ers are greatly mistaken. Your partiality for foreign
things has kept you ignorant of what you have at home. Now I am not
blaming the love of foreign things: it is not peculiar to us
Americans; all nations have it. It is a part of the poetry of our
nature to love what comes from afar, and reminds us of lands distant
and different from our own. The English belles seek after French
laces; the French beauty enumerates English laces among her rarities;
and the French dandy piques himself upon an English tailor. We
Americans are great travelers, and few people travel, I fancy, with
more real enjoyment than we; our domestic establishments, as compared
with those of the Old World, are less cumbrous and stately, and so our
money is commonly in hand as pocket-money, to be spent freely and
gayly in our tours abroad.

"We have such bright and pleasant times in every country that we
conceive a kindliness for its belongings. To send to Paris for our
dresses and our shoes and our gloves may not be a mere bit of foppery,
but a reminder of the bright, pleasant hours we have spent in that
city of boulevards and fountains. Hence it comes, in a way not very
blamable, that many people have been so engrossed with what can be got
from abroad that they have neglected to inquire what can be found at
home: they have supposed, of course, that to get a decent watch they
must send to Geneva or to London; that to get thoroughly good carpets
they must have the English manufacture; that a really tasteful
wall-paper could be found only in Paris; and that flannels and
broadcloths could come only from France, Great Britain, or Germany."

"Well, isn't it so?" said Miss Featherstone. "I certainly have always
thought so; I never heard of American watches, I'm sure."

"Then," said I, "I'm sure you can't have read an article that you
should have read on the Waltham watches, written by our friend George
W. Curtis, in the 'Atlantic' for January of last year. I must refer
you to that to learn that we make in America watches superior to those
of Switzerland or England, bringing into the service machinery and
modes of workmanship unequaled for delicacy and precision; as I said
before, you must get the article and read it, and, if some sunny day
you could make a trip to Waltham and see the establishment, it would
greatly assist your comprehension."

"Then, as to men's clothing," said Bob, "I know to my entire
satisfaction that many of the most popular cloths f