It is doubtless true that the masses of Americans do not take the Chinaman seriously, and an interesting feature of this correspondence is the attitude of the Chinaman on this very point and his clever satire on our assumption of perfection and superiority over a nation, the habits of which have been fixed and settled for many centuries. The writer's experiences in society, his acquaintance with American women of fashion and their husbands, all ingeniously set forth, have the hall-mark of actual novelty, while his loyalty to the traditions of his country and his egotism, even after the Americanizing process had exercised its influence over him for years, add to the interest of the recital. In revising the correspondence and rearranging it under general heads, the editor has preserved the salient features of it, with but little essential change and practically in its original shape. If the reader misses the peculiar idioms, or the pigeon-English that is usually placed in the mouth of the Chinaman of the novel or story, he or she should remember that the writer of the letters, while a "heathen Chinee," was an educated gentleman in the American sense of the term. This fact should always be kept in mind because, as the author remarks, to many Americans whom he met, it was "incomprehensible that a Chinaman can be educated, refined, and cultivated according to their own standards." With pardonable pride he tells how, on one occasion, when a woman in New York told him she knew her ancestral line as far back as 1200 A. D., he replied that he himself had "a tree without a break for thirty-two hundred years." He was sure she did not believe him, but he found her "indeed!" delightful. The author's name has been withheld for personal reasons that will be sufficiently obvious to those who read the letters. The period during which he wrote them is embraced in the ten years from 1892 to 1902. HENRY PEARSON GRATTON. SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, May 10th, 1904. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE AMERICAN, WHO HE IS 1 II. THE AMERICAN MAN 16 III. AMERICAN CUSTOMS 40 IV. THE AMERICAN WOMAN 63 V. THE SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AMERICAN 92 VI. THE AMERICAN PRESS 99 VII. THE AMERICAN DOCTOR 106 VIII. PECULIARITIES AND MANNERISMS 118 IX. LIFE IN WASHINGTON 131 X. THE AMERICAN IN LITERATURE 164 XI. THE POLITICAL BOSS 185 XII. EDUCATION IN AMERICA 200 XIII. THE ARMY AND NAVY 212 XIV. ART IN AMERICA 229