Note 30 — Chapter VIII

I was once speaking of the great results which might be expected from Messrs. Beck and Moore’s successful investigation of the natural phenomena of the Dead Sea: but Lady Hester damped my admiration of those gentlemen’s hazardous undertaking, by exclaiming that all English travellers were a pack of fools, and that they entirely neglected the objects that ought to be inquired into. “There are none of them,” said she, “that know half as much as I do. I’ll venture to say they never heard of the forty doors, all opening by one key, in which are locked the forty wise men who expect the Murdah. Didn’t I tell you the story the other day?” I answered, if she had, I must have forgotten it, which was fortunate, as I was always reluctant to show my dissent from her opinions; having, by experience, learned how necessary it was to proceed cautiously in doing so. “Yes, so it is,” rejoined Lady Hester: “I talk for half a day to you, wasting my breath and lungs, and there you sit like a stock or a stone—no understanding, no conviction!”