It will not quite do to say that the non-millionaire American enjoys in
England the interest mixed with commiseration which is the lot of a poor
relation of the great among kindly people. That would not be true, and
possibly the fact is merely that the name American first awakens in the
English some such associations with riches as the name South African
awakened before it awakened others more poignant and more personal.
Already the South African had begun to rival the American in the popular
imagination; as the Boer war fades more and more into the past, the time
may come when we shall be confusedly welcomed as Africanders or South
Americans.

If I were to offer what I have been saying as my opinions, or my
conclusions from sufficient observations I should be unfair, if not
uncandid. The sum of what one sees and hears in a foreign country is as
nothing to the sum of what one does not see and hear; and the immense
balance may be so far against the foregoing inferences that it is the
part of mere prudence to declare that they are not my opinions or
conclusions, but are only impressions, vague and hurried, guesses from
cursory observations, deductions from slight casual incidents. They are
mere gleams from social facets, sparks struck out by chance encounter,
and never glancing lights from the rarefied atmosphere in which the two
nations have their formal reciprocities. For all that I have really the
right to say from substantial evidence to the contrary, I might very
well say that the English value us for those things of the mind and soul
which we are somewhat neglectful of ourselves, and I insist the more,
therefore, that it is only their love of fairy-tales which is taken with
the notion of an opulence so widespread among us as to constitute us a
nation of potential, if not actual, millionaires.

They would hasten to reproach me, I am afraid, for speaking of England,