“Let me instruct you.”
Or:
“Do you know who was the greatest English poet?”
“No, sir,” you would say, or, perhaps, in those days you might venture, “Was it Shakespeare, sir?”
Then he would look at you and say:
“Let me instruct you.”
This afternoon then, after I had inspected the premises, noticed how much taller my cousin’s fir-tree was than the one I called mine (we had planted them one day, as little boys, years before), and after I had had a drink at the old pump, which in those days, before germs, brought up such cold, clear water, and after I had ascended to my cool room upstairs, and come downstairs again, and we had idly talked for a little while, as I said, he sat and looked at me a moment, and then said:
“Do you understand this tariff question?”
In those days I might have made the due, what I might term with reference to that situation, the conventional reply, and so have said:
“No, sir.”