’Now Pappa would not hear of aristocratic distinctions in our country.  He was a Hail Columbia man, on the Democratic ticket.  But something is wanted, he said, to get us out of grooves, and break the monotony.  That something, said Pappa, Nature has mercifully provided in Freaks.  The citizens feel this, unconsciously:  that’s why they spend their money at Barnum’s.  But Barnum was not scientific, and Barnum was not straight about his mermaid.  So Pappa founded his Museum of Natural Varieties, all of them honest Injun.  Here the lecturers show off the freaks, and explain how Nature works them, and how she can always see them and go one better.  We have the biggest gold nugget and the weeniest cunning least gold nugget; the biggest diamond and the smallest diamond; the tallest man and the smallest man; the whitest negro and the yellowest red man in the world.  We have the most eccentric beasts, and the queerest fishes, and everything is explained by lecturers of world-wide reputation, on the principles of evolution, as copyrighted by our Asa Gray and our Agassiz. That is what Pappa called popular education, and it hits our citizens right where they live.’

Miss McCabe paused, in a flush of filial and patriotic enthusiasm.  Merton inwardly thought that among the queerest fishes the late Mr. McCabe must have been pre-eminent.  But what he said was, ’The scheme is most original.  Our educationists (to employ a term which they do not disdain), such as Mr. Herbert Spencer, Sir Joshua Fitch, and others, have I thought out nothing like this.  Our capitalists never endow education on this more than imperial scale.’

‘Guess they are scaly varmints!’ interposed Miss McCabe.

Merton bowed his acquiescence in the sentiment.

‘But,’ he went on, ’I still do not quite understand how your own prospects in life are affected by Mr. McCabe’s most original and, I hope, promising experiment?’

’Pappa loved me, but he loved his country better, and taught me to adore her, and be ready for any sacrifice.’  Miss McCabe looked straight at Merton, like an Iphigenia blended with a Joan of Arc.

‘I do sincerely trust that no sacrifice is necessary,’ said Merton.  ’The circumstances do not call for so—­unexampled a victim.’

’I am to be Lady Principal of the museum when I come to the age of twenty-five:  that is, in six years,’ said Miss McCabe proudly.  ’You don’t call that a sacrifice?’

Merton wanted to say that the most magnificent of natural varieties would only be in its proper place.  But the man of business and the manager of a great and beneficent association overcame the mere amateur of beauty, and he only said that the position of Lady Principal was worthy of the ambition of a patriot, and a friend of the species.

’Well, I reckon!  But a clause in Pappa’s will is awkward for me, some.  It is about my marriage,’ said Miss McCabe bravely.