Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[30] at his house in Dublin, that I had felt a thrill of pleasure on observing the street sign, denoting Fishamble Lane, at Cork, and recalling the ballad about ‘Misthress Judy McCarty, of Fishamble Lane,’ he pleased me by saying that he had felt just so in New York, when he saw the name of Madison Square, and thought of Miss Flora McFlimsey. So our modest continent had already its storied heroines and its hallowed ground!

There are, undoubtedly, points in which Europe, and especially England, has still the advantage of America; such, for instance, as weekly journalism. In regard to printed books there is also still an advantage in quantity, but not in quality; while in magazine literature the balance seems to incline just now the other way. I saw it claimed confidently, not long since, that the English magazines had ‘more solid value’ than our own; but this solidity now consists, I should say, more in the style than in the matter, and is a doubtful benefit, like solidity in a pudding. When the writer whom I quote went on to cite the saying of a young girl, that she could always understand an