Excerpt from Four Americans: Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman
Now, I am not myself an advocate of race suicide but I confess to a feeling of sympathy with the lady thus denounced, whose point of view is, at least, comprehensible. Old Mal thus was not such an ass as some folks think. It is impossible not to admire Roosevelt's courage, honesty, and wonderful energy impossible to keep from liking the man for his boyish impulsiveness, camaraderie, sport ing blood, and hatred of a rascal. But it is equally impossible for a man of any spirit to keep from resenting his bullying ways, his...

The Norman conquest of England, in the 11th century, made a break in the natural growth of the English language and literature. The old English or Anglo-Saxon had been a purely Germanic speech, with a complicated grammar and a full set of inflections. For three hundred years following the battle of Hastings this native tongue was driven from the king's court and the courts of law, from parliament, school, and university. During all this time there were two languages spoken in England. Norman French was the birth-tongue of the upper classes and English of the lower.