XIII 



PREVIOUS to our Civil War, the lack of knowledge 

 abroad with regard to the United States was singular. 

 We were ignored in the economy of nations, in the 

 schools and society of the Old World, as of no impor- 

 tance. To most people America was as yet undiscovered. 

 Only the most advanced thinkers had divined that we 

 were working out the problem of the future. To see 

 their countries become Americanized was the nightmare 

 of rulers, as it is now the dream of the more intelligent 

 of the peoples. The blot of slavery was still upon us, and 

 we were numerically among the smaller nations. When, 

 sent to a monastic school in Belgium at the age of ten, 

 I was led into the petite cour and introduced by the 

 Pere Superieur to the crowd of eagerly expectant boys, 

 46 Tenez, mes enfants, voila votre nouveau camarade, le 

 jeune Americain !" I well remember a fair-faced lad (he 

 was a son of a banished Polish noble) who went up to 

 the father and plucked him by his skirt, with " Mais, mon 

 pore, il est blanc comme nous." His keen disappoint- 

 ment at my not being black, for he had never seen a 

 negro, he always rather laid up against me. And when 

 later I attended the Friedrich-Werderschen Gymnasium 

 in Berlin, the only two ideas I could ever find that boys 

 of my age had assimilated out of the shreds and patches 

 they had been taught about America, were Niagara and 

 slavery. How much did a Massachusetts lad who had 

 left home in his first decade know about slavery, or 



