Another pleaisng feature of the day's jaunt has been the absence
of the appeal to sentimentality which Judith of late, especially
since her return from Paris, has been overfond of making. This
idle habit of mind, for such it is in reality, has been arrested
by an intellectual interest. One of her great friends is
Willoughby, the economic statistician, who in his humorous
moments, writes articles for popular magazines, illustrated by
scale diagrams. He will draw, for instance, a series of men
representing the nations of the world, and varying in bulk and
stature according to the respective populations; and over against
these he will set a series of pigs whose sizes are proportionate
to the amount of pork per head eaten by the different
nationalities. To these queer minds that live on facts (I myself
could as easily thrive on a diet of egg-shells) this sort of
pictorial information is peculiarly fascinating. But Judith, who
like most women has a freakish mental as well as physical
digestion, delights in knowing how many hogs a cabinet minister
will eat during, a lifetime, and how much of the earth's surface
could be scoured by the world's yearly output of scrubbing-
brushes.
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