“Then you shall like better Fenimore Cooper?”
I was becoming reckless. I could not go on saying “No” after “No,” and yet to ask me to be ever so little enthusiastic about Fenimore Cooper was laying a burden upon me heavier than I could bear, so I said I did not like him.
“Oh, I see,” said the boy; “then it is Uncle Tom’s Cabin that you shall like?”
Here I gave in. More “Noes” I could not say, so, thinking I might as well be hung for a sheep as for a mutton chop, I said that I thought Uncle Tom’s Cabin one of the most wonderful and beautiful books that ever were written.
Having got at a writer whom I admired, he was satisfied, but not for long.
“And you think very much of the theories of Darwin in England, do you not?”
I groaned inwardly and said we did.
“And what are the theories of Darwin?”
Imagine what followed!
After which: