AMERICAN ROMANCE. 327 



descend on the aggressor and drive him back. I fancy 

 that the life of a horse or a dog might be as interesting, 

 if all its emotions, thoughts, incidents, and dreams were 

 written out — an autobiography, for instance — as the lives 

 of millions of men and women would be. For, after all, 

 innumerable men live and die without enough emotion 

 or incident, without enough of hope or passion, to supply 

 material for a single day to men like us. 



" Yes, I have thought thus often in Italy, the land of 

 romance, when I have seen miserable peasant women 

 living stupid lives among old glories. We speak of men 

 living like brutes, but that means generally their external 

 and visible life. How much lower than brute life their 

 mental life is we seldom think. The gaily-dressed and 

 brilliant peasant girl is the exception, rarely seen even in 

 Italy ; and for one such there are a thousand women 

 there who from childhood to old age and the grave have 

 never known an emotion of great joy or great sorrow, 

 who do not even feel for the loss of children so much 

 grief as a bird feels at the death of a fledgling. There's 

 a difference in lives, a vast difference; and in our coun- 

 try among the higher classes the same differences are 

 noteworthy. American life is more emotional than any 

 other." 



"You think so?" 



" I don't doubt it. Little as men think it, there is more 

 romance in our ordinary lives here in America than in 

 any other country, ancient or modern, of which we have 

 any record. There is not only more of the ' rough and 

 tumble,' more adventure, collision, sudden change, part- 

 ing and meeting, rapid accession and loss of fortune, 

 more incident and accident, but the inner life of Ameri- 

 cans is more romantic, and the private history of families 



