Chapter 1 - Page 2

written a book to prove it. (En passant, all Americans write books; those who have not, fully intend to write one.) I listened complacently, then said, "My dear ----, if I am not mistaken the Chinese discovered America." I recalled the fact to his mind that the northwestern Eskimos and the Indians were essentially Asiatic in type; and it is true that he had never heard of the ethnologic map at his National Museum, which shows the location of Chinese junks blown to American shores within a period of three hundred years. I explained that junks had been blown over to America for the last three thousand years, and that in my country there were many records of voyages to the Western land, ages before 1492.

You see I soon began to be Americanized and to claim things. China discovered America and gave her the compass as well as gunpowder. The first Americans were in the nature of emigrants; men and women who did not succeed well in their own country and so sought new fields, just as people are doing to-day. They came over in a ship called the "Mayflower," and were remarkably prolific, as I have met thousands who hail from this stock. At one time England sent her criminals to Virginia--one of the United States--and many of the refuse of the home country were sent to other parts of America in the early days. Younger sons of good families were also sent over for various reasons. Women of all classes were sent by the ship-load, and sold for wives. I reminded a lady of this, who was lamenting the fact that in China some women are sold for wives. She was absolutely ignorant of this well-known fact in American history, and forgot the selling of black women. Among the men were many representatives of old and noble families; but the bulk, I judge from their colonial histories, were people of low degree. Very soon other countries began to ship people to America. Italy, Germany, Russia, Norway, Sweden, and other lands were drawn upon for constantly increasing numbers as years went by. All tumbled into the American hopper. Imagine a coffee-grinder into which have been thrown Greek, Roman, Jew, Gentile, and all the rest, and then let what they call Uncle Sam--a heroic, paternal, and comical figure, representing the government--turn the handle and grind out the American who is neither Jew, Gentile, Greek, Roman, Russe, or Swede, but a new product, sui generis, and mostly Methodist.

This process has never ceased for an hour. America has been from 1492 to the present time, in the language of the American "press," the "dumping-ground" of the nations of the world, the real open door; yet this grinding assimilation has gone on. It is, perhaps, due to the climate, perhaps the water, or the air; but the product of these people born on the soil is described by no other word than American. It may be Irish-American, very offensive; Dutch-American, very strenuous, like the Vice-President;[1] Jewish-American, very