Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-07-12
TRUE RECIPROCITY


While everybody is making more or less
Ineligible use Of that terribly .overworked
word reciprocity let me say that in my
opinion justice demands that there should
be reciprocity In personal and social beliefs
between the American and the English pco-
pies" somewhat warmly exclaimed the
other day clever Washington woman who
recently returned from England. There
is heavy balance against US in that re-
spect that requires to be adjusted
THE great mass Of the English people
preserve identically the same notions with
respect to the personalities and manners
OF American men and women as they did
In the days when Dickens first wrote about
us. While it may be possible that they
nave grown to like us better, their llkiig
sun remains mere tolerance. ana II IS
tlnged with an exasperating If rarely out
spoken r1dicule. To the present hour the
average English individual believes that
all American men chew tobacco and eX-
pectofate promiscuously In all sorts OF
places. including carpeted rooms. They are
still under the impression that all Amer
lean men exclaim Wall, 1 reckon. four or
five times in the course Of as many minutes
or conversation. and that they are nope
lessly addicted to the habit of cooking their
heeES higher than their heads on all sorts
of occasions and saying I guess They
Still Imagine that all young American Wo-
men litter and te-he and eXc!aim Dew
tell: and want t. know! when they DC
sire to be particularly fascinating. 1t Is
still the English idea that all of us, men
and women. are perpetually and riotouslS
spreading the wings of the American eagle
and bowling patriotism from the ch'In-
ney tops, and there seems to be no possible
way of convincing the average Englisnman
that all rich travelling Americans do not
owe their wealth to pork and its products
They are absolutely convinced, as any one
can see, that Americans of every class
must necessarily be Founders and When
one happens to mention that o-and SO be-
longs to very good American family, one
can actually see the little smiles of scorn
playing around the English mouth They
don't admit, they can't conceive, IN TACT,
that there is any such thing as a good
family in America. But the most exas-
perating, the most humliating, the NEST
utterly unjust. Unborn belief of the EnSllsh
is that every last one of us talks through
our noses They are always writing about
our nasal twang. Where in heavens name
that idea ever originated l can't imagine
that the American folks talk through their
noses. 1t simply is not so, any more tndn
1t is so that we grease our hair with Co
coanut Oil and wear it in a tower at the
tops Of our heads like some of the African
tribes.
'It would be Just as fair and true for us
to say that all of the English wear bone
rings through their noses as 1t Is for them
to persist in claiming, in print as well as
by word of mouth. that we talk through
our nose. I have named only few of the
grotesque and utterly fanciful, not to say
idiotic, ideas that the English still pre-
serve as to American men and women, but
1 could go right on naming them for an
hour.
Now, no such foolish errors exist even
among the most ordinary people of this
country with respect to the English. We
know that a high-grade English man or
English woman is a pretty fine sort of per-
sonage, and we do not dwell upon their
mannerisms. although they certainly have
many. We know. too. the cockney per-
fectly we'll. but we never dream of budding
the cockneys alongside the high-grade peo-
pie Of England. of grouping them all in a
mass. and attributing to the better people
the same attributes as to the coster. We
know the English. people thoroughly, from
high to low. know where to rate them,
know how to assert them, and we are get
ting to know them better every year, where
as their knowledge of us. as 1 maintain. is
precisely the same as it was fifty or even
more years ago, so far as concerns our per-
sonalities and manners.
There ought to be some sort of recipro-
cal arrangement whereby the English could
be taught to abandon their half-century- old
ideas of us, collectively and individually in
return for our invariable and frequently
lavish hospitality extended toward them"