So Much I Say, Being Anxious To Scrape Off Some Of That Daub Of
Black Paint With Which I Have Smeared The Face Of My New Yorker;
But Not Desiring To Scrape It All Off.
For myself, I do not love
to live amid the clink of gold, and never have "a good time," as
the Americans say, when the price of shares and percentages come up
in conversation.
That state of men's minds here which I have
endeavored to explain tends, I think, to make New York
disagreeable. A stranger there who has no great interest in
percentages soon finds himself anxious to escape. By degrees he
perceives that he is out of his element, and had better go away.
He calls at the bank, and when he shows himself ignorant as to the
price at which his sovereigns should be done, he is conscious that
he is ridiculous. He is like a man who goes out hunting for the
first time at forty years of age. He feels himself to be in the
wrong place, and is anxious to get out of it. Such was my
experience of New York, at each of the visits that I paid to it.
But yet, I say again, no other American city is so intensely
American as New York. It is generally considered that the
inhabitants of New England, the Yankees properly so called, have
the American characteristics of physiognomy in the fullest degree.
The lantern jaws, the thin and lithe body, the dry face on which
there has been no tint of the rose since the baby's long-clothes
were first abandoned, the harsh, thick hair, the thin lips, the
intelligent eyes, the sharp voice with the nasal twang - not
altogether harsh, though sharp and nasal - all these traits are
supposed to belong especially to the Yankee.
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