“Kit,” he said, mildly, “this is a town of great interest to archaeology.”
I thought it over, and said:
“Seems to me it'd be of more interest to Mrs. Ulswater's orphan asylum. It's too fresh. It's the most youthful-minded place I ever saw. I don't see any archaeology in it.”
“Precisely,” he said. “The youthfulness of Zionville struck me too, and that not so much because of her crude appearance as because of her buoyancy. I said to myself, 'Clearly we are home again. This is no Latin mob of Portate, no explosion of firecrackers, no furious inefficiency. This is gunpowder in a gun. Here is the organising instinct, the jocular humour, together with the deadly arrival. We are in the States.' But yet I was not satisfied with that, and those considerations are not what's hoisting me now. Cast your eyes back over the late events. Look from this window on that people in their market place, their forum, their agora. Recollect how Zionville got herself together. What unity? What esprit de corps? You recognise it? Ha! No! It's Greek, sir, Greek! It's the civic clan, the municipal State. So looked the Athenians, so they acted in their market place. We have arrived not only in the States, but in Zionville. Now, what is Zionville? A piece of antiquity! Archaeology in flesh and blood! Pompeii be hanged. This is better than Pompeii. This is a reversion, an atavism!”
I said: “You'd better not deal out suspicious sounding names like those within hearing of Zionville. She's high-bred and nervous. If you mean she's a town with a character, I agree. She has more character than a bucking bronco.”
“Mysterious and extraordinary town,” he muttered. “Ha! You're right. 'Character' is the word. Personality! Personality fascinates me. I haven't the article myself. I'm a nebulous gas. Hence I thirst for, I cling to, personality. Most mysterious, most interesting town!”
“I don't deny the interest, doctor,” I said, “but it seems to me it's sort of concentrated around the question whether or not that crowd is going to take a notion to lynch us. It looks like a crowd that takes notions. Would an Athenian populace be likely to act that way?”
“Precisely,” he cried with enthusiasm. “Look at Socrates!”
It seemed to me Zionville had some game going on, but I didn't make out what the game was. It seemed to me a lynching would be little short of frivolous. But then the Athenians had acted frivolous about Socrates. Zionville was surely an unexpected place. But the crowd in Main Street didn't act like an angry crowd. It acted interested.
At this moment the door of our cell opened and Louisa and William C. Jones walked in. They sat down on a bench without speaking, and there they sat and seemed to be embarrassed, and William C. Jones' left eye was searching sideways for the cosine of x, and he began to question: