We formed the notion that she might be uncomfortably cultured, but when
she came to call with Mrs. Talbert afterward, my wife reported that you
would not have thought, except for a remark she dropped now and then,
that she had ever been out of her central New York village, and so far
from putting on airs of art, she did not speak of any gallery abroad,
or of the pensions in which she stayed in Florence, or the hotels in
other cities of Italy where she had stopped to visit the local schools
of painting.
In this somewhat protracted excursion I have not forgotten that I left
Mr. Talbert leaning against our party fence, with his arms resting on
the top, after a keen if not critical survey of his dwelling. He did
not take up our talk at just the point where we had been in it, but
after a reflective moment, he said, "I don't remember just whether Mrs.
Temple told my mother-in-law you were homoeopaths or allopaths."
"Well," I said, "that depends. I rather think we are homoeopaths of a
low-potency type." My neighbor's face confessed a certain
disappointment. "But we are not bigoted, even in the article of
appreciable doses. Our own family doctor in our old place always
advised us, in stress of absence from him, to get the best doctor
wherever we happened to be, so far as we could make him out, and not
mind what school he was of.
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