for they have the saving sense of humor.

Some people are ridiculously sensitive. Some years ago, at a certain place,
a big dinner was given in honor of a notable who was passing through
the district. A Chinese, prominent in local affairs, who had received
an invitation, discovered that though he would sit among the honored guests
he would be placed below one or two whom he thought he ought to be above,
and who, he therefore considered, would be usurping his rightful position.
In disgust he refused to attend the dinner, which, excepting for what
he imagined was a breach of manners, he would have been very pleased
to have attended. Americans are much more sensible.
They are not a bit sensitive, especially in small matters.
Either they are broad-minded enough to rise above unworthy trifles,
or else their good Americanism prevents their squabbling
over questions of precedence, at the dinner table or elsewhere.

Americans act up to their Declaration of Independence,
especially the principle it enunciates concerning the equality of man.
They lay so much importance on this that they do not confine its application
to legal rights, but extend it even to social intercourse. In fact,
I think this doctrine is the basis of the so-called American manners.
All men are deemed socially equal, whether as friend and friend,
as President and citizen, as employer and employee, as master and servant,
or as parent and child. Their relationship may be such
that one is entitled to demand, and the other to render,
certain acts of obedience, and a certain amount of respect,
but outside that they are on the same level. This is doubtless a rebellion
against all the social ideas and prejudices of the old world,
but it is perhaps only what might be looked for in a new country,
full of robust and ambitious manhood, disdainful of all traditions