"You are a cad, I say," bellowed the individual after him; "a cad, do you hear?"
The gentleman—for he was one—turned, lifted his hat, and replied:
"Yes; I hear. And you, sir, are a perfect gentleman."
The perfect gentleman looked very silly for a few moments. A hundred yards further on, he stopped the car and made off.
Should a minister indulge in unorthodox theories in the pulpit, the Eastern man will content himself with shaking his head, and going to another church to perform his devotions the Sunday after. The Pennsylvanian will open a violent polemic in the newspaper of the locality; he will not be satisfied with shaking his head, he will shake his fist. The Kansas man will wait for the minister at the church-door, and gave him a sound thrashing.[3]
The character of the American is English from the point of view of its contrasts and contradictions, which are still more accentuated in him than in the Englishman.
Is there anything more sublime than the way in which Jonathan can combine the sacred and profane? He is a greater adept at it than John Bull, and that is saying not a little.
On board the steamer, we had five Americans who passed eight days of the voyage in playing poker. The smoking-room rang from morning to night with the oaths that they uttered every time they laid a card on the table. They were so fluent with them that they hardly used the same twice in an hour. Their stock seemed inexhaustible. On Sunday, after breakfast, a young lady sat down to the piano, and began playing hymns. What happened then? Our five poker-players gathered round the lady, and for two hours sang psalms and holy tunes to the edification of the other occupants of the saloon.
I was dumbfounded.