o will wish me to be more explicit.

First, then. England has a thousand years of greatness to her credit.
Who would not be proud of that? Arrogance is the seamy side of pride.
That is what has rubbed us Americans the wrong way. We are recent. Our
thousand years of greatness are to come. Such is our passionate belief.
Crudity is the seamy side of youth. Our crudity rubs the English the
wrong way. Compare the American who said we were going to buy England
for a summer resort with the Englishman who said that when all other
entertainment in London failed, you could always listen to the Americans
eat. Crudity, "freshness" on our side, arrogance, toploftiness on
theirs: such is one generalization I would have you disengage from my
anecdotes.

Second. The English are blunter than we. They talk to us as they would
talk to themselves. The way we take it reveals that we are too
often thin-skinned. Recent people are apt to be thin-skinned and
self-conscious and self-assertive, while those with a thousand years of
tradition would have thicker hides and would never feel it necessary to
assert themselves. Give an Englishman as good as he gives you, and
you are certain to win his respect, and probably his regard. In this
connection see my anecdote about the Tommies and Yankees who physically
fought it out, and compare it with the Salisbury, the van Squibber, and
the opium trade anecdotes. "Treat 'em rough," when they treat you rough:
they like it. Only, be sure you do it in the right way.

Third. We differ because we are alike. That American who stood in the
theatre complaining about the sixpence he didn't have to pay at home
is exactly like Englishmen I have seen complaining about the unexpected
here. We share not only the same mother-tongue, we share every other
fundamental thing upon which our welfare rests and our lives are carried
on. We like the same things, we hate the same things. We have the same
notions about justice, law, conduct; about what a man should be, about
what a woman should be. It is like the mother-tongue we share, yet speak
with a difference. Take the mother-tongue for a parable and symbol of
all the rest. Just as the word "girl" is identical to our sight but not
to our hearing, and means oh! quite the same thing throughout us all in
all its meanings, so that identity of nature which we share comes
often to the surface in different guise. Our loquacity estranges the
Englishman, his silence estranges us. Behi