The Men of the West 35 



are. I remember a charming American woman 

 saying to me, a propos of her husband : " He is the 

 most domestic man I know, but he would like to 

 be thought a little wild." Now, the London " Spec- 

 tator " predicted war some weeks before it was 

 declared, and it pointed out the good motives that 

 would surely animate our cousins over-seas. The 

 article was able, but a note of condescension lurked 

 between the lines of it, that condescension in re- 

 gard to foreigners of which James Lowell wrote so 

 delightfully. American readers might infer from 

 the " Spectator " that they were expected by Eng- 

 land to do their duty, not as free-born Americans, 

 but as the kinsmen of Englishmen. I do not say 

 that the writer of the article in question deliber- 

 ately meant this. But I assert that by Americans 

 such interpretation was placed upon it, and upon 

 other similar articles in the London papers. At 

 any rate, the San Francisco " Argonaut," the best 

 weekly upon the Pacific Slope, and one of the best 

 in the world, burst into coloured sparks of rhetoric. 

 After reading carefully an impassioned leader, I 

 was quite satisfied (temporarily) that Duty, as an 

 entity in American affairs, was dead, that Evil 

 always triumphed over Good, that Might was 

 Right, and that the finger of Destiny was the 

 finger of Death. The article was widely read in 

 the West, and its phrases snapped up by many 

 an Autolycus. Men who had talked glibly enough 

 only the week before of philanthropy, and the obli- 

 gations of a model republic, went about the streets 

 dancing a sort of Carmagnole. It was high time 

 — some of them said — to grab all they could get. 



