which compose so much of social intercourse, he is distinctly at an
advantage who has the power of coming to the front at once without
wasting precious time in preliminaries and reconnaissances. Other
things being equal, the chances of agreeable conversation at dinner,
at the club, or in the pauses of the dance are better in the United
States than in England. The "next man" of the new world is apt to talk
better and to be wider in his sympathies than the "next man" of the
old. On the other hand, it seems to me equally true that the Americans
possess the defects of their qualities in this as in other respects;
they are often apt to talk too much, they are afraid of a
conversational lull, and do not sufficiently appreciate the charm of
"flashes of brilliant silence." It seemed to me that they often
carried a most unnecessary amount of volubility into their business
life; and I sometimes wondered whether the greater energy and rush
that they apparently put into their conduct of affairs were not due to
the necessity of making up time lost in superfluous chatter. If an
Englishman has a mile to go to an appointment he will take his
leisurely twenty minutes to do the distance, and then settle his
business in two or three dozen sentences; an American is much more
likely to devour the ground in five minutes, and then spend an hour or
more in lively conversation not wholly pertinent to the matter in
hand. The American mind is discursive, open, wide in its interests,
alive to suggestion, pliant, emotional, imaginative; the English mind
is concentrated, substantial, indifferent to the merely relative,
matter-of-fact, stiff, and inflexible.

The English have reduced to a fine art the practice of a stony
impassivity, which on its highest plane is not devoid of a certain
impressiveness. On ordinary occasions it is apt to excite either the
ire or the amusement of the representatives of a more animated race. I