I hope I belong to neither class. If I mistake not, I am a Pharisee, and thank my stars that I am not as other men are. Most of us are Pharisees, but few will admit it.
I began being a Pharisee when I was a small child, and that is the time that most people begin.
I kept it up. In this, I am—like the multitude.
Having thus stated my position, let me go on to say, that I am perfectly willing to admit that this or that bit of scenery in France, or Switzerland, or England, or Ireland, lays over anything of the sort I ever saw in America, if I think it does, and I am equally willing to say, that America has almost unknown bits that are far better than admired and poet-ridden places in Europe.
Twin Lakes in Connecticut is one of them, and Killarney is a poet-ridden place.
Why, even in Ireland there are places just as lovely as Killarney, but they have not been written up, and so no one goes to visit them.
I felt that one of the worst things about Killarney was the American sightseer, and I came away soon.
Cook's tourists have never heard of Twin Lakes, thank fortune, and it will be some time before they (the lakes) are spoiled.
The Lakes of Killarney are so beautiful that they are worthy of the pen of a poet, but the pen of a poet does not make any lake more beautiful, and I am quarreling because so many people refuse to believe the evidence of their own senses, and take their natural beauties at the say so of another.