E , WHO ARE AMERICANS? H M I s Some gentlemen were gathered in a room in Wt If 1 ' this city recently when two of them engaged in a HI n 1 chaffing match over their lespective nationalities. Hj, L Said one, "You claim to be an American. You Hj II f are but a back number, you are butua reproduction H' 1 i ! of the men who eight hundred years ago came WLr 9 ' down across the border, stole English cattle from Hf 5 1 Cumberland, Northumberland, and Durham, and H 1 ran them off into the Highlands." H I ! "You are only half right," said the other, "my Hj , I mother was a lineal descendent of a gentleman Hf who was hanged in County Cork for shooting a H U landlord In 1797." But continuing, he said: "You H ilj I claim English descent; what a fraud you are. Look H S I at your black eyes and hair. Your family began H 1 with a French officer who went over to England H, I with Queen Elinor seven hundred and fifty years H I ago, and married a Welsh woman." H. i Then another gentleman said: "There is no II v distinct race in Great Britain, the people are all I S - intermixed. In France it is different. My fa- m g ; ther and mother Were pure French Creoles and I m, i 1 was born in New Orleans." K 1 1 ; j "Listen to that," said another. "I was at the m V ' homo of Louis last week and while waiting for B ' him to get ready to come with me, I picked up a M book and it proved to be his family tree. When B the French were overrunning Holland ini the B f eighteenth century his great-great-grandfather, a M Frenchman, fell In love with a Dutch girl and ' ;! married her, and when the Hollanders opened m $ the sluices, turning the waters of the canals out, H p! he took his wife with him to France. Their old- B M est son married a Spanish girl and came to Am- H IL erica." B t i Another gentleman at this said: "My great- B I grandfather was attached to the German em- B T 1 1 bassy at Stockholm. There he married the pret- B t( '( tiest flaxen-haired Swedish girl in the world. My B II I u father married a lovely girl in Naples, but I am a B m '. pretty good American." And then the whole com B j i -pany arose and sang "America." When the song B 11 I was finished one who had not spoken before, said, H ? - "I guess you are all pretty good Americans, but i B M have the oldest title. My great-grandfather mar- Hjj ! H ried an Ottawa squaw princess in 1787 and my H 1 grandmother married a Russian fur trader in I J 1824'" B y And the question Is, "Who are we?" Pluck, H j endurance, genius, are peculiar to no race; with H H I all races blended on our soil, what is the outcome H 1 I to be? It is said that Europe will unload upon H ffi I our shores this year a million of her surplus peo- H ; pie. Thirty years hence the children of these H hi people will be votors, policemen, aldermen, and H m I senators, and it will be right for they will all be H m Americans. Bj I i , Just now the country is engaged in felling H I forests, opening and working mines, building and R I J operating railroads, factories, steel mills, and H Jf planting cotton and corn, but by and by when the B ' j calm comes and the germs of art which now are H J $ held dormant in the new mixed race, begin to H" - expand, may we not hope that there will be plc- Hj 1 i tures painted, anthems set to immortal new mu- H III sic; that modern Shakespeares and Michael An- H f J gelos will be born, and the golden age of litera- fi A 1 j ture and art make lusterless anything that the Hn I I Old World has produced, something, indeed, finer B m I than ancient Greece evolved when Greece became BR m 1 ! the world's enchantment. That then a new H j ( architecture may be evolved, a higher states- B 1 H r manship be created; that statesmanship which jHE 1 will be sufficient to settle strikes honorably, ad- B J I t: just the servant girl question, and compel the rich ! to pay their fair proportion of the country's taxes? I It will be so if we keep our ideals high and if we butfaithfully execute the trust transmitted to us py the fathers.