ve
only the physical features. His hair is straight, his skin is saffron,
his eyes are slightly aslant,--but that is all. As far as his conduct
goes,--and that is the essential thing,--he is an American. In other
words, his traits, his tendencies to action, are American and not
Chinese. His life represents the triumph of environment over heredity.

When you visit England you find yourselves among a people who speak the
same language that you speak,--or, perhaps it would be better to say,
somewhat the same; at least you can understand each other. In a great
many respects, the Englishman and the American are similar in their
traits, but in a great many other respects they differ radically. You
cannot, from your knowledge of American traits, judge what an
Englishman's conduct will be upon every occasion. If you happened on
Piccadilly of a rainy morning, for example, you would see the English
clerks and storekeepers and professional men riding to their work on the
omnibuses that thread their way slowly through the crowded thoroughfare.
No matter how rainy the morning, these men would be seated on the tops
of the omnibuses, although the interior seats might be quite unoccupied.
No matter how rainy the morning, many of these men would be faultlessly
attired in top hats and frock coats, and there they would sit through
the drizzling rain, protecting themselves most inadequately with their
opened umbrellas. Now there is a bit of conduct that you cannot find
duplicated in any American city. It is a national habit,--or, perhaps,
it would be better to say, it is an expression of a national trait,--and
that national trait is a prejudice in favor of convention. It is the
thing to do, and the typical Englishman does it, just as, when he is
sent as civil governor to some lonely outpost in India, with no
companions except scantily clad native servants, he always dresses
conscientiously for dinner and sits down to his solitary meal clad in
the conventional swallow-tail coat of civilization.

Now the way in which a Chinese cook prepares a custard, or the way in
which an English merchant rides in an omnibus, may be trivial and
unimportant matters in themselves, and yet, like the straw that shows
which way the wind blows, they are indicative of vast and profound
currents. The conservatism of the Chinese empire is only a larger and
more comprehensive expression of the same trait or prejudice that leads
the cook to copy literally his model.