Each in their way were great benefactors, the one by teaching
the Yankees to respect themselves, and the other by putting his
countrymen in an upright posture of happiness. So I can join hands
with the North Briton, and bless them both.
"With this national and nateral infirmity therefore, is it to be
wondered at if, as my 'Sayings and Doings' have become more popular
than you or I ever expected, that I should crack and boast of them? I
think not. If I have a claim, my role is to go ahead with it. Now
don't leave out my braggin', Squire, because you are afraid people
will think it is you speaking, and not me, or because you think it is
bad taste as you call it. I know what I am at, and don't go it--blind.
My Journal contains much for my own countrymen as well as the English,
for we expect every American abroad to sustain the reputation in
himself of our great nation.
"Now our Minister to Victoria's Court, when he made his brag speech to
the great agricultural dinner at Gloucester last year, didn't intend
that for the British, but for us. So in Congress no man in either
house can speak or read an oration more than an hour long, but he can
send the whole lockrum, includin' what he didn't say, to the papers.
One has to brag before foreign assemblies, the other before a
Congress, but both have an eye to the feelings of the Americans at
large, and their own constituents in particular.
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