“Where did you receive your education, Mr. Sanderson?” asked Cunningham curiously.
“I went to a deestrict school till I was eleven. Then my father died, and I had to hustle. Didn’t have any time to study after that.”
“That’s the way most of your great men began, Mr. Sanderson.”
“I expect they did. Education isn’t everything. Why, the boy that stood at the head of my class is a clerk at fifteen dollars a week, while I have an income of fifteen thousand. He’s got a lot of book knowledge, but it hasn’t done him much good.”
This conversation will give some idea of the American’s peculiar ways of regarding everything foreign to his own experience. He could not like the Italian ruins, and this was not surprising. The inns on the route which they had selected were uncommonly poor, and the cookery was such as might have been expected from the comfortless surroundings.
One morning, however, Bernard and Mr. Cunningham were agreeably surprised by an excellent dish of ham and eggs.
“Really,” said Cunningham. “This seems something like what we get in England.”
“Or in America,” suggested Amos.
“Yes, or in America.”
“They must have an unusually good cook in this inn.”