A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW

OF

THE UNITED STATES:

THE SUBSTANCE OF A SERIES OF ADDRESSES.

I HAVE a strong belief that all of us ought to know the Americans better than we do. They are really and truly our kin. This is not a mere phrase. When one goes among them one finds that they are very little removed from us after all, and the community of language makes intimacy very easy. An inti

mate acquaintance and friendship with them must be most beneficial to both parties, in order to cultivate the arts of peace and material progress, and to avert the possibility of misunderstandings which have led, and might even yet lead to war between two sister countries, than which, in these modern days of destruction, nothing can be more awful or more terrible; but a risk to which we are always exposed as long as misunderstandings are possible. It seems to me very unfortunate that most of the popular English writers who have described the Americans have caricatured them; and that is so not only as regards the writers of the past who have suffered

from American finance or otherwise, but even the popular writer Anthony Trollope, who is still among us, and who some years ago gave us a description of the Americans in his very vivid and popular manner, seems to me to have done them the greatest injustice. He seems to make the worst of everything; most of their ways and institutions he condemns to, I think, an unfair degree; and you may imagine the spirit in which he wrote, when I mention that writing in the latter part of the great civil war he condemns, in language the most scathing, all who would do any thing so mad and foolish as to emancipate the slaves. The only wonder to me is that after all that has passed the feeling of the Americans towards us is so good as it in fact is. They really have a very kindly feeling on their part; and if there is misunderstanding I think it is more due to ignorance and prejudice on the part of many people in England, though I hope not in Kirkcaldy, which has so much and so benefi cial business with America. It is certainly the case that the Americans who come to Europe do not feel themselves at their ease in England, and consequently it happens-a very lamentable fact, I think—that, almost invariably, after spending a few days in the country and seeing Windsor, Stratford-on-Avon, and Abbotsford, they go abroad to the Continent of Europe and spend their time and money there. I think this should be cured. We should welcome them more than we do; and I would very much urge on all of you who can make it out to go and see for yourselves in America what kind of people they