d, "if you make it worth their while," helping you. The same
feeling pervades all but the well-educated and intellectual classes
in the States. Even where, as in New York, contact with Europeans has
rubbed off some of this peculiarity, it exists. The shopman serving
you seems to do so under protest. The conductor on the rail treats
you as his equal. The hotel official picks his teeth, and
expectorates in dangerous proximity to your boots, while entering
your name. You need not, 'tis true, shake hands with the shopkeeper,
even if he recognizes you, simply because there is no time in New
York for such courtesies, but you have to do it out West.

The first thing that strikes you on landing in America is the want of
deference and courtesy among all classes. Not only from the inferior
to the superior, but _vice versa_ also. The maxim _noblesse oblige_
has no sway there. In England, speaking to an equal or a social
inferior, "Kindly do this," or "Please give me that," is general. In
America the "kindly" and "please" are carefully omitted, and the
servant or "help" retaliates by the substance and tone of the answer.
But I am wrong, perhaps, to use the word retaliates, for I never
found that civility in asking produced any other effect.

The maxim in America seems to be that every man is as good as his
neighbour, or better, at least every man seems to think so, and why,
thinking so, they should address anybody as "Sir," beats their
comprehension, and they simply don't do it.

It seemed to me, among the class I write of, that the feeling is
"Civility argues inferiority, _ergo_, the less given the better." It
can only be some feeling of the kind, deeply implanted, that accounts
for the fact that the Yankee (mind I use the word as I have defined
it above) is the most uncourteous being in creation.

The press in all countries reflects public opinion more than it leads
it. Suppose a paper--I say not in London, but in Manchester, then the
comparison is perfect--were to write of the Empress Eugenie as some
American papers write of our Royal Family. Were she spoken of as
simply "Eugenie," and even lauded as such, would not the paper so
speaking of her be certainly damned? But "Wales" I have seen in
several Northern States papers, do duty for our Queen's eldest son
and future king. Nay more, in such papers woman's sex is no defence.
Her Royal Highness, Princess Beatrice, is written of by her Christian
name only, and her husband is a