The American Small Boy

The American small boy is represented in history by the youthful George Washington, who suffered through his inability to invent a plausible fiction, and by Benjamin Franklin, whose abnormal simplicity in the purchase of musical instruments has become proverbial.  But history is not taken down in shorthand as it occurs, and it sometimes lags a little.  The modern American small boy is a vastly different being from either of these transatlantic worthies; at all events his most prominent characteristics, as they strike a stranger, are not illustrated in the earlier period of their career.

The peculiarities of young America would, indeed, matter but little to the stranger if young America stayed at home.  But young America does not stay at home.  It is not necessary to track the American small boy to his native haunts in order to see what he is like.  He is very much in evidence even on this side the Atlantic.  At certain seasons he circulates in Europe with the facility of the British sovereign; for the American nation cherishes the true nomadic habit of travelling in families, and the small boy is not left behind.  He abounds in Paris; he is common in Italy; and he is a drug in Switzerland.  He is an element to be allowed for by all who make the Grand Tour, for his voice is heard in every land.  On the Continent, during the season, no first-class hotel can be said to be complete without its American family, including the small boy.  He does not, indeed, appear to “come off” to his full extent in this country, but in all Continental resorts he is a small boy that may be felt, as probably our fellow-countrymen all over Europe are now discovering.

There is little use in attempting to disguise the fact that the subject of the present paper is distinctly disagreeable.  There is little beauty in him that we should desire him.  He is not only restless himself, but he is the cause of restlessness in others.  He has no respect even for the quiescent evening hour, devoted to cigarettes on the terrace after table d’hote, and he is not to be overawed by a look.  It is a constant source of wonder to the thoughtfully inclined how the American man is evolved from the American boy; it is a problem much more knotty than the difficulty concerning apple-dumplings which so perplexed “Farmer George.”  No one need desire a pleasanter travelling companion than the American man; it is impossible to imagine a more disagreeable one than the American boy.

The American small boy is precocious; but it is not with the erudite precocity of the German Heinecken, who at three years of age was intimately acquainted with history and geography ancient and modern, sacred and profane, besides being able to converse fluently in Latin, French, and German.  We know, of course, that each of the twenty-two Presidents of the United States gave such lively promise in his youth that twenty-two