Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[26] authority, Max Muller, is a German, and that her one humorous periodical — in America every newspaper is humorous-still bears trace of its French origin in the title, Punch, or the London Charivari. The English journals are constantly pointing out that their own people are becoming Americanized; why, then, should not an American here or there be Anglicized? It is pretty certain all the while that we are exerting far more influence than we receive.

Let us not disturb ourselves. Out of the fifty millions of Americans, the passing wave of Anglomania or Francomania reaches but a few thousands, and merely touches close on the surface. Even the young men whom it reaches are at heart good Americans, and if another civil war or foreign war arose, would respond as promptly as they did in 1861. They will doubtless buy their clothes in England while these can be bought there more cheaply and of better material; they will employ English grooms or Scotch gardeners if these do their work better. But so long as monarchy and hereditary aristocracy exist in England-and I fear that they will last our time — there will be an essential and ineradicable difference in the habits of mind of English and American young men; and this will show itself in their whole feeling as to caste, as to labor, as to self-respect. And since climate and institutions are