“What is an American?” asked Frothingham. “Every time I think I’ve seen one, along comes some native and tells me I’m wrong. Are you an American?”
“Underneath—yes. On the surface—no. I used to be, but now I’m posing with the rest of ’em. You’ll have to get out of New York to see Americans. There are droves of ’em here, but they’re so scattered in places you’ll never go to that you couldn’t find them. You’d better go West if you wish to be sure of seeing the real thing.”
“It’s very confusing. How shall I know this American when I see him?”
“When you see a man or a woman who looks as if he or she would do something honest and valuable, who looks you straight in the eyes, and makes you feel proud that you’re a human being and ashamed that you are not a broader, better, honester one—that’s an American.” And then he smiled with his eyes so queerly that Frothingham could not decide whether or not he was jesting.
At the club Wallingford introduced him into a large circle of young men, seated round two tables pushed together, and covered with “high balls,” and bottles of carbonated water, and silver bowls of cracked ice. He said little, drank his whiskey and water, and listened. “It’s the talk of stock brokers and tradesmen,” he said to himself. “Yet these fellows are certainly gentlemen, and they don’t talk business in the least like our middle-class people. It’s very confusing.”
After he left the others were most friendly, and even admiring, in their comments upon him.
“He’s monotonous, and poor, and will never have anything unless he marries it,” said Wallingford. “If he were a plain, poor, incapable, rather dull American, is there one of us that would waste five minutes on him?”
There was silence, then a laugh.