“No soft soap,” said the jockey, “for I never uses any. However, thank you for your information; I have hitherto thought myself a’nition clever fellow, but from henceforth shall consider myself just the contrary, and only—what’s the word?—confounded ’cute.”
“Just so,” said I.
“Well,” said the jockey, “as you say you can speak High Dutch, I should like to hear you and master six foot six fire away at each other.”
“I cannot speak German,” said I, “but I can understand tolerably well what others say in it.”
“Come no backing out,” said the jockey, “let’s hear you fire away for the glory of Old England.”
“Then you are a German?” said I, in German to the foreigner.
“That will do,” said the jockey, “keep it up.”
“A German!” said the tall foreigner. “No, I thank God that I do not belong to the stupid sluggish Germanic race, but to a braver, taller, and handsomer people;” here taking the pipe out of his mouth, he stood up proudly erect, so that his head nearly touched the ceiling of the room, then reseating himself, and again putting the syphon to his lips, he added, “I am a Magyar.”
“What is that?” said I.
The foreigner looked at me for a moment, somewhat contemptuously, through the smoke, then said, in a voice of thunder, “A Hungarian!”