The time required by Doctor Castleton to reach the home of Dirk Peters
had been about forty minutes; the time required by Doctor Bainbridge was
two and one-half times forty minutes, or only twenty minutes short of
two hours. Bainbridge drove a single horse, a beautiful, large, dappled
bay--an excellent animal, which, as most horses do, had learned those of
his master's ways that bore relation to his own interests. Bainbridge
was a lover of animals, as Castleton was not; Castleton was an admirer
of horses for their action, whilst with Bainbridge the welfare of his
horse was everything, and he never drove rapidly without a particular
and pressing necessity.
So we drove along in a leisurely way, conversing of Dirk Peters and the
Pym story, until we had arranged a plan of action for drawing out of the
old man an account of that voyage, the mere thought of which, coming
suddenly upon him, had affected him in the terrible manner which I had
that afternoon witnessed. Doctor Bainbridge explained to me that the
wild demonstrations made by Peters and described by me were a result,
not so much of any thought of those adventures on which he must have
pondered thousands of times in the forty-eight or forty-nine intervening
years, as it was of the manner in which the thoughts or mental pictures
had been brought to his mind.
"I need only remind you," he said, "of a single mental characteristic
within the experience of almost every person, to make this matter clear,
and to indicate what our course with the old man must be, and why I said
to you to come prepared for a long stay. Suppose, for instance, a woman
to have lost her husband through some extremely painful accident, his
death being not only sudden but of a horrifying nature, and that several
years have elapsed since she was widowed. Now, she has thought the
matter over ten thousand times, as the suggestion to do so entered her
mind by a hundred different routes, as, for instance, by the seeing of
something that her husband in life possessed, or by the drift of her own
thought bringing her to the subject by association or by indirect paths
of suggestion. Every day her mind has many times pictured the horrible
scene of death, until she is dry-eyed and passive amid a storm of sad
ideas. But now, after all these years, bring to her mind, suddenly and
by a strange route of suggestion, the same old horror--let a voice, and
particularly the voice of a stranger, remind her of the terrible
scene--and immediately the demonstration follows: the sobs of anguish,
the tears, all, as on the day of the accident. It is the method of
approach--the mode of suggestion when the fact is known but latent in
consciousness, that is responsible for the nervous demonstration. In
another instance, visual suggestion might have a similar result and
audible suggestion be harmless. I anticipate no serious obstruction in
the path to Peters' confidence. Patience, care, deliberate action--the
fact ever in mind that 'The more haste the less speed,' and we shall win
the prize for which we strive."
As we drove along in the bright moonlight, after we had determined on
our "method of approach" to Peters' mind, I felt confident that with the
knowledge and tact of Bainbridge we should certainly succeed in our
efforts; and I began to think along other lines. The friendly manner in
which I had been treated by all whom I had met in America, from the
millionaire coal operator down to the bell-boy, came into my thoughts. I
had not been treated as a foreigner, except to my own advantage, the
older residents of the town seeming to look upon me more as they might
look upon a man from another State of the Union. In America, even the
inland towns are cosmopolitan, while in England only the larger cities
and seaport towns have that characteristic. I was therefore able to
judge of certain questions not only from hearsay, but from actual
observation. I noticed, for example, that among the American
working-classes there existed a feeling of repugnance for the Chinaman.
Of the lower-class Italian, everybody thought enough to keep out of his
reach after dark. Germans and Irishmen were numerous, and each
individual was taken on his own merits. The English were universally
liked, wherever I went. True, there was a little tendency to allude to
the glories of Bunker Hill and the like; but this tendency was evinced
in a manner rather amusing than objectionable to an Englishman. If there
exists in the American heart a drop of bitterness for the English, I
never discovered it. I am writing now of the American-born American. I
gathered the idea that Frenchmen, as seen in America, were scarcely
taken seriously; though all Americans have been systematically educated
to respect and admire the French Nation. Of Spaniards, the prevalent
idea seemed to be that they were better at arm's length. (Anglo-Saxon
literature has been very unkind to the Spaniard.) I did not meet an
American that seemed to hate anybody--I do not conceive it possible for
an American to harbor the feeling of hatred.
