Now, I take off my hat to the man who
wrote it. He knew what he was talkin' about--by the Lord Harry, he
did!"
The Latin had come out tentatively, with an odd, unused intonation.
Mahony's retort: "How on earth do you know what suits me and what
doesn't?" died on his lips. He was surprised into silence. There had
been nothing in the other's speech to show that he was a man of any
education--rather the reverse.
Meanwhile Tangye went on: "I grant you it's an antiquated point o' view;
but doesn't that go to prove what I've been sayin'; that you and me are
old-fashioned, too--out-o'-place here, out-o'-date? The modern sort,
the sort that gets on in this country, is a prime hand at cuttin' his
coat to suit his cloth; for all that the stop-at-homes, like the writer
o' that line and other ancients, prate about the Ethiopian's hide or the
leopard and his spots. They didn't buy their experience dear, like we
did; didn't guess that if a man DON'T learn to fit himself in, when he
gets set down in such a land as this, he's a goner; any more'n they knew
that most o' those who hold out here--all of 'em at any rate who've
climbed the ladder, nabbed the plunder--have found no more difficulty
in changin' their spots than they have their trousers. Yes, doctor,
there's only one breed that flourishes, and you don't need me to tell
you which it is. Here they lie"--and he nodded to right and left of him
--"dreamin' o' their money-bags, and their dividends, and their profits,
and how they'll diddle and swindle one another afresh, soon as the sun
gets up to-morrow.
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