'Look here!' he explained.
'I've been seeing Corots, and Greuzes, and Gainsboroughs, and a
Holbein, and - and hundreds of really splendid pictures!' 'Why shouldn't
you?' I said. 'They've given up painting their lodges with vermilion
hereabouts.' 'Yes, but what I mean is, have you seen the equipment of
their schools and colleges - desks, libraries, and lavatories? It's miles
ahead of anything we have and - no one ever told me.' 'What was the good
of telling? You wouldn't have believed. There's a building in one of the
cities, on the lines of the Sheldonian, but better, and if you go as far
as Winnipeg, you'll see the finest hotel in all the world.'
'Nonsense!' he said. 'You're pulling my leg! Winnipeg's a prairie-town.'
I left him still lamenting - about a Club and a Gymnasium this time - that
no one had ever told him about; and still doubting all that he had heard
of Wonders to come.
If we could only manacle four hundred Members of Parliament, like the
Chinese in the election cartoons, and walk them round the Empire, what
an all-comprehending little Empire we should be when the survivors got
home!
