English Traits

Excerpt from book: longer and rejoin the ladies in the drawing-room and take coffee. The dress-dinner generates a talent of table-talk which reaches great perfection: the stories are so good that one is sure they must have been often told before to have got such happy turns. Hither come all manner of clever projects bits of popular science of practical invention of miscellaneous humour; political literary and personal news; railroads horses diamonds agriculture horticulture pisciculture and wine. English stories bon-mots and the recorded table-talk of their wits are as good as the best of the French. In America we are apt scholars but have not yet attained the same perfection; for the range of nations from which London draws and the steep contrasts of condition create the picturesque in society as broken country makes picturesque landscape whilst our prevailing equality makes a prairie tameness: and secondly because the usage of a dress-dinner every day at dark has a tendency to hive and produce to advantage everything good. Much attrition has worn every sentence into a bullet. Also one meets now and then with polished men who know everything have tried everything can do everything and are quite superior to letters and science. What could they not if only they would ? CHAPTER VII. TETJTH. The Teutonic tribes have a national singleness of heart which contrasts with the Latin races. The German name has a proverbial significance of sincerity and honest meaning. The arts bear testimony to it. The faces of clergy and laity in old sculptures and illuminated missals are charged with earnest belief. Add to this hereditary rectitude the punctuality and precise dealing which commerce creates and you have the English truth and credit. The Government strictly performs it...