Compatriot

“ But to a sensitive American it is far from pleasant to have the country he loves represented by a tableful of vulgarians noisily attracting the attention of a whole dining-room, and to have a European say mockingly, "Ah, and those are your compatriots?" ”

“ And England mingles with a hundred lands.
And weaving silently all far-off shores
A thousand singing wires stretch round the earth,
Or sleep still vocal in their ocean depths,
Till all lands die to make one glorious birth.
So we remote compatriots reply,
And feel the world-task only half begun:
"We are the girders of the ageing earth,
Whose veins are million, but whose heart is one." ”

“ The next time you meet a family of emigrants on the frontier, you will probably observe them a little more closely.
Not a few of those who bear a prominent part in the government of our country—more than one of the first men of the nation—men whose names are now heard in connection with the highest office of the people—twenty years ago, occupied a place as humble in the scale of influence, as that flaxen-haired son of the stoop-shouldered emigrant. Such are the elements of our civilization—such the spirit of our institutions! ”

“ The emigrant breaks with his past, closes the volume of his British birth, with all of pride, honour, and love that it includes, and puts it from him altogether, or retains it only as the goal which he may hope to attain again for the comfort of his declining years. The emigrant, in a word, if he be a man of ordinary patriotism and good feeling, is to be pitied. ”

“ If we have ever for a moment given place to the traveller's vanity, in thinking, that in visiting some new and distant region, we had achieved an exploit,—on reaching the desired point, that vanity has been instantly corrected by finding compatriots there before us, who seemed quite at home, and wholly unconscious, that the attainment of their new domicil had given them any claims to celebrity. ”

“ In your relations with foreigners, the glorious success of our arms, the power and wisdom of your government, the grand and generous views of the First Consul for the pacification of Europe, the order that he has restored in the interior of France, furnish you with the means of giving to foreign peoples just ideas upon the real state of the Republic and upon the prosperity which is assured to it." The men of science who had promoted the voyage were anxious that not even a similitude of irregularity should be permitted. ”

“ Once more all the accepted values were reversed, and it turned out that Miss Wincher had been in possession of some key to success on which Undine had not yet put her hand. To know that others were indifferent to what she had thought important was to cheapen all present pleasure and turn the whole force of her desires in a new direction. What she wanted for the moment was to linger on in Paris, prolonging her flirtation with Chelles, and profiting by it to detach herself from her compatriots and enter doors closed to their approach. ”

“ Foreigners, too, have aided me in my task as much as my own country, and I shall carry to my grave a feeling of affection for Europe as well as for France, to whom I would at times go on my knees and entreat not to divide her own household by fratricidal jealousy, nor to forget her duty and her common task, which is civilization. ”

“ Here I struck the type of the small diplomat, whose delight is the social tittle-tattle, who, having no affairs of real consequence to attend to, always strives to magnify his little routine business into great transactions of state, and affects mysterious wisdom by the knowing wink and the smile of the augur. Most of my colleagues were serious and well-informed men—not, indeed, statesmen of the highest order—but attentive observers and good reasoners, of whom one could learn something. ”

“ His audience comprised two thousand foreign-born men who had just been admitted to citizenship. They listened intently, their faces, aglow with the light of a new-born patriotism, upturned to the calm, intellectual face of the first citizen of the country they now claimed as their own. ”

“ Our nation being made up of the best blood of the nations of Europe, we learn to know the people at home through the representatives who come here. Because of our intimate connection with the foreign elements of our country our sympathy goes out to all lands; and because we have received from other nations as no other nation ever did, we are in duty bound to give as no other nation has given. ”

“ It is with the greatest pleasure that I have heard the expressions of friendship for my country, because of my feeling toward you and because of the special relations which exist between the two countries. We are engaged together in the prosecution of a great, a momentous enterprise—an enterprise which has been the dream not only of the early navigators who first colonized your coasts, but of the most progressive of mankind for four centuries. ”

“ In every other country in Europe, all the people are our friends. We found in the course of the revolution that many strangers served us faithfully, and that many natives took part against their country. When foreigners, after looking about for some other country in which they can obtain more happiness, give a preference to ours, it is a proof of attachment which ought to excite our confidence and affection. ”

“ How can we exaggerate the distance at which a lad, fresh from college and a remote provincial society, would look up to the distinguished diplomatist of sixty, who had been intimate with the two last kings, and was still the confidential friend of the reigning king, who had been an actor in the greatest scenes, not only of English, but of European history, who had been treated with respect by the ministers of Louis XIV., and in whose honour bells had been rung, and banquets set forth as he passed through the great continental cities? ”

“ Do you comprehend that I am a colonel in the army, and this gentleman a learned traveller, noting down the manners and customs of foreign lands? When strangers of our position come this way again understand that double what you have demanded is the least that you should take. ”

“ It is here that we shall take up our abode among you, and the cordiality of your words makes me feel that which I have known since we landed: that it is to no foreign country that we come, but that we have only crossed the sea to find ourselves among our own people, and to be greeted by friends on coming to a home. ”

“ The diplomatic career thus opened to young courtiers, if they proved themselves fit for service by experience in foreign countries, was therefore as strong a motive for travel as the desire to reach the source of humanism. ”

“ And around this kernel of good-fellowship formed a fringe of other good fellows who came and went, men from the country, men from the far parts of the world, soldiers, sailors, planters, explorers, country squires. ”

