OURSELVES, AND OTHERS 197 



to drive down to North Carolina the follow- 

 ing day to call on some friends. Further- 

 more, if he falls into the pit of an * English 

 set/ he is not likely to improve very much. 

 Let him avoid as he would a trap its narrow 

 confines. Also he will have less to blush for 

 in later, better-instructed years if, after a 

 limited period passed in a probably ill- 

 selected corner of this great country, he 

 were to refrain from wholesale criticism of 

 a people concerning whom he has taken 

 especial pains to know a little less than 

 nothing, and whom by these manifestations 

 he sometimes offends, but more often ex- 

 travagantly amuses. The American, and in 

 particular the educated American, is a person 

 possessed of much tolerance, to which his 

 sense of humour contributes not a little ; the 

 airs of the unaired Englishman consequently 

 afford him diversion. 



To claim that the American community in 

 which the newly-arrived Englishman is apt 

 to find himself is of necessity congenial or 

 elevating, would be as absurd as to pretend 

 that the Englishman himself is of necessity 

 superior to his surroundings. American rural 



