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Across the Zodiac
Chapter III. The Untravelled Deep
Chapter V. Language, Laws, and Life
Chapter VIII. A Faith and Its Founder
Chapter IX. Manners and Customs
Chapter XIII. The Children of Light
Chapter XVII. Presented at Court
Chapter XVIII. A Prince's Present
Chapter XIX. A Complete Establishment
Chapter XX. Life, Social and Domestic
Chapter XXI. Private Audiences
Chapter XXII. Peculiar Institutions
Chapter XXIII. Characteristics
Chapter XXVII. The Valley of the Shadow
"Thoughts he sends to each planet,
Uranus, Venus, and Mars;
Soars to the Centre to span it,
Numbers the infinite Stars."
Courthope's Paradise of Birds
Chapter I.
Shipwreck
Once only, in the occasional travelling of thirty years, did I lose any important article of luggage; and that loss occurred, not under the haphazard, devil-take-the-hindmost confusion of English, or the elaborate misrule of Continental journeys, but through the absolute perfection and democratic despotism of the American system. I had to give up a visit to the scenery of Cooper's best Indian novels — no slight sacrifice — and hasten at once to New York to repair the loss. This incident brought me, on an evening near the middle of September 1874, on board a river steamboat starting from Albany, the capital of the State, for the Empire City. The banks of the lower Hudson are as well worth seeing as those of the Rhine itself, but even America has not yet devised means of lighting them up at night, and consequently I had no amusement but such as I could find in the conversation of my fellow-travellers. With one of these, whose abstinence from personal questions led me to take him for an Englishman, I spoke of my visit to Niagara — the one wonder of the world that answers its warranty — and to Montreal. As I spoke of the strong and general Canadian feeling of loyalty to the English Crown and connection, a Yankee bystander observed —
"Wal, stranger, I reckon we could take 'em if we wanted tu!"
"Yes," I replied, "if you think them worth the price. But if you do, you rate them even more highly than they rate themselves; and English colonists are not much behind the citizens of the model Republic in honest self-esteem."
"Wal," he said, "how much du yew calc'late we shall hev to pay?"
"Not more, perhaps, than you can afford; only California, and every Atlantic seaport from Portland to Galveston."
"Reckon yew may be about right, stranger," he said, falling back with tolerable good-humour; and, to do them justice, the bystanders seemed to think the retort no worse than the provocation deserved.
"I am sorry," said my friend, "you should have fallen in with so unpleasant a specimen of the character your countrymen ascribe with too much reason to Americans. I have been long in England, and never met with such discourtesy from any one who recognised me as an American."
After this our
