"You Americans? How soon are you going to call yourself an American? But you do not answer my question. How can you manage to get on as well as you do with commonplace people like ourselves?"
"You are not commonplace. A man who knows how to milk cows and digs potatoes, who rubs down his own horse and feeds his stock, and can withal dance like a city beau, and keep a table full of people laughing from the soup to the coffee, cannot be called commonplace."
"Thank you, Princess, most heartily for the compliment. I see you will not be pinned down by my rather personal question. Let me pay you with some of your own coin. I think it quite remarkable that you have so quickly fitted into the life here, and have accepted so quietly things which must be very strange to you. The difference of the way of living, the surroundings, the very strangeness of being waited on by these Chinamen, must be very uncomfortable, I fear?"
"Do not suggest a word against Ah Lam; he is the most delightful servant I have ever seen. Our Italian domestics are like great children, who have to be humored and managed with the extreme of tact and care. Ah Lam is like nothing but one of the automata described by Bulwer in 'The Coming Race,' which stand motionless against the wall until roused to action by the vrill wand, when they promptly perform the duty in hand. Ah Lam is only mechanical as far as regularity goes, for he has feelings and deep sentiments beneath his calm exterior. Do you know that he brings me fresh roses every morning, and that when he returned from San Francisco yesterday he brought me a present?"
"They all do that; they are the most generous creatures in the world. What did Lam bring you?"
"The prettiest little China silk handkerchief, which he presented with these words: 'I solly got no more, I so poor.' Was it not touching?"
"How do your lessons get on?"
"Very well. Lam learns ten or twelve new words every day. I give him the English word for an article, and he gives me the Chinese; and the following day we catechise each other; but I have never remembered a Chinese name, and Lam has never forgotten an English one. Then I set him copies, which he writes out beautifully with his queer little camel's-hair brush dipped in India-ink. I fear the sentiments will not greatly benefit him, but I try to explain them to him."
"Give me an example of your copy-book maxims; I am sure they are something new, quite unlike those I was brought up on."
"I take my verses all from Mr. Lear's 'Nonsense Book;' they will help him geographically, if not otherwise."