all.  He was born on a western ranch and his parents died soon after his birth.  He was brought up with the children of the ranch owner, and is now a prosperous rancher himself.  He lacks every characteristic that we commonly associate with the Chinese, save only the physical features.  His hair is straight, his skin is saffron, his eyes are slightly aslant,—­but that is all.  As far as his conduct goes,—­and that is the essential thing,—­he is an American.  In other words, his traits, his tendencies to action, are American and not Chinese.  His life represents the triumph of environment over heredity.

When you visit England you find yourselves among a people who speak the same language that you speak,—­or, perhaps it would be better to say, somewhat the same; at least you can understand each other.  In a great many respects, the Englishman and the American are similar in their traits, but in a great many other respects they differ radically.  You cannot, from your knowledge of American traits, judge what an Englishman’s conduct will be upon every occasion.  If you happened on Piccadilly of a rainy morning, for example, you would see the English clerks and storekeepers and professional men riding to their work on the omnibuses that thread their way slowly through the crowded thoroughfare.  No matter how rainy the morning, these men would be seated on the tops of the omnibuses, although the interior seats might be quite unoccupied.  No matter how rainy the morning, many of these men would be faultlessly attired in top hats and frock coats, and there they would sit through the drizzling rain, protecting themselves most inadequately with their opened umbrellas.  Now there is a bit of conduct that you cannot find duplicated in any American city.  It is a national habit,—­or, perhaps, it would be better to say, it is an expression of a national trait,—­and that national trait is a prejudice in favor of convention.  It is the thing to do, and the typical Englishman does it, just as, when he is sent as civil governor to some lonely outpost in India, with no companions except scantily clad native servants, he always dresses conscientiously for dinner and sits down to his solitary meal clad in the conventional swallow-tail coat of civilization.

Now the way in which a Chinese cook prepares a custard, or the way in which an English merchant rides in an omnibus, may be trivial and unimportant matters in themselves, and yet, like the straw that shows which way the wind blows, they are indicative of vast and profound currents.  The conservatism of the Chinese empire is only a larger and more comprehensive expression of the same trait or prejudice that leads the cook to copy literally his model.  The present educational situation in England is only another expression of that same prejudice in favor of the established order, which finds expression in the merchant on the Piccadilly omnibus.