alies,
as chemists do with unknown compounds; flinging the lead, and looking
at the shells and sands it brings up to find out whether we are like
to keep in shallow water, or shall have to drop the deep-sea line;--in
short, seeing what we have to deal with. If the Englishman gets his
Hs pretty well placed, he comes from one of the higher grades of the
British social order, and we shall find him a good companion.

But, after all, here is a great fact between us. We belong to two
different civilizations, and, until we recognize what separates us, we
are talking like Pyramus and Thisbe,--without any hole in the wall to
talk through. Therefore, on the whole, if he were a superior fellow,
incapable of mistaking it for personal conceit, I think I would let out
the fact of the real American feeling about Old-World folks. They are
children to us in certain points of view. They are playing with toys we
have done with for whole generations. That silly little drum they are
always beating on, and the trumpet and the feather they make so much
noise and cut such a figure with, we have not quite outgrown, but play
with much less seriously and constantly than they do. Then there is a
whole museum of wigs, and masks, and lace-coats, and gold-sticks, and
grimaces, and phrases, which we laugh at, honestly, without affectation,
that are still used in the Old-World puppet-shows. I don't think we
on our part ever understand the Englishman's concentrated loyalty and
specialized reverence. But then we do think more of a man, as such,
(barring some little difficulties about race and complexion which the
Englishman will touch us on presently,) than any people that ever lived
did think of him. Our reverence is a great deal wider, if it is less
intense. We have caste among us, to some extent, it is true; but there
is never a collar on the American wolf-dog such as you often see on the
English mastiff, notwithstanding his robust, hearty individuality.

This confronting of two civilizations is always a grand sensation to me;
it is like cutting through the isthmus and letting the two oceans swim
into each other's laps. The trouble is, it is so difficult to let out
the whole American nature without its self-assertion seeming to take a
personal character. But I never enjoy the Englishman so much as when he
talks of church and king like Manco Capac among the Peruvians. Then you
get the real British flavor, which the cosmopolite Englishman loses. The
be