“Do you know the story about the duke and the New York hackney-coachman?”
“I have heard so many anecdotes about the duke, that I cannot tell to which you refer.”
“Why, they say that the duke went one evening in a hackney-coach to a party, and that the next day the coachman—or the driver, as he is here called—came for his money, asking the duke whether he was the man he had drove the night before; and, on being answered in the affirmative, informing him that ‘he was the gentleman what drove him,’ and that he had come for his half-dollar.”
“Se non è vero, è ben trovato. One thing, however, is certain, that in our attentions to strangers we seldom find the proper medium. If a man of title comes among us, the higher classes will caress and cajole him much beyond what the proudest nobleman could expect in any part of Europe; while, among the lower classes, he will often meet with a spirit of resistance which neither kind words nor money will be entirely able to overcome. Let him take the arithmetical medium between the two, and he will have no right to complain.”
“And I can assure you,” said I, “that in my own heart I have a much higher respect for the common American, who, in his conduct towards strangers, is solely guided by his own rude notion of dignity, than for the educated gentleman, who measures everything, and himself into the bargain, by the standard of another country.”
“Agreed! agreed!” cried my two companions; “for the one, however barbarous, has within him the elements of a national character; while the other, however civilized, is but a mutilated European.”
We had now come up as far as the Park, and, perceiving by the city-hall clock that it was half-past two, one of my companions, under the plea of an engagement, turned towards Chamber-street; while the other, with whom I had promised to dine, invited me to accompany him to his lodgings.
“Come,” said he, “we have but half an hour before dinner;[1] let me introduce you to the ladies of our boarding-house. It’s one of the most agreeable ones in town, and always full of transient people.”
“I confess I hate your boarding-houses,” replied I. “They are neither private nor public; one is deprived in them of most of the conveniences of regular inns, and yet not sufficiently quiet to be able to say one has got a home.”
“Are you married?” demanded my friend.