AS WE SEE OTHERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1921, 14 September 1888, Page 31

AS WE SEE OTHERS.

Every one is tolerably familiar with the popular French conception of tho typical •Englishman. He is a tall, thin, loosely-built fellow in tweed knickerbockers, ill-fitting tweed jacket, huge boots, and a Glengary. His two middle upper tecih project, and arc always visible above his lower lip. Ho wears neither beard nor moustache, but he has a pair of long, silky, Dundreary whiskers of a line straw colour, and his hair inclines to red. Strapped acrcss his shoulders is an opera glass in its shiny case ; under one arm is a Baedeker's guide ; and over the other is a large-patterned plaid shawl. Such is the Englishman of the French comic papers. Whether he exists in real life, I know not. But I have never seen him ; nor can I imagine how the creature came to be accepted in Paris as a type of my countrymen. English critics have often laughed at their Gallic neighbours for their faith in this remarkable travesty. Yet Englishmen, who ought by this time to know better, have equally erroneous ideas of what Frenchmen and other foreigners look like. " How very French he looks ! " is a common English verdict upon a man's appearance ; or " What a typical Dutchman I "

Some years ago I met General Caballero, the then President of the Republic of Paraguay. Now, Paraguay, in the very heart of the South American continent, has no seaboard, and, therefore, very little communication with Europe. Its inhabitants, almost without exception, are of Indian, or Spanish, or of Indian and Spanish race. The rooms in which I met the General were full of people of all nationalities. There were nearly pure-blooded Indians, there were Portugo-Brazilians, there were Spaniards of unsullied lineage, there were New Yorkers and Cubans and Englishmen. Knowing that I was to be introduced to the President of Paraguay, and knowing also that ho belonged to a purely Spanish family which had long been settled in South America, I occupied my leisure by trying to guess which of the numerous men around me was the General. I chose a dark-com-plexioned little man with eyes like coals and a most ferocious moustache. He was evidently an important personage. At last the moment came for the introduction. General Caballero turned out to be a hearty, twink-ling-eyed, massive fellow, whom I had previously set down as a well-to-do Euglish planter ; and the man whom I had supposed to be the General proved to be none other than her Britannic Majesty's Minister to one of the South American republics. I had thus mistaken the Paraguayan for the Englishman, and tho Englishman for the Paraguayan. Since then I have never hastily jumped to conclusions about any one's nationality.

And, indeed, with certain limits, the people of different nations resemble one another much more than is generally imagined. A crowd in Hamburg or Copenhagen may well strike an Englishman as being ridiculously English in physiognomy ; for, after all,- our ancestors came from Jut-

land, Friesland, and the neighbouring parts of the Continent ; and Germans, Danes, and English are scions of a common stock. But I have been struck by what I may call the English look of people's faces even in Northern Spain, where the race is of CeltoLatin origin, and in St. Petersburg, where it is Slav. Of course there is no mistaking Chinamen for Greeks, or Eskimo for Soudanese negroes. In such cases there are really differences. But between Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Portuguese, Spaniards, Italians, Greeks, and Hindustanis— using that last word in its broadest sense — there is. such a strong general likeness that, in case of its being worth my while to do so, I could easily produce half a dozen of each who should all so closely resemble one another that they might be taken for the descendants of common grandparents. All Italians are not black-haired and swarthy. I have seen Italian girls with the most lovely hair, as yellow as a field of wheat in the sunshine. In Spain, red hair is not at all uncommon. Many Greeks of the purest blood have light moustaches and light-blue eyes. And in India, some of the races are wondrously fair. Take, for instance, the Todas, who are found between Mysore and Coimbatore, on the upper part of the Neilgherry Plateau, and the light-complexioned people of the western Ghats, a few miles from Goa. Their women, in the matter of beauty — as the word is understood by Englishmen— are not, I suppose, to be equalled anywhere. The Semitic, Japanese, Chinese, Malay, and Negro races possess typical facial peculiarities which distinguish them from the mass of members of the great Indo-Germanic family. There need be nothing offensive, because nothing untrue, in saying of a man that he has a Jewish nose, or Chinese cheekbones, or negro lips ; but it is nonsense to talk about German noses, French cheekbones, or Danish lips, as if they were characteristic things. And it is equal nonsense to say that a man looks like a German as distinct from an Englishman, or like a Frenchman as distinct from a Russian. His clothes may look English, or German, or French, or Russian. If he be a vulgar American, you may, perchance, recognise him by his monstrous watch, his padded shoulders rf;P an'd his diamond studs. But if you were to take all the men in Europe, dress them uniformly in, say, the ornamental costume which is set apart for British convicts, enjoin absolute silence, and then mix them, there is no one who, in attempting to sort them, according to their nationalities, would not be as many times wrong as right.

" Garsony !" shouted a travelling Briton to a waiter in a Paris cafe; " cq^portezmoa dcs monsherooms."

" Pardon, sir," said the waiter in excellent French ; " I do not quite comprehend you." Dcs mooskcrooms ! " insisted the Englishman, who thought that by raising his voice he could make the waiter understand. The waiter, however, shook his head ; whereupon the angry Briton took out his pencil, and drew upon tho back of an envelope a thing that might have been meant for a mushroom, but, on the other hand, might have been intended for an open umbrella. The waiter took it for an umbrella. His face broke into a smile ; he went away nimbly, and in five minutes he returned with an umbrella—his own — which he should be charmed to lend.

" Confound the idiot ! " foamed the Englishman, half aloud. " Can't he understand that I want mushrooms ?"

" I beg your parden, sir," said the waiter in ' good Cockney English ; " but why didn't you say so ? I've lived 10 years in Paris, but I was born and bred at Brixton."

I do not doubt that the English tourist had supposed the waiter to be a most typical specimen of a Frenchman. If so, he was wrong. There is no judging a man's nationality by his face, unless, as I have said, he happens to be a member of an utterly distinct human family.