ng
through the district. A Chinese, prominent in local affairs, who had
received an invitation, discovered that though he would sit among the
honored guests he would be placed below one or two whom he thought he
ought to be above, and who, he therefore considered, would be usurping
his rightful position. In disgust he refused to attend the dinner,
which, excepting for what he imagined was a breach of manners, he would
have been very pleased to have attended. Americans are much more
sensible. They are not a bit sensitive, especially in small matters.
Either they are broad-minded enough to rise above unworthy trifles, or
else their good Americanism prevents their squabbling over questions of
precedence, at the dinner table or elsewhere.

Americans act up to their Declaration of Independence, especially the
principle it enunciates concerning the equality of man. They lay so
much importance on this that they do not confine its application to
legal rights, but extend it even to social intercourse. In fact, I
think this doctrine is the basis of the so-called American manners.
All men are deemed socially equal, whether as friend and friend, as
President and citizen, as employer and employee, as master and servant,
or as parent and child. Their relationship may be such that one is
entitled to demand, and the other to render, certain acts of obedience,
and a certain amount of respect, but outside that they are on the same
level. This is doubtless a rebellion against all the social ideas and
prejudices of the old world, but it is perhaps only what might be
looked for in a new country, full of robust and ambitious manhood,
disdainful of all traditions which in the least savor of monarchy or
hierarchy, and eager to blaze as new a path for itself in the social as
it has succeeded in accomplishing in the political world. Combined
with this is the American characteristic of saving time. Time is
precious to all of us, but to Americans it is particularly so. We all
wish to save time, but the Americans care much more about it than the
rest of us. Then there are different notions about this question of
saving time, different notions of what wastes time and what does not,
and much which the old world regards as politeness and good manners
Americans consider as sheer waste of time. Time is, they think, far
too precious to be occupied with ceremonies which appear empty and
meaningless. It can, they say, be much more profitably