nglish than Carlyle. Well, I have seen in later years an
almost equally wide and well-merited popularity of the stories of O.
Henry. But never for one moment could I or any one else reading them
forget that they were stories by an American about America. The very
first fact about them is that they are told with an American accent,
that is, in the unmistakable tones of a brilliant and fascinating
foreigner. And the same is true of every other recent work of which the
fame has managed to cross the Atlantic. We did not say that _The Spoon
River Anthology_ was a new book, but that it was a new book from
America. It was exactly as if a remarkable realistic novel was reported
from Russia or Italy. We were in no danger of confusing it with the
'Elegy in a Country Churchyard.' People in England who heard of Main
Street were not likely to identify it with a High Street; with the
principal thoroughfare in any little town in Berkshire or
Buckinghamshire. But when I was a boy I practically identified the
boarding-house of the Autocrat with any boarding-house I happened to
know in Brompton or Brighton. No doubt there were differences; but the
point is that the differences did not pierce the consciousness or prick
the illusion. I said to myself, 'People are like this in
boarding-houses,' not 'People are like this in Boston.'

This can be seen even in the simple matter of language, especially in
the sense of slang. Take, for instance, the delightful sketch in the
causerie of Oliver Wendell Holmes; the character of the young man called
John. He is the very modern type in every modern country who does
specialise in slang. He is the young fellow who is something in the
City; the everyday young man of the Gilbertian song, with a stick and a
pipe and a half-bred black-and-tan. In every country he is at once witty
and commonplace. In every country, therefore, he tends both to the
vivacity and the vulgarity of slang. But when he appeared in Holmes's
book, his language was not very different from what it would have been
in a Brighton instead of a Boston boarding-house; or, in short, if the
young man called John had more commonly been called 'Arry. If he had
appeared in a modern American book, his language would have been almost
literally unintelligible. At the least an Englishman would have had to
read some of the best sentences twice, as he sometimes has to read the
dizzy and involved metaphors of O. Henry. Nor is it an answer that this
depe