Page:Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy (1918).djvu/191

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IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY
171

nation. This answer delighted the world. It suggested rifles at short range on Deer Island by Niagara Falls. His equipment was of a kind that a lifetime spent in the libraries of the world and all the courts in creation would never supply. It consisted mainly of three things, given him by his fathers: a sense of chivalry, that is, the sympathy and simple courage which champions the weak; hard practical common sense that neither the mysticism of the East nor the pompous and regal ceremony and arrogance of the West could befuddle or betray; a personal charm of character and manners of whose failure in courtesy there is no record.

He received his appointment as Minister to China in 1861, and set out across the world in much the same frame of mind as one might now start for Saturn. He was not trammeled with "arbitrary instructions" for the very good reason that Secretary Seward, man of imagination though he was, could not imagine what to instruct him. At that time the prevailing diplomatic procedure in the East was conducted by