ns like a double
rose, red and full. The English article is cooler and supercilious. I
say nothing, for my role is to see; but Halicarnassus and the Anakim
exchange views with the greatest nonchalance, in spite of pokes and
scowls and various subtabular hints.

"What is the news?" says one to the other, who is reading the morning
paper.

"Prospect of English intervention," says the other to one.

"Then we are just in season to see Canada for the last time as a
British province," says the first.

"And must hurry over to England, if we design to see St. George and the
dragon tutelizing Windsor Castle," says the second; whereupon a John
Bull yonder looks up from his 'am and heggs, and the very old dragon
himself steps down from the banner-folds, and glares out of those irate
eyes, and the ubiquitous British tourist, I have no doubt, took out his
notebook, and put on his glasses and wrote down for home consumption
another instance of the insufferable assurance of these Yankees.

"Where have you been?" I ask Halicarnassus, coming in late to breakfast.

"Only planning the invasion of Canada," says he, coolly, as if it were
a mere pre-prandial diversion, all of which was not only rude, but
quite gratuitous, since, apart from the fact that we might not be able
to get Canada, I am sure we don't want it. I am disappointed. I
suppose I had no right to be. Doubtless it was sheer ignorance, but I
had the idea that it was a great country, rich in promise if immature
in fact,--a nation to be added to a nation when the clock should strike
the hour,--a golden apple to fall into our hands when the fulness of
time should come. Such inspection as a few days' observation can give,
such inspection as British tourists find sufficient to settle the facts
and fate of nations, leads me to infer that it is not golden at all,
and not much of an apple; and I cannot think what we should want of it,
nor what we should do with it if we had it. The people are radically
different from ours. Fancy those dark-eyed beggars and those
calm-mouthed, cowy-men in this eager, self-involved republic. They
might be annexed to the United States a thousand times and never be
united, for I do not believe any process in the world would turn a
French peasant into a Yankee farmer. Besides, I cannot see that there
is anything of Canada except a broad strip along the St. Lawrence
River. It makes a great show on the map, but when you ferret it out,
it is not