200 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



sweethearts, and smoke villainous cigars, and drink 

 ale and stout. There was to me something notably 

 fresh and canny about them, as if they had only yes- 

 terday ceased to be shepherds and shepherdesses. 

 They certainly were less developed, in certain direc- 

 tions, or shall I say depraved, than similar crowds in 

 our great cities. They are easily pleased, and laugh 

 at the simple and childlike, but there is little that 

 hints of an impure taste, or of abnormal appetites. I 

 often smiled at the tameness and simplicity of the 

 amusements, but my sense of fitness, or proportion, 

 or decency, was never once outraged. They always 

 stop short of a certain point the point where wit 

 degenerates into mockery, and liberty into license : 

 nature is never put to shame, and will commonly 

 bear much more. Especially to the American sense 

 did their humorous and comic strokes, their negro- 

 minstrelsy, and attempts at Yankee comedy, seem in 

 . in a minor key. There was not enough irreverence, 

 and slang, and coarse ribaldry, in the whole evening's 

 entertainment, to have seasoned one line of some of 

 our most popular comic poetry. But the music, and 

 the gymnastic, acrobatic, and other feats, were of a 

 very high order. And I will say here that the char- 

 acteristic flavor of the humor and fun-making of the 

 average English people, as it impressed my sense, is 

 what one gets in Sterne very human and stomachic, 

 and entirely free from the contempt and supercilious- 

 ness of most current writers. I did not get one whiff 

 of Dickens anywhere. No doubt, it is there in some 



