“A hundred years! I beg your pardon—but I fancied—I was surely under the impression that America was discovered more than a hundred years ago?”
“It was!” I hastened to say. “Every American child is taught to say—
‘In fourteen hundred, ninety-two,
Columbus crossed the ocean blue.’
But”—feeling that I touched upon delicate ground,—“we were provinces until 1776, when we became a separate government.”
I just avoided adding—“and independent.”
The little lady’s eyes cleared before a gleam that was more than the joy of discovery. It was, in a mild and decorous way, the rapture of creation. Her speech grew animated.
“1776! And last year was 1876! Pardon me! but perhaps you never thought—I would say—has it ever occurred to you that possibly that may have been the reason why your National Exposition was called ‘The Centennial’?”
Magnanimity and politeness are a powerful combination. By their aid, I said—“Very probably!” and sipped my tea as demurely as an Englishwoman could have done in the circumstances.
It is both diverting and exasperating to hear Englishmen sneer openly and coarsely at the attentions bestowed by American gentlemen upon the ladies under their care. Their dogged assumption—and disdainful as dogged—that this is an empty show exacted by us cannot be shaken by the fact of which they certainly are not ignorant,—to wit, that our countrymen are cowards in naught else. I will cite but one of the many illustrations that fell under my eye of their different policy toward the weaker sex. I had climbed the Ventnor Downs one afternoon by the help of my escort, and stood upon the brow of the highest hill, when we espied three English people, known to us by sight, approaching. The short grass was slippery, the direct ascent so steep that the last of the party, a handsome woman of fifty or thereabouts, was obliged, several times, to fall upon her hands and knees to keep from slipping backward. Her son, a robust Oxonian, led the way, cane in hand. Her hale, bluff husband came next, also grasping a stout staff. At the top they stopped to remark upon the beauty of the view and evening, thus giving time to the wife and mother to join them. She was very pale; the sweat streamed down her face; she caught her breath in convulsive gasps. Her attendants smiled good-humoredly.