“Really? I wonder where you got all your cut-and-dried notions about Englishmen? You seem to have a great capacity for contempt. I don’t think it is good. My experience is rather limited, of course, but, as far as it goes, I find good and bad in all nations. There are Englishmen whom I find it impossible to like, and there are Americans whom I find I admire in spite of myself. There are also, doubtless, good Englishmen and bad Americans, if we only knew where to find them. You cannot sum up a nation and condemn it in a phrase, you know.”
“Can’t you? Well, literary Englishmen have tried to do so in the case of America. No English writer has ever dealt even fairly with the United States.”
“Don’t you think the States are a little too sensitive about the matter?”
“Sensitive? Bless you, we don’t mind it a bit.”
“Then where’s the harm? Besides, America has its revenge in you. Your scathing contempt more than balances the account.”
“I only wish I could write. Then I would let you know what I think of you.”
“Oh, don’t publish a book about us. I wouldn’t like to see war between the two countries.”
Miss Jessop laughed merrily for so belligerent a person.
“War?” she cried. “I hope yet to see an American army camped in London.”
“If that is your desire, you can see it any day in summer. You will find them tenting out at the Métropole and all the expensive hotels. I bivouacked with an invader there some weeks ago, and he was enduring the rigours of camp life with great fortitude, mitigating his trials with unlimited champagne.”