The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, July 1884, No. 10Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
History
The Chautauquan, Vol. 04, July 1884, No. 10
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
As the writer remarks: _Punch_ still has John Bull as a national type;
but shows a great reserve in the use of him, and continually resorts to
Britannia as a substitute. Our old friend John, the bluff, stout, honest,
red-faced, irascible, rural person, has really been supplanted by a more
modern, thinner, nervous, intellectual, astute type. He is, or was a very
rude person, and always seemed to take great delight in asserting himself
in such a way as to produce as much general annoyance and discomfort as
possible. But he is gone, or is going, and the time is coming when we
shall regard him as only a survival, a tradition of the past.
And so for English use the Yankee type of Uncle Sam may still serve to
represent America, although he belongs to the past as much as slavery
does, or the stage coach. He would be a bold man who would attempt to
say what our national type is now; but it is safe to say that it is not
a long, thin, cute Yankee, dressed in a swallow-tailed coat with brass
buttons, whittling a stick, and interlarding his conversation with “I
swan,” and “I calc’late.” In fact, if Mr. Lowell were to write “Biglow
Papers” now, Uncle Sam would hardly serve his purpose as he did during
the war.
Not only are differences between national types rapidly vanishing into
the past, so that Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen and Americans no longer
seem strikingly unlike; but along with these international, the more
domestic and home types are disappearing also. The distinctive kinds
of men, and the distinctions which attached themselves inseparably to
various classes and occupations are passing away.
Take the men to-day of any one town, village or farming district, and I
fully believe you will find fewer odd and strange characters among them
than was the case among their predecessors or fathers of a generation ago.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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