He didn’t condemn the ways of England at all—he simply told the facts and left ’em, jest as the ’postles did. He sed he found that in the Bank of England wuz the greatest wealth heaped up in the smallest space that the world had ever known sence the creation. And with the same air of simply tellin’ a fact, and then leavin’ it, in the New Testament way, sez he—
“Almost in the shadow of this building, holding the world’s wealth, I find the greatest want and wretchedness and crime existing that I have ever looked upon, and I believe the worst the world has ever seen.”
“Almost in the shadow of the Bank of England, I found the greatest want and wretchedness.”
He didn’t say that there must be a screw loose somewhere in the great revolvin’ wheel of Humanity to make sech a state of things possible. He jest writ down sunthin’ in that book of hisen—mebby it wuz expressions of wonder about our boasted civilization havin’ accomplished so little in eighteen hundred years, when the richest place on earth should have its dark shadder of the greatest want and crime clost to its side. No; he jest stated the facts and let us draw our own morals, and as fur as we wanted to. Martin didn’t notice his remarks, nor see Al Faizi at all, so fur as I could observe. He went on a-talkin’ with Josiah about the bank, and about Rotten Row; he sed he wanted us to see that, and wanted us to set off to once.
And I told Alice out to one side, when we wuz gittin’ ready, that I didn’t know as I wanted her to go into any sech a nasty place, or Adrian either. I take good care of the children—yes, indeed I do!
But we found out when we got there that Rotten Row wuz a elegant place, fixed off for ridin’ and drivin’. Beautiful ladies and grand-lookin’ gentlemen, and if there wuz anything Rotten about ’em, it wuz on the inside of their phylackricies; the outside of ’em wuz clean and brilliant.
Some say that the place where these great folks congregate is well named, but I don’t believe everything that I hear.
Martin enjoyed the seen dretfully, though he sed, on commentin’ on the ladies ridin’, that none on ’em could come up to an American woman in grace, and he sed that the best ridin’ that he ever see wuz by cow-boys on a Dakota ranch.
Wall, I couldn’t dispute him, never havin’ neighbored with cow-boys. But let Martin alone for findin’ out all the attractions of U. S. A. No; U. S. A. won’t suffer in Martin’s hands, not at all.