y to do a kindness is itself to
confer a favour. The Continental European shares with the American the
merit of having manners on the self-regarding pattern of _noblesse
oblige_, while the Englishman wants to know who _you_ are, so as to
put on his best manners only if the _force majeure_ of your social
standing compels him. No one wishes the Englishman to express more
than he really feels or to increase the already overwhelming mass of
conventional insincerity; but it might undoubtedly be well for him to
consider whether it is not his positive duty to drop a little more of
the oil of human kindness on the wheels of the social machinery, and
to understand that it is perfectly possible for two strangers to speak
with and look at each other pleasantly without thereby contracting the
obligation of eternal friendship. Why should an English traveller deem
it worthy of special record that when calling at a Boston club, he
found his friend and host not yet arrived, other members of the club,
unknown to him, had put themselves about to entertain him? An American
gentleman would find this too natural to call for remark.

Whether we like it or not, we have to acknowledge the fact that our
brutal frankness, our brusqueness, and our extreme fondness for
calling a spade a spade are often extremely disagreeable to our
American cousins, and make them (temporarily at any rate) feel
themselves to be our superiors in the matter of gentle breeding. As
Col. T.W. Higginson has phrased it, they think that "the English
nation has truthfulness enough for a whole continent, and almost too
much for an island." They think that a line might be drawn somewhere
between dissembling our love and kicking them downstairs. They also
object to our use of such terms as "beastly," "stinking," and "rot;"
and we must admit that they do so with justice, while we cannot assoil
them altogether of the opposite tendency of a prim prudishness in the
avoidance of certain natural and necessary words. For myself I
unfeignedly admire the delicacy which leads to a certain parsimony in
the use of words like "perspiration," "cleaning one's self," and so
on. And, however much we may laugh at the class that insists upon the
name of "help" instead of "servant," we cannot but respect the class
which yields to the demand and looks with horror on the English slang
word "slavey."

On the other hand there are certain little personal habits, such as
the public use of the toothpi