The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. II

My dear Tom, I got the papers all safe. I am sure the account is perfectly correct. I only wish the balance was bigger. I waited here to receive these things, and now I discover that I can't sign the warrant of attorney except before a consul, and there is none in this place, so that I must keep it over till I can find one of those pleasant functionaries, a class that between ourselves I detest heartily. They are a presumptuous, under bred, consequential race, a cross between a small skipper and smaller Secretary of Legation, with a mixture of official pedantry and maritime off handedness that is perfectly disgusting. Why our reforming economists don't root them all out I cannot conceive. Nobody wants, nobody benefits by them; and save that you are now and then called on for a "consular fee, " you might never hear of their existence. I don't rightly understand what you say about the loan from that Land Improvement Society. Do you mean that the money lent must be laid out on the land as a necessary condition? Is it possible that this is what I am to infer? If so, I never heard anything half so preposterous! Sure, if I raise five hundred pounds from a Jew, he has no right to stipulate that I must spend the cash on copper coal scuttles or potted meats! I want it for my own convenience; enough for him that I comply with his demands for interest and repayment.