Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/158

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set to herd with the "Bounders" of their country, whom their country rejects. For one may presume that there is some cogent reason why an American citizen of the Greatest Republic in the world, should elect to desert his native land and "settle down" under "rotten old monarchies." People do not leave the home of their birth for ever unless they find it impossible to live there for causes best known to themselves. The poor are often compelled to emigrate, we know, in the hope to find employment and food in other countries—but when the rich "slope off" from the very centres where they have made their capital, one may be permitted to doubt the purity of their intentions. Anyway, surrounded as we are to-day socially by American Bounders of every description,—American Bounders who think themselves as good as any one else "and a darned sight better"—American Bounders who declare that they are the "real old British race renewed,"—American Bounders who "run" British journals of "literary opinion" and so forth,—American Bounders who thrust themselves into the company of unhappy kings and queens,—those crowned slaves who in such earthquaking days as these have to be more than common careful "not to offend,"—American Bounders who themselves claim kinship with the blood royal,—the one straight and simple fact remains—namely, that all the best Americans still live in America!