68 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



This was one of those horribly vague accusations, the 

 victim of which has no defence. An umbrella is of no 

 avail against a Scotch mist. It envelops you, it pene- 

 trates at every pore, it wets you through without seem- 

 ing to wet you at all. Vulgarity is an eighth deadly sin, 

 added to the list in these latter days, and worse than all 

 the others put together, since it perils your salvation in 

 this world, — far the more important of the two in the 

 minds of most men. It profits nothing to draw nice dis- 

 tinctions between essential and conventional, for the con- 

 vention in this case is the essence, and you may break 

 every command of the decalogue with perfect good-breed- 

 ing, nay, if you are adroit, without losing caste. We, 

 indeed, had it not to lose, for we had never gained it. 

 " How am I vulgar ] " asks the culprit, shudderingly. 

 " Because thou art not like unto Us," answers Lucifer, 

 Son of the Morning, and there is no more to be said. 

 The god of this world may be a fallen angel, but he has 

 us thei^e ! We were as clean, — so far as my observation 

 goes, I think we were cleaner, morally and phj^sically, 

 than the English, and therefore, of course, than every- 

 body else. But we did not pronounce the diphthong ou 

 as they did, and we said eether and not eyther, following 

 therein the fashion of our ancestors, who unhappily could 

 bring over no English better than Shakespeare's ; and we 

 did not stammer as they had learned to do from the 

 courtiers, who in this way flattered the Hanoverian king, 

 a foreigner among the people he had come to reign over. 

 Worse than all, we might have the noblest ideas and 

 the finest sentiments in the world, but we vented them 

 through that organ by which men are led rather than 

 leaders, though some physiologists would persuade us 

 that Nature furnishes her captains with a fine handle to 

 their faces that Opportunity may get a good purchase on 

 them for dragging them to the front. 



