truth. Do not tell the Eskimos that snow is bright green; nor tell the
negroes in Africa that the sun never shines in that Dark Continent.
Rather tell the Eskimos that the sun never shines in Africa; and then,
turning to the tropical Africans, see if they will believe that snow is
green. Similarly, the course indicated for you is to slander the
Russians to the English and the English to the Russians; and there are
hundreds of good old reliable slanders which can still be used against
both of them. There are probably still Russians who believe that every
English gentleman puts a rope round his wife's neck and sells her in
Smithfield. There are certainly still Englishmen who believe that every
Russian gentleman takes a rope to his wife's back and whips her every
day. But these stories, picturesque and useful as they are, have a limit
to their use like everything else; and the limit consists in the fact
that they are not _true_, and that there necessarily exists a group of
persons who know they are not true. It is so with matters of fact about
which you asseverate so positively to us, as if they were matters of
opinion. Scarborough might be a fortress; but it is not. I happen to
know it is not. Mr. Morel may deserve to be universally admired in
England; but he is not universally admired in England. Tell the Russians
that he is by all means; but do not tell us. We have seen him; we have
also seen Scarborough. You should think of this before you speak.

Third, don't perpetually boast that you are cultured in language which
proves that you are not. You claim to thrust yourself upon everybody on
the ground that you are stuffed with wit and wisdom, and have enough for
the whole world. But people who have wit enough for the whole world,
have wit enough for a whole newspaper paragraph. And you can seldom get
through even a whole paragraph without being monotonous, or irrelevant,
or unintelligible, or self-contradictory, or broken-minded generally. If
you have something to teach us, teach it to us now. If you propose to