ve had me from the beginning. The raw
material was as good as the average; why did you not work it up better?
I went to the best schools you gave me. I learned everything I was set
to learn. You can nowhere find a teacher who will tell you that I ever
evaded a lesson. I was greedy of gain. I spared neither time nor toil. I
lost no opportunity, and here I am, just as good as you made me. So, if
there is any one to blame, it is you, for not giving me better
facilities. The Children's Aid Society warned New York a dozen years ago
that a "dangerous class of untaught" pagans was growing up in her
streets; but she did not think it worth while to arouse herself and
educate them, and one morning she found them burning her house over her
head. You too, my country, have been repeatedly warned of your dangerous
class, a class whom, with malice aforethought, you leave half educated,
and, from ignorance, idle,--and now comes Nemesis! New York had a mob,
and you have--me.

The real ogre was those terrible Englishmen. I was brought up on the
British Quarterlies. Their high and mighty ways entered into my soul. I
never did have any courage or independence, to begin with; and when they
condescended to tread our shores with such lordly airs, I should have
been only too glad to burn incense for a propitiation. So impressive was
their loftiness, their haughty patronage, that their supercilious sneers
at our provincialism were heart-rending, I came to look at everything
with an eye to English judgment. It was not so much whether a book or a
custom were good as whether it would be likely to meet with English
approval. To be the object of their displeasure was a calamity, and at
even a growl from their dreadful throats I was ready to die of terror.
And this slavish subservience lasted beyond the school-room.

But it so happened that by the time my book was set afloat, the
Reviewers had lost their fangs. The war came, and they went over to the
enemy, every one: "North British," "London Quarterly," "Edinburgh," and
even the liberal "Westminster," had but one tone. "Blackwood" was seized
with an evil spirit, and wallowed foaming. The English people may be all
right at the heart. Their slow, but sure and sturdy sense may bring them
at length within hailing distance of the truth. Noble men among them,
Mill and Cairnes and Smith and their kind, made their voices heard in
the midst of opposing din, even through the very pages which had rung
with So