Year: 1878

Every once in a while, some native critic
takes it upon himself to express his opinions,
usually through the weekly or monthly press,
on the manners and conduct of Americans
abroad. These opinions are mostly splenet-
ic tending to show that the people of this
country behave very badly in other lands
that they are a rare combination of vulgari-
ans and toadies; that they are arch pro
tenders and wretched snobs; that they are
ridiculously anxious to pass for what they are
not in culture, breeding and nationality;
that they are in n word precisely the kind
of folk that any person of common sense and
common delicacy would be mortified to meet.
just Mt present, Americans in Europe are
undergoing this periodical arraignment, at
the hands of peevish home critics, on the
charges specified, with many others of ma
ture equally offensive.


No amount Of foreign travel will enable an
American, however intelligent and observing,
to learn how ignorant, affected, mean, syco-
phantic. and generally contemplate his COM
patriots can be and are until he has read the
caustic comments upon them in some of the
publications of the United States. 1t has
grown to be a habit with many writers here
to misrepresont Americans III the mass to
put upon nearly all the weaknesses and faults
OF the few, and to maintain that character
formed in a Republic is very apt to be in
jured and perverted by temporary residence
or even by joumeying, beyond the sea. The
habit may be the reaction from what has been
termed spread -oagleism, Of which no doubt
we have rs a nation been lamentably guilty.
But latterly, especially since the civil war, the
overween;ng vanity we have been accused Of
has been greatly modified modified, indeed,
to n degree that is well-nigh incompatible,
with many of us, with proper sclf-esteem.
We have got into a way OF concentrating our
attention upon, and eXaggerating. our own
defects to such an extent rs to believe that
we enjoy something like n monopoly of them.
Hence the repeated and unjust censure from
home sources. Any thoughtful American
who has spent any time III the Old World
must have noticed countless things in his
Countrymen which he would gladly have
changed; that many wanted respect for the
feelings and opinions of others that they
were boastful. self-assCrtiyc, noisy; that they
stupiily condemned whatever they could
not appreciate and understand He must
have noticed, too. that another class gave
themselves absurd airs, and assumed to be and
to know what they were not and did not
that they were pushing, and insensible or in-
different to snuOs and Sights that they went
where they We're not welcome that they
We're tuft-hunters, and seemed ashamed to
have been born in n democracy. albeit they
could not have been half so much ashamed as
any honest American cognizant of their weak
ness. 1t is profound pity that such cti-
zens Of the Republic can be found and pro-
founder pity that they can be found on their
own territory, which they should relinquish
forever. But we have no law to suppress our
fools and snobs and if we had such is the
obstinacy of unintclligenco and yulgarity-
they would break it.


Granted that there are innumerahle disa-
greeable and discreditabe Americans abroad
and most of us are quicker and more an
noyed to see this than foreigners themselves
does anybody claim that they are representa-
tive, or that they are what they are from their
nationality: Ignorance, yulgarity, sham swag-
ger, fawnipe belong to 10 land and no race
they are, unhappily, part of our common
humanity. While we probably have far less
of these, on the whole, than any people we
may show more in Europe, because all Ameri-
cans may be said to travel, and large pro-
portion of them are not of the sort TO reflect
honor on themselves or the Republic. The
same class, relatively, Of English, French,
Italians, Germans, Spauiards, Russians, 90
not cross their buundarics. They have not
the means, the time, the inclination, or the
intelligence to travel, ,the worst faults Of our
couutrymen spring. 1t must be conceded,
from a certain kind of intelligence and not
meeting them on the highways and in the
centres of tourists, it is natural to infer that
they have no existence


OF this nation it can be truly said that there
are Americans and Americans The better
class who cross the ocean act like the better
class of foreigners, and are scarcely dstn-
guished from them in manners and conduct.
On this account they are not supposed gem
orally to be Americans, even by their own
cOuntrymen. They are quiet, unobtrusive,
simple, kindly, unpretentious more so than
the majority of Europeans they move among.
Nobody critciscs them, because there is noth-
ing to crticiSe. They are silently passed
over, in order that Americans Of the offensive
class should be censured This is unjust and
absurd. Coarse or snohbi9h Americans are the
same at home as abroad, or rather little bet
ter at home Not approved or respected
| here, or reckoned here rs representative, why
| should they be presumed to change their ma
| ture beyond the sea? Many of our country
men in the Old World are nll that any one
would wish them 20 be. They are content to
be themselves; they ape nothing; they seek
nobody.


If we must hear OF our cOuntrymen abroad,
let us hear occasionally of these and not in
ccssautly of those who choose to violate good
manners aud demean themselves, For their
behavior and the impression they create,
| they alone are responsible, and there is no
reason why we should be troubled about them.
The Objectionable thing is that Americans as
"A people, should be constantly held up by
their own counrymen either as barbarians or
| toad-eaters, because certain number are
not at all what they should be, The Ameri-
cans have grave faults, and many OF the most
unfavorable specimens elect to travel, while
| Europeans of the same relative grade are
| OBLIGED bV their circumstances to remain Mt
home. This may be regretted, though it can
not be helped. So We may as well dismiss
uneasness on the subject. We should be
much more concerned with what our people
| do at home than how they appear abroad.
| Nevertheless, with all their defects, Ameri-
cans show, on the whole, to quite as much
advantage in respect to manners and morals
as any of the older and more self-centred
natons.-Ncto Y0rk Times.