Americans, and, though I cannot expect them to feel for me as I feel for
them, I cherish the belief that, at any rate, they do not dislike me
instinctively. That many of them regard me as somewhat wild and
injudicious in my praise of their country I am well aware. They hold
that I often praise America not only too much, but that I praise her for
the wrong things,--praise, indeed, where I ought to censure, and so
"spoil" their countrymen. Well, if that is a true bill, all I can say is
that it is too late to expect me to mend my ways.

During my boyhood people here understood America much less than they do
now. Though I should be exaggerating if I said that there was anything
approaching dislike of America or Americans, there were certain
intellectual people in England who were apt to parade a kind of
conscious and supercilious patronage of the wilder products of American
life and literature. I heard exaggerated stories about Americans, and
especially about the Americans of the Far West,--heard them, that is,
represented as semi-barbarians, coarse, rash, and boastful, with bad
manners and no feeling for the reticences of life. Such legends
exasperated me beyond words. I felt as did the author of _Ionica_
on re-reading the play of Ajax.

The world may like, for all I care,
The gentler voice, the cooler head,
That bows a rival to despair,
And cheaply compliments the dead.

That smiles at all that's coarse and rash,
Yet wins the trophies of the fight,
Unscathed in honour's wreck and crash,
Heartless, but always in the right.