If I proceed to enumerate a few of the actual contrasts that struck
me, in matters both weighty and trivial, it is not merely as an
exercise in antithesis, but because I hope it will show how easy it
would be to pass an entirely and even ridiculously untrue judgment
upon the United States by having an eye only for one series of the
startling opposites. It should show in a very concrete way one of the
most fertile sources of those unfair international judgments which led
the French Academician Joüy to the statement: "Plus on réfléchit et
plus on observe, plus on se convainct de la fausseté de la plupart de
ces jugements portés sur un nation entière par quelques ecrivains et
adoptés sans examen par les autres." The Americans themselves can
hardly take umbrage at the label, if Mr. Howells truly represents them
when he makes one of the characters in "A Traveller from Altruria"
assert that they pride themselves even on the size of their
inconsistencies. The extraordinary clashes that occur in the United
States are doubtless largely due to the extraordinary mixture of youth
and age in the character of the country. If ever an old head was set
upon young shoulders, it was in this case of the United States--this
"Strange New World, thet yit was never young." While it is easy, in a
study of the United States, to see the essential truth of the analogy
between the youth of an individual and the youth of a State, we must
also remember that America was in many respects born full-grown, like
Athena from the brain of Zeus, and coördinates in the most
extraordinary way the shrewdness of the sage with the naïveté of the
child. Those who criticise the United States because, with the
experience of all the ages behind her, she is in some points vastly
defective as compared with the nations of Europe are as much mistaken
as those who look to her for the fresh ingenuousness of youth unmarred
by any trace of age's weakness. It is simply inevitable that she
should share the vices as well as the virtues of both. Mr. Freeman