looking if not elegant, yet at any rate spruce, by the aid
of even meagre materials, and in the art of "savoir faire," of which our
English "tact" hardly preserves the aroma? What dynasty or party shall
rule the destinies of France may be uncertain. Bonapartist, Legitimist,
Republican may be in the ascendant or may be hurled from power, but
under each or all, whether for good or evil, _manners_ will rule until
the French cease to be French; for when they meet you do not they say,
naturally, "Comment vous portez-vous?" ("How do you _carry_ yourself?")?

If a Frenchman should unintentionally run against you, would he not ask
your pardon with the politest possible bow? If a German should encounter
you in the same unintentionally unceremonious way, would he not in all
probability, after the recoil, look at you with inquiring eyes, with a
mixture of phlegmatic coolness and curiosity, and partly as an
exclamation, partly as an interrogation, utter the monosyllable "So!"?
He would not be so much occupied in trying to parry the blunder
gracefully as in thinking of its cause, with that love of sifting which
involuntarily exhibits itself even in little things, or with that
tendency to take even jokes gravely which originated the fable of Pope
Joan, and led a learned commentator, in his annotations on Thucydides,
to cite, with all the ponderous clang of a critical Latin note, the
factions "of the Long Pipes and the Short Pipes, mentioned by Mr.
Diedrich Knickerbocker in his _History of New York_," as a grave
historic parallel to the factions at Athens and those of the Guelphs and
the Ghibellines! Wonderful is the exactness in research, as well as the
gravity, of the Teuton--his reflectiveness, his going to the bottom of
the minutiae of facts, as well as his recourse to his "inner
consciousness" when the concrete fails him. Thoroughness, quiet,
plodding thoroughness--a looking at things in all their bearings, an
exhaustive (as well as exhausting) treatment of a subject, whether of
fact or of speculation, a constant striving to _find out_ all about
whatever he takes in hand--is not this one of his most marked
characteristics? And so, is it not natural that his greeting should be,
if he is gravely polite, "Wie _befinden_ Sie sich?" ("How do you _find_
yourself?")?

Lastly, the Anglo-Saxon greeting has its revelation of character no less
than the others. No corner of the earth is ignorant of the
representatives of that sturdy race w