Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/168

 MARK TWAIN

Germans, the Italians, the Swedes, the French, the Chinamen, the Greasers; and the Catholics, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregation- alists, the Baptists, the Spiritualists, the Mormons, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Jews, the Campbell- ites, the infidels, the Christian Scientists, the Mind- Curists, the Faith-Curists, the train-robbers, the White Caps, the Moonshiners. And when a thou sand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of the people, the life of the people, the speech of the people; and not anywhere else can these be had. And the shadings of character, man ners, feelings, ambitions, will be infinite.

The nature of a people is always of a similar shade in its vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its labor. // is this physiognomy which it is necessary to discover, and every document is good, from the hall of a casino to the church, from the foibles of a fashionable woman to the suggestions of a revo lutionary leader. I am therefore quite sure that this American soid, the principal interest and the great object of my voyage, appears behind the records of Newport for those who choose to see it. M. Paul Bourget.

[The italics are mine.] It is a large contract which he has undertaken. Records&quot; is a pretty poor word there, but I think the use of it is due to hasty translation. In the original the word is fastes. I think M. Bourget meant to suggest that he ex pected to find the great &quot;American soul&quot; secreted behind the ostentations of Newport; and that he was going to get it out and examine it, and generalize it, and psychologize it, and make it reveal to him its hidden vast mystery: &quot;the nature of the people&quot; of

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