“All these,” said Tolstoy, meditatively, “in one country.”

“Not only that,” I said, “but no two alike, and most of them as widely different as if one wrote in French and the other in German.”

“A wonderful country,” murmured Tolstoy again.  “I have often thought of going there, but now I am too old.”

“There is no one in the world,” I answered him, “in the realm of letters or social economics, whom the people of America would rather see than you.”

He bowed gracefully, and only answered again: 

“No, I am too old now.  I wish I had gone there when I could.  But tell me,” he added, “have you no authors who write universally?”

“Universally,” I repeated.  “That is a large word.  Yes, we have Mark Twain.  He is our most eminent literary figure at present.”

“Ah!  Mark Twain,” repeated Tolstoy.  “I have heard of him.”

“Have you indeed?  I thought no one was known in Europe, except Fenimore Cooper.  He is supposed to have written universally of America, because he never wrote anything but Indian stories!  In France, they know of Poe, and like him because they tell me that he was like themselves.”

“He was insane, was he not?” said Tolstoy, innocently.

I bit my lip to keep from laughing, for Tolstoy had not perpetrated that as a jest.

“But many of our most whimsical and most delicious authors could not be appreciated by Europe in general, because Europeans are all so ignorant of us.  There is Frank Stockton, whose humour continentals would be sure to take seriously, and then Thomas Nelson Page writes most effectively when he uses negro dialect.  His story ‘Marse Chan,’ which made him famous, I consider the best short story ever written in America.  Hopkinson Smith, too, has written a book which deserves to live for ever, depicting as it does a phase of the reconstruction period, when Southern gentlemen of the old school came into contact with the Northern business methods.  Books like these would seem trivial to a European, because they represent but a single step in our curious history.”

“I understand,” said Tolstoy, sympathetically.  “Of course it is difficult for us to realise that America is not one nation, but an amalgamation of all nations.  To the casual thinker, America is an off-shoot of England.”

“Perfectly true,” said Jimmie, “and that barring the fact that we speak a language which is, in some respects, similar to the English, no nations are more foreign to each other than the United States and England.  It would be better for the English if they had a few more Bryces among them.”

“If it weren’t for the dialects,” said Tolstoy, “I think more Europeans would be interested in American literature.”

“That is true,” I said, “and yet, without dialects, you wouldn’t get the United States as it really is.  There are heaps and heaps of Americans who won’t read dialect themselves, but they miss a great deal.  Take, for instance, James Whitcomb Riley, a poet who, to my mind, possesses absolute genius,—­the genius of the commonplace.  His best things are all in dialect, which a great many find difficult, and yet, when he gives public readings from his own poems, he draws audiences which test the capacity of the largest halls.  I myself have seen him recalled nineteen times.”