I had to
give up a visit to the scenery of Cooper's best Indian novels--no
slight sacrifice--and hasten at once to New York to repair the loss.
This incident brought me, on an evening near the middle of September
1874, on board a river steamboat starting from Albany, the capital of
the State, for the Empire City. The banks of the lower Hudson are as
well worth seeing as those of the Rhine itself, but even America has
not yet devised means of lighting them up at night, and consequently I
had no amusement but such as I could find in the conversation of my
fellow-travellers. With one of these, whose abstinence from personal
questions led me to take him for an Englishman, I spoke of my visit to
Niagara--the one wonder of the world that answers its warranty--and to
Montreal. As I spoke of the strong and general Canadian feeling of
loyalty to the English Crown and connection, a Yankee bystander
observed--
"Wal, stranger, I reckon we could take 'em if we wanted tu!"
"Yes," I replied, "if you think them worth the price. But if you do,
you rate them even more highly than they rate themselves; and English
colonists are not much behind the citizens of the model Republic in
honest self-esteem.
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