He makes up for his want of light by his superiority in weight.  Social adaptability is not his foible.  He accepts the conventionality of his class and wears it as an impenetrable armour.  Out of his own class he may sometimes appear less conventional than the American, simply because the latter is quick to adopt the manners of a new milieu, while John Bull clings doggedly or unconsciously to his old conventions.  If an American and an English shop-girl were simultaneously married to peers of the realm, the odds would be a hundred to one in favour of the former in the race for self-identification with her new environment.

The American facility of expression, if I do not err, springs largely from an amiable difference in temperament.  The American is, on the whole, more genially disposed to all and sundry.  I do not say that he is capable of truer friendships or of greater sacrifices for a friend than the Englishman; but the window through which he looks out on humanity at large has panes of a ruddier hue, he cultivates a mildness of tone, which a Briton is apt to despise as weakness.  His desire to oblige sometimes impels him to uncharacteristic actions, which lead to fallacious generalisations on the part of his British critic.  He shrinks from any assumption of superiority; he is apt to think twice of the feelings of his inferiors.  The American tends to consider each stranger he meets—­at any rate within his own social sphere—­as a good fellow until he proves himself the contrary; with the Englishman the presumption is rather the other way.  An Englishman usually excuses this national trait as really due to modesty and shyness; but I fear there is in it a very large element of sheer bad manners, and of a cowardly fear of compromising one’s self with undesirable acquaintances.  Englishmen are apt to take omne ignotum pro horribile, and their translation of the Latin phrase varies from the lifting of the aristocratic eyebrow over the unwarranted address of the casual companion at table d’hote down to the “’ere’s a stranger, let’s ’eave ’arf a brick at ’im” of the Black Country.  In England I am apt to feel painfully what a lame dog I am; in America I feel, well, if I am a lame dog I am being helped most delightfully over the conversational stile.  An Englishman says, “Would you mind doing so-and-so for me?” showing by the very form of the question that he thinks kindness likely to be troublesome.  An American says, “Wouldn’t you like to do this for me?” assuming the superior attitude of one who feels that to give an opportunity to do a kindness is itself to confer a favour.  The Continental European shares with the American the merit of having manners on the self-regarding pattern of noblesse oblige, while the Englishman wants to know who you are, so as to put on his best manners only if the force majeure of your social standing compels him.  No one wishes the Englishman to express more than he really feels or to increase