As we jogged along, the idea entered my mind that I would, when I
returned home, write a treatise on "American Manners and Customs." "No
doubt," I said to myself, "I can in the next few minutes procure from
Bainbridge enough facts to make quite a book." I afterward abandoned the
intention; but at that moment my mind was filled with it. So I decided
to ask my companion a few leading questions, noting well his replies.
"And I will first," I determined within myself, "inquire into the mooted
point concerning the existence of an aristocratic feeling in the United
States. Some of our English writers on 'American Manners and Customs,'
and our most acute analysts of American character, say that the
Americans are great snobs, and are only too glad to claim the possession
of even the most distant aristocratic connection;" so I broached the
subject to Bainbridge.
"It interests me to convince you," he began, in reply, "that in the
United States there is scarcely a vestige of aristocratic feeling. In
fact as in theory, there is in this country but one class of people.
Such supposed barriers as wealth and political position are only
partitions of paper--relative nothings. I do not mention heredity,
because in the United States all attempts to establish a family line
result in the family rotting before it gets ripe. The only pretence to
hereditary pride which we have here, exists in two States; in one of
them some four or five hundred persons cannot forget that their
forefathers got to shore before somebody else; and in the other a few
families still dispute over the threadbare question of whose
great-great-grandmother cost the most pounds of tobacco. Now,
candidly--is this sufficient to justify a reproach from Europe that we
are striving to claim or to create an aristocracy?
"And then there is that other reproach--we're such outrageous
tuft-hunters. I shall not deny having seen an American run himself out
of breath to get a peep at a duke, but I never knew an American spend
money to see one, unless the American was too beastly rich to care for
money at all. And then, hereditary nobles do not wear well here. Let a
visiting duke be followed within a year by anything less than a king,
and the visitor will fail to excite anybody out of a walk. You must not
in England judge of this subject from the effect on our people of a
certain not remote visit; for the people of the United States have a
feeling of respect and affection for the present royal family of Great
Britain which no other royal family or individual, past or present, has
ever produced. Hum, hum! Our people mean well; but curiosity and
imitation will not die out of the human race till an inch or two more of
the spinal column drops off."
Still with a view to the gathering of facts for my intended treatise, I
asked Bainbridge to explain in what distinctive manner the people of the
United States were benefited by a republican form of government. He
replied that he knew nothing worth mentioning of the science of
government, and had never been outside of the United States.
"But," he continued, "I can tell you something of what the whole people
of this country enjoy. And to begin with, there is, as I have intimated,
in the United States but one class of people, aside from the criminal
class common to all lands, and that vicious but not relatively numerous
element which lives on the borderland between respectability and actual
crime. This truth seems sometimes to be questioned in Europe--why, I can
but guess. Who would attempt to enter the nurseries and schoolrooms of
our land today, and, by inquiring as to the parentage of the children,
select from among them any approximation to those from whom are to come,
in twenty or thirty years, the men that shall then govern our States,
sit in our National Congress, direct our army and navy, and control our
commerce? I have heard that in Europe it is rather the exception for a
son to reach exalted position when the father has earned a living by
manual labor. In the United States this is not the exception, but the
rule. At this moment the positions alluded to are here filled by the
sons of poor fathers. With us, inherited wealth appears to be rather a
detriment than an aid to political advancement of more than a petty
kind. 'And yet,' you may say, 'your people are not always satisfied.' No
advancing, upward-looking people is ever satisfied. With such a people,
too, the demagogue is a natural product; and the demagogue period of
this country is at hand. But there will never be a tom-fool revolution
in this fair land. The people here know that when they have universal
suffrage and majority rule they've pulled the last hair out of the end
of the cat's tail for them."