SOME REGULARITIES OF AMERICAN LIFE.

Woodville Examiner, Volume VII, Issue 659, 30 January 1891, Page 1 (Supplement)

SOME REGULARITIES OF AMERICAN LIFE.

In the Universal Review, Mr. W. H. S. Aubrey writes on “Some Peculiarities of American Life.” He maintains that the immense influx of foreign elements into the American continent is creating political, social, and religious diversities between England and the United States, which result in peculiarities which strike every visitor. Some of these peculiarities he sets to work to describe. There are certain things which arrest attention everywhere, and one of these is the ceaseless movement of the people, and the consuming dcsiro to go on as well as to get on. They have an almost inexaustible capacity for talk, and, as a whole, are better talkers and speakers than the English. The average people are more accurate in their speech than ours, being trained to speak so from childhood by school recitation. Every one can get access to everybody, all public buildings are open, fees are unknown. Mr. Aubrey complains that the habit of spitting is almost universal, and the effect on an Englishman is nauseatiug in the extreme. The peculiarities of travel are most of them as convenient as they are novel; the system of checking baggage he pronounced perfect. Everything is disfigured by glaring advertisements. Diffidence and modesty seem likely to become extinct. The strain of public life is greater, business hours are longer, and competition is keener than with us. Food is not eaten, it is devoured, consumed, bolted; in some parts of the west dining is described as “stoking.” Digestion is almost unknown, dyspepsia is a despotic demon whose sway is nearly universal. Hotel keeping is an art elevated to a science. Under the pressure of immense publicity individuality becomes less marked, and may even become extinct. Mrs. Grundy is absent. Etiquette is as cast iron both in regard to weddings and funerals. The worst thing about America seems to be its umbrellas. “Of all huge, misshapen, bulky, discoloured, wretched-looking articles in the form of umbrellas, surely the United States can boast of the most varied collection.”— Review of Jteviemn.