niche; that while many are excluded from the circles for which they
_think_ themselves adapted, practically none are shut off from their
really harmonious _milieu_. The process of segregation is deprived to
a large extent of the disagreeableness consequent upon a rigid table
of precedence. Nothing surprises an American more in London society
than the uneasy sense of inferiority that many a distinguished man of
letters will show in the presence of a noble lord. No amount of
philosophy enables one to rise entirely superior to the trammels of
early training and hoary association. Even when the great novelist
feels himself as at least on a level with his ducal interlocutor, he
cannot ignore the fact that his fellow-guests do not share his
opinion. Now, without going the length of asserting that there is
absolutely nothing of this kind in the intercourse of the American
author with the American railroad magnate, it may be safely stated
that the general tone of society in America makes such an attitude
rare and unlikely. There social equality has become an instinct, and
the ruling note of good society is of pleasant cameraderie, without
condescension on the one hand or fawning on the other. "The democratic
system deprives people of weapons that everyone does not equally
possess. No one is formidable; no one is on stilts; no one has great
pretensions or any recognised right to be arrogant." (Henry James.)
The spirit of goodwill, of a desire to make others happy (especially
when it does not incommode you to do so), swings through a much larger
arc in American society than in English. One can be surer of one's
self, without either an overweening self-conceit or the assumption of
brassy self-assertion.

The main rock of offence in American society is, perhaps, its tendency
to attach undue importance to materialistic effects. Plain living with
high thinking is not so much of an American formula as one would wish.