Moths by Ouida — page 71: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MOTHS 64 ing boots, if you please. Men with a whole row of Crusaders at their backs, men as count their forefathers right away into Julius Ceesar’s times, men that had uncles in the ark with Noah, they’re at a Yankee pile like flies around molasses. Wal, now,” said the pretty American, with her eyes lighting fiercely and with sparks of scorn flashing out from them—‘ wal, now, yow’re all of you that proud that you beat Lucifer, but as far as I see there aren’t much to be proud of. We’re shoddy over there. If we went to Boston we wouldn’t get a drink, outside a hotel, for our lives. N’ York, neither, don’t think because a man’s struck ile he'll go to heaven with Paris thrown in. But look atall your big folk! Pray what do they do the minute shoddy comes their way over the pickle- field? Why, they just eat it! Kiss it and eat it! Do you guess we're such fools we don’t see that? Why, your Norman blood and Domesday Book and all the rest of it—pray hasn’t it married Lily Peart, whose father kept the steamboat hotel in Jersey City and made his pile selling soothers to the heathen Chinee? Who was your Marchioness of Snowdon if she weren’t the daughter of old Sam Salmon the note-shaver? Who was your Duchess de Dagobert, if she weren’t Aurelia Twine, with seventy million dollars made in two years out of oil? Who was your Princess Buondelmare, if not Lotty Miller, who was born in Nevada and baptized with gin in a miner’s pannikin? We know ’emall! And Blue Blood’s taken ’em because they had cash. That’s about it! Wal, to my fancy, there aren’t much to be proud of anyhow, and it aren’t only us that need be laughed at——” ‘‘It is not,” said Vere, who had listened in bewilderment. ** There is very much to be ashamed of on both sides.” _ *Shame’s a big thing—a four-horse concern,” said the other, with some demur. ‘* But if any child need be ashamed, it is not this child. There’s awoman in Rome, Anastasia W. Crash; her father’s acolored person. After the war he turned note- shaver and made apile; Anastasia aren’t colored to signify; she looks like a Creole, and she’s handsome. It got wind in Rome that she was going there, and had six million dollars a year safe; and she has that; it’s no lie. Well, ia a week she could pick and choose among the Roman princes as if they were bilberries in a hedge, and she’s taken onethat’s got a name a thousand years old—a name that every school-girl reads out in her history-books, when she reads about the popes! There! And Anastasia W. Crash is a colored person with us; with uswe would not go in the same car with her, nor eat at the same table with her. What do you think of that?” ‘*T think your country is very liberal, and that your ‘ colored person’ has avenged all the crimes of the Borgias.” The pretty American looked at her suspiciously. _ ‘‘T guess I don’t understand you,” she said, a little sulkily. ‘¢T suess you’re very deep, aren’t you?” ‘*Pardon me,” said Vere, weary of the conversation; °‘ if you will excuse me I will leave you now: we are going to ride 99 ‘Ride? Ah! That’s afthing I don’t cotton to, anyhow,” said Miss Fuschia Leach, who had found that her talent did not_lie comicboo { cS co