going abroad, whenever they see--it may be
in England, or in Germany--an evidence of energy and force, they say:
"Truly the world is becoming Americanised!" Bless their insular hearts!
America did not invent the cosmic forces.

When the first suspension bridge was thrown over Niagara, there was a
great and tumultuous opening ceremony, such as the Americans love, and
many of the great ones of the United States assembled to do honour to
the occasion, and among them was Roscoe Conkling. Conkling was one of
the most brilliant public men whom America has produced: a man of
commanding, even beautiful, presence and of, perhaps, unparalleled
vanity. He had been called (by an opponent) a human peacock. After the
ceremonies attending the opening of the bridge had been concluded,
Conkling, with many others, was at the railway station waiting to
depart; but, though others were there, he did not mingle with them, but
strutted and plumed himself for their benefit, posing that they might
get the full effect of all his majesty.

One of the station porters was so impressed that, stepping up to another
who was hurrying by trundling a load of luggage, he jerked his thumb in
Conkling's direction and:

"Who's that feller?" he asked. "Is he the man as built the bridge?"

The other studied the great man a moment.

"Thunder! No," said he. "He's the man as made the Falls."

It is curious that with their sense of humour Americans should so
persistently force Europeans into the frame of mind of that railway
porter. The Englishman, in his assurance of his own greatness, has come
to depreciate the magnitude of whatever work he does; nor is it
altogether a pose or an affectation. He sees the vastness of the British
Empire and the amazing strides which have been made in the last two
generations, and wonders how it all came about. He knows how
proverbially blundering are British diplomacy and British
administration, so he puts it all down to the luck of the nation and
goes grumbling contentedly on his way. There is no country in which
policies have been so haphazard and unstable, or ways of administration
so crude and so empirical, as in the United States. "Go forth, my son,"
said Oxenstiern, "go forth and see with how little wisdom the world is
governed"; and on such a quest, it is doubtful if any civilised country
has offered a more promising field for consideration than did the United
States from, say, the close of the Civil War to less than