Here We Stopped At A House Very Different From The Ship Inn, For It
Looked As If It Had Been Built The Day Before Yesterday.
Everything was
new and shiny, and we had our supper at a long table with about twenty
other people, just like a boardinghouse.
Some of their ways reminded
me of the backwoods, and I suppose there is nothing more modern than
backwoodsism, which naturally hasn't the least alloy of the past. When
the people got through with their cups of coffee or tea, mostly the
last, two women went around the table, one with a big bowl for us to
lean back and empty our slops into, and the other with the tea or
coffee to fill up the cups. A gentleman with a baldish head, who was
sitting opposite us, began to be sociable as soon as he heard us speak
to the waiters, and asked questions about America. After he got through
with about a dozen of them he said:
"Is it true, as I have heard, that what you call native-born Americans
deteriorate in the third generation?"
I had been answering most of the questions, but now Jone spoke up
quick. "That depends," says he, "on their original blood. When
Americans are descended from Englishmen they steadily improve,
generation after generation." The baldish man smiled at this, and said
there was nothing like having good blood for a foundation. But Mr.
Poplington laughed, and said to me that Jone had served him right.
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