the Boston woman sets her eyeglasses at a critical angle towards the
'laisser faire' flow of social amenity in New Orleans, and the New
Orleans woman seeks out only the prim and conventional in Boston, each
may miss the opportunity to supplement her life by something wanting and
desirable in it, to be gained by the exercise of more openness of mind
and toleration. To some people Yankee thrift is disagreeable; to others,
Southern shiftlessness is intolerable. To some travelers the negro of the
South, with his tropical nature, his capacity for picturesque attitudes,
his abundant trust in Providence, is an element of restfulness; and if
the chief object of life is happiness, the traveler may take a useful
hint from the race whose utmost desire, in a fit climate, would be fully
satisfied by a shirt and a banana-tree. But to another traveler the
dusky, careless race is a continual affront.

If a person is born with an "Ego," and gets the most enjoyment out of the
world by trying to make it revolve about himself, and cannot
make-allowances for differences, we have nothing to say except to express
pity for such a self-centred condition; which shuts him out of the
never-failing pleasure there is in entering into and understanding with
sympathy the almost infinite variety in American life.




JUVENTUS MUNDI

Sometimes the world seems very old. It appeared so to Bernard of Cluny in
the twelfth century, when he wrote:

"The world is very evil,