90 MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

American accent so strong that I couldn't follow
them; for though I understand English fairlip
well when touched with the American accent
it becomes unintelligible to me when thait
peculiarity drowns it. Going farther I heard !a
loud voice declaring that the American peoplfe
were " mostly fools "—a distinction which I had
previously supposed Carlyle had fixed for all time
on the British—whereupon somebody in the
audience called out, " And you the damndedst of
the lot," to which the orator could find nothing
better to reply than, u Except you/' At last J
drew up by a group where a fierce duel was beinfc
fought between fundamentalism and modernism!
with considerable interruption from the by*
standers. The duellists were a young man who)
might have been a student from the great Biblej
College a few blocks away (the fundamentalist he)
and an elderly man of benign aspect, stammering
tongue and mind all in a mush, but hot for the!
cause of modernism. For some time, I will here
interrupt myself to say, a suspicion had been
creeping over me that I had wandered into Bed-
lam, and I had fallen into the mood which inclines
one to think foolish thoughts about the futility
of life in general, especially the argumentative
part of it, and to say with the Fool in the play,
" Motley's the only wear." But to resume. In
view of my antecedents, the controversy about
fundamentalism and modernism should have
recalled me from this undesirable state of mind.