ousand_ years, and that in my
country there were many records of voyages to the Western land, ages
before 1492.

You see I soon began to be Americanized and to claim things. China
discovered America and gave her the compass as well as gunpowder. The
first Americans were in the nature of emigrants; men and women who did
not succeed well in their own country and so sought new fields, just as
people are doing to-day. They came over in a ship called the
"Mayflower," and were remarkably prolific, as I have met thousands who
hail from this stock. At one time England sent her criminals to
Virginia--one of the United States--and many of the refuse of the home
country were sent to other parts of America in the early days. Younger
sons of good families were also sent over for various reasons. Women of
all classes were sent by the ship-load, and sold for wives. I reminded a
lady of this, who was lamenting the fact that in China some women are
sold for wives. She was absolutely ignorant of this well-known fact in
American history, and forgot the selling of black women. Among the men
were many representatives of old and noble families; but the bulk, I
judge from their colonial histories, were people of low degree. Very
soon other countries began to ship people to America. Italy, Germany,
Russia, Norway, Sweden, and other lands were drawn upon for constantly
increasing numbers as years went by. All tumbled into the American
hopper. Imagine a coffee-grinder into which have been thrown Greek,
Roman, Jew, Gentile, and all the rest, and then let what they call Uncle
Sam--a heroic, paternal, and comical figure, representing the
government--turn the handle and grind out the American who is neither
Jew, Gentile, Greek, Roman, Russe, or Swede, but a new product, _sui
generis_, and mostly Methodist.

This process has never ceased for an hour. America has been from 1492 to
the present time, in the language of the American "press," the
"dumping-ground" of the nations of the world, the real open door; yet
this grinding assimilation has gone on. It is, perhaps, due to the
climate, perhaps the water, or the air; but the product of these people
born on the soil is described by no other word than American. It may be
Irish-American, very offensive; Dutch-American, very strenuous, like the
Vice-President;[1] Jewish-American, very commercial; Italian-American,
very dirty and reeking with garlic; but it is American, totally unlike
its progenitor, a so