hey do not think of disputing. Now, while
they are talking about America and their own local atmosphere and
temperature, there comes in a second Boston Fahrenheit. The two of the
same name look at each other for a moment, and rush together so eagerly
that their bulbs are endangered. How well they understand each other!
Thirty-two degrees marks the freezing point. Two hundred and twelve
marks the boiling point. They have the same scale, the same fixed
points, the same record: no wonder they prefer each other's company!

I hope that my reader has followed my illustration, and finished it off
for himself. Let me give a few practical examples. An American and an
Englishman meet in a foreign land. The Englishman has occasion to
mention his weight, which he finds has gained in the course of his
travels. "How much is it now?" asks the American. "Fourteen stone. How
much do you weigh?" "Within four pounds of two hundred." Neither of them
takes at once any clear idea of what the other weighs. The American has
never thought of his own, or his friends', or anybody's weight in
_stones_ of fourteen pounds. The Englishman has never thought of
any one's weight in _pounds_. They can calculate very easily with a
slip of paper and a pencil, but not the less is their language but half
intelligible as they speak and listen. The same thing is in a measure
true of other matters they talk about. "It is about as large a space as
the Common," says the Boston man. "It is as large as St. James's Park,"
says the Londoner. "As high as the State House," says the Bostonian, or
"as tall as Bunker Hill Monument," or "about as big as the Frog Pond,"
where the Londoner would take St. Paul's, the Nelson Column, the
Serpentine, as his standard of comparison. The difference of scale does
not stop here; it runs through a great part of the objects of thought
and conversation. An average American and an average Englishman are
talking together, and one of them speaks of the beauty of a field of
corn. They are thinking of two entirely different objects: one of a
billowy level of soft waving wheat, or rye, or barley; the other of a
rustling forest of tall, jointed stalks, tossing their plumes and
showing their silken epaulettes, as if every stem in the ordered ranks
were a soldier in full regimentals. An Englishman planted for the first
time in the middle of a well-grown field of Indian corn would feel as
much lost as the babes in the wood. Conversation between tw