Here indeed is the sum total of the matter. If Great Britain--and other countries in Europe--but Great Britain especially--did not “receive” and encourage the American Bounder and Bounderess, these objectionable creatures would never be known or heard of. Therefore it is our fault that they exist. Were it not for our short-sighted foolishness, and our proneness to believe that every “Am_urr_ican” with money must be worth knowing, we should be better able to sort the sheep from the goats. We should add to the pleasures of our social life and intercourse an agreeable knowledge of the real American ladies, the real American gentlemen; and though these are seldom seen over here, for the very good reason that they are valued and wanted in their own country, they could at least be certain, when they did come, of being received at their proper valuation, and not set to herd with the “Bounders” of their country, whom their country rejects. For one may presume that there is some cogent reason why an American citizen of the Greatest Republic in the world, should elect to desert his native land and “settle down” under “rotten old monarchies.” People do not leave the home of their birth for ever unless they find it impossible to live there for causes best known to themselves. The poor are often compelled to emigrate, we know, in the hope to find employment and food in other countries--but when the rich “slope off” from the very centres where they have made their capital, one may be permitted to doubt the purity of their intentions. Anyway, surrounded as we are to-day socially by American Bounders of every description,--American Bounders who think themselves as good as any one else “and a darned sight better”--American Bounders who declare that they are the “real old British race renewed,”--American Bounders who “run” British journals of “literary opinion” and so forth,--American Bounders who thrust themselves into the company of unhappy kings and queens,--those crowned slaves who in such earthquaking days as these have to be more than common careful “not to offend,”--American Bounders who themselves claim kinship with the blood royal,--the one straight and simple fact remains--namely, that all the best Americans still live in America! COWARD ADAM Among the numerous fascinating and delightful members of the male sex whom I have the honour to count as friends, there is one very handsome and devotedly attentive gentleman of four years old, who is particularly fond of reciting to me in private the following striking poem on the Fall of Man. When Mister Sarpint did deceive Poor little silly Missis Eve, The Lord he spied an apple gone From off the branch it hanged upon; That apple was a heavy loss, And so the Lord got very cross, He searched the garden through and through, And called “Hi Adam! where are you?” But Mister Adam, he, Clum up a tree.