Americans and Others

Americans and Others

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Americans and Others, by Agnes Repplier This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Americans and Others
Author: Agnes Repplier
Release Date: September 19, 2005 [EBook #16722]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMERICANS AND OTHERS ***

Produced by Ron Swanson

By Agnes Repplier
COUNTER-CURRENTS. AMERICANS AND OTHERS. A HAPPY HALF-CENTURY AND OTHER ESSAYS. IN OUR CONVENT DAYS. COMPROMISES. THE FIRESIDE SPHINX. With 4 full-page and 17 text illustrations by Miss E. BONSALL. BOOKS AND MEN. POINTS OF VIEW. ESSAYS IN IDLENESS. IN THE DOZY HOURS, AND OTHER PAPERS. ESSAYS IN MINIATURE. A BOOK OF FAMOUS VERSE. Selected by Agnes Repplier. In Riverside Library for Young People. THE SAME. Holiday Edition. VARIA.

AMERICANS AND OTHERS
BY AGNES REPPLIER, LITT.D.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY AGNES REPPLIER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published October 1912_
The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

Note
Five of the essays in this volume appear in print for the first time. Others have been published in the Atlantic Monthly, the Century Magazine, _Harper's Bazar_, and the Catholic World.

Contents
A Question of Politeness
The Mission of Humour
Goodness and Gayety
The Nervous Strain
The Girl Graduate
The Estranging Sea
Travellers' Tales
The Chill of Enthusiasm
The Temptation of Eve
"The Greatest of These is Charity"
The Customary Correspondent
The Benefactor
The Condescension of Borrowers
The Grocer's Cat

AMERICANS AND OTHERS

A Question of Politeness
"La politesse de l'esprit consiste a penser des choses honnetes et delicates."
A great deal has been said and written during the past few years on the subject of American manners, and the consensus of opinion is, on the whole, unfavourable. We have been told, more in sorrow than in anger, that we are not a polite people; and our critics have cast about them for causes which may be held responsible for such a universal and lamentable result. Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, for example, is by way of thinking that the fault lies in the sudden expansion of wealth, in the intrusion into the social world of people who fail to understand its requirements, and in the universal "spoiling" of American children. He contrasts the South of his childhood, that wonderful "South before the war," which looms vaguely, but very grandly, through a half-century's haze, with the New York of to-day, which, alas! has nothing to soften its outlines. A more censorious critic in the "Atlantic Monthly" has also stated explicitly that for true consideration and courtliness we must hark back to certain old gentlewomen of ante-bellum days. "None of us born since the Civil War approach them in respect to some fine, nameless quality that gives them charm and atmosphere." It would seem, then, that the war, with its great emotions and its sustained heroism, imbued us with national life at the expense of our national manners.
I wonder if this kind of criticism does not err by comparing the many with the few, the general with the exceptional. I wonder if the deficiencies of an imperfect civilization can be accounted for along such obvious lines. The self-absorption of youth which Mrs. Comer deprecates, the self-absorption of a crowd which offends Mr. Page, are human, not American. The nature of youth and the nature of crowds have not changed essentially since the Civil War, nor since the Punic Wars. Granted that the tired and hungry citizens of New York, jostling one another in their efforts to board a homeward train, present an unlovely spectacle; but do they, as Mr. Page affirms, reveal "such sheer and primal brutality as can be found nowhere else in the world where men and women are together?" Crowds will jostle, and have always jostled, since men first clustered in communities. Read Theocritus. The hurrying Syracusans--third century B.C.--"rushed like a herd of swine," and rent in twain Praxinoe's muslin veil. Look at Hogarth. The whole fun of an eighteenth-century English crowd consisted in snatching off some unfortunate's wig, or toppling him over into the gutter. The truth is we sin against civilization when we consent to flatten ourselves against our neighbours. The experience of the world has shown conclusively that a few inches more or less of breathing space make all the difference between a self-respecting citizen and a savage.
As for youth,--ah, who shall be brave enough, who has ever been brave enough, to defend the rising generation? Who has ever looked with content upon the young, save only Plato, and he lived in an age of symmetry and order which we can hardly hope to reproduce. The shortcomings of youth are so pitilessly, so glaringly apparent. Not a rag to cover them from the discerning eye. And what a veil