He could rattle off French and German like a native; he could imitate an Englishman's intonation to perfection; and yet he came to manhood with his own honest Ohio accent untouched. And where had he learned it? Not in Ohio, surely. He had been about as much in Ohio as I have in the moon. It was in his red blood, I suppose, to speak as the men of his family spoke--less so, for his vocabulary was bigger, but plainly, straightly, honestly, and with some regard for the way in which words are spelled. So speak the men who are the backbone of liberty, each with the honest accent that he is born to. Don't you suppose that Washington himself held forth in the molten, golden tones of Virginia? Do you think Adams said _bought_ and _caught_? He said _bot_ and _cot_. Did Lincoln use the broad A at Gettysburg? I think that in the words he there spoke the A's were narrow as heaven's gate. I think some of them struck against the base of his nose before they came out to strengthen the hearts of men, to rejoice God, and to thunder forever down the ages. It is, of course, more elegant to speak as we New Yorkers do. Everybody knows that. And I should advise all men to cultivate the accent and intonation--all men who are at leisure to perfect themselves. But honesty compels me to state that there has never been a truly great American who spoke any speech but his own--except that superlatively great Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin--of Boston. He didn't talk Philadelphianese. And you may cotton to that! II We must go back to the Fourth of July. When Benton returned with the French clothes Fitzhugh Williams rose from his downy couch and bathed in cold water. He was even an eager bather in France, rejoicing in the feeling of superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain of it. But in England, where everybody bathed--or at any rate had water in their rooms and splashed and said ah! ah! and oh! oh!--he regarded the morning bath as commonplace, and had often to be bribed into it. He now had Benton in to rub his back dry, and to hand him his clothes in sequence; it being his mother's notion that to be truly polite a man must be helpless in these matters and dependent. And when he had on his undershirt and his outer shirt and his stockings, he sat down to his breakfast of chocolate and rolls and Rillet de Tours, which the butler had just brought; and afterward brushed his teeth, finished dressing, and ordered Benton to call a fiacre. But finding his mother's victoria at the door he dismissed the hack, and talked stable matters with Cunningham, the coachman, and Fontenoy, the tiger, until his mother came--one of these lovely, trailing visions that are rare even in Paris, though common enough, I dare say, in paradise.