What a curious people,
aged and young, corrupt and idealistic, candid and hypocritical,
religious and materialistic, hoarders and spenders, self-righteous,
licentious, Puritanical." "Like all others," I interjected.
"Like no other," Aldington rejoined. "Go back to your native England and
see. You have forgotten some things. There is such a thing as a definite
stock. And if you call the English bulldogs, for example, your America
is a mixture of the wolf, spaniel, lapdog, shepherd, and about all
breeds; and according to the occasion any one of them, with quick
changes. Abigail and I have been here for a number of days and we have
been entertained by some of her splendacious friends, to use Thackeray's
adjective for American fashion; and the impression it all makes on me is
beyond description. I want to see a better thing made of Chicago. I
really hate it here, all this striving for money--but of course no place
can beat Chicago for that--but also the idlers here, the worship of
Mammon, the dullness and the gloom of elegant people, the extravagant
dressing, the liveried servants, all this imitation. And all this talk
here of America being the only religious, free, and enlightened people
in the world. Why, they are not free at all. The mind must be free
before the man is free, and the mind cannot be free in a despotism.
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