Produced by Ron Swanson By Agnes Repplier COUNTER-CURRENTS. AMERICANS AND OTHERS. A HAPPY HALF-CENTURY AND OTHER ESSAYS. IN OUR CONVENT DAYS. COMPROMISES. THE FIRESIDE SPHINX. With 4 full-page and 17 text illustrations by Miss E. BONSALL. BOOKS AND MEN. POINTS OF VIEW. ESSAYS IN IDLENESS. IN THE DOZY HOURS, AND OTHER PAPERS. ESSAYS IN MINIATURE. A BOOK OF FAMOUS VERSE. Selected by Agnes Repplier. In Riverside Library for Young People. THE SAME. _Holiday Edition_. VARIA. AMERICANS AND OTHERS BY AGNES REPPLIER, LITT.D. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY AGNES REPPLIER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published October 1912_ The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. Note Five of the essays in this volume appear in print for the first time. Others have been published in the _Atlantic Monthly_, the _Century Magazine_, _Harper's Bazar_, and the _Catholic World_. Contents A Question of Politeness The Mission of Humour Goodness and Gayety The Nervous Strain The Girl Graduate The Estranging Sea Travellers' Tales The Chill of Enthusiasm The Temptation of Eve "The Greatest of These is Charity" The Customary Correspondent The Benefactor The Condescension of Borrowers The Grocer's Cat AMERICANS AND OTHERS A Question of Politeness "La politesse de l'esprit consiste a penser des choses honnetes et delicates." A great deal has been said and written during the past few years on the subject of American manners, and the consensus of opinion is, on the whole, unfavourable. We have been told, more in sorrow than in anger, that we are not a polite people; and our critics have cast about them for causes which may be held responsible for such a universal and lamentable result. Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, for example, is by way of thinking that the fault lies in the sudden expansion of wealth, in the intrusion into the social world of people who fail to understand its requirements, and in the universal "spoiling" of American children. He contrasts the South of his childhood, that wonderful "South before the war," which looms vaguely, but very grandly, through a half-century's haze, with the New York of to-day, which, alas! has nothing to soften its outlines. A more censorious critic in the "Atlantic Monthly" has also stated explicitly that for true consideration and courtliness we must hark back to certain old gentlewomen of ante-bellum days. "None of us born since the Civil War approach them in respect to some fine, nameless quality that gives them charm and atmosphere." It would seem, then, that the war, with its great emotions and its sustained heroism, imbued us with national life at the expense of our national manners.