CHARACTERISTICALLY AMERICAN

Evening Star, Issue 18332, 20 July 1923, Page 5

CHARACTERISTICALLY AMERICAN

DISTINCTIVE FORMULA) FOR THE “ YANK.” Clomoncoau, aboard tho steamer Paris on his return to Franco, ordered a grapefruit as a nightcap. Ho said it was his parting tribute to a delicacy which ho did not know when ho dwelt hero just- after tho Civil War, and which, he said, he deeply regretted having lived without for eighty years (says tho ‘Literary Digest’). Other Europeans have returned with the story that “ all Yankees begin their day by consuming a hemisphere of grapefruit dusted with powdered sugar." This has caused Allan Nevitis to inquire, in tho New York ‘Evening Post,’ just what wo would now select as the one thing “ characteristically American.” Is it tho rocking-chair? Is it household ice, or is it tho oyster? Is it tho skyscraper, or is it the glaring electric sign? Mr Kevins recalls the comments of other noted visitors who came to us long before Clcmenceau. He writes: Matthew Arnold, in tho brief impressions of America which ho entitled ‘ Civilisation in tho United Slates,’ did not omit to point to the universal use of fruit ami ico as a trait demarking American from European life. He denied our claims that the fruit was better as well as commoner. Never believe that an American poach is as good as a peach grown under English glass, ho said, or an American apple as a Newtown pippin, or an American pear as a Marie Louise pear. But, whereas in other lands such fruits arc for the wealthy, in America the whole people enjoy them. It has always been true. John Adams, stopping to breakfast in this city witli John Morin Scott, when ho rode to the first Continental Congress, noted a tribute in his diary to tho plates of luscious peaches, melons, pears, and plums served “in groat perfection.” The humblest dairy restaurant has its daily crate from Florida. “Good-bye to tho copious fruit, the early grapefruit I” was one of tho sighs of 11. W. Nevinson's farewell to us last spring. In time Europe will adopt the grapefruit from our tables as it lias already adopted ico. One note of wonderment ran through all early foreign books of travel in America —our ice! When Henry Wansev toured this country in the summer of 1794 he was impressed by nothing more than by such ice-houses as that attached to Philadelphia's most pretentious hostelry. The owner of the hotel took him from tho blazing kitchen on a blistering day down some steps and through two doors, and ho stood beside a wall of ice, in a temperature that soon made him glad to retreat. Other travellers of equally early date found that ice waft no mere urban luxury, but that nearly all the thrifty farmers of the North enjoyed it. It was tho iced drinks that struck Lord Acton when ho came over to tho Crystal Exposition. Dickens commented upon tho solid blocks of icc dumped by waggons on the Broadway sidewalks, and Martin Chuzzlewit found an iced sherry cobbler, sucked through a straw, the most delightful event of hia American tour. “Good-bye,” said Novimon, “to oysters large and' small, to celery, and olives besides the soup, to soa-food, to sublimated viands, to bleeding duck, to the salad course, to individual pie or the. thick wedge of apple pie, to the invariable slab of icecream.” To pic, hot bread, and oysters all our visitors bavo given mention for generations. Olives would bo no novelly to an Italian, or salad to a Frenchman. But European travellers long ago ascribed the bad teeth which they discovered in most Americans to pio and hot bread, with calomel as a contributing cause. As for oysters, it was not merely their abundance hut their size that called for mention. “How do yon feel?” asked James T. Field when Thackeray had swallowed one of Ilia enormous bivalves served at tho Parker House. "Profoundly grateful, and much ns if I had swallowed a baby,” gasped Thackeray. Many travellers, like Isaac Candler In 1824, wondered at Iho recklessness with which wo devoured “oysters and sweet cakes together.” Mark Twain, in his reply to Bourcet's caustic depiction of America in ‘ Outro-Mer,’ is said to have declared that there is nothing “characteristically American” except ico-wafer and railway accidents.” Clcmenceau carried back with him not merely a, taste for {grapefruit, but something' else that originated in America—a safety-razor. A number of other details must have appealed lo him as characteristic of tho country, opines Mr Kevins. For instance :

Clemeneeau was too good an observer not to bo struck by the universality of tho admirably appointed bathroom, the perfection of plumbing. It has become distinctively American since his previous sojourn. Dickons, it mav ho remembered, commented’on the difficulty of obtaining water for the toilet in our hotels. Anthony ‘Trollope, here during tho Civil War, carried his own bathtub and experienced daily exasperation in getting it filled. Universally American and universal only in America, again, is the central heat, tho radiator, ami tiio constant, all-permeating warmth. Wo xvero always too warm for our English visitors, and Sir Philip -Gibbs has just told us that even in midwinter our sleeping cars are insufferably warm still. But the consummation of appliances to make us warm is American. The skyscraper, tho train without compartments, tho glaring electric sign, the sprawling fire-escape—these, like tho grapefruit, help to characterise America now that all tho comfortable old social generalisations once relied upon by Europeans have become Impossible. It can no longer be said, ns Miss Mart-menu _ declared, that American women carry their modesty to a ridiculously affected extreme. Travellers can no longer dilate upon the excessive role of the boarding-house in American life, as Airs Trollope and James Silk Buckingham did. They can no longer comment on the cariy age of marriage. They cannot assort that, we all bolt our meals, using a knifeblade to get them to the mouth. They cannot find our women ignorant and our iron nil talking dollars. They cannot say that they are kept awake every night in our cities by the dashing of engines to put out the incessant house fires. _ They cannot even, as Herbert Spencer did in his famous lecture, accuse us of workiig too incessantly and forgetting that toil is a means, not an end. America is too large, too various, and too much like tho rest of the world to let its manners he comprehended in neat and distinctive formula:. But the Pullman, tho high-piled office structure with its flights of elevators, the palatial barber-shop, the wonderfully efficient telephone system—these arc American.