Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1892-09-15
GEO. wM. CURTIS LAST ARTICLE.
An Extract from His September ..p..
Chair'--last Nynras NJ "

eo"ii> LAST ARTICLE.
An Extract from His September ..Easv
Chair"--Last Words He wrste.
The part OF the English speaking
people that inhabits the British
Islands is apt TO show, among its
more ignorant classes, much moro
brutishness than is shown by the
American branch of the race. Sew.
enty and eighty years ago., when the
American Englishman foolishly ner.
mittee himself to be very much dis
turped by the gibes of the British
traveller, who, seeing our sensitive
ness, took especial pleasure i'm prick-
ing and prodding us with his men.
which, after all, was more blunt than
pointed. In those belligerent DAYS
our literary forefathers angrily
retorted with the tn loo and
there are pamphlets of the time which
are mainly catalogues of incidents of
brutality and outrage culled from the
British papers.
These dreadful people," said the
Briton, ''spit a great deal and eat
peas with a knife, and sit in their
shirt sleeves at the theater and ask q
great many questions, and speak the
language somewhat differently from
us. Pigs run at large in the streets
of New York city, and in general it is
a vain, vulgar and boastful people.
In the whole chorus of writers who
ex~asperated us by such comments
there was no n of ability, no one
who was worthy of attention, hardly
one who could be called clever. But
the effect upon u sensitiveness was
undeniable, and none of them was
visited with more wrath than a GER
tain commonplace clergyman named
Fidler, who might have been a curate
in n of Miss Austen,s novels, and
whose dizziness was so dense as to be
entertaining.
The rejoinder, however, was always
crushing. If Americans eat peas
with a knife, Englishmen kicked
their wives and sold them in open
market, and every offense against
social convention on our part was set
off by an offense against common
humanity or the part of John Bull.
The catalogue was long and painful,
and it left the same impression OF
brutality among the lower English
classes that is derived from the Eng
lish novels of the last century, and
from hints in Hogarth's pictures and
which is constantly confirmed by cur
rent reports. The latest of such stor-
les is that of the missile thrown at
Mr.. Gladstone and the riot at the
speech of Mr.. Stanley.
Our elections are excited and there
is sometimes a quarrel at the polls.
But there is no breaking up the meet
ings Of one party by the attacks of
the other. Just after the adoption of
the Constitution Alexander Hamilton
made a speech in the open air in New
York and stones were thrown at him;
and in the hot campaigns that pre-
ceded the civil war there were some
times violent interruptions of polit-
zeal meetings. But the custom OF
our campaigns is wholly different.
Each side respects the meetings of the
other, and a personal indignity from
a Democratic opponent TO Mr..
Edmunds' speaking upon the stump
would be resented upon all sides as
warmly as a republican assault upon
Mr.. Bayard.
Such a scene as that at Lambeth in
London, where Mr.. Stanley and his
wife were driven from the platform
by an angry mob, which sought to
tear them from their carriage, and
from which they escaped only with
great difficulty, is wholly unknown in
this part of the English speaking
world. Yet it seems to be very
familiar in the British Islands. 1t
springs from the same spirit that
makes prize fighting a national lnstl-
tuition, and which made Tame feel
that upon a certain kind OF English
men the veneer OF civilization is very
| thin.