Читать книгу The Plumed Serpent. Historical Novel - Life and Love after the Mexico Revolution онлайн

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‘You can hardly blame Mexico for a banana skin,’ said Owen, elated. ‘I fell on one in Lexington Avenue; but fortunately I only bruised myself on a soft spot.’

‘That wasn’t your head, was it?’ said Mrs Henry.

‘No,’ laughed Owen. ‘The other extreme.’

‘We’ve got to add banana skins to the list of public menaces,’ said young Henry. ‘I’m an American, and I may any day turn bolshevist, to save my pesos, so I can repeat what I heard a man saying yesterday. He said there are only two great diseases in the world to-day — Bolshevism and Americanism; and Americanism is the worse of the two, because Bolshevism only smashes your house or your business or your skull, but Americanism smashes your soul.’

‘Who was he?’ snarled the Judge.

‘I forget,’ said Henry, wickedly.

‘One wonders,’ said Mrs Norris slowly, ‘what he meant by Americanism.’

‘He didn’t define it,’ said Henry. ‘Cult of the dollar, I suppose.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Norris. ‘The cult of the dollar, in my experience, is far more intense in the countries that haven’t got the dollar, than in the United States.’