They Neither Know
How To Hold Their Tongues Or To Carry Their Personal Pretensions.
An American is nationally assumptive, an Englishman personally
so.
He took no notice of me till something passed which showed
him I was English, when his manner at once changed into courtesy,
and his drawl was shortened by a half. He took pains to let me
know that he was an officer in the Guards, of good family, on
four months' leave, which he was spending in slaying buffalo and
elk, and also that he had a profound contempt for everything
American. I cannot think why Englishmen put on these broad,
mouthing tones, and give so many personal details. They retired
to their camp, and the landlord having passed into the sodden,
sleepy stage of drunkenness, his wife asked if I should be afraid
to sleep in the large canvas-sided, unceiled, doorless shed, as
they could not move the sick miner. So, I slept there on a
shake-down, with the stars winking overhead through the roof, and
the mercury showing 30 degrees of frost.
I never told you that I once gave an unwary promise that I would
not travel alone in Colorado unarmed, and that in consequence I
left Estes Park with a Sharp's revolver loaded with ball
cartridge in my pocket, which has been the plague of my life.
Its bright ominous barrel peeped out in quiet Denver shops,
children pulled it out to play with, or when my riding dress hung
up with it in the pocket, pulled the whole from the peg to the
floor; and I cannot conceive of any circumstances in which I
could feel it right to make any use of it, or in which it could
do me any possible good.
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