"
"Created goodness, Dan'l! You're designin' ter"--
Dan'l Borem rose, coughed, expectorated carefully at the usual spot
in the fender, his general custom of indicating the conclusion of a
subject or an interview, and said dryly: "I'm thar!"
II
To return to the writer of the letter, whose career was momentarily
cut off by the episode of the horse trade (who, if he had
previously received a letter written by somebody else would have
been an entirely different person and not in this novel at all):
John Lummox--known to his family as "the perfect Lummox"--had been
two years in college, but thought it rather fine of himself--a
habit of thought in which he frequently indulged--to become a
clerk, but finally got tired of it, and to his father's relief went
to Europe for a couple of years, returning with some knowledge of
French and German, and the cutting end of a German student's
blunted dueling sword. Having, as he felt, thus equipped himself
for the hero of an American "Good Society" novel, he went on board
a "liner," where there would naturally be susceptible young ladies.
One he thought he recognized as a girl with whom he used to play
"forfeits" in the vulgar past of his boyhood. She sat at his
table, accompanied by another lady whose husband seemed to be a
confirmed dyspeptic. His remarks struck Lummox as peculiar.
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