A Queer Conversation.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIII, Issue 7367, 15 November 1898, Page 4

A Queer Conversation.

In her new book, "Penelope's Experiences in Scotland," Mrs Kate D. Wiggin thus records a queer conversation made up of international bickerings:— •' How did you get on with your delightful minister 2" inquired Salemina of Francesca, as she flung her unoffending wrap over the back of a chair. "He was quite the handsomest man in the room. Whoishe 1" " He is the Rev. Ronald Macdonald, and •the most disagreeable, condescending, illtempered prig I ever met." " Why, Francesca," I exclaimed, " Lady Baird speaks of him as her favorite nephew, and says he is full of charm." " ±f e is just as full of charm as he was when I met him," returned the girl, nonchalantly. " That is, he parted with none of it this evening. He was incorrigibly stiff and rude, and, oh ! so Scotch ! X believe if once punctured him with a hatpin oatmeal would fly in the air." " Doubtless you acquainted him, early in the evening, with the immeasurable advantages of our sleeping car system, the superiority of cur fast-running elevators, and the height of our buildings V observed Salemina. " I mentioned them," Francesca answered evasively. "You naturally inveighed against the Scotch climate ?" " Oh, I alluded to it; but only when he said that our hot summers must be insufferable." " I suppose you repeated the remark you make at luncheon, that the ladies you had seen in Princes street were excessively plain 1" "Yes, I did!" she replied hotly; "but that was because he said that American girls generally looked bloodless and frail. He asked if it were really true that they ate chalk and slate pencils. Wasn't that uneni durable ? I answered that those were the I chief solid articles of food, but that after their complexions were established, so to speak, their parents often allowed them pickles and native claret to vary the diet." j " What did he say to that ?" I asked, •' 1 Oh,' he said; ' quite so, quite so.' That was his invariab'e response to all my witticisms. Then when i told him casually that the shops looked very small and dark at)d stufiy here, and that there were not so many tartanß and plaids in the windows as we had expected, he remarked that, as to the latter point, the American season had not opened yet. Presently he asserted that no royal city in Europe can boast ten centuries of such glorions and stirring history as Edinburgh. I said it did no 6 appear to be stirring much at present, and that everything in Scotland seemed a little slow to an American; that he could have no idea of push or enterprise until he had visited a city like Chicago. He retorted that happily Edinburgh was peculiarly free from the taint of the ledger and the counting-house ; that it was Weimar without a Goethe, Boston without its twang !" "Incredible!" cried Salemina, deeply wounded in her local pride. "He never could have said 'twang' unless you had tried him beyond measure." " I daresay I did ; he is easily tried," returned Francesca. "I asked him, sarcastically, if he had ever been in Boston. ' No,' he said, 'it is not necessary to go there. And while we are discussing these matters,' be went on, 'how is your American dyspepsia these days—have you decided what is the cause of it ?"

"'Yes, we have,' said I, as quick as a flash; 'we have always taken in more foreigners than we could assimilate!' 1 wanted to tell him that one Scotsman of his type would upset the national digestion anywhere, but I restrained myself."