1
/
of
0
Variety Books
Among the Americans, and A stranger in America
Among the Americans, and A stranger in America
Regular price
$5.99 USD
Regular price
Sale price
$5.99 USD
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Quantity
Couldn't load pickup availability
The portion of these pages entitled "Among the Americans," was written for the Manchester "Co-operative News." Messrs. Belford, Clarke & Co. do me the honor to reprint these papers here, together with the article contributed to the " Nineteenth Century," entitled, "A Stranger in America," and they have generously and voluntarily agreed to give me a fair share of the profits that may accrue therefrom. As they are pleased to think the papers will interest the American people, among whom I spent happy months, I should feel indebted to them did no advantage come to me thereby. I will not conceal that their honorable offer does not decrease my satisfaction; and I have to acknowledge that the "New York Tribune" and the "Index," of Boston, which has published passages from these Chapters, have treated me in the same handsome manner.
John Bull, in his solid, bovine way, does make steady progress after his kind. But his dietai-y, consisting of precedents, is not very stimulating, and he takes a long time chewing the cud of progress. Like the oxen of Cuyp, he stands meditating over the hedge of his verdant little island, looking as though he was going to think: but he is so long about it that the spectator never feels sure that he does it.
If anybody in England proposes to do a new thing, everybody exclaims, like Lord Melbourne, "Can you not let it alone. "If you do it everybody will do it." But everybody does not do it. England is a country where nothing leads to anything, and anything leads to nothing.
Three centuries ago the Reformation broke out, \vhen it was predicted that everybody would come to have ideas of his own. A few new creeds flew into the air and alighted upon ledges in the old rocks of opinion, where they have nestled in inadventurous content, and the groves of thought have seldom since been enlivened by new brightness of plumage or cheered by varieties of song. The republican equality and the repviblican freedom of America, with their infinite incentives and fertility of aspirations, were to me as a land of new color and ncAv notes, where the minds of the people, like keyless watches, wind themselves up and alwaj's keep going. I should have been glad to live there for years, so as to write about it; as it is, I content myself with relating a few of the things which I noticed.
It is not intended that these papers, now collected into a book form, should be regarded as a "book upon America." That would be a very absurd pretension. These pages are the story of nearly four months travel, and if I had been in America four years I should not think myself competent to write a "book about America." Only an ex-Piesident could write that in a complete way. When I returned home my friends naturally asked me what I thought of a country I had never seen before. What I have written is Avhat I told them. It is a niere fireside story of what interested me.
John Bull, in his solid, bovine way, does make steady progress after his kind. But his dietai-y, consisting of precedents, is not very stimulating, and he takes a long time chewing the cud of progress. Like the oxen of Cuyp, he stands meditating over the hedge of his verdant little island, looking as though he was going to think: but he is so long about it that the spectator never feels sure that he does it.
If anybody in England proposes to do a new thing, everybody exclaims, like Lord Melbourne, "Can you not let it alone. "If you do it everybody will do it." But everybody does not do it. England is a country where nothing leads to anything, and anything leads to nothing.
Three centuries ago the Reformation broke out, \vhen it was predicted that everybody would come to have ideas of his own. A few new creeds flew into the air and alighted upon ledges in the old rocks of opinion, where they have nestled in inadventurous content, and the groves of thought have seldom since been enlivened by new brightness of plumage or cheered by varieties of song. The republican equality and the repviblican freedom of America, with their infinite incentives and fertility of aspirations, were to me as a land of new color and ncAv notes, where the minds of the people, like keyless watches, wind themselves up and alwaj's keep going. I should have been glad to live there for years, so as to write about it; as it is, I content myself with relating a few of the things which I noticed.
It is not intended that these papers, now collected into a book form, should be regarded as a "book upon America." That would be a very absurd pretension. These pages are the story of nearly four months travel, and if I had been in America four years I should not think myself competent to write a "book about America." Only an ex-Piesident could write that in a complete way. When I returned home my friends naturally asked me what I thought of a country I had never seen before. What I have written is Avhat I told them. It is a niere fireside story of what interested me.