I slowly paced the floor, pondering scientific problems, and heard this conversation:
GRANDSON. First visit to Europe?
HARRIS. Mine? Yes.
G.S. (With a soft reminiscent sigh suggestive of bygone joys that may be tasted in their freshness but once.) Ah, I know what it is to you. A first visit!—ah, the romance of it! I wish I could feel it again.
H. Yes, I find it exceeds all my dreams. It is enchantment. I go...
G.S. (With a dainty gesture of the hand signifying “Spare me your callow enthusiasms, good friend.”) Yes, _I_ know, I know; you go to cathedrals, and exclaim; and you drag through league-long picture-galleries and exclaim; and you stand here, and there, and yonder, upon historic ground, and continue to exclaim; and you are permeated with your first crude conceptions of Art, and are proud and happy. Ah, yes, proud and happy—that expresses it. Yes-yes, enjoy it—it is right—it is an innocent revel.
H. And you? Don’t you do these things now?
G.S. I! Oh, that is very good! My dear sir, when you are as old a traveler as I am, you will not ask such a question as that. _I_ visit the regulation gallery, moon around the regulation cathedral, do the worn round of the regulation sights, yet?—Excuse me!
H. Well, what do you do, then?