“If I have not gone to foreign countries, young man, foreign countries have come to me. They have come to me in the way of business, and I have improved upon my opportunities. Put it that I take an inventory, or make a catalogue. I see a French clock. I never saw him before, in my life, but I instantly lay my finger on him and say ‘Paris!’ I see some cups and saucers of Chinese make, equally strangers to me personally: I put my finger on them, then and there, and I say ‘Peking, Nanking, and Canton.’ It is the same with Japan, with Egypt, and with bamboo and sandalwood from the East Indies; I put my finger on them all. I have put my finger on the North Pole before now, and said ‘Spear of Eskimo make, for half a pint of pale sherry!’ ”
“Really? A very remarkable way, Mr. Sapsea, of acquiring a knowledge of men and things.”
“I mention it, sir,” Mr. Sapsea rejoins, with unspeakable complacency, “because, as I say, it don’t do to boast of what you are; but show how you came to be it, and then you prove it.”
“Most interesting. We were to speak of the late Mrs. Sapsea.”
“We were, sir.” Mr. Sapsea fills both glasses, and takes the decanter into safe keeping again. “Before I consult your opinion as a man of taste on this little trifle”—holding it up—“which is but a trifle, and still has required some thought, sir, some little fever of the brow, I ought perhaps to describe the character of the late Mrs. Sapsea, now dead three quarters of a year.”
Mr. Jasper, in the act of yawning behind his wineglass, puts down that screen and calls up a look of interest. It is a little impaired in its expressiveness by his having a shut-up gape still to dispose of, with watering eyes.
“Half a dozen years ago, or so,” Mr. Sapsea proceeds, “when I had enlarged my mind up to—I will not say to what it now is, for that might