"In no part of the world are ladies treated with so much respect as in North America. They can make, by land or water, the longest journeys without the apprehension of having their sense of delicacy offended by hearing an improper expression, and, as far as public opinion is concerned, the law allows them privileges greater than they obtain in any other country. By marriage, the wife enters at once into equal possession of her husband's property; the simple testimony of a woman is of the same force as the oath of a man, and the testimony of a woman when confirmed by oath, can only be neutralized by the oaths of three men. The ill-treatment of a wife by her husband is severely punished; but such cases are as unusual of occurrence as that a woman takes undue advantage of her rights. It may moreover be confidently asserted, that America is the true home of connubial love. The consciousness of her rights gives the American lady a dignity of manner which admirably blends with the amiable attractions of her sex. Not a little of the fascination so peculiar to the ladies of North America is, however, due to the circumstance that no woman—not even the poorest—is ever obliged to perform any task based upon merely physical strength. She rules at home undisputed; and this is the reason why the poorest house in America is a model of neatness and order."
"'Help yourself' (aid yourself), is a favorite phrase of the American, and which has given him the character of wanting in charity, while in fact it is nothing but a simple indication of the means by which every man in sound health can in that country relieve his poverty. Work in America is neither difficult to obtain, nor is it hemmed in and oppressed by the regulations and requirements of guilds, unions, and peculiar laws. Beggars and vagabonds find indeed no favor in his eyes; but unfortunate guiltless poverty invariably meets with his warmest aid, as is evidenced by the numerous hospitals, institutions, &c., which would astonish any one reflecting on the youth of the country. Kindness and hospitality may also be included among his virtues.
"From which the reader may justly infer, that beggary and theft are rare in the United States; and though it may be alleged that such occurrences are frequent in the large cities, it may be at the same time remembered that these are the rendezvous of the scum of all nations, while on the other hand the fact, that in the country, and even in the villages, locks are rare on house and stable doors, affords the strongest confirmation that America presents by far fewer instances of robbery than the greater part of Europe."
After which, Herr Von Ross indulges in a few attractive remarks on the facility of marriage in America, which would, however, prove far less astonishing to our American, than to his German readers: concluding with the following paragraph, which is not devoid of a certain degree of observation:
"Young married couples whose means will not permit them to keep house, pass their first year of wedded life in boarding-houses, by which means the facilities to marriage are greatly extended."
The following passages on our alleged want of sociability identify us to a certain degree, and to our minds not unpleasantly, with our English cousins. Of all persons, those to be most pitied or despised are "the weak brethren," who, devoid of internal or intellectual resources, or manly self-reliance, declaim against a nation or a society at large because its members, forsooth, do not receive them with open arms. The true citoyen du monde—the genuine cosmopolite, never has occasion to make this complaint against any country. For the more a man depends on himself and the less on others for happiness, just in that proportion will it be his luck to attract sympathy and sociability when among strangers. Narrow-minded Spaniards, and those of other nations, who travel for the express purpose of getting into fashionable society, are peculiarly liable to this reproach. Such a foreigner have we heard, minutely and boringly detailing to a stern circle of impregnable natives, the noble and munificent style of hospitality with which they would be treated, were they visitors in his fatherland: "In my contree 'spose you come strangére in one cittee, a gentleman take you in hees house. In ze morning come one buttiful gairl wiz coffees. Zen dey send you one horse carriage for make de promenàde. Aftair dinner come buttiful gairls again wiz ticket on silvare waiter for whole opera box! Wat you sink of dat, hey?" "Think!" replied a native, "why I think that you take great pains to make a strange gentleman feel very uncomfortable." But to return to our writer.
