AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY SEVENTY YEARS AGO 275 



They were the days when Elijah Pagram could silence 

 all cavillers by reminding them that " our bright home 

 is in the settin' sun." More summary were the meth- 

 ods of Mr. Hannibal Chollop. " Do you see this 

 pistol ? " said he to Martin Chuzzlewit. " I shot a man 

 down with it the other day in the state of Illinois. I 

 shot him for asserting in the Spartan Portico, a tri- 

 weekly journal, that the ancient Athenians went ahead 

 of the present locofoco ticket." Very few eminent 

 persons from England visited the United States in 

 those days, and it was quite natural that those who did 

 should feel called upon, after going home, to write 

 books recording their impressions of the country and 

 the people. Such books, even when written in a 

 friendly spirit, were sure to give mortal offence to the 

 Americans, simply because it was impossible for the 

 writers, without making themselves ridiculous, to 

 pile up superlatives enough to satisfy our national 

 vanity. When one reads Dickens's " American Notes," 

 in which he treats us seriously, one finds it hard to 

 understand the storm of indignation which it aroused, 

 except that he did indeed touch upon one very sensi- 

 tive spot, the incongruity between negro slavery and 

 our fine talk about the rights of man. In " Martin 

 Chuzzlewit " he made fun of us ; but the good-natured 

 banter which enraged our fathers only makes us laugh 

 to-day. Dickens was friendly, Mrs. Trollope was not 

 " To speak plainly," said she, " I do not like the 

 Americans." The poor woman had entered our 

 country by what was then one of its back doors. She 

 had landed at New Orleans and gone up by river 

 to Cincinnati, where circumstances obliged her to live 

 for more than a year in the old times when countless 



