64 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



somewhat musty flavor, that an Englishman, for exam- 

 ple, should feel himself defrauded, nay, even outraged, 

 when he comes over here and finds a people speaking 

 what he admits to be something like English, and yet 

 so very different from (or, as he would say, to) those 

 he left at home. Nothing, I am sure, equals my thajik- 

 fulness when I meet an Englishman who is not like 

 every other, or, I may add, an American of the same 

 odd turn. 



Certainly it is no shame to a man that he should be 

 as nice about his country as about his sweetheart, and 

 who ever heard even the friendliest appreciation of that 

 unexpressive she that did not seem to fall infinitely 

 short ? Yet it would hardly be wise to hold every one 

 an enemy who could not see her w^ith our own enchanted 

 eyes. It seems to be the common opinion of foreigners 

 that Americans are too tender upon this point. Per- 

 haps we are ; and if so, there must be a reason for it. 

 Have we had fair play % Could the eyes of what is 

 called Good Society (though it is so seldom true either to 

 the adjective or noun) look upon a nation of democrats 

 with any chance of receiving an undistorted image % 

 Were not those, moreover, who found in the old order 

 of things an earthly paradise, paying them quarterly 

 dividends for the wisdom of their ancestors, with the 

 punctuality of the seasons, unconsciously bribed to mis- 

 understand if not to misrepresent us % Whether at war 

 or at peace, there we were, a standing menace to all 

 earthly paradises of that kind, fatal underminers of the 

 very credit on which the dividends were based, all the 

 more hateful and terrible that our destructive agency was 

 so insidious, w^orking invisible in the elements, as it 

 seemed, active while they slept, and coming upon them in 

 the darkness like an armed man. Could Laius have the 

 proper feelings of a father tow^ards CEdipus, announced 



