He said things that no doctor should say to another, but which a politician may well say, and has often said, to another politician--things which cannot bear repeating, if, for no other reason, because they are too humiliating and too little conducive to pride for the average
American citizen to know; things of the inside, secret governments of imperial municipalities which the average
American citizen, voting free as a king at the polls, fondly thinks he manages; things which are, on rare occasion, partly unburied and promptly reburied in the tomes of reports of Lexow Committees and Federal Commissions.
Yet the
American citizen plumes himself upon this spirit, even when he is sufficiently dispassionate to perceive the ruin it works; and will often adduce it, in spite of his own reason, as an instance of the great sagacity and acuteness of the people, and their superior shrewdness and independence.
Hamilton Fynes was robbed and murdered--an
American citizen on his way to London.
'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations.
I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.'
I didn't pan out particularly well those days--drank more whisky than was prescribed for me and didn't seem to care for my duty as a patriotic
American citizen; so I took that pagan in, as a kind of cook.
"Then it's the privilege of being an
American citizen," said Newman.
Like a simple
American citizen beduking himself in his lodge, or affirming his consequence in the Scheme of Things as an elemental unit of a parade.
He was aware of the wish of the American government, already stated, that the fur trade within its boundaries should be in the hands of
American citizens, and of the ineffectual measures it had taken to accomplish that object.
I never heard a sailor proclaiming himself as a handful of
American citizens traveling for recreation, but I wished he might trip and fall overboard, and so reduce his handful by one individual, at least.
This was in allusion to a great journalistic declaration (attributed to Mr Kidd himself) that "he guessed the sun would rise in the west yet, if
American citizens did a bit more hustling." Those, however, who mock American journalism from the standpoint of somewhat mellower traditions forget a certain paradox which partly redeems it.
"There you are gentlemen,
American citizens, and fellow-militiamen.