Saturday, October 26, 2024

 

Abundant Points of Resemblance

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), "Race," Essays & Lectures (New York: The Library of America, 1983), pp. 790-805 (at 792):
The French in Canada, cut off from all intercourse with the parent people, have held their national traits. I chanced to read Tacitus "on the Manners of the Germans," not long since, in Missouri, and the heart of Illinois, and I found abundant points of resemblance between the Germans of the Hercynian forest, and our Hoosiers, Suckers, and Badgers of the American woods.
American Encyclopaedic Dictionary s.v. sucker, sense I.1(4):
A cant name for an inhabitant of Illinois.
I am descended from French in Canada and Germans in Missouri and Illinois.

# posted by Michael Gilleland @ 8:27 AM


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