jump, where women--Lord A'mighty! where women are
divorced by one evil husband, by the dozen, for nothing they ever did
or left undone, and yet 'd be cut to pieces by their own fathers if they
learned that 'To step aside is human--' Mr. Claridge, of that Egypt I
don't know much more'n would entitle me to say, How d'ye do. But it's
enough for me. You've seen something--eh?"