“Of all nations, then, the industrial example of England is to be avoided by every sensible people.  She has been willing to wear chains, because they were gold.  But the pre-Millennial nations must be able to stand alone; and we at this moment know more than ever that we must work out our own national salvation, not only without aid, which we had no reason to ask, but without sympathy, which we had every honorable right to expect.  But, to be a truly independent people, we must practically prove our self-sufficiency; and at this moment patriotism shows itself not only in defending the nation against the Rebellion, but in the heartiest encouragement of every art and manufacture for which our opportunities and capacities fit us.”

My watch here ticked so loudly and defiantly that I feared some neighboring passenger might have a Frodsham or Jurgensen in his pocket and feel insulted.

“A nation like ours,” steadily ticked my watch, “seated upon a continent from sea to sea, with so propitious a variety of climate and with such imperial resources of every kind, if it brought all its powers to bear upon its productions and opportunities, would be absolutely invincible, because entirely independent.  It need not, therefore, sit a cynic recluse on the Western sea.  It need not, therefore, deny nor delay the dawn of the Millennial day, which the poet beheld, when

’The war-drum throbbed no longer, and the
battle-flags were furled,
In the Parliament of man, the Federation
of the world.’

“Tick, tick, tick,” urged my watch.  But I made no reply.

“Why, then,” it continued, “do we consent to look longer to Europe for any of the essential conveniences of life?  Why are our clothes not made of American cloth or of American silk?  Why are our railroads not laid with American iron?  Yes, and why,—­pardon me, but we are very near Waltham,—­why is our time not told by American watches?  Tea and coffee, doubtless, we cannot grow, nor do lemons and bananas ripen in our sun.  But has not the time come when every hearty American will say, ’All that I can get here which is good enough and cheap enough for the purpose, I will not look for elsewhere; and all that I can do to develop every resource and possibility, I will do with all my heart’?”

“I do not wish to dampen your enthusiasm,” answered I, “but I remember a story of that friend of Southern liberty and author of the Fugitive-Slave Bill, Mason of Virginia.  He appeared in the Senate during the Secession winter, in a suit of Southern-made clothes.  The wool was grown and spun and woven in Virginia, and Mason wore it to show that Virginia unassisted could clothe her children.  But a shrewder man than Mason quietly turned up the buttons on the Secession coat and showed upon them the stamp of a Connecticut factory.”