Sunlight on a Broken Column - pg. 195

I tried to look attentive as he went on. " I found them most instructive this afternooon. They brought home to me why our Province is known for its culture, and our hometown for its nuances of courtesy and grace. Nowhere else could the impossible, acrobatic feat have been performed of stabbing one in the back right under one's nose! And with such charm, humility and poetry that the stabber and the stabbed both appeared to be accepting a gracious favour from each other. I had a lesson in practical politics, which makes all one's theoretical studies seem like the pipe-dreams of opium eaters."