speaking person it is like Sanskrit. In the same way the New
England stories, which are written in Yankee dialect, cannot be
understood by people in the South who have never been North. How then
can we expect Europeans to manage them?"

"How extraordinary," said Tolstoy. "And both are equally typical, I
suppose?"

"Equally so," I replied.

"The reason she understands them both," broke in Jimmie, "is because her
mother comes from the northernmost part of the northernmost State in
the Union, and her father from a point almost equally in the South.
There is but one State between his birthplace and the Gulf of Mexico."

"About the same distance," said Tolstoy, "as if your mother came from
Petersburg and your father from Odessa."

"But there are others who write English which is not distorted in its
spelling. James Lane Alien and Henry B. Fuller are particularly noted
for their lucid English and literary style; Cable writes Creole stories
of Louisiana; Mary Hartwell Catherwood, stories of French Canadians and
the early French settlers in America; Bret Harte, stories of California
mining camps; Mary Hallock Foote, civil engineering stories around the
Rocky Mountains; Weir Mitchell, Quaker stories of Pennsylvania; and
Charles Egbert Craddock lays her plots in the Tennessee mountains. Of
all these authors, each has written at least two books along the lines I
have indicated, and I mention them, thinking they would be particularly
interesting to you as descriptive of portions of the United States."

"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 u