Outwardly, if you choose, the country is like one of the pretentious houses of its rich citizens—­new, smug, complacently commonplace—­but within, like the house again, it is filled with rare bits gathered out of every age and country and jumbled together in utter confusion.  If you ride down Seventh street in a horse-car, you are in a psychological curio-shop.  On one side, very likely, is a Russian Jew just from the Steppes; on the other, a negro with centuries of heathendom and slavery hinting themselves in lip and eye; the driver is a Fenian, with the blood of the Phoenicians in his veins; in front of you is a gentleman with the unmistakable Huguenot nose, and chin; while an almond-eyed pagan, disguised behind moustache and eye-glasses, courteously takes your fare and drops it for you in the Slawson box.  Nowhere do all the elements of Tragedy and Comedy play so strange a part as on the dead-level of this American stage.  It is because it is so dead a level that we fail to see the part they play—­because “furious Goth and fiery Hun” meet, not on the battle-field, but in the horse-car, dropping their cents together in a Slawson box.

For example, as to the tragedy.

I met at dinner not long ago a lady who was introduced to me under a French name, but whose clear olive complexion, erect carriage and singular repose of manner would indicate her rather to be a Spaniard.  She wore a red rose in the coils of her jetty hair, and another fastened the black lace of her corsage.  Her eyes, which were slow, dark and brilliant, always rested on you an instant before she spoke with that fearless candor which is not found in the eyes of a member of any race that has ever been enslaved.  I was told that her rank was high among her own people, and in her movements and voice there were that quiet simplicity and total lack of self-consciousness which always belong either to a man or woman of the highest breeding, or to one whose purpose in life is so noble as to lift him above all considerations of self.  Although a foreigner, she spoke English with more purity than most of the Americans at the table, but with a marked and frequent recurrence of forcible but half-forgotten old idioms; which was due, as! learned afterward, to her having had no book of English literature to study for several years but Shakespeare.  I observed that she spoke but seldom, and to but one person at a time; but when she did, her casual talk was the brimming over of a mind of great original force as yet full and unspent.  She was, besides, a keen observer who had studied much, but seen more.

This lady, in a word, was one who would deserve recognition by the best men and women in any country; and she received it here, as many of the readers of Lippincott, who will recognize my description, will remember.  She was caressed and feted by literary and social celebrities in Washington and New York; Boston made much of her; Longfellow and Holmes made verses in her honor; prying reporters gave accounts of her singular charm and beauty to the public in the daily papers.