to reorganize everything, and to begin the world again
with new habits and grand theories; but the French
as a people were too old for such a change, and the
theories fell to the ground. But in the States,
after their revolution, an Anglo-Saxon people had
an opportunity of making a new State, with all the
experience of the world before them; and to this matter
of education they were from the first aware that they
must look for their success. They did so; and
unrivaled population, wealth, and intelligence has
been the result; and with these, looking at the whole
masses of the people—I think I am justified
in saying— unrivaled comfort and happiness.
It is not that you, my reader, to whom in this matter
of education fortune and your parents have probably
been bountiful, would have been more happy in New York
than in London. It is not that I, who, at any
rate, can read and write, have cause to wish that
I had been an American. But it is this:
if you and I can count up in a day all those on whom
our eyes may rest and learn the circumstances of their
lives, we shall be driven to conclude that nine-tenths
of that number would have had a better life as Americans
than they can have in their spheres as Englishmen.
The States are at a discount with us now, in the
beginning of this year of grace 1862; and Englishmen
were not very willing to admit the above statement,
even when the States were not at a discount.
But I do not think that a man can travel through
the States with his eyes open and not admit the fact.
Many things will conspire to induce him to shut his
eyes and admit no conclusion favorable to the Americans.
Men and women will sometimes be impudent to him;
the better his coat, the greater the impudence.
He will be pelted with the braggadocio of equality.
The corns of his Old World conservatism will be trampled
on hourly by the purposely vicious herd of uncouth
democracy. The fact that he is paymaster will
go for nothing, and will fail to insure civility.
I shall never forget my agony as I saw and heard my
desk fall from a porter’s hand on a railway
station, as he tossed it from him seven yards off
on to the hard pavement. I heard its poor, weak
intestines rattle in their death struggle, and knowing
that it was smashed, I forgot my position on American
soil and remonstrated. “It’s my
desk, and you have utterly destroyed it,” I
said. “Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the porter.
“You’ve destroyed my property,”
I rejoined, “and it’s no laughing matter.”
And then all the crowd laughed. “Guess
you’d better get it glued,” said one.
So I gathered up the broken article and retired mournfully
and crestfallen into a coach. This was very
sad, and for the moment I deplored the ill luck which
had brought me to so savage a country. Such and
such like are the incidents which make an Englishman
in the States unhappy, and rouse his gall against
the institutions of the country; these things and
the continued appliance of the irritating ointment