San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1888-09-20

Own MothotS and ma6e Our own
Manners.
A. natter that will constantly excite the
wrath Of good Americans, is the perpetual
iteration Of the way IN which the peop}e.6
England do this OF say that, OF think the
other, i'm contradistiDcfion TO, the way in
which we upon this side Of eiglobe do, say
and think, as If in English methods only
were to be found the highest, seat Of jud:-
ment and last court Of appeal This defer
enee TO EnglishA ideas has developed among
US an emasculated class Of minds that does
not even think its own. thoughts achieves
only pale reflection and initiation Of the
original article, and in endeavoring to be-
come pure English succeeds in becoming
poqr American. This is apparent in dress,
in'manner, in style and action and speech;
and it creates the Inability Of returning'us to
ourNold colonial estate, in which we shall
cease to be people of new development Of
mental. as we have been and as we are of
material life.
Our country could hardly have been de-
signed as perpetual colony Of Great
Britain. Its geographical situation, its
isolation from the Old World, its immense
extent, its possession of all climates, all soils,
all woods, all metals, all common and all
precious things, mark it out as for place of
its own, while generations have impaired to
the descendants of its first Settlers charac-
ter Of their own, and it is given to the de-
scendants Of later settlers here to intefmarry
aud associate with those Of longer date, and
make themselves a homogeneous people
There is no. more reason why this peoples
civilization, then, should be on an English
than on a French, an. Italian or German
model. 1t should be on none of them. 1t
should be American. In the course of time
it should be one great American people,
varying only with the necessities of its par
allels, the customs Of its tropics, the life of
its hills and plains and seashore, as it may
be, but all on one broad scale and scheme Of
a new and bftier civilization possibly than
has appeared in the world before.
1t would seem That it would-rbe wise to let
the manners and speech and habits of such a
people develop according to their Own needs,
and not to attempt to enforce upon them an
arbitrary system Of another and totally diff
ferent country, climate and institution of
caste. What odds is IL to the woodsmen sf
the northern peninsIIlas to the cowboys of
the southwestern prairies, to the miners of
planters of the mississippi levels, how English
lords and ladies and. scholars address their
visiting cards, enter their carriages, dip their
spoonsi And why should the girl graduate
Of Vassar or Wellesley trouble herself with
the fancy shat because she does not use the
rising infection of voice at the close of all
her sentences as the Girton graduate does,
her education is therefore deficient and her
resources limitedi
1t is a matter Of question whether the
English domestic life, pure as It is, rs of
p,lrer quality than the German; whether the
English mental life is of finer strain than the
French; whether the Swede and Norwegian
are not as manly, as genial, as true, as the
English; il the italian and the SpanlaFd are
not of more poetioal sort; whether, in
short, there is any peculiar reason why the
English behavior and thought should be
made our standard rather than that of any
other people We may be told that some
reason lies in the fact that we speak the
same language; but when We come to con-
slider the matter of language, the question be-
comes a still more open one. There is not a
whole county in ali England where the Ian
guage is generally spoken in anything ap-
preaching purity; there is but one where it is
pretended that it, is so spoken; there is no
region of a hundred square miles in the three
kingdoms where it is spoken with the purity
and perfection that rs used, for instance, in
the state of Massachusetts,, in our own
country; and there is neither rhyme nor
reason in the effort to impose upon US a
foreign Nsrnacular, especially those portions
of il which have become the slang of the
upper classes using that vernacular, in which
"nonsepse" is called rot" bad weather is
called "beastly, p our own euphonious ''swill"
is called ''hog wash" unseemly conduct is
called NASTY" and peculiar people are
called "rum ones" -...
1t seems to US that perhaps it would be just
as welA to follow our own methods and make
our own manners, sure that nlanners which