hem, and when we
get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter. Sometimes we get a
good man and worth the price, but we are ready to take him anyway,
whether he be ripe or rotten, whether he be clean and decent, or merely
a basket of noble and sacred and long-descended offal. And when we get
him the whole nation publicly chaffs and scoffs--and privately envies;
and also is proud of the honor which has been conferred upon us. We run
over our list of titled purchases every now and then, in the newspapers,
and discuss them and caress them, and are thankful and happy.

Like all the other nations, we worship money and the possessors of
it--they being our aristocracy, and we have to have one. We like to read
about rich people in the papers; the papers know it, and they do their
best to keep this appetite liberally fed. They even leave out a football
bull-fight now and then to get room for all the particulars of
how--according to the display heading--"Rich Woman Fell Down Cellar--Not
Hurt." The falling down the cellar is of no interest to us when the
woman is not rich, but no rich woman can fall down cellar and we not
yearn to know all about it and wish it was us.

In a monarchy the people willingly and rejoicingly revere and take pride
in their nobilities, and are not humiliated by the reflection that this
humble and hearty homage gets no return but contempt. Contempt does not
shame them, they are used to it, and they recognize that it is their
proper due. We are all made like that. In Europe we easily and quickly
learn to take that attitude toward the sovereigns and the aristocracies;
moreover, it has been observed that when we get the attitude we go on
and exaggerate it, presently becoming more servile than the natives, and
vainer of it. The next step is to rail and scoff at republics and
democracies. All of which is natural, for we have not ceased to be human
beings by becoming Americans, and the human race was always intended to
be governed by kingship, not by popular vote.

I suppose we must expect that unavoidable and irresistible Circumstances
will gradually take away the powers of the States and concentrate them
in the central government, and that the republic will then repeat the
history of all time and become a monarchy; but I believe that if we
obstruct these encroachments and steadily resist them the monarchy can
be postponed for a good while yet.

[Sidenote: (1849-'51.)]

[_Dictated December 1, 1906._] An