"Wrong. Ye mustn't joke, me boy. No. It's the English. Shure, they're the consatedest people in the whole worrld. An' now, thin, who's the wisest people in the worrld?" "The Americans," said Franklin promptly again. "Wrong agin. It's thim same d----d domineerin' idjits, the yally-headed subjecks o' the Widdy. An' pfwhy are they wise?" "You'll have to tell," said Franklin. "Then I'll till ye. It's because they have a _sacra fames_ fer all the land on earth." "They're no worse than we," said Franklin. "Look at our Land-Office records here for the past year." "Yis, the Yankee is a land-lover, but he wants land so that he may live on it, an' he wants to see it before he gives his money for it. Now, ye go to an Englishman, an' till him ye've a bit of land in the cintre of a lost island in the middle of the Pacific say, an' pfwhat does he do? He'll first thry to stale ut, thin thry to bully ye out of ut; but he'll ind by buyin' ut, at anny price ye've conscience to ask, an' he'll thrust to Providence to be able to find the island some day. That's wisdom. I've seen the worrld, me boy, from Injy to the Great American Desert. The Rooshan an' the Frinchman want land, as much land as ye'll cover with a kerchief, but once they get it they're contint. The Haybrew cares for nothin' beyond the edge of his counter. Now, me Angly-Saxon, he's the prettiest fightin' man on earth, an' he's fightin' fer land, er buyin' land, er stalin' land, the livin' day an' cintury on ind. He'll own the earth!" "No foreign Anglo-Saxon will ever own America," said Franklin grimly. "Well, I'm tellin' ye he'll be ownin' some o' this land around here." "I infer, Battersleigh," said Franklin, "that you have made a sale." "Well, yis. A small matter." "A quarter-section or so?" "A quarter-township or so wud be much nearer," said Battersleigh dryly. "You don't mean it?"