The Land of Contrasts: A Briton's View of His American Kin

by James F. Muirhead

It is, perhaps, superfluous to say that this kind of bringing up hardly tends to make the American child an attractive object to the stranger from without. On the contrary, it is very apt to make the said stranger long strenuously to spank these budding citizens of a free republic, and to send them to bed instanter. So much of what I want to say on this topic has been well said by my brother Findlay Muirhead in an article on "The American Small Boy," contributed to the St. James's Gazette, that I venture to quote the bulk of that article below.

The American Small Boy

The American small boy is represented in history by the youthful George Washington, who suffered through his inability to invent a plausible fiction, and by Benjamin Franklin, whose abnormal simplicity in the purchase of musical instruments has become proverbial. But history is not taken down in shorthand as it occurs, and it sometimes lags a little. The modern American small boy is a vastly different being from either of these transatlantic worthies; at all events his most prominent characteristics, as they strike a stranger, are not illustrated in the earlier period of their career.

The peculiarities of young America would, indeed, matter but little to the stranger if young America stayed at home. But young America does not stay at home. It is not necessary to track the American small boy to his native haunts in order to see what he is like. He is very much in evidence even on this side the Atlantic. At certain seasons he circulates in Europe with the facility of the British sovereign; for the American nation cherishes the true nomadic habit of travelling in families, and the small boy is not left behind. He abounds in Paris; he is common in Italy; and he is a drug in Switzerland. He is an element to be allowed for by all who make the Grand Tour, for his voice is heard in every land. On the Continent, during the season, no first-class hotel can be said to be complete without its American family, including the small boy. He does not, indeed, appear to "come off" to his full extent in this country, but in all Continental resorts he is a small boy that may be felt, as probably our fellow-countrymen all over Europe are now discovering.

There is little use in attempting to disguise the fact that the subject of the present paper is distinctly disagreeable. There is little beauty in him that we should desire him. He is not only restless himself, but he is the cause of restlessness in others. He has no respect even for the quiescent evening hour, devoted to cigarettes on the terrace after table d'hôte, and he is not to be overawed by a look. It is a constant source of wonder to the thoughtfully inclined how the American man is evolved from the American boy; it is a problem much more knotty than the difficulty concerning apple-dumplings which so perplexed "Farmer George." No one need desire a pleasanter travelling companion than the American man; it is impossible to imagine a more disagreeable one than the American boy.

The American small boy is precocious; but it is not with the erudite precocity of the German Heinecken, who at three years of age was intimately acquainted with history and geography ancient and modern, sacred and profane, besides being able to converse fluently in Latin, French, and German. We know, of course, that each of the twenty-two Presidents of the United States gave such lively promise in his youth that twenty-two aged friends of the twenty-two families, without any collusion, placed their hands upon the youthful heads, prophesying their future eminence. But even this remarkable coincidence does not affect the fact that the precocity of the average transatlantic boy is not generally in the most useful branches of knowledge, but rather in the direction of habits, tastes, and opinion. He is not, however, evenly precocious. He unites a taste for jewelry with a passion for candy. He combines a penetration into the motives of others with an infantile indifference to exposing them at inconvenient times. He has an adult decision in his wishes, but he has a youthful shamelessness in seeking their fulfilment. One of his most exasperating peculiarities is the manner in which he querulously harps upon the single string of his wants. He sits down before the refusal of his mother and shrilly besieges it. He does not desist for company. He does not wish to behave well before strangers. He desires to have his wish granted; and he knows he will probably be allowed to succeed if he insists before strangers. He is distinguished by a brutal frankness, combined with a cynical disregard for all feminine ruses. He not seldom calls up the blush of shame to the cheek of scheming innocence; and he frequently crucifies his female relatives. He is generally an adept in discovering what will most annoy his family circle; and he is perfectly unscrupulous in avenging himself for all injuries, of which he receives, in his own opinion, a large number. He has an accurate memory for all promises made to his advantage, and he is relentless in exacting payment to the uttermost farthing. He not seldom displays a singular ingenuity in interpreting ambiguous terms for his own behoof. A youth of this kind is reported to have demanded (and received) eight apples from his mother, who had bribed him to temporary stillness by the promise of a few of that fruit, his ground being that the Scriptures contained the sentence, "Wherein few, that is, eight, souls were saved by water."

