Again he smiled, sarcastically.
"I find," said the American, "a great many interesting people in these cafés."
"Yes, they are what you call characters, I suppose," he said, dispassionately; "but I find them interesting only for one reason—no, no, I won't tell you what that reason is."
"You don't seem to be as enthusiastic about the people as I am," said the American, "but whenever I come into a café down here I find serious men who will talk seriously. They are different from the Americans who amuse themselves in bars, at horse races and farces."
The inventor smiled coldly.
"I do not call serious, what you call serious," he said. "It is not necessary to talk seriously to be serious. Serious men do things. The Russians don't do things. If they were gay and did things, they would be more serious than they are. But they are solemn and don't do anything."
"I don't agree with you," said the American, warmly. "Doesn't Blank, who writes so many excellent novels, do anything? Don't the actors, who act so truthfully, without self-consciousness, do anything? Don't the journalists, who spread excellent ideas, do anything?"
The inventor nodded judicially and remarked that there were some exceptions.
"But," he added, "you are deceived by the surface. There are many men in our colony who seem to be stronger intellectually than they really are. In Russia a few men, really cultivated and intellectual, give the tone, and everybody follows them. In America, however, the public gives the tone, and the playwright, the literary man, simply expresses the public. So that really intellectual Americans do not express as good ideas as less intellectual Russians. The Russians all imitate the best. The Americans imitate what the mass of the people want. But an intellectual American is more intellectual than these geniuses around here whom you like. Of course, they have some good things in them, as everybody has."
"What is it that you find to like in this Russian colony?" asked the American.