ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 61 



before I had been so tickled with a paper (professedly 

 written by a benevolent American clergyman) certifying 

 that the bearer, a hard-working German, had long 

 " sofered witli rheumatic pamts in his limps," that, alter 

 copying the passage into my note-book, 1 thought it but 

 fair to pay a trifling honorarium to the author. 1 had 

 pulled the string of the shower-bath ! It had been run- 

 ning shipwrecked sailors for some time, but foi'thwith it 

 began to pour Teutons, redolent of lager-bier. I could 

 not help associating the apparition of my new friend 

 with this series of otherwise unaccountable phenomena. 

 I accordingly made up my mmd to deny the debt, and 

 modestly did so, pleading a native bias towards impecu- 

 niosity to the full as strong as his own. He took a high 

 tone with me at once, such as an honest man would 

 naturally take with a confessed repudiator. He even 

 brought down his proud stomach so far as to join him- 

 self to me for the rest of my townward walk, that he 

 might give me his views of the American people, and 

 thus inclusively of myself. 



I know not whether it is because I am pigeon-livered 

 and lack gall, or whether it is from an overmastering 

 sense of di'ollery, but I am apt to submit to such bast- 

 ings with a patience which afterwards surprises me, 

 being not without my share of warmth in the blood. 

 Perhaps it is because I so often meet with young per- 

 sons who know vastly more than I do, and especially Avith 

 so many foreigners whose knowledge of this country is 

 superior to my own. However it may be, I listened for 

 some time with tolerable composure as my self-appointed 

 lecturer gave me "in detail his opinions of my country 

 and its people. America, he informed me, was without 

 arts, science, literature, culture, or any native hope of 

 supplying them. We were a people wholly given to 

 money-getting, and who, having got it, knew no other 



