The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers - just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians - by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.

In the United States, there is no project so audacious for which people cannot be found to guarantee the cost and find the working expenses.

Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.

Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies - their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy.

It was all very well for an Englishman like Mr. Fogg to make the tour of the world with a carpet-bag; a lady could not be expected to travel comfortably under such conditions.

Everybody knows that England is the world of betting men, who are of a higher class than mere gamblers: to bet is in the English temperament.