"Carthew will be pleased," said Dodd; "for there's no
doubt they oppressed the man abominably when they were
in the CURRENCY LASS. It's diamond cut diamond
now."
This, I think, was the most of the news I got from my
friend Loudon; and I hope I was well inspired, and have
put all the questions to which you would be curious to
hear an answer.
But there is one more that I daresay you are burning to
put to myself; and that is, what your own name is doing
in this place, cropping up (as it were uncalled for) on
the stern of our poor ship? If you were not born in
Arcadia, you linger in fancy on its margin; your
thoughts are busied with the flutes of antiquity, with
daffodils, and the classic poplar, and the footsteps of
the nymphs, and the elegant and moving aridity of
ancient art. Why dedicate to you a tale of a cast so
modern:--full of details of our barbaric manners and
unstable morals; full of the need and the lust of
money, so that there is scarce a page in which the
dollars do not jingle; full of the unrest and movement
of our century, so that the reader is hurried from
place to place and sea to sea, and the book is less a
romance than a panorama--in the end, as blood-
bespattered as an epic?
Well, you are a man interested in all problems of art,
even the most vulgar; and it may amuse you to hear the
genesis and growth of THE WRECKER.
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