niversally of America, because
he never wrote anything but Indian stories! In France, they know of Poe,
and like him because they tell me that he was like themselves."

"He was insane, was he not?" said Tolstoy, innocently.

I bit my lip to keep from laughing, for Tolstoy had not perpetrated that
as a jest.

"But many of our most whimsical and most delicious authors could not be
appreciated by Europe in general, because Europeans are all so ignorant
of us. There is Frank Stockton, whose humour continentals would be sure
to take seriously, and then Thomas Nelson Page writes most effectively
when he uses negro dialect. His story 'Marse Chan,' which made him
famous, I consider the best short story ever written in America.
Hopkinson Smith, too, has written a book which deserves to live for
ever, depicting as it does a phase of the reconstruction period, when
Southern gentlemen of the old school came into contact with the Northern
business methods. Books like these would seem trivial to a European,
because they represent but a single step in our curious history."

"I understand," said Tolstoy, sympathetically. "Of course it is
difficult for us to realise that America is not one nation, but an
amalgamation of all nations. To the casual thinker, America is an
off-shoot of England."

"Perfectly true," said Jimmie, "and that barring the fact that we speak
a language which is, in some respects, similar to the English, no
nations are more foreign to each other than the United States and
England. It would be better for the English if they had a few more
Bryces among them."

"If it weren't for the dialects," said Tolstoy, "I think more Europeans
would be interested in American literature."

"That is true," I said, "and yet, without dialects, you wouldn't get the
United States as it really is. There are heaps and heaps of Americans
who won't read dialect themselves, but they miss a great deal. Take, for
instance, James Whitcomb Riley, a poet who, to my mind, possesses
absolute genius,--the genius of the commonplace. His best things are
all in dialect, which a great many find difficult, and yet, when he
gives public readings from his own poems, he draws audiences which test
the capacity of the largest halls. I myself have seen him recalled
nineteen times."

"America and Russia are growing closer together every day," said
Tolstoy. "Every year we use more of your American machinery; your plows,
and threshers, and mowing-machin