Nature and Human Nature | Page 5

me, or because you think it is bad taste as you call it.
I know what I am at, and don't go it--blind. My Journal contains much

for my own countrymen as well as the English, for we expect every
American abroad to sustain the reputation in himself of our great
nation.
"Now our Minister to Victoria's Court, when he made his brag speech
to the great agricultural dinner at Gloucester last year, didn't intend that
for the British, but for us. So in Congress no man in either house can
speak or read an oration more than an hour long, but he can send the
whole lockrum, includin' what he didn't say, to the papers. One has to
brag before foreign assemblies, the other before a Congress, but both
have an eye to the feelings of the Americans at large, and their own
constituents in particular. Now that is a trick others know as well as we
do. The Irish member from Kilmany, and him from Kilmore, when he
brags there never was a murder in either, don't expect the English to
believe it, for he is availed they know better, but the brag pleases the
patriots to home, on account of its impudence.
"So the little man, Lord Bunkum, when he opens Oxford to Jew and
Gentile, and offers to make Rothschild Chancellor instead of Lord
Derby, and tells them old dons, the heads of colleges, as polite as a
stage-driver, that he does it out of pure regard to them, and only to
improve the University, don't expect them to believe it; for he gives
them a sly wink when he says so, as much as to say, how are you off
for Hebrew, my old septuagenarians? Droll boy is Rothey, for though
he comes from the land of Ham, he don't eat pork. But it pleases the
sarcumsised Jew, and the unsarcumsised tag-rag and bobtail that are to
be admitted, and who verily do believe (for their bump of conceit is
largely developed) that they can improve the Colleges by granting
educational excursion tickets.
"So Paddy O'Shonnosey the member for Blarney, when he votes for
smashing in the porter's lodges of that Protestant institution, and talks
of Toleration and Equal Rights, and calls the Duke of Tuscany a broth
of a boy, and a light to illumine heretical darkness, don't talk this
nonsense to please the outs or ins, for he don't care a snap of his finger
for either of them, nor because he thinks it right, for it's plain he don't,
seeing that he would fight till he'd run away before Maynooth should
be sarved arter that fashion; but he does it, because he knows it will
please him, or them, that sent him there.
"There are two kinds of boastin', Squire, active and passive. The former

belongs exclusively to my countrymen, and the latter to the British. A
Yankee openly asserts and loudly proclaims his superiority. John Bull
feels and looks it. He don't give utterance to this conviction. He takes it
for granted all the world knows and admits it, and he is so thoroughly
persuaded of it himself, that, to use his own favourite phrase, he don't
care a fig if folks don't admit it. His vanity, therefore, has a sublimity in
it. He thinks, as the Italians say, 'that when nature formed him, she
broke the mould.' There never was, never can, and never will be,
another like him. His boastin', therefore, is passive. He shows it and
acts it; but he don't proclaim it. He condescends and is gracious,
patronizes and talks down to you. Let my boastin' alone therefore,
Squire, if you please. You know what it means, what bottom it has, and
whether the plaster sticks on the right spot or not.
"So there is the first division of my subject. Now for the second. But
don't go off at half-cock, narvous like. I am not like the black preacher
that had forty-eleven divisions. I have only a few more remarks to
make. Well, I have observed that in editin' my last Journal, you struck
out some scores I made under certain passages and maxims, because
you thought they were not needed, or looked vain. I know it looks
consaited as well as you do, but I know their use also. I have my own
views of things. Let them also be as I have made them. They warn't put
there for nothin'. I have a case in pint that runs on all fours with it, as
brother Josiah the lawyer used to say, and if there was anythin' wantin'
to prove that lawyers were not strait up and down in their dealings, that
expression would show it.
"I was to court wunst to Slickville, when he was addressin'