Ch. 1 - The Foreigner at Home - Page 2

for some foreign art or fashion may deceive the world, it cannot
impose upon his intimates. He may be amused by a foreigner as by a
monkey, but he will never condescend to study him with any
patience. Miss Bird, an authoress with whom I profess myself in
love, declares all the viands of Japan to be uneatable - a
staggering pretension. So, when the Prince of Wales's marriage was
celebrated at Mentone by a dinner to the Mentonese, it was proposed
to give them solid English fare - roast beef and plum pudding, and
no tomfoolery. Here we have either pole of the Britannic folly.
We will not eat the food of any foreigner; nor, when we have the
chance, will we eager him to eat of it himself. The same spirit
inspired Miss Bird's American missionaries, who had come thousands
of miles to change the faith of Japan, and openly professed their
ignorance of the religions they were trying to supplant.

I quote an American in this connection without scruple. Uncle Sam
is better than John Bull, but he is tarred with the English stick.
For Mr. Grant White the States are the New England States and
nothing more. He wonders at the amount of drinking in London; let
him try San Francisco. He wittily reproves English ignorance as to
the status of women in America; but has he not himself forgotten
Wyoming? The name Yankee, of which he is so tenacious, is used
over the most of the great Union as a term of reproach. The Yankee
States, of which he is so staunch a subject, are but a drop in the
bucket. And we find in his book a vast virgin ignorance of the
life and prospects of America; every view partial, parochial, not
raised to the horizon; the moral feeling proper, at the largest, to
a clique of states; and the whole scope and atmosphere not
American, but merely Yankee. I will go far beyond him in
reprobating the assumption and the incivility of my countryfolk to
their cousins from beyond the sea; I grill in my blood over the
silly rudeness of our newspaper articles; and I do not know where
to look when I find myself in company with an American and see my
countrymen unbending to him as to a performing dog. But in the
case of Mr. Grant White example were better than precept. Wyoming
is, after all, more readily accessible to Mr. White than Boston to
the English, and the New England self-sufficiency no better
justified than the Britannic.

It is so, perhaps, in all countries; perhaps in all, men are most
ignorant of the foreigners at home. John Bull is ignorant of the
States; he is probably ignorant of India; but considering his
opportunities, he is far more ignorant of countries nearer his own
door. There is one country, for instance - its frontier not so far
from London, its people closely akin, its language