Then there is a
whole museum of wigs, and masks, and lace-coats, and gold-sticks, and
grimaces, and phrases, which we laugh at, honestly, without affectation,
that are still used in the Old-World puppet-shows. I don't think we
on our part ever understand the Englishman's concentrated loyalty and
specialized reverence. But then we do think more of a man, as such,
(barring some little difficulties about race and complexion which the
Englishman will touch us on presently,) than any people that ever lived
did think of him. Our reverence is a great deal wider, if it is less
intense. We have caste among us, to some extent, it is true; but there
is never a collar on the American wolf-dog such as you often see on the
English mastiff, notwithstanding his robust, hearty individuality.
This confronting of two civilizations is always a grand sensation to me;
it is like cutting through the isthmus and letting the two oceans swim
into each other's laps. The trouble is, it is so difficult to let out
the whole American nature without its self-assertion seeming to take a
personal character. But I never enjoy the Englishman so much as when he
talks of church and king like Manco Capac among the Peruvians. Then you
get the real British flavor, which the cosmopolite Englishman loses. The
best conversation I have had with one of them for a long time, lively,
fluent, courteous, delightful, was a variation and illustrative
development in elegant phrases of the following short sentences.
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