hivalrous, and richest people on the face of the earth,
and they all said Amen. Another clergyman asserted in the words of the
Declaration that all men were created equal, and equally entitled to
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. I should like to know
whether the wild and woolly West recognises this first right as freely
as the grantors intended. The clergyman then bade the world note that
the tourists included representatives of seven of the New England
States; whereat I felt deeply sorry for the New England States in their
latter days. He opined that this running to and fro upon the earth,
under the auspices of the excellent Rayment, would draw America more
closely together, especially when the Westerners remembered the perils
that they of the East had surmounted by rail and river. At duly
appointed intervals the congregation sang "My country, 'tis of thee" to
the tune of "God save the Queen" (here they did not stand up) and the
"Star-Spangled Banner" (here they did), winding up the exercise with
some doggrel of their own composition to the tune of "John Brown's
Body," movingly setting forth the perils before alluded to. They then
adjourned to the verandahs and watched fire-crackers of the feeblest,
exploding one by one, for several hours.

What amazed me was the calm with which these folks gathered together and
commenced to belaud their noble selves, their country, and their
"institootions" and everything else that was theirs. The language was,
to these bewildered ears, wild advertisement, gas, bunkum, blow,
anything you please beyond the bounds of common sense. An archangel,
selling town-lots on the Glassy Sea, would have blushed to the tips of
his wings to describe his property in similar terms. Then they gathered
round the pastor and told him his little sermon was "perfectly
glorious," really grand, sublime, and so forth, and he bridled
ecclesiastically. At the end a perfectly unknown man attacked me and
asked me what I thought of American patriotism. I said there was
nothing like it in the Old Country. By the way, always tell an American
this. It soothes him.

Then said he: "Are you going to get out your letters,--your letters of
naturalisation?"

"Why?" I asked.

"I presoom you do business in this country, and make money out of
it,--and it seems to me that it would be your dooty."

"Sir," said I, sweetly, "there is a forgotten little island across the
seas called England. It is not much bigger t