"What were you whispering?" said the daughter of the house,
moistening her lips, as she spoke, in a very engaging manner.

"I was only laying down a principle of social diagnosis."

"Yes?"

- It is curious to see how the same wants and tastes find the same
implements and modes of expression in all times and places. The
young ladies of Otaheite, as you may see in Cook's Voyages, had a
sort of crinoline arrangement fully equal in radius to the largest
spread of our own lady-baskets. When I fling a Bay-State shawl
over my shoulders, I am only taking a lesson from the climate that
the Indian had learned before me. A BLANKET-shawl we call it, and
not a plaid; and we wear it like the aborigines, and not like the
Highlanders.

- We are the Romans of the modern world,--the great assimilating
people. Conflicts and conquests are of course necessary accidents
with us, as with our prototypes. And so we come to their style of
weapon. Our army sword is the short, stiff, pointed gladius of the
Romans; and the American bowie-knife is the same tool, modified to
meet the daily wants of civil society. I announce at this table an
axiom not to be found in Montesquieu or the journals of Congress:-


The race that shortens its weapons lengthens its boundaries.