Our Little English Cousin

The lives of Our Little English Cousins are not so widely different from our own in America. It is only the more ancient associations with which they are surrounded that changes their manners and customs. Their speech is the same and their amusements and tasks are to a great extent quite similar. Certain details of home life vary considerably, and when they "take their walks abroad," "Our Little English Cousins," as often as not, visit some ancient historic shrine from whose associations have been built up the great British nation. Little English cousins and Little American cousins alike, however, would have the same affections for the same things were they but to change places, therefore things are not so very different after all. What Washington is to America, London is to Britain; meaning in this case England, Ireland, and Scotland as well, for our little Scotch and Irish cousins by no means like one to talk or write of England alone when one really means Britain. "Our Little English Cousin" lives in a less rigorous climate than that which prevails for the most part in America. Their winters are in general not so cold (though they are quite as long) and not usually so bright and sunny. The summers are by no means so hot as ours and are accordingly most delightful. The open-air pleasures of our English cousins, while existent in our own country, are at least more general than with us, and tea out-of-doors, in the garden, or on the banks of the Thames is an institution which is quite unique, and accordingly, as a summer divertisement, is greatly in vogue.