No Doubt We Daily Come
Into The Closest Contact With Matters Which, If We Saw All That
Appertains To Them, Would Cause Us To Shake And Shudder.
In other
countries we do not see all this, but in the Western States we do.
I have eaten in Bedouin tents, and have been ministered to by Turks
and Arabs.
I have sojourned in the hotels of old Spain and of
Spanish America. I have lived in Connaught, and have taken up my
quarters with monks of different nations. I have, as it were, been
educated to dirt, and taken out my degree in outward abominations.
But my education had not reached a point which would enable me to
live at my ease in the Western States. A man or woman who can do
that may be said to have graduated in the highest honors, and to
have become absolutely invulnerable, either through the sense of
touch, or by the eye, or by the nose. Indifference to appearances
is there a matter of pride. A foul shirt is a flag of triumph. A
craving for soap and water is as the wail of the weak and the
confession of cowardice. This indifference is carried into all
their affairs, or rather this manifestation of indifference. A few
pages back, I spoke of a man whose furniture had been sold to pay a
heavy tax raised on him specially as a secessionist; the same man
had also been refused the payment of rent due to him by the
government, unless he would take a false oath.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 167 of 531
Words from 44557 to 44818
of 142339
