Characteristic Traits.—A Gentleman and a Cad.—Different Ways of Discussing the Merits of a Sermon.—Contradictions and Contrasts.—Sacred and Profane.—Players of Poker on Board Ship.—A Meek and Humble Follower of Jesus.—The Open Sesame of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.—The Childish Side of American Character.—The Three Questions Jonathan puts to every Foreigner who lands in America.—Preconceived Notions.—Request of an American Journalist.—Why the English and the French do not put Questions on their Countries to the Foreigner who visits them.
nation, scarcely more than a hundred years old, and composed of many widely different elements, cannot, in the nature of things, possess very marked characteristic traits.
There are Americans in plenty, but the American does not yet exist.
The inhabitant of the North-east States, the Yankee,[2] differs as much from the Western man and the Southerner, as the Englishman differs from the German or the Spaniard.
For example, call a Yankee "a cad," and he will get out of the room, remarking, "You say so, sir, but that proves nothing." Call a Pennsylvania man "a cad," and he will get out of temper, and knock you down. Call a real Westerner "a cad," and he will get out his revolver, and shoot you dead on the spot.
On leaving a New York theatre one night, I jumped into a tramcar in Broadway. We were quite sixty persons packed upon the vehicle—sitting, standing, holding on to the rail on the platform, trying to keep our equilibrium as well as we could. A gentleman, well-dressed and looking well-bred, signed to the conductor to stop, and tried to make his way through the crowd. By dint of using his elbows as propellers, he reached the door, and was preparing to alight, when a man, indignant at having been pushed (there are people who, for twopence-halfpenny, expect to travel as comfortably as in a barouche), cried:
"You are a cad, sir—a howling cad!"
The gentleman jumped off the car.