"But," he
added thoughtfully, "it does not come up to what we have on hand in the
Panama Canal." I pointed out that the Panama Canal was not being cut
through the heart of New York City and apparently the suggestion was new
to him. The American rarely understands that the British Isles are no
more--rather less--than the thirteen original states. Canada and India
are the British Illinois and Florida, Australia and New Zealand
represent the West from Texas to Montana, while South Africa is the
British Pacific Slope; just as Egypt may stand for Cuba, and Burma and
what-not-else set against Alaska and the Philippines. Many times I have
known Americans in England to make jest of the British railways,
comparing them in mileage with the transcontinental lines of their own
country. But the British Transcontinental lines are thrown from Cairo to
the Cape, from Quebec to Vancouver, from Brisbane to Adelaide and
Peshawar to Madras. The people of the United States take legitimate
pride in the growth of the great institutions of learning which have
sprung up all over the West; but there are points of interest of which
they take less account, in similar institutions in, say, Sydney and
Allahabad.

It is not necessary to say that I do not underestimate the energy of the
American character. I have seen too much of the people, am familiar
with too many sections of the country, and have watched it all growing
before my eyes too fast to do that. But I think that the American
exaggerates those qualities in himself at the expense of other peoples,
and he would acquire a new kind of respect for Englishmen--the respect
which one good workman necessarily feels for another--if he knew more of
the British Empire.

A precisely similar exaggeration of his own quality has been bred by
similar causes in the American mind in his estimate of his national
sense of humour. I am not denying the excellence of American humour, for
I have in my library a certain shelf to which I go whenever I feel dull,
and for the books on which I can never be sufficiently grateful. The
American's exaggeration of his own funniness is not positive but
comparative. Just as he is tempted to regard himself as the original
patentee of human progress, and the first apostle of efficiency, so he
is very ready to believe that he has been given something like a
monopoly among peoples of the sense of humour. With a little more
humour, he would undoubtedly have been saved from this