This Was Very Sad, And For The Moment I
Deplored The Ill Luck Which Had Brought Me To So Savage
A country.
Such and such like are the incidents which make an Englishman in
the States unhappy, and rouse his
Gall against the institutions of
the country; these things and the continued appliance of the
irritating ointment of American braggadocio with which his sores
are kept open. But though I was badly off on that railway
platform, worse off than I should have been in England, all that
crowd of porters round me were better off than our English porters.
They had a "good time" of it. And this, O my English brother who
has traveled through the States and returned disgusted, is the fact
throughout. Those men whose familiarity was so disgusting to you
are having a good time of it. "They might be a little more civil,"
you say, "and yet read and write just as well." True; but they are
arguing in their minds that civility to you will be taken by you
for subservience, or for an acknowledgment of superiority; and
looking at your habits of life - yours and mine together - I am not
quite sure that they are altogether wrong. Have you ever realized
to yourself as a fact that the porter who carries your box has not
made himself inferior to you by the very act of carrying that box?
If not, that is the very lesson which the man wishes to teach you.
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