Nothing like this at all. No proper
appreciative preparation made; nothing really ready. Now, for a person
born with high and delicate instincts--why, even the cradle wasn't
whitewashed--nothing ready at all. I hadn't any hair, I hadn't any
teeth, I hadn't any clothes, I had to go to my first banquet just like
that. Well, everybody came swarming in. It was the merest little bit of
a village--hardly that, just a little hamlet, in the backwoods of
Missouri, where nothing ever happened, and the people were all
interested, and they all came; they looked me over to see if there was
anything fresh in my line. Why, nothing ever happened in that village
--I--why, I was the only thing that had really happened there for months
and months and months; and although I say it myself that shouldn't, I
came the nearest to being a real event that had happened in that village
in more than, two years. Well, those people came, they came with that
curiosity which is so provincial, with that frankness which also is so
provincial, and they examined me all around and gave their opinion.
Nobody asked them, and I shouldn't have minded if anybody had paid me a
compliment, but nobody did.
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