‘You have museums even in London?’ asked Miss McCabe.

Merton assented.

‘Are they not educational?’

’The British Museum is mainly used by the children of the poor, as a place where they play a kind of subdued hide-and-seek,’ said Merton.

’That’s because they are not interested in tinned Egyptian corpses and broken Greek statuary ware,’ answered the fair Republican.  ’Now, Mr. Merton, did you ever see or hear of a popular museum, a museum that the People would give its cents to see?’

‘I have heard of Mr. Barnum’s museum,’ said Merton.

‘That’s the idea:  it is right there,’ said Miss McCabe.  ’But old man Barnum was not scientific.  He saw what our people wanted, but he did not see, Pappa said, how to educate them through their natural instincts.  Barnum’s mermaid was not genuine business.  It confused the popular mind, and fostered superstition—­and got found out.  The result was scepticism, both religious and scientific.  Now, Pappa used to argue, the lives of our citizens are monotonous.  They see yellow dogs, say, but each yellow dog has only one tail.  They see men and women, but almost all of them have only one head:  and even a hand with six fingers is not common.  This is why the popular mind runs into grooves.  This causes what they call “the dead level of democracy.”  Even our men of genius, Pappa allowed (for he was a very fair-minded man), do not go ahead of the European ticket, but rather the reverse.  Your Tennyson has the inner tracks of our Longfellow:  your Thackeray gives our Bertha Runkle his dust.  The papers called Pappa unpatriotic, and a bad American.  But he was not:  he was a white man.  When he saw his country’s faults he put his finger on them, right there, and tried to cure them.’

‘A noble policy,’ murmured Merton.

Miss McCabe was really so pretty and unusual, that he did not care how long she was in coming to the point.

’Well, Pappa argued that there was more genius, or had been since the Declaration of Independence, even in England, than in the States.  “And why?” he asked.  “Why, because they have more variety in England.  Things are not all on one level there—­“’

‘Our dogs have only one tail apiece,’ said Merton, ’in spite of the proverb “as proud as a dog with two tails,” and a plurality of heads is unusual even among British subjects.’

‘Yes,’ answered Miss McCabe, ’but you have varieties among yourselves.  You have a King and a Queen; and your peerage is rich in differentiated species.  A Baronet is not a Marquis, nor is a Duke an Earl.’

‘He may be both,’ said Merton, but Miss McCabe continued to expose the parental philosophy.