cepts the conventionality of his
class and wears it as an impenetrable armour. Out of his own class he
may sometimes appear less conventional than the American, simply
because the latter is quick to adopt the manners of a new _milieu_,
while John Bull clings doggedly or unconsciously to his old conventions.
If an American and an English shop-girl were simultaneously married to
peers of the realm, the odds would be a hundred to one in favour of the
former in the race for self-identification with her new environment.

The American facility of expression, if I do not err, springs largely
from an amiable difference in temperament. The American is, on the
whole, more genially disposed to all and sundry. I do not say that he
is capable of truer friendships or of greater sacrifices for a friend
than the Englishman; but the window through which he looks out on
humanity at large has panes of a ruddier hue, he cultivates a mildness
of tone, which a Briton is apt to despise as weakness. His desire to
oblige sometimes impels him to uncharacteristic actions, which lead to
fallacious generalisations on the part of his British critic. He
shrinks from any assumption of superiority; he is apt to think twice
of the feelings of his inferiors. The American tends to consider each
stranger he meets--at any rate within his own social sphere--as a good
fellow until he proves himself the contrary; with the Englishman the
presumption is rather the other way. An Englishman usually excuses
this national trait as really due to modesty and shyness; but I fear
there is in it a very large element of sheer bad manners, and of a
cowardly fear of compromising one's self with undesirable
acquaintances. Englishmen are apt to take _omne ignotum pro
horribile_, and their translation of the Latin phrase varies from the
lifting of the aristocratic eyebrow over the unwarranted address of
the casual companion at _table d'hote_ down to the "'ere's a stranger,
let's 'eave 'arf a brick at 'im" of the Black Country. In England I am
apt to feel painfully what a lame dog I am; in America I feel, well,
if I am a lame dog I am being helped most delightfully over the
conversational stile. An Englishman says, "Would you _mind_ doing
so-and-so for me?" showing by the very form of the question that he
thinks kindness likely to be troublesome. An American says, "Wouldn't
you _like_ to do this for me?" assuming the superior attitude of one
who feels that to give an opportunit