The Magnolia gazette. [volume] (Magnolia, Miss.) 1872-current, 1882-12-14
American Good MIXTURE.


One great aim of American life is
labor saving. Wherever the mechan-
ism by which mans wants are to be
supplied consists in part of human be-
ings, the trouble Of getting it to work,
and consequently the advantage of do
ing without, is enormously greater than
in England In such cases, therefore,
submission becomes prudence, and sub
mission generates patience or good ma
ture, You cannot command so much
human machinery; and the consequent
compliance with the resulting incon-
veniences is sometimes interpreted by
hasty persons as n result of wicked
jealousy. Take, for example, those
large hotels which were formerly pecul-
lar to America You are forced, said in
dignant travellers fresh from Eur pean
comforts, to be mere number instead of
being the object of personal attention II;
and this illustrates the tyranny of ma
iority and its hatred for individual pe-
culiarties. No such sentiment need be
inferred. Where everybody eats like
his neighbors, eats at the same time,
and submits TO uniform regulations,
there is an en- 1rm us economy of labor.
Two or three walters can serve all the
guests at n table d hote where, ii each
man wishes for separate waiter TO at
tend to all his wants just rs the wants
are felt, dozen would be insufficient.
The same principle is equally visible in
all the other arrangements which are
most obvious to traveller The En-
| glsh traveller, accustomed to any
number of porters and ards and SUI
perintendents, is disgusted when he
| finds no such array of dependent
officials, and when he is expected to
facilitate arrangements by submitting
TO do what everybody else is doing. and
finds that neither tips nor obiurgations
are dreaded or expected The readi-
ness with which Frenchmen form a
qtteur on appropriate OCCASION has often
been mentioned as proof of the na-
tional intelligence and courtesy In
America the traveller is always forming
gateUes; he finds himself constantly
Obliged to fall in with some such spon-
taneous arrangement, the final cause Of
which is the saving OF all the elaborate
personal machinery so easily provide /
where labor is cheap. He frets and
| fumes at the inferior qua ity of the ac-
commodation provided, and is half
edited and half-scandalzed by the good
nature of the habtuated The good
nature means, in fact, the habit of sub
hitting 10 inconvenience caused by the
independence of your interiors; it is the
quality developed in bachelor in cham
bers who is bullied by a slalternly laun-
dress and despi, ed for his tameness by
the comfortable monarch of a domestic
estab ishment. We do not presume to
say how far this habit of remuneration
enters into the indifference with which
Americans too often accept political
scandals and grievances, or the too easy
forgiveness which they extend to vari-
GUS evil-doers. Neither do we ask how
far it is compensated by advantages to
the classes whose services are in de-
man1 We simply observe that the
hasty traveller often assigns some occult
working of democratic principles as the
cause of what is simply due TO the scare
ity of labor. In country where the
raw material of social machinery is 50
dear and SO apt to disperse into its CON
stituent atoms, one learns TO accept the
alternative of doing without. and taking
deprivation as easily as one can, be-
cause no amount of scolding will lead to
satisfactory results. Pall-MaU Gazette.