Of all the American invasion she is the most subtly dangerous. You may keep off the American men with your fleets, and all the terrors of your newest million pounders, but how defend yourself from the American girl, who borrows a bow and arrow from a naughty little boy lightly dressed in two wings and a blush, and shoots right into your—heart!
Temporary Power
It was in the "tuppeny tube" that the idea first came to me. I was filing out of the long car as expeditiously as I could, considering that I had to disentangle my feet from the heels of my fellow man, when a stern being in the brass buttons of authority gave me an unnecessary push, remarking briefly, "Hurry up!" Before I could wither him with a glance, the red light at the back of the train was winking jocosely at me, so there was nothing left to do but to follow my fellow sufferers, swallow my resentment along with the bad air, and proceed to soar upward.
Having recovered my mental balance I began to laugh. The awful majesty of temporary power, from a protoplasm up!
It is indeed a curious fact that the world is not so much governed by its ruling classes as by the lower ones, who exercise their temporary tyranny—in whatever capacity it be—with a colossal arrogance that leaves the arrogance of a higher sphere leagues behind. Who has not seen great ladies, majestic beings in their own drawing-rooms, wait patiently before a counter while the young "saleslady" finished an interesting conversation with a colleague in imitation diamonds. Possibly in private life the young "saleslady" was not at all proud; but place her behind a counter, and it gives her a moral support that makes her rise superior to the aristocracy and crush the middle classes.
Never shall I forget the pathetic sight of a distinguished general—one who fought and won a battle in the American Civil War, that decided the fortunes of the North—buying a pair of kid gloves from a superior young person in a glove store. He waited a long time very patiently while she exchanged a light badinage with an idle youth, splendid in the tallest kind of a collar.
"If you please," the general ventured, seeing the talk was not of business. The haughtiness with which she turned on him! "What do you want?"
She leaned on the counter with both hands in that most delightfully engaging and characteristic of shop attitudes. No, there was no badinage for the poor general, and as he had no taste and no ideas, she sold him the most dreadful yellow gloves, with which he was burdened when we met at the door. He showed them to me rather piteously.
"They don't look right, somehow," he sighed. "Why don't you change them?" I urged. "Because," the great man whispered, whose courage was famous in the land, "because I'm afraid of her."