“My question having the precedence, sir, it will be, perhaps, more regular to answer it first,” said Ogden, with a slow pertinacity. “Well, I ain't quite sure o' that, stranger.” drawled out the other. “Mine was a sort of an amendment, and so might be put before the original motion.” The remark chimed in well with the humor of one never indisposed to word-fencing, and so he deferred to the suggestion, told his name and his object in coming. “And now, sir,” added he, “I hope not to be deemed indiscreet in asking an equal candor from you.” “You ain't a doctor?” asked Quackinboss. “No, sir; not a physician, at least.” “That's a pity,” said Quackinboss, slowly, as he brushed the ashes off his cigar. “Help yourself, stranger; that's claret, t'other's the country wine, and this is cognac,--all three bad o' their kind; but, as they say here to everything, 'Come si fa, eh? Come si fa!'” “It is not from any disparagement of your hospitality, sir,” said Ogden, somewhat pompously, “that I am forced to recall you to my first question.” “Come si fa!” repeated Quackinboss, still ruminating over the philosophy of that expression, one of the very few he had ever succeeded in committing to memory. “Am I to conclude, sir, that you decline giving me the information I ask?” “I ain't in a witness-box, stranger. I 'm a-sittin' at my own fireside. I 'm a-smokin' my Virginian, where I 've a right to, and if _you_ choose to come in neighborly-like, and take a liquor with me, we 'll talk it over, whatever it is; but if you think to come Holy Office and the Inquisition over Shaver Quackinboss, you 've caught the wrong squirrel by the tail, Britisher, you have!” “I must say, sir, you have put a most forced and unfair construction upon a very simple circumstance. I asked you if the Marquis of Agincourt resided here?” “And so you ain't a doctor?” said Quackinboss, pensively. “No, sir; I have already told you as much.” “Bred to the law, belike?” “I _have_ studied, sir, but not practised as a lawyer.” “Well, now, I expected you was!” said Quackinboss, with an air of self- satisfaction. “You chaps betray yourselves sooner than any other class in all creation; as Flay Harris says: 'A lawyer is a fellow won't drink out of the bung-hole, but must always be for tapping the cask for himself.' You ain't long in these parts?” “No, sir; a very short time, indeed,” said Ogden, drearily. “You needn't sigh about it, stranger, though it is main dull in these diggin's! Here's a people that don't understand human natur'. What I mean, sir, is, human natur' means goin' ahead; doin' a somewhat your father and your grandfather never so much as dreamt of. But what are these critturs about? Jest showin' the great things that was done centuries before they was born,--what pictures and statues and monuments their own ancestors could make, and of which they are jest showmen, nothing more!” “The Arts are Italy's noblest inheritance,” said Ogden, sententionsly.