Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/189

 NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET

Shouter. No, no, no ! you have quite misun- derSTOODme. If-

Deaf Person. Ah! GOOD morning; I am sorry you must go. But call again, and let me continue to be of assistance to you in every way I can.

You see it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated. It is really curious and interesting when you come to compare it with yours; in detail, with my former article to which it is a Reply in your hand. I talk twelve pages about your Ameri can instruction projects, and your doubtful scientific system, and your painstaking classification of non existent things, and your diligence and zeal and sin cerity, and your disloyal attitude toward anecdotes, and your undue reverence for unsafe statistics and for facts that lack a pedigree ; and you turn around and come back at me with eight pages of weather.

I do not see how a person can act so. It is good of you to repeat, with change of language, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much of my own article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new buttons on; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so; but agreeing with a person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed. It is weather; and of almost the worst sort. It pleases me greatly to hear you discourse with such approval and expansiveness upon my text:

&quot;A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that is as far as he can get. I

six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are worth
 * And you say: &quot;A man of average intelligence, who has passed

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