Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/154

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that he has no time to enquire as to the way in which the journals he confides in are "run." If he knew that the particular view taken of the political situation in a certain journal, was merely the political view ordered to be taken by one "Amurrican"—naturally he would not pin his simple faith upon it. Perhaps the Man in the Street will some day wake up to the realization that in many cases, (though not all) with respect to journalism, he only exists to be "gulled."

Like all good and bad things, the American Bounder, whether millionaire or only shabby-genteel, has a certain height beyond which he can no further go—a point where he culminates in a blaze of ultra Bounder-ism. This brilliant apotheosis is triumphantly reached in the Female of his species. The American Female Bounder is the quintessence of vulgarity, and in every way makes herself so objectionable even to her own people and country that Americans themselves view her departure for "Yew-rope" with perfect equanimity, and hope she will never come back. Once in what she calls "the old country" she talks all day long through her quivering nose of "Lady This" and "Countess That." One of this class I recall now as I write, who spoke openly of a "Mrs. Countess So-and-So"—and utterly declined to be instructed in any other form of address. She was not content to trace her lineage to such humble folk as the "Scroobys of Scrooby"—no indeed, not she! Kings were her ancestors; her "family tree" sprouted from Richard the Lion-Heart, according to her own bombastic assertion, and she, with her loud twanging voice, odious manners