Americans and Others | Page 3

are impressed with the politeness of Americans in their own
households. That fine old Saxon point of view, "What is the good of a
family, if one cannot be disagreeable in the bosom of it?" has been
modified by the simple circumstance that the family bosom is no longer
a fixed and permanent asylum. The disintegration of the home may be a
lamentable feature of modern life; but since it has dawned upon our
minds that adult members of a family need not necessarily live together
if they prefer to live apart, the strain of domesticity has been reduced to
the limits of endurance. We have gained in serenity what we have lost
in self-discipline by this easy achievement of an independence which,
fifty years ago, would have been deemed pure licence. I can remember
that, when I was a little girl, two of our neighbours, a widowed mother
and a widowed daughter, scandalized all their friends by living in two
large comfortable houses, a stone's throw apart, instead of under one
roof as became their relationship; and the fact that they loved each
other dearly and peacefully in no way lessened their transgression. Had
they shared their home, and bickered day and night, that would have
been considered unfortunate but "natural."
If the discipline of family life makes for law and order, for the
subordination of parts to the whole, and for the prompt recognition of
authority; if, in other words, it makes, as in the days of Rome, for
citizenship, the rescue of the individual makes for social intercourse,
for that temperate and reasoned attitude which begets courtesy. The
modern mother may lack influence and authority; but she speaks more
urbanely to her children than her mother spoke to her. The modern
child is seldom respectful, but he is often polite, with a politeness
which owes nothing to intimidation. The harsh and wearisome habit of
contradiction, which used to be esteemed a family privilege, has been
softened to a judicious dissent. In my youth I knew several old
gentlemen who might, on their death-beds, have laid their hands upon
their hearts, and have sworn that never in their whole lives had they
permitted any statement, however insignificant, to pass uncontradicted
in their presence. They were authoritative old gentlemen, kind
husbands after their fashion, and careful fathers; but conversation at

their dinner-tables was not for human delight.
The manners of American officials have been discussed with more or
less acrimony, and always from the standpoint of personal experience.
The Custom-House is the centre of attack, and critics for the most part
agree that the men whose business it is to "hold up" returning citizens
perform their ungracious task ungraciously. Theirs is rather the attitude
of the detective dealing with suspected criminals than the attitude of the
public servant impersonally obeying orders. It is true that even on the
New York docks one may encounter civility and kindness. There are
people who assure us that they have never encountered anything else;
but then there are people who would have us believe that always and
under all circumstances they meet with the most distinguished
consideration. They intimate that there is that in their own demeanour
which makes rudeness to them an impossibility.
More candid souls find it hard to account for the crudity of our
intercourse, not with officials only, but with the vast world which lies
outside our narrow circle of associates. We have no human relations
where we have no social relations; we are awkward and constrained in
our recognition of the unfamiliar; and this awkwardness encumbers us
in the ordinary routine of life. A policeman who has been long on one
beat, and who has learned to know either the householders or the
business men of his locality, is wont to be the most friendly of mortals.
There is something almost pathetic in the value he places upon human
relationship, even of a very casual order. A conductor on a local train
who has grown familiar with scores of passengers is no longer a
ticket-punching, station-shouting automaton. He bears himself in
friendly fashion towards all travellers, because he has established with
some of them a rational foothold of communication. But the official
who sells tickets to a hurrying crowd, or who snaps out a few tart
words at a bureau of information, or who guards a gate through which
men and women are pushing with senseless haste, is clad in an armour
of incivility. He is wantonly rude to foreigners, whose helplessness
should make some appeal to his humanity. I have seen a gatekeeper at
Jersey City take by the shoulders a poor German, whose ticket called
for another train, and shove him roughly out of the way, without a word

of explanation. The man, too bewildered for resentment, rejoined