Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/173

 WHAT BOURGET THINKS OF US

suspicion a little, but it didn t. It was a note from a fog-horn for strenuousness, it seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not catch it. If he had but caught it, it would have saved him from several disasters :

If the American knows that you are traveling to take notes, he is interested in it, and at the same time rejoices in it, as in a tribute.

Again, this is defective observation. It is human to like to be praised; one can even notice it in the French. But it is not human to like to be ridiculed, even when it comes in the form of a &quot;tribute.&quot; I think a little psychologizing ought to have come in there. Something like this: A dog does not like to be ridiculed, a redskin does not like to be ridiculed, a negro does not like to be ridiculed, a Chinaman does not like to be ridiculed ; let us deduce from these significant facts this formula: the American s grade being higher than these, and the chain of argument stretching unbroken all the way up to him, there is room for suspicion that the person who said the American likes to be ridiculed, and regards it as a tribute, is not a capable observer.

I feel persuaded that in the matter of psycholo gizing, a professional is too apt to yield to the fasci nations of the loftier regions of that great art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks. Every now and then, at half-hour intervals, M. Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies and dissolves them in a panful of assorted abstractions, and runs the charge into a mold and turns you out a compact principle which will explain an American girl, or an Amer-

�� �