Americans and Others | Page 4

his
wife to whom he had said good-bye, and the two anxious, puzzled
creatures stood whispering together as the throng swept callously past
them. It was a painful spectacle, a lapse from the well-ordered
decencies of civilization.
For to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offence, it is
to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path. An
Englishwoman once said to Mr. Whistler that the politeness of the
French was "all on the surface," to which the artist made reply: "And a
very good place for it to be." It is this sweet surface politeness, costing
so little, counting for so much, which smooths the roughness out of life.
"The classic quality of the French nation," says Mr. Henry James, "is
sociability; a sociability which operates in France, as it never does in
England, from below upward. Your waiter utters a greeting because,
after all, something human within him prompts him. His instinct bids
him say something, and his taste recommends that it should be
agreeable."
This combination of instinct and taste--which happily is not confined to
the French, nor to waiters--produces some admirable results, results out
of all proportion to the slightness of the means employed. It often takes
but a word, a gesture, to indicate the delicate process of adjustment. A
few summers ago I was drinking tea with friends in the gardens of the
Hotel Faloria, at Cortina. At a table near us sat two Englishmen, three
Englishwomen, and an Austrian, the wife of a Viennese councillor.
They talked with animation and in engaging accents. After a little while
they arose and strolled back to the hotel. The Englishmen, as they
passed our table, stared hard at two young girls who were of our party,
stared as deliberately and with as much freedom as if the children had
been on a London music-hall stage. The Englishwomen passed us as
though we had been invisible. They had so completely the air of seeing
nothing in our chairs that I felt myself a phantom, a ghost like Banquo's,
with no guilty eye to discern my presence at the table. Lastly came the
Austrian, who had paused to speak to a servant, and, as she passed, she
gave us a fleeting smile and a slight bow, the mere shadow of a curtsey,
acknowledging our presence as human beings, to whom some measure

of recognition was due.
It was such a little thing, so lightly done, so eloquent of perfect
self-possession, and the impression it made upon six admiring
Americans was a permanent one. We fell to asking ourselves--being
honestly conscious of constraint--how each one of us would have
behaved in the Austrian lady's place, whether or not that act of simple
and sincere politeness would have been just as easy for us. Then I
called to mind one summer morning in New England, when I sat on a
friend's piazza, waiting idly for the arrival of the Sunday papers. A
decent-looking man, with a pretty and over-dressed girl by his side,
drove up the avenue, tossed the packet of papers at our feet, and drove
away again. He had not said even a bare "Good morning." My kind and
courteous host had offered no word of greeting. The girl had turned her
head to stare at me, but had not spoken. Struck by the ungraciousness
of the whole episode, I asked, "Is he a stranger in these parts?"
"No," said my friend. "He has brought the Sunday papers all summer.
That is his daughter with him."
All summer, and no human relations, not enough to prompt a friendly
word, had been established between the man who served and the man
who was served. None of the obvious criticisms passed upon American
manners can explain the crudity of such a situation. It was certainly not
a case of arrogance towards a hapless brother of toil. My friend
probably toiled much harder than the paperman, and was the least
arrogant of mortals. Indeed, all arrogance of bearing lay conspicuously
on the paperman's part. Why, after all, should not his instinct, like the
instinct of the French waiter, have bidden him say something; why
should not his taste have recommended that the something be agreeable?
And then, again, why should not my friend, in whom social constraint
was unpardonable, have placed his finer instincts at the service of a
fellow creature? We must probe to the depths of our civilization before
we can understand and deplore the limitations which make it difficult
for us to approach one another with mental ease and security. We have
yet to learn that the amenities of life stand for its responsibilities, and
translate them into action. They express externally the fundamental

relations which ought to exist between men. "All the distinctions, so