filled with
other and more useful occupations. In any discussion of American
manners it would be unfair to leave out of consideration their
indifference to ceremony and their highly developed sense of the value
of time, but in saying this I do not forget that many Americans are
devout ritualists, and that these find both comfort and pleasure in
ceremony, which suggests that after all there is something to be said
for the Chinese who have raised correct deportment almost to the rank
of a religion.

The youth of America have not unnaturally caught the spirit of their
elders, so that even children consider themselves as almost on a par
with their parents, as almost on the same plane of equality; but the
parents, on the other hand, also treat them as if they were equals, and
allow them the utmost freedom. While a Chinese child renders
unquestioning obedience to his parents' orders, such obedience as a
soldier yields to his superior officer, the American child must have
the whys and the wherefores duly explained to him, and the reason for
his obedience made clear. It is not his parent that he obeys, but
expediency and the dictates of reason. Here we see the clear-headed,
sound, common-sense business man in the making. The early training of
the boy has laid the foundation for the future man. The child too has
no compunction in correcting a parent even before strangers, and what
is stranger still the parent accepts the correction in good part, and
sometimes even with thanks. A parent is often interrupted in the
course of a narrative, or discussion, by a small piping voice, setting
right, or what it believes to be right, some date, place, or fact, and
the parent, after a word of encouragement or thanks, proceeds. How
different is our rule that a child is not to speak until spoken to! In
Chinese official life under the old regime it was not etiquette for one
official to contradict another, especially when they were unequal in
rank. When a high official expressed views which his subordinates did
not endorse, they could not candidly give their opinion, but had to
remain silent. I remember that some years ago some of my colleagues
and I had an audience with a very high official, and when I expressed
my dissent from some of the views of that high functionary, he rebuked
me severely. Afterward he called me to him privately, and spoke to me
somewhat as follows: "What you said just now was quite correct. I was
wrong, and