Impressions of America During the Years 1833, 1834 and 1835. Volume 2 (of 2)Power, Tyrone
History
Impressions of America During the Years 1833, 1834 and 1835. Volume 2 (of 2)
Power, Tyrone
Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
It is these revolutions, and such as these, that form the true wonders
of this country; that stimulate curiosity, excite interest, and well
repay the labour of any voyager embued with a grain of intelligence or
observation, to say nothing of philosophy.
It is to these results, their causes, and their immediate and probable
effects, his mind's eye will be irresistibly drawn, not to
spitting-boxes, tobacco, two-pronged forks, or other conventional
_bagatelles_, the particulars of each of which, as a solecism in polite
manners, can be corrected and canvassed by any waiter from the London
Tavern, Ludgate Street, and by every _grisette_ from America Square to
Brompton Terrace, who may choose to display their acquired gentility
"for the nonce;" and it is the absence of a spirit of philosophy
generally in our writers, and this affectation of prating so like
waiting-gentlewomen, that stings Americans, and with some show of
reason, when they see the great labours of their young country with the
efforts of its people passed lightly by, and trifles caught up and
commented upon, whose importance they cannot comprehend, and which they
have neither leisure nor example to alter or attend to.
After much and close observation, I say fearlessly, that, in all
conventional points, good society in the States is equal to the best
provincial circles in England. The absence of a court, together with the
calls of business, necessarily preclude the possibility of any class
acquiring that grace of repose, that perfection of ease, which
cultivation, example, and a conscious knowledge of the world gives to
the _beau-monde_ of Europe; on the other hand, in the absence of this,
you are seldom pestered with the second-hand ladies'-maid airs of your
pretenders to exclusive gentility, so common amongst Europeans.
The great mass of Americans are natural, therefore rarely vulgar; and
if a freshness of spirits, and an entire freedom from suspicion and the
many guards which ill-bred jealousy draws around the objects of its
care, may be viewed, as indeed they ought to be, as proofs of high
feeling and true culture, then are the men of America arrived at a point
of civilization at once creditable to themselves and honourable to their
women, as nothing can be more perfectly unrestrained than the freedom
enjoyed in all good families here. Strangers once introduced find every
house at all times open to them, and the most frequent visits neither
create surprise nor give rise to suspicion.
Hospitality is inculcated and practised, and the people entertain with a
liberality bordering on profuseness: the merit of this is enhanced by
the great trouble the absence of good domestics entails on the mistress
of even the best establishments. Ladies are here invariably their own
housekeepers, yet, nowhere is the stranger more warmly welcomed, and in
no country is more cheerful readiness evinced in preparing for his
entertainment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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