Distinguished Americans have one weakness,—they are always too ready to
discover imputations on the United States and its civi- lisation and resent them. Some silly German papers have been describing Thomassen's (alias Alexander's) crime as " the natural result and climax of the mercenary civilisation of America ;" whereupon the Rev. Dr. Thomson, a distinguished American in Berlin, addresses a meeting of sympathetic Germans on the sub - ject, and says he has no intention of protesting against the doc- trine of the Berlin papers referred to. Well, then, why did he address the meeting ? When the little boy began vehemently protesting he hadn't been eating the raisins, his friends all took it as an involuntary confession that he had ; and that is the view most people will take of the Rev. Dr. Thomson's remark, that he was not protesting against a doctrine which he strove to upset by reading a strong testimonial to American character by Karl Schurz. Personally Yankee politicians never blush, but politically they blush like girls at nothing at all ; yet it is not a dignified „habit, and far from a useful one.
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