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Show LATIN MASSACHUSETTS. On New England there are 500,000 more foreigners for-eigners than natives, in Massachusetts there are 700,000 more foreigners than native inhabitants. The influx semes to he mostly Canadian, French and Italians. A writer in a Springfield, Mass., paper says that while these people adopt American Ameri-can dress and many of the outside ways of Americans, Am-ericans, still one who enters their homes finds that they are as foreign as is the Tiber or the Lower St. Lawrence, and seems to feel that instead in-stead of the people being Americanized the old Bay State is liable to be Latinized. The situation seems to be some thing 'like a joke on those Massachusetts people who have so long looked down with a kind of generous scorn upon Americans who did not have the good fortune for-tune to be born within the sacred boundaries of that state which is sanctified by Plymouth Hock and Bunker Hill monument "gilt by the earliest light of the morning and around whose summit the parting day lingers and plays." Still we will not despair. Rather let us hope that this foreign invasion is what Massachusetts most needs to lift her out of her exclusiveness, I to shake the old state out of her old provincial egotism and quicken and broaden her views. When those races commingle who knows that the stock on both sides will not be improved? That all the old strength will not remain and that at the same time there -will be u healthy quickening? quicken-ing? When the birch gives away in the forest, tho elements in the soil which produced thd birch heing futilized by the birch produce the beech. Nature's plans are all benign. When the pine forest for-est succeeds the oak there is no loss, but rather a gain. After three generations of commingling who knows that the new race will not be an improvement im-provement over all the past? The especial foreign for-eign customs will not last beyond the second generation. gen-eration. There will be some changes, but they will bo for the better. There will be more wine and beer consumed but less rum and whiskey; there will be more macoroni and cheese eaten, out It will be better cooked, less butter and more oil will be eaten and the cases of appendicitis will grow lfs and less. There will be marked im-Provem im-Provem noticed in the art schools for the foreign for-eign gei '11 be quickened under the change in the hope, and material welfare of the peo ple, there will be a closer and more careful cultivation cul-tivation of the soil and more color and variety in the dress of the people. There will bo changes in the Sabbath day exercises for the new race Will more and more realize that tho Sabbath was made for man rather than man was made for the Sabbath. Tho architecture of the state will be softened down and generally there will be a smoothing off of sharp angles. The intellect, too, will become more acute. But something 'of the steadiness and firmness of the old race will be lacking: there will be more action and less deliberation; de-liberation; the slow reasoning of tho people will give way to more and more impulse. There will be more fertility in the race, more marriages and more births and our faith is that about all there is good in the race will be saved and many more excelencles be added. There is nothing noth-ing to be anticipated of evil in the new American race. |