IN THE COUNTRY ARE THE TRUE AMERICANS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXVI, Issue 1323, 28 August 1894, Page 6

IN THE COUNTRY ARE THE TRUE AMERICANS.

Great cities, among us, are typical of the Republic as a whole, but the citizens of our great cities have their nationality brushed off at their elbows. In the country there are still purely American communities, whose fathers and grandfathers were American before them. Moreover, in the country the foreigner becomes more quickly Americanised. In New York he hardly'pays us the compliment of learning our language.

And it is not strange that the few foreigners who have either the wit or the good fortune to penetrate into what they' call the “ provinces ” are our kind* estjudges, for they have seen THE AMERICAN AT HIS BEST.

They have touched both the picturesque and the gentle side of our national character. It is not in the great cities, but in the little cities and the villages that one sees the class that Emerson loved, the plain livers and high thinkers, or another class, not so plain in its living, not so high in its thinking in one way, but practical followers of righteousness and exceedingly pleasant people to meet. Many of them have %vhat counted for wealth in a simpler generation ; all of them have education and a generous habit of mind. THEY LOVE THEIR COUNTRY, but they are a little shy of politics ; nevertheless they furnish the pith of the Republic. They are the silent Warwicks that make and unmake party kings, asking and expecting no reward, and only half-conscious of their own power. Most of the women treasure up, somewhere, an old sword or a pair of tarnished shoulder straps, belonging, it may be to a gray, it may be to a blue uniform, but worn by equally honest fellows. The men are in touch with the present, but they keep the sturdy virtues taught them by their fathers, and, God be thanked, they will transmit them to their sons.