s a great mistake. Opportunity is all that is needed. There
must be the inspiration of the clash of minds and the encouragement of
good listening. In an evening round the fire, when couples begin, to
whisper or talk low to each other, it is time to put out the lights.
Inspiring interest is gone. The most brilliant talker in the world is
dumb. People whose idea of a dinner is private talk between
seat-neighbors should limit the company to two. They have no right to
spoil what can be the most agreeable social institution that civilization
has evolved.

NATURALIZATION

Is it possible for a person to be entirely naturalized?--that is, to be
denationalized, to cast off the prejudice and traditions of one country
and take up those of another; to give up what may be called the
instinctive tendencies of one race and take up those of another. It is
easy enough to swear off allegiance to a sovereign or a government, and
to take on in intention new political obligations, but to separate one's
self from the sympathies into which he was born is quite another affair.
One is likely to remain in the inmost recesses of his heart an alien, and
as a final expression of his feeling to hoist the green flag, or the
dragon, or the cross of St. George. Probably no other sentiment is, so
strong in a man as that of attachment to his own soil and people, a
sub-sentiment always remaining, whatever new and unbreakable attachments
he may form. One can be very proud of his adopted country, and brag for
it, and fight for it; but lying deep in a man's nature is something, no
doubt, that no oath nor material interest can change, and that is never
naturalized. We see this experiment in America more than anywhere else,
because here meet more different races than anywhere else with the
serious intention of changing their nationality. And we have a notion
that there is something in our atmosphere, or opportunities, or our
government, that makes this change more natural and reasonable than it
has been anywhere else in history. It is always a surprise to us when a
born citizen of the United States changes his allegiance, but it seems a
thing of course that a person of any other country should, by an oath,
become a good American, and we expect that the act will work a sudden
change in him equal to that wrought in a man by what used to be called a
conviction of sin. We expect that he will not only come into our family,
but that he will at once assume all