Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/156

 And thus it often happens that one frequently meets her where she has no business to be. One is not surprised to find her at Court, or in the Royal enclosure at Ascot, because so many of her British sisters in the Bounder line are in these places, ready to give her a helping hand—but one is occasionally startled and in a manner sorry to discover her making herself at home among certain "exclusive" people who are chiefly distinguished for their good-breeding, culture and refinement. In one thing, however, we can take much comfort, and this is, that whatever the American Bounder, Male or Female, may purchase or otherwise insidiously obtain in the Old World, neither he nor she can ever secure respect. Driven to bay as the Britisher may be by consummate and pertinacious lying, he can and does withhold from the liars his honest esteem. He may sell a valuable manuscript or picture to a "bounding" Yankee, out of sheer necessitous circumstance, but he will never be "friends" with the purchaser. He will call him "bounder" to the crack of doom, and Doomsday itself will not alter that impression of him.

It may be, and it is I think, taken for granted that America itself is very glad to get rid of its "bounders." It regards them with as much shame and distress as we feel when we see certain specimens of "travelling English" disporting themselves upon the Continent in the 'Arry and Jemima way. We always fervently hope that our Continental neighbours will not take these extraordinary roughs as bona-fide examples of the British people, and in the same way America trusts all the nations of Europe not to accept their "Bounders" as