"Magnificent!" he would cry, growing instantly cheerful at the
prospect. "Think of ze sensation!"
He spoke English fluently, though shaky on the TH and the W, and
it was first hand and not mentally translated. His pronunciation
of Far West, two words that were constantly on his lips, was an
endless entertainment to Florence, and out of a sense of humour
she forebore to correct him. It was typical, indeed, of his
ignorance of everything American. Europe was at his fingers' ends;
there was not a country in it he was not familiar with; intimately
familiar, knowing much of what went on behind the scenes, and the
lives and characters of the men, and not less the women, who
shaped national policies and held the steering-wheels of state.
"Muravief would never do that," he would say. "He is
constitutionally inert, and his imagination has carried him
through too many unfought wars for him to throw down the gage now.
He smokes cigarettes and dreams of endless peace. I had many talks
with him last year and found him impatient of any subject but the
redemption of the paper rouble!"
But his mind had never crossed the Atlantic Ocean. He still
thought that the Civil War had been between North and South
America. To him the United States was a vague region peopled with
miners, pork-packers, and Indians; a jumble of factories, forests,
and red-shirted men digging for gold, all of it fantastically seen
through the medium of Buffalo Bill's show.
Pages:
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45