He made Mrs. Goarly's goose immortal, and in imitating
the indignation of Runce the farmer and Bean the gamekeeper showed
that he was master of considerable humour. But he brought it all
round at last to his own purpose, and ended this episode of his
lecture by his view of the absurdity and illegality of British
hunting. "I can talk about it to you," he said, "and you will know
whether I am speaking the truth. But when I get home among my own
people, and repeat my lecture there, as I shall do,--with some
little additions as to the good things I have found here from which
your ears may be spared,--I shall omit this story as I know it will
be impossible to make my countrymen believe that a hundred
harum-scarum tomboys may ride at their pleasure over every man's
land, destroying crops and trampling down fences, going, if their
vermin leads them there, with reckless violence into the sweet
domestic garden of your country residences; and that no one can
either stop them or punish them! An American will believe much about
the wonderful ways of his British cousin, but no American will be
got to believe that till he sees it."
"I find," said he, "that this irrationality, as I have ventured to
call it, runs through all your professions. We will take the Church
as being the highest at any rate in its objects.
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