The thing that
occurred, as naturally and inevitably as the rain if you leave your
umbrella at home, was that within a fortnight after my return to Chicago
my engagement to Mr. Page terminated; and the even more painful
consequence is that I feel obliged on that account to refer to it again.
Even an American man has his lapses into unreasonableness. Arthur
especially encouraged the idea of my going to England on the ground that
it would be so formative. He said that to gaze upon the headsman's block
in the Tower was in itself a liberal education. As we sat together in
the drawing-room--momma and poppa always preferred the sitting-room when
Arthur was there--he used to gild all our future with the culture which
I should acquire by actual contact with the hoary traditions of Great
Britain. He advised me earnestly to disembark at Liverpool in a
receptive and appreciative, rather than a critical and antagonistic,
state of mind, to endeavour to assimilate all that was worth
assimilating over there, remembering that this might give me as much as
I wanted to do in the time.
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