There were to be some sports, and all the station were expected to be present. Even society likes a crowd to look on, though the unregenerate residuum are kept outside the ropes. I thought this a good opportunity to make our first public appearance, so in our phaeton, drawn by a pair of the best steppers in the station, we were driven to the parade ground. I saw that our coming excited considerable curiosity, and to tell the truth, I was not the least displeased at this. A number of my acquaintances came up to greet me, for I had some friends, and don’t wish it to be understood that because there are lots of cads and snobs, that I think all the better class of people belong to these grades. I was proud of this recognition. I have always had pride as every one should have, and mine, myself being the best judge of it, was an honest kind, based on my good intentions and self respect as a man. I never forgot the saying of Mr. Percy, “Charles, be a man.” He was a man who hated any false way, a manly, noble man, pure and clean, true as steel, and one in whom Jesus, or any other good person, would have been delighted as a companion, a friend without guile. To be a man, to have subdued all the baseness that pertains to the flesh, and to have the honesty, purity, courage and nobility that belongs to real manhood, is what it seems to me to be Godlike. When one has reached that condition he has obtained what the religious call “salvation,” and is prepared for the life to come. There are so many pigmies—no that is not the word—as they are only pigmies in goodness, but giants in evil—coarse-minded, foul-worded, sordid and base in everything, deceivers and seducers, living in the slime and filth of vice. They are the eels and slugs of humanity, living in the mud, while the pure and good are like the delicate trout that can live only in the springs at the source of the streams, but here I am going astray again. I said that I had pride. I was proud of my wife and the way she received my friends. There was not a woman present who was her superior in appearance, manners or dress, and I knew, with her spirit, she could hold her own with the best of them, and I was not mistaken. As others came up to our company a white-haired, white-faced, flashily dressed swell, with an air of self-importance, putting his one-eyed glass to his eye, bowed to my wife with the remark, “Pardon me, but doncher know, I think I must have met you before.” This was said with a bold, patronizing air, with a London cockney tone and accent. My wife not at all disconcerted, with a laugh in her voice, replied, “Oh, yes, Mr. Smith, I remember you well. It was years ago, in Roorki, at a croquet party, when you told me that if I preferred that Eurasian I could do so. And to show you that I made use of the liberty you gave me, allow me to introduce you—Mr. Smith, Mr. Japhet, my husband.”