The Colonel said he believed that was true. And this was a good illustration of what one persevering and intelligent man can do in bringing in the larger life and nobler purpose of the Kingdom of Heaven. Such a man makes men cease from labor, which is always irksome, and work with God. This is always ennobling.
"I am ashamed to say that I do not know what a cut-off is," said Alice, who, like Seth, had been trained to "confess ignorance."
"I was going to say so," said John Rodman.
"And I,—and I,—and I," said quite a little chorus.
"We must make up a party, the first pleasant day, and go and see the stationary engine which pumps this water for us." So the Colonel met their confessions.
"But does not all this indicate that we might spend a few days in looking up inventions?"
"I think we ought to," said Hatty. "Certainly we ought, if the Vesuvius pays. Imagine me at Manchester. Imagine John Bright taking me through his own mill, and saying to me, 'This is the rover we like best, on the whole. Do you use this in America?' Imagine me forced to reply that I do not know a rover when I see one, and could not tell a 'slubber' from a 'picker.'"
The others laughed, and confessed equal ignorance. "Only, John Bright has no mills in Manchester, Hatty."
"Well, they are somewhere; and I must not eat the bread of the Vesuvius slubbers, and not know something of the way in which slubbers came to be."
"Very well," said Uncle Fritz, as usual recalling the conversation to sanity. "Whom shall we read about first?"