New York, January 23.
I was asked to-day by the editor of the North American Review to write an article on the typical American.
The typical American!
In the eyes of my beloved compatriots, the typical American is a man with hair falling over his shoulders, wearing a sombrero, a red shirt, leather leggings, a pair of revolvers in his belt, spending his life on horseback, and able to shoot a fly off the tip of your nose without for a moment endangering your olfactory organ; and, since Buffalo Bill has been exhibiting his Indians and cowboys to the Parisians, this impression has become a deep conviction.
I shall never forget the astonishment I caused to my mother when I first broke the news to her that I wanted to go to America. My mother had practically never left a lovely little provincial town of France. Her face expressed perfect bewilderment.
“You don’t mean to say you want to go to America?” she said. “What for?”
“I am invited to give lectures there.”
“Well, mother, I will try my best in English.”
“Do they speak English out there?”