“I know the tiresome and hackneyed nonsense, and the mean-spirited sneers of the European at the American, for his lack of culture, his defect in polish, his money-getting haste. And it’s all a lie!” Leacraft wheeled round as if on a pivot, and even in the pale light the Thomsens could see that his face flushed, and the stern decision of his voice betrayed the fires of resentment. “Who is it that these precious pretenders of Europe look to when they have famine and disaster; who has taught the lessons of sympathy, of open-hearted helpfulness, and unswerving generosity, or made them recognize in their own natures the almost exterminated seeds of kindness? As to culture, let me tell you in all seriousness that the idle glamour of a scholar’s diction does not weigh a barleycorn as against the flashing splendor of an honest and sincere spirit; as to polish, who made the European regard Woman as something better than the helpless ally of his lust, and the chained companion to his exultant vanity? Woman has gained a new empire of dignity in these new lands; she for once triumphs in the unquenched assertion of her rights. As to money-making greed, where under the canopy will you find a more meanly mercenary race than these same Europeans, inert panderers to pleasure for money, fortune hunters, and silent spectators of atrocities, if the risk of money loss stops their way to succor. I know the dolts and traitors on the American soil, the men and women who sell their birthright for the mess of pottage contained in a gilded name in Europe, or the hollow mockery of a coat-of-arms. These are the tattooed children of humbug--careless and ungrateful, indolent and self-seeking, lured by that strange beauty which Europe, for some inscrutable reason, seems to keep, and of which even I, an Englishman, feel jealous, for the sake of a country which may not be so good-looking, but which becomes every day more sublimely the appointed pattern of the future state. Well! my friends, you must pardon these ‘wild and whirling words.’ They may strike you as an unseemly tirade, but if you knew this land as well as I do, you, too, might trespass beyond the limits of moderation in its defense. But other matters have for you a less doubtful interest. The great physical revolution which has left its mark no less in the political world than in the material, has become consolidated and solidified into a permanent feature of the earth. The broad engulfment of the land at the isthmus has established an open way to the Pacific from the Atlantic, and the initial formation of the barrier northward from the Caribbean Sea by the erection of a ridge from Cuba to Yucatan, and partially from Jamaica to Honduras, this latter connexion the singular sequel to the disturbance which overwhelmed Kingston in 1907, has advanced far enough to effectually assist the momentous deflection of the Gulf Stream from the Atlantic. And another transformation has thereby been achieved.