It is not the countries, but the
persons, that are 'shown up.' You go to France and write a dull book.
I go to France and write a lively book. But France is the same. The
difference is in ourselves."
Halicarnassus glowered at me. I think I am not using strained or
extravagant language when I say that he glowered at me. Then he growled
out,--
"So your book of travels is just to put yourself into pickle."
"Say rather," I answered, with sweet humility,--"say rather it is to
shrine myself in amber. As the insignificant fly, encompassed with
molten glory, passes into a crystallized immortality, his own littleness
uplifted into loveliness by the beauty in which he is imprisoned, so I,
wrapped around by the glory of my land, may find myself niched into a
fame which my unattended and naked merit could never have claimed."
Halicarnassus was a little stunned, but, presently recovering himself,
suggested that I had travelled enough already to make out quite a
sizable book.
"Travelled!" I said, looking him steadily in the face,--"travelled!
I have been up to Tudiz huckleberrying; and once, when there was a
freshet, you took a superannuated broom and paddled me, around the
orchard in a leaky pig's trough!"
He could not deny it; so he laughed and said,--
"Ah, well!--ah, well! Suit yourself.
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