fearfully energetic; the energy of the people here is nothing to
that of the inquiring Briton. If we should devote half the energy
to building up our institutions that they devote to obtaining
information about them, we should have a very satisfactory country.
Mr. Antrobus seemed to think very well of us, which surprised me, on
the whole, because, say what one will, it's not so agreeable as
England. It's very horrid that this should be; and it's delightful,
when one thinks of it, that some things in England are, after all,
so disagreeable. At the same time, Mr. Antrobus appeared to be a
good deal pre-occupied with our dangers. I don't understand, quite,
what they are; they seem to me so few, on a Newport piazza, on this
bright, still day. But, after all, what one sees on a Newport
piazza is not America; it's the back of Europe! I don't mean to say
that I haven't noticed any dangers since my return; there are two or
three that seem to me very serious, but they are not those that Mr.
Antrobus means. One, for instance, is that we shall cease to speak
the English language, which I prefer so much to any other. It's
less and less spoken; American is crowding it out. All the children
speak American, and as a child's language it's dreadfully rough.
It's exclusively in use in the schools; all the magazines and
newspapers are in American. Of course, a people of fifty millions,
who have invented a new civilisation, have a right to a language of
their own; that's what they tell me, and I can't quarrel with it.
But I wish they had made it as pretty as the mother-tongue, from
which, after all, it is more or less derived. We ought to have
invented something as noble as our country. They tell me it's more
expressive, and yet some admirable things have been said in the
Queen's English. There can be no question of the Queen over here,
of course, and American no doubt is the music of the future. Poor
dear future, how "expressive" you'll be! For women and children, as