An educated English couple was an oasis in an unlettered frontier.

Evidence

It was an oasis. It was barely three weeks since I had left “the communion of educated men,” and the first tones of the voices of my host and hostess made me feel as if I had been out of it for a year. Mrs. C. stayed an hour and a half, and then went home to the cows, when we launched upon a sea of congenial talk. They said they had not seen an educated lady for two years, and pressed me to go and visit them. I rode home on Dr. Hughes’s horse after dark, to find neither fire nor light in the cabin. Mrs. C. had gone back saying, “Those English talked just like savages, I couldn’t understand a word they said.” — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 159

Categorization

• CANDY: Mrs. C. dismissing elegant English talk as ‘savages’ is a wry, quotable frontier clash.