s from the West.
And it is a mystery yet un-pierced that, as the generations pass, they
approach nearer and nearer to uniformity, both in type and character.
And by what traits do we recognise the citizen of New York? Of course
there is no question here of the cultivated gentleman, who is familiar
in Paris and London, and whose hospitality in his own land is an amiable
reproach to our own too frequent thoughtlessness, but of the simpler
class which confronts the traveller in street and train, in hotel and
restaurant. The railway guard, the waiter, the cab-driver--these are the
men upon whose care the comfort of the stranger depends in every land,
and whose tact and temper are no bad index of the national character. In
New York, then, you are met everywhere by a sort of urbane familiarity.
The man who does you a service, for which you pay him, is neither civil
nor uncivil. He contrives, in a way which is by no means unpleasant,
to put himself on an equality with you. With a mild surprise you find
yourself taking for granted what in your own land you would resent
bitterly. Not even the curiosity of the nigger, who brushes your coat
with a whisk, appears irksome. For the habit of years has enabled white
man and black to assume a light and easy manner, which in an Englishman,
born and trained to another tradition, would appear impertinence.

And familiarity is not the only trait which separates the plain man of
New York from the plain man of London. The New Yorker looks upon the
foreigner with the eye of patronage. To his superior intelligence the
wandering stranger is a kind of natural, who should not be allowed to
roam alone and at large. Before you have been long in the land you find
yourself shepherded, and driven with an affability, not unmixed with
contempt, into the right path. Again, you do not resent it, and yet are
surprised at your own forbearance. A little thought, however, explains
the assumed superiority. The citizen of New York has an ingenuous pride
and pleasure in his own city and in his own prowess, which nothing can
daunt. He is convinced, especially if he has never travelled beyond his
own borders, that he engrosses the virtue and intelligence of the world
The driver of a motor-car assured me, with a quiet certitude which
brooked no contradiction, that England was cut up into sporting estates
for the "lords," and that there the working man was doomed to an idle
servility. "But," said he, "there is no room