Page:The Siege of London, The Pension Beaurepas, and The Point of View (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1883).djvu/299

Rh of them, I may say that they were dreadfully apt to be dull. The imagination among the people I see here is more flexible; and then they have the advantage of a larger horizon. It's not bounded on the north by the British aristocracy, and on the south by the scrutin de liste. (I mix up the countries a little, but they are not worth the keeping apart.) The absence of little conventional measurements, of little cut-and-dried judgments, is an immense refreshment. We are more analytic, more discriminating, more familiar with realities. As for manners, there are bad manners everywhere, but an aristocracy is bad manners organized. (I don't mean that they may not be polite among themselves, but they are rude to every one else.) The sight of all these growing millions simply minding their business, is impressive to me,—more so than all the gilt buttons and padded chests of the Old World; and there is a certain powerful type of "practical" American (you'll find him chiefly in the West), who does n't brag as I do (I 'm not practical), but who quietly feels that he has the Future in his vitals,—a type that strikes me more than any I met in your favorite countries. Of course you 'll come back to the cathedrals and Titians, but there 's a thought that helps one to do without them,—the thought that though there 's an immense deal of plainness, there 's little misery, little squalor, little degradation. There is no regular wife-beating class, and there are none of the stultified peasants of whom it takes so many to make a European noble.