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307 Strange as it may sound, the traveller sometimes finds it difficult to carry on an argument with an American, on account of his complete ignorance of the subject upon which he will go on arguing; or, worse still, from his wonderful misconceptions, for some of which he may possibly be indebted to rural orators, & rural newspapers. I was in this way myself often reminded of what a well-known American Editor said to me; of course very much exaggerating the fact; still, however, his remark may have some grain of truth in it "that his countrymen were, & must long continue to be in matters out of their own unclear, & beyond their own country the most ignorant people in the civilized world." Another difficulty one occasionally meets with is that you do not know how much you are to discount from the speaker's grand phrases in order to arrive at his own meaning, for it sometimes happens that the ideas that are on his own mind? are very inadequate to the language he uses to complete them. I was for instance, for several days thrown into close contact with a very gentlemanly, well-spoken, well-mannered Merchant, who had seen something of the world, for his business? had frequently taken him to South America & to Europe. On one occasion he unclear me by offering "that the Farmers, of all classes in the United States, "possessed the finest intellects." Any body he would have meant by these words that among them were to be found the most powerful & most cultivated intellects; unclear great in imaginative