The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-03-21
AMERrcAN MANNERS.
Is.. James Gaie,te.l

A I0kkSuuGtuAA AhtSA SAl nOk u~ dIkO- sesher pleased if a west-counsryman, sfter spending few days in the north Of England, fell to criticising everything that vas not according to the usages of Devon or Somerset, and accounting for the difference in every case by mere stu pidity or perversity on the part of his hosts. The continent of North America is a good deal bigger than Yorkshire. and considerably more different from Eng land than the north of England from rhe south. Yet English people are con- stahtly behaving like our supposed west countTymes. They spend vacation or so rushing aboat the United States and Canada, with or without introductions aud other aids of forethought come home, and turn out a budget of crude censure as fast as they can get 1t printed !; and then, if it happens to be suggested to them that they have committed an im- pertinence, call everybody to witness what an unreasonable and touchy sort of people are these Americans, or these colonists, or both, as the case may be. Perhaps even such reckless travellers do some good in dispelling the gross and palpable errors that prevailed genera ton or two ago. No one in England at any rate, no one who is likely to read this page-now believes that the men of Boston drive about with their boots stick ing out of the carriage window, or that New Workers pick their teeth with bowie kpives. But mistakes of a somewhat less obvious kind are still current, and, in- deed, are fostered as often as not by the kind of travellers we have mentioned. We shall here point out some of those which, if an Englishman starts with them as fixed ideas, are most likely to get him into trouble. They are easily corrected, in our opinion, by using ones own eyes, tention and without prejudice. Yet we cannot but fear that the truth will appear paradoxical. Much of what we shall say IS equally applicable to English Canadian society. As for the French civilization and manners of lower Canada, they are a world by themselves.
 One. The Americans are always in a hurry. This is capital error, and a source of others. Americans may be much occupied, but their speech and &C., ton in detail are, on the whole, more de- liberate than an Englishman's their speech remarkably so. There is far less repetition and interruption in Anglo American than in British talk. With us there is no such careless speaking and careless hearing that the first answer or remark when people meet is apt to be lit- tie more than a signal to call attention. On the west side of the Atlantic man says thing, meaning to say it once for all and doec mt AvnAcf fO hal fo it. Again, 1t is true that Americans ob- ject to unpunctuality more than English men as, in country of long distances, it is easily understood that its conse. quences may be graver. But this has nothing to do with being in hurry. On the contrary, the American habit is to allow a greater margin of time for ap- pointments than we do here. And, in truth, the fatal facilities of English dwell- CTS in cities for running things fine do not exist in Aperica. The "gondola of London will redeem at a pinch many delays, with speed neither practiced nor practicable in thoroughfares engrossed by horse cars. The conditions of Amer ican life make it needful to prefer labor saving to time-saving in most things of common use. In short, the practical Englishman's method is to begin with allotting sixty-three minutes work to the first hour, and then to scramble papting after the odd three minutes during all the hours that follow. The American allows time enough, but not more than enough :; and he allows it only once.
 Two. That Americans are melancholy. This is aswidely spread mistake, founded s~EA -A~m ton the fact being that the American travelling public, as seen in hotels and other public places, is of a bearing sober and decorous even to moroseness. It is nothing but an outward habit, legiti- mately akin to the air of self-centered re- serve, which has lsng been attached by tradition and repute to the public appear ances of well-to-do English people. A stranger from almost any part of Europe would, probably, form the same off-hand judgment, if he were set down in the morning-reom of almost any English club, with the same kind of plausioility and with the same injustice. Americans attach, if possible, even greater weight than we do to the virtue of minding ones own business. The preseat writer met near John Browns home in the Adiron- dacks, a man who had known John Brown well. That Brown had been Irregular abolitionist was to this old neighbor a mere incident. He remembered Brown as good, steady-going sort of a man who minded his own business;' such was his version of the Horatian jHsfum ef kenaesn prs1osiH. Thus it is a point of dignity not to thrust ones self directly or indirectly on one's own neighbor for the time being. Not that Americans re- pei advances as English people some times do; but they do not as rule, in- vite them. We are not concerned to deny that garrulous and curious people may be found out west. But if they were ever commonly to be met with in the eastern states, they are not so now. On the other hand, these staid and silent people, if you address yourself to them with patience and courtesy for any req