The Retrospect by Ada Cambridge — Read

How beautiful England is! The home-stayers do not know it, nor the stranger within her gates. One must have been long enough absent from her in a sharply contrasting environment to have become an outsider, a cosmopolitan connoisseur, while still not an alien but native to her soil -- at any rate, imbued with her maternal influence -- to appreciate her consummate charm. I think that Australians and Americans, her elder and younger offspring, who have so many points of view in common, do so more fully than other peoples of the world, although we "swear by" the lands where we have our ampler homes and opportunities -- perhaps for that very reason. It is an impression I have gained from the literature of the States, which has supplied my chief reading for many years. Whether right or wrong, I shall feel, when I fall into rhapsodies on the subject -- and really I cannot help it -- that my American readers will understand me before them all.

That it is not a case of the rose-coloured spectacles is proved by the fact that we no sooner set foot in the beloved Old Country than we begin to sniff at a number of her little ways -- little ways that are quite all right to less impartial critics. We even feel that we could teach our grandmother something about the sucking of eggs with good warrant for reversing the orthodox procedure; only that she is our grandmother, bless her, with the natural attributes of her time of life, and we do not want her different. Were she "younged up," as a member of my household describes the old lady who dresses to conceal her age, we should not love her more, and we might respect her less. Twice as "smart," she would not be half as beautiful.