America has won the respectful consideration of even the most
thoughtless and insular among us. She has come home to us, so to speak,
as a vast and vital factor in the problem of the future.
Superciliousness towards her is a mere anachronism.
Many Englishmen, however, are still guilty of a thoughtless captiousness
towards America, which is none the less galling because it manifests
itself in the most trifling matters. A friend of my own returned a few
years ago from a short tour in the United States, declaring that he
heartily disliked the country, and would never go back again. Inquiry as
to the grounds of his dissatisfaction elicited no more definite or
damning charge than that "they" (a collective pronoun presumed to cover
the whole American people) hung up his trousers instead of folding
them--or _vice versa_, for I am heathen enough not to remember which is
the orthodox process. Doubtless he had other, and possibly weightier,
causes of complaint; but this was the head and front of America's
offending. Another Englishman of education and position, being asked why
he had never crossed the Atlantic, gravely replied that he could not
endure to travel in a country where you had to black your own boots!
Such instances of ignorance and pettiness may seem absurdly trivial, but
they are quite sufficient to act as grits in the machinery of social
intercourse.
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