The fire-tender.  How is it about the war-path and all that?

Mandeville.  Oh, these studiously calm and cultured people may have malice underneath.  It takes them to give the most effective “little digs;” they know how to stick in the pine-splinters and set fire to them.

Herbert.  But there is more in Mandeville’s idea.  You bring a red man into a picture-gallery, or a city full of fine architecture, or into a drawing-room crowded with objects of art and beauty, and he is apparently insensible to them all.  Now I have seen country people, —­and by country people I don’t mean people necessarily who live in the country, for everything is mixed in these days,—­some of the best people in the world, intelligent, honest, sincere, who acted as the Indian would.

The mistress.  Herbert, if I did n’t know you were cynical, I should say you were snobbish.

Herbert.  Such people think it a point of breeding never to speak of anything in your house, nor to appear to notice it, however beautiful it may be; even to slyly glance around strains their notion of etiquette.  They are like the countryman who confessed afterwards that he could hardly keep from laughing at one of Yankee Hill’s entertainments,

The young lady.  Do you remember those English people at our house in Flushing last summer, who pleased us all so much with their apparent delight in everything that was artistic or tasteful, who explored the rooms and looked at everything, and were so interested?  I suppose that Herbert’s country relations, many of whom live in the city, would have thought it very ill-bred.

Mandeville.  It’s just as I said.  The English, the best of them, have become so civilized that they express themselves, in speech and action, naturally, and are not afraid of their emotions.

The parson.  I wish Mandeville would travel more, or that he had stayed at home.  It’s wonderful what a fit of Atlantic sea-sickness will do for a man’s judgment and cultivation.  He is prepared to pronounce on art, manners, all kinds of culture.  There is more nonsense talked about culture than about anything else.

Herbert.  The Parson reminds me of an American country minister I once met walking through the Vatican.  You could n’t impose upon him with any rubbish; he tested everything by the standards of his native place, and there was little that could bear the test.  He had the sly air of a man who could not be deceived, and he went about with his mouth in a pucker of incredulity.  There is nothing so placid as rustic conceit.  There was something very enjoyable about his calm superiority to all the treasures of art.

Mandeville.  And the Parson reminds me of another American minister, a consul in an Italian city, who said he was going up to Rome to have a thorough talk with the Pope, and give him a piece of his mind.  Ministers seem to think that is their business.  They serve it in such small pieces in order to make it go round.