The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-03-21

than with England. There is yet . greater and more dangerous fallacy in the way ot the Englishman admitted to American society, namely
 1ASes. That Americans are unceFe- n,onious. American manners allow greater freedom to certain persons and in certain conditions than we are accus- toned to Qhough neither so broadly as we are apt to think, .or without degrees and distinctions in local usage); whence rash observer may conclude that in American society there is no etiquette al all. Any one who acts on that conclusion will do so to his own great discontinue. There is less eticuette, certainly, in America than here. For one thing, there are no fixed rules of precedence, and ve believe that Americans have some diff. culty in realizing their existence in this country. But some etiquette there is, and what there is of 1t is more strictly observed than with us so that it is, for example, almost a worse breach of good manners in Boston Or New York than in London to dispense with evening dress without express request or license from ones host. Absence of shyness and awkwardness is quite a different thing from lawlessness; one cause of them, in fact, is the laxity of social rules, which in England often makes it difficslt for a well-meaning person to know whether he is doing the right thing or not. The best American manners have an inde- inable charm, in which perfect freedom and frankness are compounded with a certain flavor of old-world politeness. Little traits of piece with this are the frequent use of Sir" and of one or two formulas of greeting which sound at first rather stffiy to an English ear, having been faithfully preserved in the new country after they have been mostly dropped in the old. For our n part, we half or more than half resret the Johnsonian fashion. American assemblages. One is really ashamed to set down this as a current belief; but many Englishmen speak and write as if they believed it. We shall only say that any such Englishman can easily undeceive himself by going to the Central park, of New York, on a Sunday afternoon. He will there see a multi. tude of people which it would be difficult to surpass anywhere else in scale, taking number and density together (for New Yerk has only one park, and everybody seems to go there) and impossible to sur pass in good behavior. Then the Eng fish instinct of discipline flourishes, and abounds at every turn. 1t is shown even in such matters as political processions, which are imposing, not by any special merit of artistic composition or detail things which Germans or Italians would arrange much better with the sam {. op- portunities), but by good order and good marching. We have said nothing of the influence of democracy on American manners, believing it much less for good or for ill than is commonly supposed. In any case American democracy has strongly conservative side, as has lately been well shown.
 Finally, thefe is one very simple point on which we shall not dwell, because 1t is apt to be forgotten, not only in America but in most quarters of the world, by travellers of most nations. Still it is to be hsted that inferences drawn indiscrim- inately from the people one sees in the street and the hotel to the people one does not see in their own houses, are no, always or necessarily correct.