ves since 1776. But
as we are now, seldom has a great commonwealth been seen less united in
its stages of progress, more uneven in its degrees of enlightenment.
Never, indeed, it would seem, have such various centuries been jostled
together as they are to-day upon this continent, and within the
boundaries of our nation. We have taken the ages out of their
processional arrangement and set them marching disorderly abreast in our
wide territory, a harlequin platoon. We citizens of the United States
date our letters 18--, and speak of ourselves as living in the present
era; but the accuracy of that custom depends upon where we happen to be
writing. While portions of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are of
this nineteenth century, we have many ancient periods surviving among
us. What do you say, for example, to the Kentucky and Tennessee
mountaineers, with their vendettas of blood descending from father to
son? That was once the prevailing fashion of revenge. Yet even before
the day when Columbus sailed had certain communities matured beyond it.
This sprout of the Middle Ages flourishes fresh and green some five
hundred miles and five hundred years from New York. In the single State
of Texas you will find a contrast more violent still. There, not long
ago, an African was led upon a platform in a public place for people to
see, and tortured slowly to death with knives and fire. To witness this
scene young men and women came in crowds. It is said that the railroad
ran a special train for spectators from a distance. How might that
audience of Paris, Texas, appropriately date its letters? Not Anno
Domini, but many years B.C. The African deserves no pity. His hideous
crime was enough to drive a father to any madness, and too many such
monsters have by their acts made Texas justly desperate. But for
American citizens to crowd to the retribution, and look on as at a
holiday show, reveals the Inquisition, the Pagans, the Stone Age,
unreclaimed in our republic. On the other hand, the young men and women
who will watch side by side the burning of a negro shrink from using
such words as bull or stallion in polite society; many in Texas will
say, instead, _male cow_ and _caviard horse_ (a term spelled as they
pronounce it), and consider that delicacy is thus achieved. Yet in this
lump Texas holds leaven as sterling as in any State; but it has far to
spread.

It were easy to proceed from Maine to California instancing the remote
cen