st conversation I have had with one of them for a long time, lively,
fluent, courteous, delightful, was a variation and illustrative
development in elegant phrases of the following short sentences.

_Englishman_.--Sir, your New-World civilization is barbarism.

_American_.--Sir, your Old-World development is infancy.

How much better this thorough interpenetration of ideas than a barren
interchange of courtesies, or a bush-fighting argument, in which each
man tries to cover as much of himself and expose as much of his opponent
as the tangled thicket of the disputed ground will let him!

----My thoughts flow in layers or strata, at least three deep. I follow
a slow person's talk, and keep a perfectly clear under-current of my own
beneath it. My friend the Autocrat has already made a similar remark.
Under both runs obscurely a consciousness belonging to a third train of
reflections, independent of the two others. I will try to write out a
mental movement in three parts.

A.--First part, or Mental Soprano,--thought follows a woman talking.

B.--Second part, or Mental Barytone,--my running accompaniment.

C.--Third part, or Mental Basso,--low grumble of an importunate
self-repeating idea.

A.--White lace, three skirts, looped with flowers, wreath of
apple-blossoms, gold bracelets, diamond pin and earrings, the most
delicious _berthe_ you ever saw, white satin slippers----

B.--Deuse take her! What a fool she is! Hear her chatter! (Look out of
window just here.--Two pages and a half of description, if it were
all written out, in one tenth of a second.)--Go ahead, old lady! (Eye
catches picture over fireplace.) There's that infernal family nose! Came
over in the "Mayflower" on the first old fool's face. Why don't they
wear a ring in it?

C.--You'll be late at lecture,--late at lecture,--late,--late,--late----

I observe that a deep layer of thought sometimes makes itself felt
through the superincumbent strata, thus:--The usual single or double
currents shall flow on, but there shall be an influence blending with
them, disturbing them in an obscure way, until all at once I say,--Oh,
there! I knew there was something troubling me,--and the thought which
had been working through comes up to the surface clear, definite, and
articulates itself,--a disagreeable duty, perhaps, or an unpleasant
recollection.

The inner world of thought and the outer world of events are alike in
this, that they are both brimful. There is