“ Have we recovered from the ennui of our long voyage? He showers us with solicitation as to our welfare and immediately we feel that we are among friends. It is a habit that these foreign officials have, to make one at home upon the instant. ”

“ But who is to remedy this unfornate susceptibility on the part of foreigners? The foreign employé has his work to do—diplomatic, professional, or commercial; the native is in no particular hurry to court the esteem of outsiders, being quite contented with his own high estimate of himself. Must it always be an officer "on short leave," or a journalist in a hurry, who undertakes to record superficial impressions of a passing spectacle? ”

“ I have no men now," said Aymar, colouring.
"You have—what I once wished you, Monsieur, if you remember—your sword again," said Colonel Richard.
"It's your brains, your advice that I want, Monsieur de la Rocheterie," said the Royalist. "It will be a matter of arrangement with our allies, after we have come to an understanding with our compatriots. We can talk about it this evening. ”

“ In every foreign region of the globe the title of American citizen is held in the highest respect, and when pronounced in a foreign land it causes the hearts of our countrymen to swell with honest pride. ”

“ The very character of the present solemnities which have brought this delegation to America awakens with us in France a peculiar feeling of sympathy and grateful retrospection. Our intellectual world, our literary men—all who are versed in historical research and who cherish the great memories of the past—look back with love and pride upon the one time humble heroes whose venturous spirit and whose wonderful foresight made of their [66] own mother country the glorious promoter of civilization. ”

“ If there are any gentlemen present who may think themselves warranted by their connections with the Colonies in aiding to insure a friendly reception of my communication there, it will be a source of gratification both to me and my colleagues to view such efforts, so entirely in unison with our own, and to welcome them as fellow-workers in the same cause. ”

“ Many native gentlemen, some of the highest rank, cultivate European society, and every European who has anything of the gentleman in him treats them with the courtesy due to their position. Natives of this class are, as a rule, most gentlemanly in their demeanour, and intercourse with them is very pleasant. ”

“ For, at this day, gray-haired veterans in states-craft recognize with clearness the binding tie of humanity, and esteem it the highest statesmanlike wisdom, and the noblest achievement of diplomacy, to stay the effusion of blood, and to bind in concord the families of nations. ”

“ There may be—nay, there are—many jealousies and causes of estrangement between the people of the Old Country and of the New, but between the individuals of both there is a camaraderie which cannot, I believe, be found between Englishmen and the natives of any country except America. ”

“ Therefore, I am convinced, firmly convinced, that you, for instance, supposing you wished to enter the diplomatic career, could be of the greatest service to France; for you not only possess the art of pleasing, your success in society attests it, but you have also solid and eminent qualities. ”

“ The resident diplomats, I have heard, say that they find society there more agreeable than at any other capital—at least those who have the qualities to make themselves agreeable independent of their rank. ”

“ I am quite aware that you have many military, naval, and civil officers to provide for, and I am also aware of the advantages which they all possess, in comparison with any colonial gentleman, from being in England or having friends in the House, or elsewhere, to press their claims. ”

“ Every American who visits foreign countries, whether as the accredited official representative of his government, or simply in the character of a private citizen, owes a duty to his native land, as one of those by the observance of whom strangers are forming an estimate of the social and political advancement of the people who are making the great experiment of the world, and upon whom the eyes of all are fixed with a peculiar and scrutinizing interest. ”

“ Examine the situation of that country comparatively to us: the extent and situation of that country is totally different from ours; their country is surrounded by powerful, ambitious, and reciprocally jealous nations; their territory small, and soil not very fertile. The peculiarity, sir, of their situation, has kept them together, and not that system of alliance to which the gentleman seems to attribute the durability and felicity of their connection. ”

“ As the diplomatic representative of a great Power it was a part of my official duty to inform myself of everything that tended to show the animus of the people or the drift of their social and political inclinations. I do not see how any foreigner could ever have fuller facilities than I enjoyed for getting at the real facts. ”

“ The usages of all Europe, those of the English excepted, differ from our own on the subject of visits. There the stranger, or the latest arrival, is expected to make the first visit, and an inquiry for your address is always taken for an intimation that your acquaintance would be acceptable. Many, perhaps most Americans, lose a great deal through their provincial breeding, in this respect, in waiting for attentions that it is their duty to invite, by putting themselves in the way of receiving them. ”

“ And I’m sure you’ll be interested when I tell you that, if you’ll only do as I ask, I shall be able to marry one of your own compatriots—such a beautiful heroic youth! It is for him, for him only, that I long to be wealthy again. ”

“ He was not alone. Every young diplomat, and most of the old ones, felt awkward in an English house from a certainty that they were not precisely wanted there, and a possibility that they might be told so. ”

“ The reader who has not delved into the diplomatic correspondence does not readily conceive of the range of subjects which thus come under the attention of an American minister abroad, in the present habit, which unites the old diplomacy and the formality of old centuries with the hustling end-of-the-century practice, in which every citizen enjoys the attention of the minister. ”

“ The reports of diplomatic and consular officers in relation to the development of our foreign commerce have furnished many facts that have proved of public interest and have stimulated to practical exertion the enterprise of our people. ”

“ The very thought that speeds the emigrant pulls at the heart-strings of the immigrant; drawing home one son from the outposts, while thrusting out another toward the outposts, there to learn what England means, and to earn and deserve the glory of his birthright. ”

“ Unfortunately, there are always too few of him. He is hampered by having no residents in the British colony that he can consult. The first years of a diplomatist’s life in a foreign country are occupied in learning the lie of the land. ”