Farther down the street she met Professor Hardage.
"I know all about your old Odyssey—your old Horace and all those things," she said threateningly. "I am not as ignorant as you think."
"I wish Horace had known you."
"Would it have been nice?"
"He might have written an ode Ad Margaritam instead of Ad
Lalagem."
"Then I might have been able to read it," she said. "In school I couldn't read the other one. But you mustn't think that I did not read a great deal of Latin. The professor used to say that I read my Latin b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l-l-y, but that I didn't get much English out of it. I told him I got as much English out of it as the Romans did, and that they certainly ought to have known what it was meant for."
"That must have taught him a lesson!"
"Oh, he said I'd do: I was called the girl who read Latin perfectly, regardless of English. And, then, I won a prize for an essay on the three most important things that the United States has contributed to the civilizations of the Old World. I said they were tobacco, wild turkeys and idle curiosity. Of course every one knew about tobacco and turkeys; but wasn't it clever of me to think of idle curiosity? Now, wasn't it? I made a long list of things and then I selected these from my list."
"I'd like to know what the other things were!"
"Oh, I've forgotten now! But they were very important at the time.
Are you coming to my ball?"