arm was taken
when they threw out a skirmish-line of magazines and began to deploy an
occasional wild poet, who advanced in buckskin leggings, revolver in
hand, or a stray sharp-shooting sketcher clad in the picturesque robes of
the sunset. Put when the main body of American novelists got fairly
ashore and into position the literary militia of the island rose up as
one man, with the strength of a thousand, to repel the invaders and sweep
them back across the Atlantic. The spectacle had a dramatic interest. The
invaders were not numerous, did not carry their native tomahawks, they
had been careful to wash off the frightful paint with which they usually
go into action, they did not utter the defiant whoop of Pogram, and even
the militia regarded them as on the whole "amusin' young 'possums" and
yet all the resources of modern and ancient warfare were brought to bear
upon them. There was a crack of revolvers from the daily press, a lively
fusillade of small-arms in the astonished weeklies, a discharge of
point-blank blunderbusses from the monthlies; and some of the heavy
quarterlies loaded up the old pieces of ordnance, that had not been
charged in forty years, with slugs and brickbats and junk-bottles, and
poured in raking broadsides. The effect on the island was something
tremendous: it shook and trembled, and was almost hidden in the smoke of
the conflict. What the effect is upon the invaders it is too soon to
determine. If any of them survive, it will be God's mercy to his weak and
innocent children.

It must be said that the American people--such of them as were aware of
this uprising--took the punishment of their presumption in a sweet and
forgiving spirit. If they did not feel that they deserved it, they
regarded it as a valuable contribution to the study of sociology and race
characteristics, in which they have taken a lively interest of late. We
know how it is ourselves, they said; we used to be thin-skinned and
self-conscious and sensitive. We used to wince and cringe under English
criticism, and try to strike back in a blind fury. We have learned that
criticism is good for us, and we are grateful for it from any source. We
have learned that English criticism is dictated by love for us, by a warm
interest in our intellectual development, just as English anxiety about
our revenue laws is based upon a yearning that our down-trodden millions
shall enjoy the benefits of free-trade. We did not understand why a
country