The more I looked
at everything in the house, the more I was struck with its quasi-European
character; and had the walls only been pasted over with extracts from the
_Illustrated London News_ and _Punch_, I could have almost fancied myself
in a shepherd's hut upon my master's sheep-run. And yet everything was
slightly different. It was much the same with the birds and flowers on
the other side, as compared with the English ones. On my arrival I had
been pleased at noticing that nearly all the plants and birds were very
like common English ones: thus, there was a robin, and a lark, and a
wren, and daisies, and dandelions; not quite the same as the English, but
still very like them--quite like enough to be called by the same name; so
now, here, the ways of these two men, and the things they had in the
house, were all very nearly the same as in Europe. It was not at all
like going to China or Japan, where everything that one sees is strange.
I was, indeed, at once struck with the primitive character of their
appliances, for they seemed to be some five or six hundred years behind
Europe in their inventions; but this is the case in many an Italian
village.
All the time that I was eating my breakfast I kept speculating as to what
family of mankind they could belong to; and shortly there came an idea
into my head, which brought the blood into my cheeks with excitement as I
thought of it.
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