Show american child Is a greater puzzle than Is the american adult by IV V I 1 4 GEORGE british Br Ithell novelist the american child is to me a greater puzzle than the american Anie rican adult I 1 cannot the emotional american dominated by moral impulses develops out of the shrewd and hard american child it 4 is I 1 B almost inhuman it hates to be fondled it seldom al kisses an adult it wholly diffene from the emotional al M kiy enthusiastic english chili child which hurls itself upon the people it j t likes and inflicts upon them sticky embraces it does not give itself it knows what it wants and takes it with strange brutality if this applied apalie d only to female children I 1 could understand it for something of this survives in the american girl before marriage and misfortunes have turned her into a human being but the male american child shows only the hardness of the american man not the gentleness and tenderness which make him so attractive this may come from the close contact between the american child and its parent it lives IMS with them is of thena it is treated seriously therefore it does docs not hot look upon the adult as a god notably in the well todo to do classes there is no childrens hour say when the anxious prisoners of the nursery are allowed trembling with excitement and a nwe we to enter the holy pre presence pence of the grownups grown ups it is no fun fan being an american child one grows up without idols and one must make some for ones self since mankind at all ages lives only by error the hard child suggests the hard home which is characteristic of america I 1 visited many houses in the united states and except among the definitely rich I 1 found them rather uncomfortable they felt bare untenanted cd they were too neat too new they indicated d the restaurant the theater the cinema were often visited one missed the comfortable accumulation of broken screens old fire irons and seven year old volumes of the london illustrated news which make up the dusty frowsy drowsy feeling of home the american house is not a place where one lives but a place where one merely sleeps sleep eats sits sita works you will mil say that makes up home life but it does not I 1 there is something else which can arise only out of a compound of dullness boiled mutton in an ill cut lawn idoa a dog a cat and some mice to keep beep the cat amused I 1 cannot explain it better than that and americans may not understand what I 1 mean although any english person will |