rted view of
her--how could she assume right proportions or be posed in right
perspective? Nor is the Englishman any more to be blamed. America has
been beyond and below his horizon, and among the travellers' tales that
have come to him of her people and her institutions has been much
misinformation; and if he has not yet--as in the realms of literature
and art--come to any realisation of America's true achievements, how
should he have done so, when Americans themselves have only just shaken
off the morbid sensitiveness and diffidence of their youth, and have so
recently arrived at some partial comprehension of those achievements
themselves?

Probably the most successful joke which _Life_ ever achieved (Americans
will please believe that it is not with any disrespect that I explain to
English readers that _Life_ is the _Punch_ of New York), successful,
that is, measured by the continent-wide hilarity which it provoked, had
relation to the New York dandy who turned up the bottoms of his trousers
because it was "raining in London." That was published--at a
guess--some twenty years ago.

Some ten years later a Chicagoan (one James Norton--he died, alas! all
too soon afterwards) leaped into something like national notoriety by a
certain speech which he delivered at a semi-public dinner in New York.
In introducing Mr. Norton as coming from Chicago the chairman had made
playful reference to the supposed characteristic lack of modesty of
Chicagoans and their pride in their city. Norton, in acknowledgment,
confessed that there was justice in the accusation. Chicagoans, he said,
were proud of their city. They had a right to be. They were as proud of
Chicago as New Yorkers were of London! And the quip ran from mouth to
mouth across the continent.

It would be too much to say that those jokes are meaningless to-day, but
to the younger generation of Americans they have lost most of their
point, for Anglomania has ceased to be the term of reproach that once it
was--it has, at least, dropped from daily use--partly because the
official relations of the country with Great Britain have so much
improved, but much more because the United States has come to consider
herself as Great Britain's equal and, in the new consciousness of her
greatness, the idea of toadying to England has lost its sting. It is
already difficult to throw one's mind back to the conditions of twenty
years ago--to remember the deference which (in New York and the l