| Show A LOOK AT OURSELVES no character is quite so interesting to thoughtful englishmen as aa the americans it is so like our own yet so unlike so complex and yet so 00 simple so and yet so full of unexpected turns they are as difficult to depict as aa englishmen seem 16 foreigners and if we try to do it it is with a full consciousness that atter after our best beat efforts many facets of the store will still remain but for two peculiarities which are universal and deep enough profoundly to modify char character we should say that the americans as a nation more closely resemble the english in ireland than any other people in the world the long contest with enemies with nature with circumstances has bred in them the inner hardness and incapacity of yielding to opposition which oat peculiar caste derives from its long habit of keeping down supe superior flor ti numbers umbers and exacting from them tribute there is dourness douress somewhere in every american EL hard pan as they itar themselves to which it if you get down dowst there is no further progress tabe to be made anade you must crush it to powder derOl 01 retreat and nine times out of ten re theat is lound to be the easier course ao 70 american character rests in fact job on A L granite substratum which has J been tho the origin of their success and will give theto thein the mastery of the western astern hemisphere it is not merely the english doggedness dogged nesa though it doUbt doubtless lego had its root in it it to is a quality which enables its possessor to so CO on whatever happens to charge an aa jt were instead of merely standing to receive the assault it is in tact fact it if we are jo to be minute doggedness dogged made fiery by an infusion of hope of a sang UJ djimas ImAs which you would never expect from an americans face that owing iolas to some climatic peculiarity la Is usually cafe careworn worn especially in the aut which colors hla his very vera blood we never met an american in our lives who did not believe he should worry through any trouble on hand and reach at last the point desired however distant it might seem to be like the anglo irishman also the american has a quick sense of the incongruous he perceives the comicality alike of things and persons and he has a habit of pointing that out with a reserve shrewdness which has always the effect of and sometimes really is mordant humor like the anglo irish too the american has a strong sense oi 01 personal dignity he cannot beer bear to be belittled and is if anything tive on the score of his individual claims to respect his pride is not the glacial pride of the englishmen englishman who at heart hold the man who offends him to be a boor for doing it and would as am soon quarrel with a cabman as with him but is a growing pride perhaps over to resent insult and to imagine wrong add to these traits an almost infinite depth of inner kindness so long as there to is no provocation and no resistance from inferiors and you have the anglo irish character on its strong sides and that is also the american about as efficient a character as the world presents to our view he can fight or he can bargain h he e can build or he can and when doing any of these things he generally contrives to come out at the top toly with perhaps just a glance around to see that the high place out of which he emerges with unmoved countenance has hab been noticed by the world around we should add for it is characteristic though perhaps it is of little importance that the manner of a well brea american is usually and allowing for individual idiosyncrasies almost exactly that of a well bred anglo irishman a intended grace and with a certain patience as of one accustomed to other mens folly which Is not english at all that Is the testimony of all mankind to the English mans great perplexity but the americans patience and that of the anglo irishman leave a sensation not always fully justified of friendliness there are a hundred lord ferins in america the american has however as we said two peculiarities which differentiate him from all mankind we should not call him a happy man exactly but he be Is an incurably cheerful one the weight of the dozen atmospheres which press down the englishman is oft off the americans spirit he does not expect to find aily anywhere where persons superior to himself he thinks he can make instead of obeying he sees no reason unless indeed he is a candi diate for his municipality or for congress for professing to be anything but what he is he is quite contented as to his past and quite satisfied that the future will go his way he lives mainly in the present but as the past was good and the future will be better the present will do very well for the time being if no one has affronted him he has no quarrel with any one but is disposed to look on all men with an appreciative smile as being all equally creatures of allah poor crea tures turea some of them no doubt but still cre creatures atuTes he takes life as it comes in fact with little concern rAny body takes it differently and with a complete admission not only fro from in the lips but from the heart that tt it takes a good many sorts of men to make up a world the conviction of equality equall tY with all men has taken the social fidget out of him and given him an inner sense of ease and tranquility never quite absent even when his external manner seems seema awkward or constrained it follows fool lows that he Is always ready to try anything and that the english idea of living in a groove seems to him confined and small a waste of the faculties that god has given and it fol lows also that being inwardly content to work with himself and having a whole continent to work in he is seldom so thorough as the englishman is satisfied sati fied fled with knowing many things less completely than the englishman knows one and has for intellectual temptation always provided that the task before him is not machine making a certain shallowness the kind of man who is least like an american Afner ican is the kind of man about the british museum who knows upon some one subject nearly all there is to know and can tell YOW you almost to a foot where all that remains to be known will ultimately be found we doubt it if the american is fuller of resource than the generally has his plan at least but he is much quicker in bringing his wits to bealand be arand much less lesa disposed to let any habitude of mind stand for a moment in his way in fact though the amerian like every other of his sons of eve is clothed ira in habits he wears them with singular lightness and if his sense of propriety would permit would on the stalest provo caton cast them all away there are only two exceptions to th that at with an american his reli religion glon and the constitution ution of the united states those two are not habits at all in the sense but butter and inner skins there remains the strongest and strangest peculiarity rity of all which already differentiates the american completely from the englishman and a hundred years hence will make of him an entirely separate being the american is a nervous man in the sense in which doctors who study constitution use that word he is not neurotic no man less so and brave as any man living but his nerves respond more quickly to his brain than those of any other human being he feels strongly and he feels everything we are inclined to suspect that the condition of so many americans resembles the condition of over trained men or horses and that activity of brain continued for generations is injurious in a dry climate to bodily health be the cause what it may the american is liable to be excited and his excitement which sometimes shows itself in bursts of tremendous energy sometimes in fits of gayety gaiety and sometimes in almo incurable melancholia constantly wears him out it is the greatest distinction distinct on between him and the more stolid englishman or rather between him and the oldest of english colonists the anglo irish man mam evanston wyo press A row that might have proved disastrous to several patriotic citizens of this city was W narrowly averted last night light by the timely interference of martin cleory cl eairy the bartender at the rocky mountain hotel As far as could be learned a man by the name of L lopaz 0 p az not lo 10 lopez pe 2 had registered himself as a guest df d f that hostelry y and atter after the u usual s u al c crowd r drw d had congregated in the bar room I 1 late ate last evening frank easton ace osted lopaz in a slurring manner intimating t that he was not a countryman ot at his linking lInk hg etc lopaz seemed to think that easton baston was implying that helas he was a spaniard and not a mexican aaa immediately to took ok them up and to in ft a forcible manner pulling a long blaa looking dirk from his boot leg hp he made tor for easton and threatened to carve his wizen after an lunge with his knife maram mal ft cleary caught him and holding alm fast the other occupants of the bar ba room disarmed him and no dama damage was done but the mexican succeeded in impressing the of the participants that even a mexican would resent such an insult as being ing called a spaniard |
