Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/38

 young man who has been suddenly transplanted from the Old World—its ways of thinking, its traditional views of life, its struggles, illusions, and ideals—into a new world where he witnesses the operation of elementary forces in open daylight, and the realities of free government in undisguised exhibition. I endeavored to get at the essence of truly democratic life, and I still believe that, notwithstanding some errors in the detail of my observations, my general conclusions as to the vital element of democratic institutions were correct.

Some excursions into the interior of Pennsylvania, and to Connecticut, where a distant relative of ours conducted a manufacturing establishment, enlarged the range of my observation. On these occasions I made the acquaintance of a few specimens of the old Pennsylvania Germans, and of the Connecticut Yankees—two distinct elements of the population—both native, for several generations of those Pennsylvania Germans had lived in this country, but so different in language, in habits of thought, and in social traditions, customs, and notions, that the mere fact of their having lived, worked, and exercised the same political rights together in the Republic was to me a most instructive and encouraging illustration of the elasticity and the harmonizing power of democratic government.

What an astonishing spectacle these Pennsylvania Germans presented! Honest, pious, hardworking, prosperous people; good, law-abiding, patriotic American citizens; great-great-grandchildren of my own old Fatherland, who had for several generations tilled these acres and lived in these modest but comfortable houses and built these majestic barns, and preserved the German speech of their forefathers, only mixing it with some words and phrases of English origin. They call all English-speaking people “the Irish,” and kept alive many