“Americans are accused of over-sensitiveness and boastfulness. Is it natural that we should submit tamely to patronage and criticism from those who calmly avow their ‘excessive ignorance’ of all that pertains to our land and institutions? Can we respect those who assume to teach when they know less upon many subjects than we do? A celebrated English divine once persisted in declaring to my husband that Georgia is a city, not a State. Another informed us that Pennsylvania is the capital of New England. Even my dear Miss W—— cannot be convinced that boys of nine years old are considered minors with us. She says she has been told by those who ought to know that, at that age, they discard parental authority; while her sister questioned me seriously as to the truth of the story that the feet of all American babies—boys and girls—are bandaged in infancy to make them small. Don’t laugh! This is all true, and I have not told you the tenth. The Silver Bill! I have never met another Englishman who knew anything about it!”
My friend laughed, in spite of my injunction.
“It is not ‘natural’ for Americans to ‘submit tamely’ to any kind of injustice, I fancy. But be merciful! Have you read in the ‘Nineteenth Century’ Dr. Dale’s ‘Impressions of America?’”
“I have. They are like himself, honest, sincere, thorough! But I have also read Trollope’s ‘American Senator,’ a product of the nineteenth century that will be read and credited by many who cannot appreciate Dr. Dale’s scholarship and logic. May I tell you an anecdote—true in every particular—to offset the Senator’s behavior in the Earl’s drawing-room? An English novelist, than whom none is better known on both sides of the water, dined, by invitation, at the house of a _bona fide_ Senator in Washington. After dinner he approached the hostess in the drawing-room to take leave.
“‘It is very early yet, Mr.——,’ she said politely.
“‘I know it. But the fact is I _must write ten pounds’ worth_ before I go to bed!’
“Yet this man is especially happy in clever flings at American society. We _have_ faults—many and grievous! But we might drop them the sooner if our monitors were better qualified to instruct us, and would admonish in kindness, not disdain.”