The Spirit of America

by Henry Van Dyke

I was reading only a few day ago an amusing description of the impression which the American pas-redoublé of existence made upon an amiable French observer, M. Hugues Le Roux, one of the lecturers who came to the United States on the Hyde foundation. He says:—

“Everywhere you see the signs of shopkeepers who promise to do a lot of things for you ‘while you wait.’ The tailor will press your coat, the hatter will block your hat, the shoemaker will mend your shoe,—while you wait. At the barber shops the spectacle becomes irresistibly comic. The American throws himself back in an arm-chair to be shaved, while another artist cuts his hair; at the same time his two feet are stretched out to a bootblack, and his two hands are given up to a manicure....

“If ‘Step lively’ is the first exclamation that a foreigner hears on leaving the steamship, ‘Quick’ is the second. Everything here is quick. In the business quarter you read in the windows of the restaurants, as their only guarantee of culinary excellence, this alluring promise: ‘Quick lunch!’...

“The American is born ‘quick’; works ‘quick’; eats ‘quick’; decides ‘quick’; gets rich ‘quick’; and dies ‘quick.’ I will add that he is buried ‘quick.’ Funerals cross the city au triple galop.”

So far as it relates to the appearance of things, what the philosopher would call the phenomenal world, this is a good, though slightly exaggerated, description. I have never been so fortunate as to see a man getting a “shave” and a “hair-cut” at the same moment; and it seems a little difficult to understand precisely how these two operations could be performed simultaneously, unless the man wore a wig. But if it can be done, no doubt the Americans will learn to have it done that way. As for the hair-cutter, the manicure, and the bootblack, the combination of their services is already an accomplished fact, made possible by the kindness of nature in placing the head, the hands, and the feet at a convenient distance from one another. Even the Parisian barbers have taken advantage of this fact. They sell you a bottle of hair tonic at the same time.

It is true that the American moves rapidly. But if you should infer from these surface indications that he is always in a hurry, you would make a mistake. His fundamental philosophy is that you must be quick sometimes if you do not wish to be hurried always. You must condense, you must eliminate, you must save time on the little things in order that you may have more time for the larger things. He systematizes his correspondence, the labour of his office, all the details of his business, not for the sake of system, but for the sake of getting through with his work.

Over his desk hangs a printed motto: “This is my busy day.” He does not like to arrive at the railway station fifteen minutes before the departure of his train, because he has something else that he would rather do with those fifteen minutes. He does not like to spend an hour in the barber-shop, because he wishes to get out to his country club in good time for a game of golf and a shower-bath afterward. He likes to have a full life, in which one thing connects with another promptly and neatly, without unnecessary intervals. His characteristic attitude is not that of a man in a hurry, but that of a man concentrated on the thing in hand in order to save time.

President Roosevelt has described this American trait in his familiar phrase, “the strenuous life.” In a man of ardent and impetuous temperament it may seem at times to have an accent of overstrain. Yet this is doubtless more in appearance than in reality. There is probably no man in the world who has comfortably gotten through with more work and enjoyed more play than he has.

But evidently this American type of life has its great drawbacks and disadvantages. In eliminating the intervals it is likely to lose some of the music of existence. In laying such a heavy stress upon the value of action it is likely to overlook the part played by reflection, by meditation, by tranquil consideration in a sane and well-rounded character.

The critical faculty is not that in which Americans excel. By this I do not mean to say that they do not find fault. They do, and often with vigour and acerbity. But fault-finding is not criticism in the true sense of the word. Criticism is a disinterested effort to see things as they really are, to understand their causes, their relations, their effects. In this effort the French intelligence seems more at home, more penetrating, better balanced than the American.