. 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
r