IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 



527 



frequently, whether it was customary for children 

 when addressing their father to say " sir." He 

 said, " Oh, yes — is it not customary in England ? 

 We teach our children to do it ; we have not too 

 much of the spirit of reverence in America, and 

 we think it desirable to cultivate it." 



I came to the conclusion — to me a very unex- 

 pected one — that the Americans are a reserved 

 people. They are not eager to talk to you about 

 their own affairs. Manufacturers, except when I 

 asked them, did not tell me how many men they 

 employed. Merchants were not anxious to im- 

 press me with the magnitude of their business 

 transactions. Xor, indeed, did I find that the 

 strangers I met were very anxious or, indeed, 

 very willing to talk at all. I often found it hard 

 to discover whether the people I was traveling 

 with approved of Mr. Hayes's Southern policy or 

 not, or even whether they belonged to the Re- 

 publican or the Democratic party. When I was 

 fortunate enough to find a man with a cigar in 

 his mouth standing on the platform of a Pullman 

 car, I could sometimes make him more communi- 

 cative ; and occasionally, under these conditions, 

 I learned a great deal about the country. But, 

 as a rule, strangers opened slowly and shyly. 

 Nor was this because I was an Englishman. I 

 used to watch the people in railway-carriages — a 

 dozen or twenty in a Pullman drawing-room car, 

 forty or fifty in an ordinary car — and if they did 

 not know each other they would travel together 

 all day without exchanging half a dozen words. 

 Occasionally three men who were friends would 

 ask a stranger to take a hand at whist, but this 

 was not very common. Perhaps the reticence is 

 confined to the wealthier people. On the lines 

 which have, two classes of carriages I often spent 

 half an hour in a smoking-car intended for both 

 classes of passengers. There I generally found 

 much more freedom. Working-men talked to 

 each other without any difficulty ; but even there 

 the passengers who had come from the first-class 

 carriages sat and smoked in silence. 



I remember one conspicuous exception, how- 

 ever, to the general reserve. In the smoking- 

 cabin of a steamboat a Southern gentleman, a 

 professor in a college of some reputation, gave 

 the company an elaborate account — d propos of 

 nothing — of the exercises he had had to perform 

 for his degree in a German university. As most 

 of the men were obviously men of business, and 

 just as uninterested in university affairs as in the 

 incidents of the gentleman's personal history, they 

 smoked on in silence, looking at him occasionally 

 with an expression of stolid wonder, alleviated 



slightly with perplexity and amusement. On an- 

 other occasion, and equally without provocation, 

 the same gentleman gave the same company the 

 most minute information about his physical ail- 

 ments and how lie treated them, and was listened 

 to with the same look of amusement, perplexity, 

 and wonder. It was very odd. He was under 

 fifty, so that he had not become garrulous through 

 old age. He had not lost the control of his tongue 

 by drinking whiskey-and-water. I had several 

 private talks with him outside the smoking-room, 

 and found him an intelligent and well-read man. 

 He had seen a great deal of the world, and though 

 he was extraordinarily communicative about his 

 opinions and doings, he could talk pleasantly 

 about many things besides his own learning, 

 headaches, and attacks of indigestion. But he 

 was the only instance I happened to meet with 

 of an American absolutely free from reserve. As 

 a rule, the people appeared to me to be more re- 

 served than ourselves. 



The same quality of their national temper- 

 ament shows itself in another form ; as a rule, 

 they are undemonstrative. The late Lord Lytton 

 tells us that on one occasion when Kean was per- 

 forming in the United States, he came to the man- 

 ager at the end of the third act and said : " I can't 

 go on the stage again, sir, if the pit keeps its 

 hands in its pockets. Such an audience would 

 extinguish Etna." After receiving this alarming 

 threat the manager appeared before the curtain 

 and informed the audience that " Mr. Kean, hav- 

 ing been accustomed to audiences more demon- 

 strative than was habitual to the severer in- 

 telligence of an assembly of American citizens, 

 mistook their silent attention for disapprobation ; 

 and, in short, that if they did not applaud as 

 Mr. Kean had been accustomed to be applauded, 

 they could not have the gratification of seeing 

 Mr. Kean act as he had been accustomed to 

 act." » 



Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was lecturing 

 many years ago in some city in Vermont or New 

 Hampshire, and the same " severe intelligence of 

 an assembly of American citizens " baffled and 

 perplexed him. There was no sign of interest. 

 His brightest wit and his shrewdest humor failed 

 to produce even a passing smile. The people sat 

 as if they had been in church listening to the 

 dullest of sermons. But as he was walking away 

 from the lecture-room with the full conviction 

 that he had made a miserable failure, his host 

 said to him quietly : " Why, Mr. Holmes, you said 



J "Upon the Efficacy of Praise," " Caxtoniana," 

 vol. i., p. 335. 



