There is
another young lady here, who is less abnormally developed than the one I
have just described, but who yet bears the stamp of this peculiar
combination of incompleteness and effeteness. These three persons look
with the greatest mistrust and aversion upon each other; and each has
repeatedly taken me apart and assured me, secretly, that he or she only
is the real, the genuine, the typical American. A type that has lost
itself before it has been fixed--what can you look for from this?
Add to this that there are two young Englanders in the house, who hate
all the Americans in a lump, making between them none of the distinctions
and favourable comparisons which they insist upon, and you will, I think,
hold me warranted in believing that, between precipitate decay and
internecine enmities, the English-speaking family is destined to consume
itself; and that with its decline the prospect of general pervasiveness,
to which I alluded above, will brighten for the deep-lunged children of
the Fatherland!
CHAPTER IX
MIRANDA HOPE TO HER MOTHER.
October 22d
Dear Mother--I am off in a day or two to visit some new country; I
haven't yet decided which.
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