United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs
shallow to an extent, and fast it goes without saying. Yet is he not
all bad. He _has_ a code, loose as it is, and acts up to it. It is
real pain to him to be backward with a debt of honour (though I write
it, how foolish the expression: as if all debts were not equally
incumbent), but any tradesman may wait for years. He does not lie,
except to save a woman's reputation (query--Is it then justifiable? I
really don't know), but he exaggerates fearfully. Animal courage he
has, but nothing of the moral attribute. Except as regards his
egotism, personal and national, he is not offensive in manner or
language. To ladies he is courteous, but his opinion of woman is of
the lowest. I have said enough to show such a one does not commend
himself to foreigners.
There is an American of the same type, but he differs. Far more
intellectual than his English brother, he has much wider views. He is
equally puffed up with conceit as to his own "glorious country" (odd
how often you hear this expression in the States), but he recognizes
it is a new country, and _may_ thus have some shortcomings. Still,
that it is on the high road to eclipse all others is part of his
creed. He does not, like the other described, look up to a rich man
because he is rich, but because he must have been "cute" to attain
the position. Social customs of all kinds he ignores, and if with the
Englishman aforesaid would willingly carry his parcel for him! He too
is a free-thinker in theology, but he is more tolerant of creed and
dogma in others. I cannot call him "fast" as compared with other
Americans, for they are all fast in a sense. The word, as we
understand it, somehow does not apply to them. So much for his best
side. As regards any code of honour, or appreciation of the virtue of
truth, it is not in him. As regards physical courage I would back the
Englishman, moral courage the American. He (the latter) is often
offensive both in manner and language. Courtesy to any one he does
not practise, for he thinks it argues his own inferiority. I know not
what he thinks of women, for I never cared to discuss the subject
with him.
Such are, in my opinion, the general characteristics of two similar
types of young men in England and America. Both, after travel and as
they advance in years, improve. But, as painted, they are, of course,
neither of them desirable companions, and I do not think there is
much to choose between them.
I care not here to continue the subject, and try to depict the
opposing national characteristics of the Americans and English (of
course, what is written above applies to neither, only to the
particular type of each country as set forth). I have already done it
more or less in the foregoing pages, and would rather it peeped out
in the same way as my book proceeds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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