The American
 “Oh, I’ll be your little child,” said Tristram, jovially; “I’ll take you by the hand. Trust yourself to me.” 

 “I am a good worker,” Newman continued, “but I rather think I am a poor loafer. I have come abroad to amuse myself, but I doubt whether I know how.” 

 “Oh, that’s easily learned.” 

 “Well, I may perhaps learn it, but I am afraid I shall never do it by rote. I have the best will in the world about it, but my genius doesn’t lie in that direction. As a loafer I shall never be original, as I take it that you are.” 

 “Yes,” said Tristram, “I suppose I am original; like all those immoral pictures in the Louvre.” 

 “Besides,” Newman continued, “I don’t want to work at pleasure, any more than I played at work. I want to take it easily. I feel deliciously lazy, and I should like to spend six months as I am now, sitting under a tree and listening to a band. There’s only one thing; I want to hear some good music.” 

 “Music and pictures! Lord, what refined tastes! You are what my wife calls intellectual. I ain’t, a bit. But we can find something better for you to do than to sit under a tree. To begin with, you must come to the club.” 

 “What club?” 

 “The Occidental. You will see all the Americans there; all the best of them, at least. Of course you play poker?” 

 “Oh, I say,” cried Newman, with energy, “you are not going to lock me up in a club and stick me down at a card-table! I haven’t come all this way for that.” 

 “What the deuce have you come for! You were glad enough to play poker in St. Louis, I recollect, when you cleaned me out.” 

 “I have come to see Europe, to get the best out of it I can. I want to see all the great things, and do what the clever people do.” 

 “The clever people? Much obliged. You set me down as a blockhead, then?” 

 Newman was sitting sidewise in his chair, with his elbow on the back and his head leaning on his hand. Without moving he looked a while at his companion with his dry, guarded, half-inscrutable, and yet altogether good-natured smile. “Introduce me to your wife!” he said at last. 

 Tristram bounced about in his chair. “Upon my word, I won’t. She 
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