ghed and flirted and married
as we are doing to-day, but they seem to us strangely far away, like
inhabitants of another sphere!

It is humiliating to think how soon we, too, shall have become the
ancestors of a new and careless generation; fresh faces will replace our
faded ones, young voices will laugh as they look at our portraits hanging
in dark corners, wondering who we were, and (criticising the apparel we
think so artistic and appropriate) how we could ever have made such guys
of ourselves.

No. 38--A Conquest of Europe

The most important event in modern history is the discovery of Europe by
the Americans. Before it, the peoples of the Old World lived happy and
contented in their own countries, practising the patriarchal virtues
handed down to them from generations of forebears, ignoring alike the
vices and benefits of modern civilization, as understood on this side of
the Atlantic. The simple-minded Europeans remained at home, satisfied
with the rank in life where they had been born, and innocent of the ways
of the new world.

These peoples were, on the whole, not so much to be pitied, for they had
many pleasing crafts and arts unknown to the invaders, which had enabled
them to decorate their capitals with taste in a rude way; nothing really
great like the lofty buildings and elevated railway structures, executed
in American cities, but interesting as showing what an ingenious race,
deprived of the secrets of modern science, could accomplish.

The more aesthetic of the newcomers even affected to admire the
antiquated places of worship and residences they visited abroad, pointing
out to their compatriots that in many cases marble, bronze and other old-
fashioned materials had been so cleverly treated as to look almost like
the superior cast-iron employed at home, and that some of the old
paintings, preserved with veneration in the museums, had nearly the
brilliancy of modern chromos. As their authors had, however, neglected
to use a process lending itself to rapid reproduction, they were of no
practical value. In other ways, the continental races, when discovered,
were sadly behind the times. In business, they ignored the use of
"corners," that backbone of American trade, and their ideas of
advertising were but little in advance of those known among the ancient
Greeks.

The discovery of Europe by the Americans was made about 1850, at which
date the first bands of adventurers crossed the seas