ure and told her what I thought of her
conduct. 'Well, you air techy,' she said, and walked off leisurely."
Before closing her letter, Mrs. Sykes remarked of her hostess, "Quite
good for nothing physically, and absurdly romantic. She has been abroad
a good deal, and bores me dreadfully with her European reminiscences.
She is always talking in a foolish, rapturous sort of way about 'dear
Melrose,' or 'noble Tintern Abbey,' or 'enchanting Warwick Castle;' and
she has read simply libraries of books about England, and puts me
through a sort of examination about dozens of places and events, as
though I could carry all England about in my head. I really know less of
it than of most other countries: there is nothing to be got by running
about it. If one knew every foot of it, everybody would think it a
matter of course; but to be able to talk of Siam and the Fiji Islands,
Cambodia and Alaska, and the like, is really an advantage in society.
One gets the name of being a great traveller, and all that, and is asked
about tremendously and taken up to a wonderful extent. I know a man that
didn't wish to go to the trouble and expense of rambling all over the
world, and wanted the reputation of having done it, so he went into
lodgings at intervals near the British Museum and got all the books that
were to be had about a particular country, and, having read them, would
come back to the West End and give out that he had been there. It
answered beautifully for a while, and he was by way of being asked to
become a Fellow of the Royal Geographical, and was thought quite an
authority and wonderfully clever; but somehow he got found out, which
must have been a nuisance and spoiled everything. I can see that these
people consider it quite an honor to have me visit them, all because of
my having been around the world, I dare say. And of course I have let
them see that I know who is who and what is what. They are imploring me
to stay on; but I told them yesterday that it wouldn't suit my book at
all to stay
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