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of Artesian wells; but he simply raised his eyebrows; while Mr. Gliddon
winked at me very hard and said, in a low tone, that one had been
recently discovered by the engineers employed to bore for water in the
Great Oasis.
I then mentioned our steel; but the foreigner elevated his nose, and
asked me if our steel could have executed the sharp carved work seen on
the obelisks, and which was wrought altogether by edge-tools of copper.
This disconcerted us so greatly that we thought it advisable to vary the
attack to Metaphysics. We sent for a copy of a book called the "Dial,"
and read out of it a chapter or two about something that is not very
clear, but which the Bostonians call the Great Movement of Progress.
The Count merely said that Great Movements were awfully common things in
his day, and as for Progress, it was at one time quite a nuisance, but
it never progressed.
We then spoke of the great beauty and importance of Democracy, and
were at much trouble in impressing the Count with a due sense of the
advantages we enjoyed in living where there was suffrage ad libitum, and
no king.
He listened with marked interest, and in fact seemed not a little
amused. When we had done, he said that, a great while ago, there had
occurred something of a very similar sort. Thirteen Egyptian provinces
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