200 Manners, Customs, AND [Part II. 



power of selection. They are all well-informed; 

 modest without shyness ; always free to communicate 

 what they know, and never ashamed to acknowledg;e 

 that they have yet to learn. You never hear them 

 boast of their possessions, and aou never hear them 

 compiainhtg of their wants. Tliey have all been 

 readers from their youth up ; and there are few subjects 

 upon which they cannot converse with you, whether of 

 a political or scientific nature. At any rate, they 

 always hear with patience. I do not know that I ever 

 heard a native American interrupt another man while 

 he was speaking-. Their sedateness and coolness, the 

 deliberate manner in -which they say and do every 

 thing, and the slowness and reserve with which they 

 express iheir assent ; these are very wrongly estimated, 

 •when they are taken for marks of a vant of feeling. 

 It must be a tale of woe indeed, that will bring a tea 

 from an American's eye ; but any trumped up story will 

 send his hand to his pocket, as the ambassadors from 

 the beggars of France, Italy and Germany can fully 

 testify. 



357. However, you will not, for a long while, know 

 what to do for want of the quick rcspciises of the 

 English tongue, and the decided tone of the English 

 expression. The loud voice ; the hard squeeze by the 

 hand ; the instant assent or dissent ; the clamorous joy ; 

 the bitter wailing ; the ardent friendship; the deadly 

 enmity ; the love that makes people kill themselves ; the 

 hatred that makes them kill others. All these belong 

 to the characters of Englishmen, in whose minds and 

 hearts every feeling exists in the extreme. To decide 

 the question, which character is, upon the whole, 

 best, the American or the English, we nuist appeal to 

 some third party. Hut, it is no matter : we cannot 

 change our natures. For my part, who can, in nothing, 

 think or act by halves, I must belie my very nature, if 

 I said that I did not like the character of my o-wm 

 countrymen best. We all like our own parents and 

 children better than other people's parents and chil- 

 dren ; not because they are belter, but because they 

 areo nrs ; because they belong to us and we to them, 

 and because we must resemble each other. There are 



