do. This was peculiarly true of men from New England, whose intelligence
as well as interest seemed continually walking a tight-rope. The New
Englander was always and ever the sublimation of a blind, ineffable
vanity that went about proposing him as an example to the race. And so
consciously self-perfect was he that, while coming to opinions touching
others, generally to their disadvantage, he never once bethought him
that others might be forming opinions of him. Another New England
weakness was to believe in the measure more than in the man, and there
was not one from that section who did not think that if you but
introduced among negroes or Indians the New England town meeting, those
negroes or Indians, thus blessed, would all and instantly become
Yankees.

Another sublime provincial whom Richard uncovered was the Southern man.
He, like the New Englander, was so busy thinking on and revering a past
that was dead, that he owned little space for anything else. There was,
however, one characteristic, common to Southern men, which was wanting
in folk from other corners of the country. Richard never met a Southern
man who remembered, assuming such to be his official station, that he
was in Cabinet or Congress, while he never met a Northern or a Western
or a New England man who for a moment forgot it.

This amiable democracy on the Southern part, like other good things, has
its explanation. Your Southern man, like a squab pigeon, is biggest when
he is born. The one first great fact of his nativity is an honor beyond
any other which the world can confer. It is as though he were cradled on
a peak; and thereafter, wherever his wanderings may take him, and
whether into Congress, Cabinet, or White House, he travels always
downhill. It is this to account for that benignant urbanity, the
inevitable mark of a Southern man, which teaches him faith in you as