These remarks are of little interest, but they tend to show how much some people and nations depend on the approbation of others and are the reason why I am going to finish with a short summing-up. XVII: THINKING IT OVER IN ENGLAND THINKING IT OVER IN ENGLAND AMERICANS FRIENDLY BUT VAIN--THE LAND OF THE REFORMER--INTEREST IN EUROPE'S ARISTOCRACY--NEWSPAPERS PANDER TO VULGAR CURIOSITY--PLEA FOR ANGLO-AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP It is probably wiser in writing impressions to keep the conclusions you arrive at secret; and many may ask--and with justice--: "What can a woman know who arrived on the 30th of January, and left on the 4th of April, of America or her people?" In answer to this I can only say that in those nine weeks I saw and talked to more varied types of persons than I could have done had I remained in either New York, Chicago or Washington for as many months. I met and conversed with senators and niggers, farmers and reporters, judges and preachers, hotel proprietors, mayors, solicitors, soldiers, shopmen, doctors, men of science and commerce, and a few of the rarer class of both the fashionable and the leisured. During this experience there are certain things I observed that I shall take the risk of writing down. The Americans, while the most friendly people in the world, are too much concerned about each other; and, though not personally, they are nationally vain. They would rather hear themselves abused than undiscussed; which inclines one to imagine that they are suffering from the uneasiness of the _nouveaux riches_. What do you think of us? or, how do you compare our men and women and their clothes and customs with your own? was the substance of every question that was put to me. There are things of surpassing interest in this country, but have any of us heard an English man or woman ask a foreigner what he thought of us? Or, if they were silly enough to do so, who would be interested in the reply? Some will say that this comes from pride, or insularity; but they would be wrong. We are not obsessed by the desire to interfere with our neighbour that is noticeable all over America. In spite of true generosity and kindliness, I was aware of an undercurrent of illiberalism and violence which amazed me. In every city that I have visited there are clubs, both male and female, to forbid or promote some harmless triviality and until these are ridiculed they will prevent the United States from ever becoming what we should call a free country. Because there is little gallantry and no reserve, people do not necessarily become of one class. We cannot regulate equality, since we are born with different brains, natures, and environment, and so far from being equal, there is such a rigid regard for precedence in America that you are even congratulated after a dinner party because you have been seated "one off Mrs. ----".