The American small boy is possessed, moreover, of a well-nigh invincible aplomb. He is not impertinent, for it never enters into his head to take up the position of protesting inferiority which impertinence implies. He merely takes things as they come, and does not hesitate to express his opinion of them. An American young gentleman of the mature age of ten was one day overtaken by a fault. His father, more in sorrow than in anger, expressed his displeasure. "What am I to do with you, Tommy? What am I to do with you?" "I have no suggestions to offer, sir," was the response of Tommy, thus appealed to. Even in trying circumstances, even when serious misfortune overtakes the youthful American, his aplomb, his confidence in his own opinion, does not wholly forsake him. Such a one was found weeping in the street. On being asked the cause of his tears, he sobbed out in mingled alarm and indignation: "I'm lost; mammy's lost me; I told the darned thing she'd lose me." The recognition of his own liability to be lost, and at the same time the recognition of his own superior wisdom, are exquisitely characteristic. They would be quite incongruous in the son of any other soil. In his intercourse with strangers this feeling exhibits itself in the complete self-possession and sang-froid of the youthful citizen of the Western Republic. He scorns to own a curiosity which he dare not openly seek to satisfy by direct questions, and he puts his questions accordingly on all subjects, even the most private and even in the case of the most reverend strangers. He is perfectly free in his remarks upon all that strikes him as strange or reprehensible in any one's personal appearance or behaviour; and he never dreams that his victims might prefer not to be criticised in public. But he is quick to resent criticism on himself, and he shows the most perverted ingenuity in embroiling with his family any outsider who may rashly attempt to restrain his ebullitions. He is, in fact, like the Scottish thistle: no one may meddle with him with impunity. It is better to "never mind him," as one of the evils under the sun for which there is no remedy.

Probably this development of the American small boys is due in great measure to the absorption of their fathers in business, which necessarily surrenders the former to a too undiluted "regiment of women." For though Thackeray is unquestionably right in estimating highly the influence of refined feminine society upon youths and young men, there is no doubt that a small boy is all the better for contact with some one whose physical prowess commands his respect. Some allowance must also be made for the peevishness of boys condemned to prolonged railway journeys, and to the confinement of hotel life in cities and scenes in which they are not old enough to take an interest. They would, doubtless, be more genial if they were left behind at school.

The American boy has no monopoly of the characteristics under consideration. His little sister is often his equal in all departments. Miss Marryat tells of a little girl of five who appeared alone in the table d'hôte room of a large and fashionable hotel, ordered a copious and variegated breakfast, and silenced the timorous misgivings of the waiter with "I guess I pay my way." At another hotel I heard a similar little minx, in a fit of infantile rage, address her mother as "You nasty, mean, old crosspatch;" and the latter, who in other respects seemed a very sensible and intelligent woman, yielded to the storm, and had no words of rebuke. I am afraid it was a little boy who in the same way called his father a "black-eyed old skunk;" but it might just as well have been a girl.

While not asserting that all American children are of this brand, I do maintain that the sketch is fairly typical of a very large class—perhaps of all except those of exceptionally firm and sensible parents. The strangest thing about the matter is, however, that the fruit does not by any means correspond to the seed; the wind is sown, but the whirlwind is not reaped. The unendurable child does not necessarily become an intolerable man. By some mysterious chemistry of the American atmosphere, social or otherwise, the horrid little minx blossoms out into a charming and womanly girl, with just enough of independence to make her piquant; the cross and dyspeptic little boy becomes a courteous and amiable man. Some sort of a moral miracle seems to take place about the age of fourteen or fifteen; a violent dislocation interrupts the natural continuity of progress; and, presto! out springs a new creature from the modern cauldron of Medea.