d was normal to him in the sense
that nine times out of ten he felt and wrote in that humorous and
hilarious mood. But he was, if ever there was one, a man of moods; and
all the more of a typical Englishman for being a man of moods. But it
was because of this, almost entirely, that he had a misunderstanding
with America.

In America there are no moods, or there is only one mood. It is the same
whether it is called hustle or uplift; whether we regard it as the
heroic love of comrades or the last hysteria of the herd instinct. It
has been said of the typical English aristocrats of the Government
offices that they resemble certain ornamental fountains and play from
ten till four; and it is true that an Englishman, even an English
aristocrat, is not always inclined to play any more than to work. But
American sociability is not like the Trafalgar fountains. It is like
Niagara. It never stops, under the silent stars or the rolling storms.
There seems always to be the same human heat and pressure behind it; it
is like the central heating of hotels as explained in the advertisements
and announcements. The temperature can be regulated; but it is not. And
it is always rather overpowering for an Englishman, whose mood changes
like his own mutable and shifting sky. The English mood is very like the
English weather; it is a nuisance and a national necessity.

If any one wishes to understand the quarrel between Dickens and the
Americans, let him turn to that chapter in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, in which
young Martin has to receive endless defiles and deputations of total
strangers each announced by name and demanding formal salutation. There
are several things to be noticed about this incident. To begin with, it
did not happen to Martin Chuzzlewit; but it did happen to Charles
Dickens. Dickens is incorporating almost without alteration a passage
from a diary in the middle of a story; as he did when he included the
admirable account of the prison petition of John Dickens as the prison
petition of Wilkins Micawber. There is no particular reason why even the
gregarious Americans should so throng the portals of a perfectly obscure
steerage passenger like young Chuzzlewit. There was every reason why
they should throng the portals of the author of _Pickwick_ and _Oliver
Twist_. And no doubt they did. If I may be permitted the aleatory image,
you bet they did. Similar troops of sociable human beings have visited
much more insignificant English