know just what happened because Uncle William never gives
any details of things. His mind moves too rapidly for
that. But he came home with his pictures still under his
arm in a perfect fury and raged up and down his room,
using very dreadful language.

But after a little while when he grew calmer he explained
to me that the Americans are merely swineheads and that
art, especially art such as his, is wasted on them. Uncle
says that he has no wish to speak harshly of the Americans,
but they are pig-dogs. He bears them no ill-will, he
says, for what they have done and his heart is free of
any spirit of vengeance, but he wishes he had his heel
on their necks for about half a minute. He said this with
such a strange dreadful snarl that for the moment his
face seemed quite changed. But presently when he recovered
himself he got quite cheerful again, and said that it
was perhaps unseemly in him, as the guest of the American
people, to say anything against them. It is strange how
Uncle always refers to himself as the guest of the American
people. Living in this poor place, in these cheap
surroundings, it seems so odd. Often at our meals in the
noisy dining-room down in the basement, in the speeches
that he makes to the boarders, he talks of himself as
the guest of America and he says, "What does America ask
in return? Nothing." I can see that Mrs. O'Halloran, the
landlady, doesn't like this, because we have not paid
her anything for quite a long time, and she has spoken
to me about it in the corridor several times.