Daily Arizona silver belt., 1907-08-23
IGNORANCE ABOUT AMERICA
We'll Educated Englishmen Have Odd
 Notions About United States

It is amusing in England to learn
 the odd notions which often exist there
 about the United States and things
 American on the part of ordinary Eng,
 lishmen. l once had occasion to go in-
 to a Holborn publishing house, espec-
 ially engaged in the sale of text books
 for schools. I explained that one of
 the principal purposes of my call was to purchase one or two books that would
 give an idea of the interpretation which
 is put upon the events of the American
 revolution as taught to English youth
 Courteous attention was exhausted in
 the endeavors of the manager of the house to get me what l wanted in his stock or to send for it elsewhere "But," said the young man, an appar ently well educated clerk, who looked over the catalogue for the text books in vain, to discover one which gave anything like full account of the rev olution, CT must say. sir, that when went to school we boys were taught very little about it. Your American boys, sir, must know more in day about English history than ours do about American history in year. I can see this from the kind of American books we sometimes get here" It is, therefore, not surprising that most Englishmen grow up into manhood with queer ideas about the size and geog. raphy of the United States-thc diffcr- ence for example, between Massaehus- ctts and Pennsylvania, what New Eng land is, the location of the Indians, what caused the revolution, the difference be tween President and a governor, and other such themes of elementary i'm port. l have known not n few Amer ican boys and girls who could reel oif list of all the kings and queens of England from the time of William the Conqueror to Edward VII almost with out stopping to take breath; but an English youth has usually no knowledge at all of American rulers save that he has read something about Washington, has a misty idea of Lincoln as an eman- cipator, and has heard just enough about Roosevelt in the newspapers to be in some doubt as to whether he was an en- terprising college professor or re- formed cowboy.
 It is still not uncommon to run across Englishmen who have an idea that New York is the capital of the United States. that Pennsylvania is chiefly populated by Quakers, that Indiana is the State which is given over to the Indians, that Chicago is on tine Mississippi river, that Abraham Lincoln was the great soldier or general of the Civil war, that Phila- delphia is somewhere down in the South ern country, that the American business man usually goes about with a revolver or a bowie knife, and that Englishmen who live in this country are likely to be bounced upon by mobs. These are few specimens of the sort of observations which are made seriously by men who have had presumably what we would call "eommon school education. v Even excellent business men sometimes have hay notions on such things. I once met a delightful Englishman, MT. James Webster, of Liverpool He had just made a journey for the first time in Canada and through the Northern and Western States. He expressed his hearty admiration of most of the things he had seen, of the unexpected degree of civilized comfort which he had found in our houses and of the organization of hotels and great stores even in some of the youngest cities. He admitted that he had been considerably surprised at what he saw. 'But," he added, '1therc is nothing which will give more amusement when I settle down at home again and have my friends around the table than to tell them what I saw, then to watch how ineredulously they will listen to me. Why I know that some of them actually believe that it is not safe to go into an American hotel unless you have a six shooter by the side of the plate on your table or under your pillow" Penn," in Philadelphia Bull letin