The evening times., 1899-10-11
New York and the Countryman.


New York made a discovery during
/ Dewey week. Once or twice before it has
/ happened that thar metropolis has been
led to suspect the existence of standards
and ideas other than its own. and while
this impression is doubtless transitory, 1t
thing which startled some of the inhabitants
of the city out of their customary atti-
! tude Of unconscious superiority was the
fact that comparatively few of the multi
tude of visitors from the rural districts
talked in dialect. IL had been expected that
during the few days which Dewey spent
in town there would be crowds and crowds
of people of the Uncle Josh Whitcomb and
David Harum type-people VINO would go
about openmouthed and gawky, asking idi-
otic questions, and calculating ''Naow, dew
tell" But nothing of the sort happened.
New York was cheated out of that part
of its show, and has been wondering ever
since what was the reason
Ii is not at all necessary TO infer from
this little circumstance that the farmer
folk OF New York, Pennsylvania, New Jer-
sey, and western New England have so
lost their patriotism that they did not at
tend the Dewey celebration at all. They
were there, by the thousands and tens of
thousands, ana-Hndoubtedly most had never
been so far away from home before. Per-
haps 10 more than half of them, the
county seat ten or twelve miles from their
homes had given them their only expert
ence of urban life. But they did not find
it necessary, oh that account, to carry
green cotton umbrellas and carpetbags, nor
did they wear clothes cut and made at
home. They simply melted into the crowd
like any other Americans, and kept what
ever astonishment they may have felt to
themselves.
Some one has remarked that, outside of
a novel, the population of a village does
not stare with open-mouthed awe at the
city boarder. It may be added that the
farmer frequently understands the city
visitor considerably better than the visitor
understands him. What is true of these
| two classes of people is true of city and
country populations in general The
farmer can go 10 town and pick up it's
ways and fiIaahners much more quickly
than the born .city-dweller can learn to be
a farmer. What is more, the great ma
jority of our country folk know a great
deal about New York, even if they have
not been there. The women, with that
native taste in dress which is the birth
right of most American girls, manage to
clothe themselves in garments which would
pass quite unnoticed in a New York crowd
and the men buy their ready-made cloth
ing from firms which sell the same sort
Of goods in Chicago. New York, and
Squashville. Thus the distinctive garb
which the countrymen OF the stage always
wear is seldom seen in real life, certainly
not on such an occasion as the Dewey
festivities. What is more. the country
man puts on his most correct English as
well as his best attire for visit to town.
In the privacy of his own home he may use
racy colloquialisms or wreck the rules Of
grammar at his own sweet will, but not
when he is talking with stranger. Quite
unconsciously he drops his drawl and his
country slang together, and prunes his dia-
lect until it is only the average dialect
of the untutored American citizen.
One reason for this is peculiarly Ameri-
can. 1t is the Influence which the young
have in the home. Certain aspects of this
influence are not very lovely. but in some
ways il is a good thing. One of the most
painful sights in the world is the aged
father or mother meekly submitting to the