hat in the matter of psychologizing, a professional is
too apt to yield to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that great
art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks. Every now and then, at
half-hour intervals, M. Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies
and dissolves them in a panful of assorted abstractions, and runs the
charge into a mould and turns you out a compact principle which will
explain an American girl, or an American woman, or why new people yearn
for old things, or any other impossible riddle which a person wants
answered.

It seems to be conceded that there are a few human peculiarities that can
be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the
name of the nation where they are found. I wonder what they are.
Perhaps one of them is temperament. One speaks of French vivacity and
German gravity and English stubbornness. There is no American
temperament. The nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two
--the composed Northern and the impetuous Southern; and both are found in
other countries. Morals? Purity of women may fairly be called universal
with us, but that is the case in some other countries. We have no
monopoly of it; it cannot be named American. I think that there is but a
single specialty with us, only one thing that can be called by the wide
name "American." That is the national devotion to ice-water. All
Germans drink beer, but the British nation drinks beer, too; so neither
of those peoples is the beer-drinking nation. I suppose we do stand
alone in having a drink that nobody likes but ourselves. When we have
been a month in Europe we lose our craving for it, and we finally tell
the hotel folk that they needn't provide it any more. Yet we hardly
touch our native shore again, winter or summer, before we are eager for
it. The reasons for this state of things have not been psychologized
yet. I drop the hint and say no more.

It is my belief that there are some "national" traits and things
scattered about the world that are mere superstitions, frauds that have
lived so long that they have the solid look of facts. One of them is the
dogma that the French are the only chaste people in the world. Ever
since I arrived in France this last time I have been accumulating doubts
about that; and before I leave this sunny land again I will gather in a
few random statistics and psychologize the plausibilities out of it. If
people are to come over t