I shall never forget the astonishment I caused to my mother when I first broke the news to her that I wanted to go to America. My mother had practically never left a lovely little provincial town of France. Her face expressed perfect bewilderment. "You don't mean to say you want to go to America?" she said. "What for?" "I am invited to give lectures there." "Lectures? in what language?" "Well, mother, I will try my best in English." "Do they speak English out there?" "H'm--pretty well, I think." We did not go any further on the subject that time. Probably the good mother thought of the time when the Californian gold-fields attracted all the scum of Europe, and, no doubt, she thought that it was strange for a man who had a decent position in Europe, to go and "seek fortune" in America. Later on, however, after returning to England, I wrote to her that I had made up my mind to go. Her answer was full of gentle reproaches, and of sorrow at seeing that she had lost all her influence over her son. She signed herself "always your loving mother," and indulged in a postscript. Madame de Sévigné said that the gist of a woman's letter was to be found in the postscript. My mother's was this: "P.S.--I shall not tell any one in the town that you have gone to America." This explains why I still dare show my face in my little native town. * * * * * The typical American! First of all, does he exist? I do not think so. As I have said elsewhere, there are Americans in plenty, but _the_ American has not made his appearance yet. The type existed a hundred years ago in New England. He is there still; but he is not now a national type, he is only a local one. [Illustration: THE TYPICAL AMERICAN.] I was talking one day with two eminent Americans on the subject of the typical American, real or imaginary. One of them was of opinion that he was a taciturn being; the other, on the contrary, maintained that he was talkative. How is a foreigner to dare decide, where two eminent natives find it impossible to agree? In speaking of the typical American, let us understand each other. All the civilized nations of the earth are alike in one respect; they are all composed of two kinds of men, those that are gentlemen, and those that are not. America is no exception to this rule. Fifth Avenue does not differ from Belgravia and Mayfair. A gentleman is everywhere a gentleman. As a type, he belongs to no particular country, he is universal. When the writer of some "society" paper, English or American, reproaches a sociologist for writing about the masses instead of the classes, suggesting that "he probably never frequented the best society of the nation he describes," that writer writes himself down an ass.