198 OBSERVATIONS OF A RANCHWOMAN 



communities, if one may be permitted to 

 generalize, whilst ahead of the same kind 

 of community in England in some respects, 

 are, in the South and West, at all events, 

 distinctly behind in others. The reasons for 

 their deficiencies are obvious to one who has 

 spent any length of time in their midst. But 

 it must never be forgotten that a large pro- 

 portion of our immigrating fellow- country - 

 people have not been conspicuous successes 

 'at home,' and to the impartial observer have 

 no solid foundation on which to build their 

 ostentatious claims to superiority. And for 

 his rigid inadaptability to unaccustomed 

 surroundings the Englishman too often pays 

 dearly, sinking lower and lower in the social 

 scale, and making a failure of everything he 

 attempts, until ' See what an Englishman 

 can come down to !' has become a universal 

 exclamation, overheard at all times and in all 

 places. This is not to say that a rigid in- 

 adaptability is not a virtue in the right place, 

 or that the manifestation of it is not in some 

 localities eminently desirable. 



But however personally distasteful the 

 country community may chance to be in 



