Americans were black or copper-colored, am able in this land of free schools and equal rights to straighten out my verbs and keep my nouns intact.  If you will see the highest, look on the heights.  If you look at me, look at me where I am:  not among those whose infancy was cradled in leisure and luxury, whose life from the beginning has been carefully attuned to the finest issues, who for purity of language and dignity of mental bearing may throw down the gauntlet to the proudest nation in the world,—­but among those children of the soil who take its color, who share its qualities, who give out its fragrance, who love it and lay their hearts to it and grow with it, rocky and rugged, yet cherish, it may be hoped, its little dimples of verdure here and there,—­who show not what, with closest cultivation, it might become, but what, under the broad skies and the free winds and the common dews and showers, it is.  Our conservatories can boast hues as gorgeous, forms as stately, texture as fine as yours; but don’t look for camellias in a cornfield.”

Does this seem a little inconsistent with what I was saying just now to my homemade critics?  Very likely.  But truth is many-sided, and one side you may present at home and the other abroad, according to the exigencies of the case.  You may lecture your country in one breath, and defend her in the next, without being inconsistent.

Oh, England, England! what shall recompense us for our Lost Leader?  Great and Mighty One, from whose brow no hand but thine own could ever have plucked the crown!  Beautiful land, sacred with the ashes of our sires, radiant with the victories of the past, brilliant with hopes for the future,—­

    “O Love, I have loved you!  O my soul,
    I have lost you!”

Ah, if these two fatal years might be blotted out!  If we could stand once again where we stood on that October day when the young Prince, whose gentle blood commanded our attention, and whose gentle ways won our hearts, bore back to his mother-land and ours the benedictions of a people!  Upon that pale, that white-faced shore I shall one day look, but woe is me for the bitter memories that will spring up for the love and loyalty so ruthlessly rent away!

So I borrow your ears, my countrymen, and tell you why it is impossible to defer to you as much as one would like.  Partly, it is because you talk so wide of the mark.  It may not be practicable or desirable to say much; but so much the more ought what you do say to be to the point.  A good carpenter needs not to vindicate his skill by hammering away hour after hour on the same shingle; but while he does strike, he hits the nail on the head.  Moreover, you show by your remarks that you have such—­such—­well, stupid is what I mean, but I am afraid it would not be polite to employ that word, so I merely give you the meaning, and leave you to choose a word to your liking—­ideas about the nature, the facts, and the objects of writing.  Look at it