The Bent of International Intercourse [pp. 162-169]

'The Bent of International Intercourse.
ticed, dated April I2th. Carelessly his eye
ran down the column, until arrested by the
following paragraph, which was marked:
MARRIED.-In Grace Church, yesterday, by Rev.
Mr. Henry Rollins, of this city, and Miss
Agnes Denton, of Buffalo. No cards.
The couple will sail for Europe on the "Scotia"
today.
The waiter brought Charles Sydney his
supper, but it remained untouched upon the
table. He sat there silently, gazing into vacancy. His room was needed at last, and
the waiter approached and touched him respectfully upon the shoulder. Then, slowly
and painfully, as an old man moves, Sydney
arose and staggered out into the night.
I WAS deer-huniting in the Lockwood valley last summer, and I saw the Hermit of
Sawmill Mountain, sitting quietly in the door
of his cabin, and smoking a meerschaum
pipe, which never leaves his lips, they say,
day or- night. He arose as we drove up,
and tottered out into the sunshine. His
gait was feeble and stooping, his eyes lacklustre, his hair silver-gray, his hands nerveless, and his whole appearance that of a man
prematurely aged. He partook freely, with
very little urging, of our liquid supplies, and
afterwards grew quite garrulous. He was a
trifle daft, I concluded, for he jumbled Homer and Virgil and the latest market quotations together in inextricable confusion. It
was evident, however, that his education had
been excellent. With a grandiloquent wave
of the hand he placed the whole valley at
our disposal, and then tottered back into his
cabin as we rode off.
Thus, it is said, he treats all campers and
wayfarers. At other times he sits alone in
his cabin, muttering to himself and smoking,
and, in times of high winds, bending his
head to catch the music of the pines, and
waiting-waiting-for what?
Sol. Sheridan.
THE BENT OF INTERNATIONAL INTERCOURSE.
THE gift by a foreign country to the United
States of a statue of "Liberty enlightening
the World," carries with it a compliment of
no inconsiderable significance. It is a testimonial to the fact that Liberty has found a
congenial home within our confines. And
what is Liberty? " Liberty," says Victor
Hugo, "is the climate of civilization."
But in the face of this, what do we see?
Alien writers and lecturers coming to this
country, assuming the right to teach the
people, and proclaiming Europe as an exemplar, because they have been reared in an
older civilization and received its approval.
Throughout their discourses Europe is their
standpoint, and the way things are done in
Europe is their standard. But who is prepared to accept this criterion? Who, among
Americans, is willing to admit that the new
world would be altogether better for instruction from the old? Thomas Jefferson makes
the admission, it is true, but in a way from
which it is not necessary to dissent. During
the days of his diplomatic service abroad,
writing to James Monroe, he says:
"I sincerely wish that you may find it convenient
to come here; the pleasure of the trip will be less
than you expect, but the utility greater. It will make
you adore your own country, its soil, its climate, its
equality, liberty, laws, people, and manners."
What would be the effect of such advice
upon this generation? Let an American
hailing from any of the States of the Atlantic
sea-board travel abroad today, and he will
no doubt find a great contrast between that
life with which he is familiar and that which
he observes. But let a resident of ahy of
the Western States make the same tour, and
to him the contrast will be much more
marked, and the patriotic profit of travel,
perhaps, be greater, because the recent States
of the Union, within the last three or four
decades, have come to more closely resemble the country of Jefferson than do the
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162