The Spread Eagle, and Other Stories | Page 4

like a native; he could imitate an Englishman's intonation to perfection; and yet he came to manhood with his own honest Ohio accent untouched. And where had he learned it? Not in Ohio, surely. He had been about as much in Ohio as I have in the moon. It was in his red blood, I suppose, to speak as the men of his family spoke--less so, for his vocabulary was bigger, but plainly, straightly, honestly, and with some regard for the way in which words are spelled. So speak the men who are the backbone of liberty, each with the honest accent that he is born to. Don't you suppose that Washington himself held forth in the molten, golden tones of Virginia? Do you think Adams said bought and caught? He said bot and cot. Did Lincoln use the broad A at Gettysburg? I think that in the words he there spoke the A's were narrow as heaven's gate. I think some of them struck against the base of his nose before they came out to strengthen the hearts of men, to rejoice God, and to thunder forever down the ages.
It is, of course, more elegant to speak as we New Yorkers do. Everybody knows that. And I should advise all men to cultivate the accent and intonation--all men who are at leisure to perfect themselves. But honesty compels me to state that there has never been a truly great American who spoke any speech but his own--except that superlatively great Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin--of Boston. He didn't talk Philadelphianese. And you may cotton to that!

II
We must go back to the Fourth of July. When Benton returned with the French clothes Fitzhugh Williams rose from his downy couch and bathed in cold water. He was even an eager bather in France, rejoicing in the feeling of superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain of it. But in England, where everybody bathed--or at any rate had water in their rooms and splashed and said ah! ah! and oh! oh!--he regarded the morning bath as commonplace, and had often to be bribed into it.
He now had Benton in to rub his back dry, and to hand him his clothes in sequence; it being his mother's notion that to be truly polite a man must be helpless in these matters and dependent. And when he had on his undershirt and his outer shirt and his stockings, he sat down to his breakfast of chocolate and rolls and Rillet de Tours, which the butler had just brought; and afterward brushed his teeth, finished dressing, and ordered Benton to call a fiacre. But finding his mother's victoria at the door he dismissed the hack, and talked stable matters with Cunningham, the coachman, and Fontenoy, the tiger, until his mother came--one of these lovely, trailing visions that are rare even in Paris, though common enough, I dare say, in paradise.
They drove first of all to Gaston Rennette's gallery, where Fitz celebrated the glorious Fourth with a real duelling pistol and real bullets, aiming at a life-size sheet-iron man, who, like a correct, courteous, and courageous opponent, never moved. And all the way to the gallery and all the way back there was here and there an American flag, as is customary in Paris on the Fourth. And to these Fitz, standing up in the victoria, dipped and waved his hat. While he was shooting, his mother took a "little turn" and then came back to fetch him; a stout man in a blue blouse accompanying him to the curb, tossing his hands heavenward, rolling up his eyes, and explaining to madame what a "genius at the shoot was the little mister," and had averaged upon the "mister of iron" one "fatal blow" in every five. Madame "invited" the stout man to a five-franc piece for himself and she smiled, and he smiled, and bowed off backward directly into a passing pedestrian, who cried out upon the "sacred name of a rooster." And everybody laughed, including Cunningham, whose face from much shaving looked as if a laugh must crack it; and so the glorious Fourth was begun.
But the next event upon the programme was less provocative of pure joy in the heart of Fitz.
"You don't remember the Burtons, do you, Fitz?" asked his mother.
"No," said he.
"Well," she said, "Mrs. Burton was a school-mate of mine, Elizabeth Proctor, and I've just learned that she is at the d'Orient with her daughter. The father died, you know--"
"I know now" interrupted Fitz with a grin.
He liked to correct his mother's English habit of "you-knowing" people who didn't know.
"And I really think I must call and try to do something for them."
"The d'Orient," said Fitz, "is where they have the elevator that you work yourself. Billy Molineux and I got