Page:Varia.djvu/86

 74 and manifest contempt, that all his innocent airs of importance shriveled into humility and dejection. It is but honest to state that the Kavasses appeared to despise us quite as cordially as they did Demetrius; but we sustained their scorn with more tranquillity for the sake of the splendor and distinction they imparted. One of them was a very handsome and very supercilious Turk, who never condescended to look at us nor to speak to us; the other a Circassian, whose pride was tempered by affability, and who was good enough to hold with us the strictly necessary intercourse. I hear it is said now and then by censorious critics that American women are the most arrogant of their sex, affecting a superiority which is based upon no justifiable claim. But I candidly admit that all such airy notions, born of the New World and of the nineteenth century, dwindled rapidly away before the disdainful composure of those two lordly Mohammedans. The old primitive instincts are never wholly eradicated; only overlaid with the acquired sentiments of our time and place. I have not been without my share of self-assertion; but my meekness of spirit in