“I think,” Leacraft slowly replied, while Agnes Ethel Tobit--she who had become inferentially the wife of the handsome Thomsen--arose and, walking to her husband’s side, leaned over the back of his chair, thus looking down upon the speaker, who had turned towards Thomsen, as if her movement was dictated by a desire to hear his friend more distinctly; “I think that the finest, the most inspiring--yes, the most delicate and subtle virtues flourish in a republic, such as this Republic of the United States is. I confess, I am in love with it; I love its people. They are superbly human, and humanly noble. The American gentleman, and he lives on no particular and restricted level--you find him among the firemen, the policemen, the clerks, the fathers of families--this unique man is always gracious, delightful, unerringly just. I believe that these traits develop most naturally under the dispensations of equality, reasonably understood. I think the most fruitful national life ensues, when a nation stands fundamentally, in its government, and in its social conceptions, for common sense standards, and an unqualified acceptance of the principles of personal freedom. I like these Americans. To me, their ardor, their naturalness, their hearty friendship, their generous self-forgetfulness, and a certain deferential amusement at the foibles of less emancipated cultures, is fascinating. Of course, there are stupid rich Americans, dressed in most obnoxious livery of affectation and imitation, men and women who have treacherous tendencies in their feelings and desires, willing always to kick their own country, and willing to leave it, but never willing to relinquish the luxuries its prosperity has enabled them to enjoy. There are also hateful middle-class Americans, who deteriorate the impressions made by the best aspects of the American heart and mind; but the substance and the spirit of the American life, however much disguised, or, from momentary and economic reasons obscured, is to me the most palatable; it is palpably the best life now shown on the world; it is the most energizing, the most alert, and it carries the power of enormous assimilation, because it is built on the essence of manhood, the respect for the rights of others. I know what is in your thoughts and on the point of your tongue. You would ask: How about the Chinaman, the Negro, and the Japanese, perhaps? That is a long question, and has nothing to do with my contention, for in a nutshell, respect for others’ rights does not involve respect for others’ habits, and generous as the Americans are, they are not so stupid as to wish to imperil, for an unnecessary sentiment, the hard-gained benefits of their own national experiment. They have already leavened the whole earth; it’s not to be expected that they digest all of its rubbish as well. Let the rest of the world do something for itself, and clean its own social sloughs, by a little more admixture of freedom and sympathy.