Page:Select Conversations with an Uncle (Now Extinct) And Two Other Reminiscences.djvu/27

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DISCOMFORT OF HUMANITY
11

in some unpleasant manner, and holding disorderly meetings."

"Who are these people?"

"Never heard of them before, though they told me they were quite well known. The lady asked me if I had been to Chicago."

I chuckled. I could imagine no more hideous insult to my uncle.

"I told her that I had been to most places south-eastward and eastward, but never across the Atlantic. She informed me that I ought to have gone to Chicago, and that America was a great country, and I remarked that I had always thought it was so great that one could best appreciate it at a distance. Then she asked me what I thought of the condition of the lower classes, and I told her I was persuaded, from various things I had noticed, that a lot of them were frightfully hard up. And with that she started off to show whose fault it was, by the Socratic method."

"Entertaining?"

"A little. I did not get all my answers