Identifier: saturdayeveningp1933unse (find matches)
Title: The Saturday evening post
Year: 1839 (1830s)
Authors:
Subjects:
Publisher: Philadelphia : G. Graham
Contributing Library: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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Text Appearing Before Image:
that — the real facts about
things out there? Woman I
ran across last week made out
they were ghastly; sickening
stories she told.
The easy, curt talk that
flickered from man to man
came to a lull upon the ques-
tion, and faces turned with
ready interest toward the man
of whom the question was
asked. Sir Nicholas Cresswell,
sitting some four or five places
from his host, stirred in his
chair with a movement that
suggested a momentary
squirm of embarrassment. He
was a tall man, spare withou
tbeing fine drawn. He might
have been some fifty years of
age; and in his attitudes and
gestures, in the manner with
which he turned now to reply,
there was a sort of conscious
and limelighted quality. It
suggested that he might be
more effectual in oratory than
in conversation.
" I've no doubt your friend's
stories were perfectly true,"
he replied. " I have heard such
stories myself. The towns
were simply starving to death
and the country districts were
little better. The statistics,
for instance—"
The red-faced host had a
conversational style of his own.
Text Appearing After Image:

'It Was bad Enough When My Typist Broke Down and Wept at My Feat, Imploring Me to Make an Exception."

" Hang the statistics!" he
interrupted. " What about
cannibalism an all that?"
Sir Nicholas smiled faintly
beneath his trim, gray-
streaked mustache.
" The statistics touch upon
that too," he said. "And I
don't think you realize exactly
what the position of the chief
of a relief mission is. The sta-
tistics—the facts, good and
bad, commonplace or terrible,
boiled down into and expressed
by figures—are all I really
know about the matter. The
stories your friend told you
came to me as graphs—rising
or falling curves upon sheets
of squared paper. I know of
no other manner in which I
could have dealt with the con-
ditions that existed in that un-
happy country.
" But," the host protested,
" you couldn't have helped
seeing something besides fig-
ures and curves. This woman I
was talkin about—she told me
about one night when—"
He went on to repeat in his
inadequate and sport-
distorted vocabulary such a
tale as one may gather from
any of the hundreds of those

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