s just trying to strike the public eye. In my judgment, your
Mr. Vanderbilt knows what he is about.'

I tried to modify this verdict, feeling that a double slop-tub standard
was not a fair one to try everybody by, although a sound enough one
in its own habitat; but the girl's head was set, and she was not to be
persuaded. Presently she said:

'Do the rich people, with you, have as good sleeping-benches as ours,
and made out of as nice broad ice-blocks?'

'Well, they are pretty good--good enough--but they are not made of
ice-blocks.'

'I want to know! Why aren't they made of ice-blocks?'

I explained the difficulties in the way, and the expensiveness of ice
in a country where you have to keep a sharp eye on your ice-man or your
ice-bill will weigh more than your ice. Then she cried out:

'Dear me, do you buy your ice?'

'We most surely do, dear.'

She burst into a gale of guileless laughter, and said:

'Oh, I never heard of anything so silly! My! there's plenty of it--it
isn't worth anything. Why, there is a hundred miles of it in sight,
right now. I wouldn't give a fish-bladder for the whole of it.'

'Well, it's because you don't know how to value it, you little
provincial muggings. If you had it in New York in midsummer, you could
buy all the whales in the market with it.'

She looked at me doubtfully, and said:

'Are you speaking true?'

'Absolutely. I take my oath to it.'

This made her thoughtful. Presently she said, with a little sigh:

'I wish I could live there.'

I had merely meant to furnish her a standard of values which she could
understand; but my purpose had miscarried. I had only given her the
impression that whales were cheap and plenty in New York, and set her
mouth to watering for them. It seemed best to try to mitigate the evil
which I had done, so I said:

'But you wouldn't care for whale-meat if you lived there. Nobody does.'

'What!'

'Indeed they don't.'

'Why don't they?'

'Wel-l-l, I hardly know. It's prejudice, I think. Yes, that is it--just
prejudice. I reckon somebody that hadn't anything better to do started
a prejudice against it, some time or other, and once you get a caprice
like that fairly going, you know it will last no end of time.'

'That is true--perfectly true,' said the girl, reflectively. 'Like our
prejudice against soap, here--our tribes had a prejudice against soap at
first, you know.'

I glanced at her to see if she was in earnest. Evidently she wa