My host, still speaking my native language, inquired with much politeness, whether it would be agreeable to me to converse, or if I preferred solitude.

I replied, that I should feel much honoured and obliged by the opportunity offered me to express my gratitude for the hospitality and civilities I had received in a country to which I was a stranger, and to learn enough of its customs and manners not to offend through ignorance.
As I spoke, I had of course risen from my couch: but Zee, much to my confusion, curtly ordered me to lie down again, and there was something in her voice and eye, gentle as both were, that compelled my obedience.
She then seated herself unconcernedly at the foot of my bed, while her father took his place on a divan a few feet distant.
"But what part of the world do you come from ?" asked my host, "that we should appear so strange to you and you to us?
I have seen individual specimens of nearly all the races differing from our own, except the primeval savages who dwell in the most desolate and remote recesses of uncultivated nature, unacquainted with other light than that they obtain from volcanic fires, and contented to grope their way in the dark, as do many creeping, crawling and flying things.

But certainly you cannot be a member of those barbarous tribes, nor, on the other hand, do you seem to belong to any civilised people." I was somewhat nettled at this last observation, and replied that I had the honour to belong to one of the most civilised nations of the earth; and that, so far as light was concerned, while I admired the ingenuity and disregard of expense with which my host and his fellow-citizens had contrived to illumine the regions unpenetrated by the rays of the sun, yet I could not conceive how any who had once beheld the orbs of heaven could compare to their lustre the artificial lights invented by the necessities of man.

But my host said he had seen specimens of most of the races differing from his own, save the wretched barbarians he had mentioned.

Now, was it possible that he had never been on the surface of the earth, or could he only be referring to communities buried within its entrails?
My host was for some moments silent; his countenance showed a degree of surprise which the people of that race very rarely manifest under any circumstances, howsoever extraordinary.