I Had My Task To Do, And I Could Not Take The Pleasant And Ignore The Painful.

It may perhaps be that as a friend I had better not have written either good or bad.

But no! To say that would indeed be to speak calumny of your country. A man may write of you truly, and yet write that which you would read with pleasure; only that your skins are so thin. The streets of Washington are muddy and her ways are desolate. The nakedness of Cairo is very naked. And those ladies of New York - is it not to be confessed that they are somewhat imperious in their demands? As for the Van Wyck Committee, have I not repeated the tale which you have told yourselves? And is it not well that such tales should be told?

And yet ye will not forgive me; because your skins are thin, and because the praise of others is the breath of your nostrils.

I do not know that an American as an individual is more thin skinned than an Englishman; but as the representative of a nation it may almost be said of him that he has no skin at all. Any touch comes at once upon the net-work of his nerves and puts in operation all his organs of feeling with the violence of a blow. And for this peculiarity he has been made the mark of much ridicule. It shows itself in two ways: either by extreme displeasure when anything is said disrespectful of his country, or by the strong eulogy with which he is accustomed to speak of his own institutions and of those of his countrymen whom at the moment he may chance to hold in high esteem. The manner in which this is done is often ridiculous. "Sir, what do you think of Mr. Jefferson Brick? Mr. Jefferson Brick, sir, is one of our most remarkable men." And again: "Do you like our institutions, sir? Do you find that philanthropy, religion, philosophy and the social virtues are cultivated on a scale commensurate with the unequaled liberty and political advancement of the nation?" There is something absurd in such a mode of address when it is repeated often. But hero worship and love of country are not absurd; and do not these addresses show capacity for hero worship and an aptitude for the love of country? Jefferson Brick may not be a hero; but a capacity for such worship is something. Indeed the capacity is everything, for the need of a hero will produce a hero. And it is the same with that love of country. A people that are proud of their country will see that there is something in their country to justify their pride. Do we not all of us feel assured by the intense nationality of an American that he will not desert his nation in the hour of her need? I feel that assurance respecting them; and at those moments in which I am moved to laughter by the absurdities of their addresses to me I feel it the strongest.

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