"Strangers who have hastily travelled and superficially examined America, and those who have judged by the statements of others rather than by their own experience, have ascribed to the American a want of sociability and a stiff and repulsive manner towards strangers. True it is that in America it is no very easy matter to become intimate with a man or establish one's self in his family circle—but he who has once attained this point, becomes a home friend in the fullest sense of the word, and will find hidden beneath the stern, earnest exterior of the American, a warm heart, and in his conversation a remarkable degree of familiar confidence. Those who have detected in the confident manner and sense of independence which the American manifests, any thing approaching to presumption, must assuredly have been the newly arrived, who could not accustom themselves to the idea that even laborers should consider that they had with others equal right to express their opinions. The man, however, who is free from prejudice will not fail to admire a nation, wherein the poorest is on an equality with the richest, and where the rich, at least, do not take it on themselves to assert their superiority. Seldom, indeed, do we find a native American, conscious of his right to equality, giving a stranger (his possible superior in intelligence or education) to understand that he considers himself quite as good as any one—the right is to him a thing so natural, that it never even occurs to him to boast of it. This is, unfortunately, far from being the case with the majority of the more ignorant German emigrants, accustomed in their own country to oppressive laws, and not unfrequently hard treatment, yet without learning the orderly conduct which these should have taught, and who think that in America they have a right to do as they please. The American Germans seem to entertain the opinion that it is their republican duty, at all times, with or without occasion or provocation, to give to every man belonging in Europe to the higher classes, to understand and feel that the difference of rank is not recognized—as if indeed, in America far more than in Europe, education and culture did not of themselves indicate the rank which a man occupies. These American Germans all nourish the jealousy of trade (Brodneid) the miserable little hatreds, and the whole range of German disunity or local enmities, which they brought over with them, with a care and zeal worthy of a better cause. Seldom indeed do we hear a German there call himself German, he remains as of old a Prussian, a Bavarian, a Hanoverian, a Hessian, or an Altenburger. Even the irritation between North and South Germans still continues, but let one of them only get together so many scraps of English as will barely render him intelligible, then he denies his fatherland—Americanizes both Christian and surnames—adopts tobacco chewing, and other evil customs of the New World, and draws on himself with full justice the contempt of his more sensible fellow-countrymen and the ridicule of the Americans. Let no one misunderstand us, we pronounce this hard judgment not against the entire German population of North America, but still a great—a very great portion thereof are with the fullest justice obnoxious to these charges, and he who has lived any time in the German districts of North America, and more particularly among the German, or German descended population of Pennsylvania, will agree with us with all his heart."
These are not amiable words, even if merited, but we must still admire the energy with which the blow is given. Often have we despised the contemptible and weak spirit which could induce so many almost newly arrived Germans to change fine sounding and easily enunciable names, into vulgar, snobbish appellatives for which no child would thank them. Often have we wondered at the pitiable impertinence with which ignorant Deutschers have taken it upon themselves, in the second rate American-German journals to abuse our national observance of the Sabbath, or our respect for women, and despised the small-minded eagerness with which they caught up any petty disrespect toward females, and cited it complacently as a proof that this noble attribute was on the wane in the land of their adoption. Often have we been amazed at the readiness with which illiterate rascals, whose ideas of government or political liberty, were at home bounded by the word: "Polizei," "Strafe," "Wanderbuch," "Zuchthaus," and "Fechten" take it upon themselves to curse, ban and vilify the only land in the world where they could find bread or protection. But again, with Mr. Ross, we earnestly protest that we do not believe that such conduct or such foolish ingratitude can ever with justice be attributed to any respectable or well educated Germans. Some few there have been, indeed, who, urged by the selfish stimulant of a desire for popularity, have thus flattered the prejudices of their more ignorant fellow-countrymen, but none who have thus spoken from the heart.
In conclusion, we may remark that if, as has generally been said, we are a sensitive race, attaching undue importance to the good opinion of our neighbors, and striving infinitely more than we need to keep up a good national reputation, we ought to be much obliged to all who, like Mr. Ross, preach to other countries in their own tongue and with such a peculiarly distinct enunciation, their candid and unbiased opinion of their native land. What must strike the reader is indeed the remarkably unembarrassed and independent air with which he addresses his audience, and the coolness with which, on their own ground, he points out their own defects, and their general inferiority to the freemen of "this great and glorious country." He tells them that America is a land of hard work—a church-going, Sabbath-keeping, God-fearing, moral land, for which they must prepare themselves; and no Methodist ever assured his flock of his solemn conviction that they were all irreclaimable sinners, with greater earnestness than Mr. Ross announces to his public, in the plainest terms, that the great majority of the German emigrants to America are a pack of graceless, narrow-minded, ignorant, fatherland-denying knaves; ending with an earnest appeal to all whom it may concern, or are therein informed, to know if they do not with heart and soul (aus vollum Flerzen) coincide with him in these views. But the American reader who for an instant imagines that Mr. Ross will lose either popularity or reputation among his auditors, is decidedly mistaken. Accustomed as we are to regard with nervous anxiety the slightest opinion of the most insignificant foreigner regarding our country, and to raise high very tornadoes of indignation against such writers as have abused our own manners and customs, we can hardly conceive that an author after "giving it" to his readers in such a remarkably hot-and-heavy style, and, to make all perfectly intelligible, concluding with the assurance that it is from his very heart, can still proceed quietly, editing a paper, keeping up his list, and remaining unmobbed.
But we trust that the day is not distant when foreigners will no longer be able to taunt us with undue sensitiveness. So rapidly have we of late years increased in power, in wealth, in influence, that our conviction of our own might has not kept pace with its growth. Like the young giant in Rabelais, we have lain in our cradle without an attempt to break the chain. But with the consciousness of our vast and immovable moral and political superiority (a consciousness which despite the good self-opinion so generally attributed to Americans, has hitherto scarce dawned on us), will come a quiet disregard of the united abuse and laughter of all Europe. A Dickens may then issue his "Notes"—a Marryatt, publish his "Diary"—without attracting the attention or anger of the American press from Maine to Mexico.