--We talk about a Yankee, a New-Englander,---he said,-as if all of 'em
were just the same kind of animal. "There is knowledge and knowledge,"
said John Bunyan. There are Yankees and Yankees. Do you know two native
trees called pitch pine and white pine respectively? Of course you know
'em. Well, there are pitch-pine Yankees and white-pine Yankees. We
don't talk about the inherited differences of men quite as freely,
perhaps, as they do in the Old World, but republicanism doesn't alter the
laws of physiology. We have a native aristocracy, a superior race, just
as plainly marked by nature as of a higher and finer grade than the
common run of people as the white pine is marked in its form, its
stature, its bark, its delicate foliage, as belonging to the nobility of
the forest; and the pitch pine, stubbed, rough, coarse-haired, as of the
plebeian order. Only the strange thing is to see in what a capricious
way our natural nobility is distributed. The last born nobleman I have
seen, I saw this morning; he was pulling a rope that was fastened to a
Maine schooner loaded with lumber. I should say he was about twenty
years old, as fine a figure of a young man as you would ask to see, and
with a regular Greek outline of countenance, waving hair, that fell as if
a sculptor had massed it to copy, and a complexion as rich as a red
sunset.
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