It May Be That He
Chews, But If So, He Does It With Motionless Jaws, And So Slow A
Mastication
Of the pabulum upon which he feeds, that his employment
in this respect only disturbs the absolute quiet of the
Circle when,
at certain long, distant intervals, he deposits the secretion of his
tobacco in an ornamental utensil which may probably be placed in the
farthest corner of the hall. But during all this time he is happy.
It does not fret him to sit there and think and do nothing. He is
by no means an idle man - probably one much given to commercial
enterprise. Idle men out there in the West we may say there are
none. How should any idle man live in such a country? All who were
sitting hour after hour in that circle round the stove of the
Crestline Hotel hall - sitting there hour after hour in silence, as I
could not sit - were men who earned their bread by labor. They were
farmers, mechanics, storekeepers; there was a lawyer or two, and one
clergyman. Sufficient conversation took place at first to indicate
the professions of many of them. One may conclude that there could
not be place there for an idle man. But they all of them had a
capacity for a prolonged state of doing nothing which is to me
unintelligible, and which is by me very much to be envied. They are
patient as cows which from hour to hour lie on the grass chewing
their cud. An Englishman, if he be kept waiting by a train in some
forlorn station in which he can find no employment, curses his fate
and all that has led to his present misfortune with an energy which
tells the story of his deep and thorough misery. Such, I confess,
is my state of existence under such circumstances. But a Western
American gives himself up to "loafing," and is quite happy. He
balances himself on the back legs of an arm-chair, and remains so,
without speaking, drinking or smoking for an hour at a stretch; and
while he is doing so he looks as though he had all that he desired.
I believe that he is happy, and that he has all that he wants for
such an occasion - an arm-chair in which to sit, and a stove on which
he can put his feet and by which he can make himself warm.
Such was not the phase of character which I had expected to find
among the people of the West. Of all virtues patience would have
been the last which I should have thought of attributing to them. I
should have expected to see them angry when robbed of their time,
and irritable under the stress of such grievances as railway delays;
but they are never irritable under such circumstances as I have
attempted to describe, nor, indeed, are they a people prone to
irritation under any grievances. Even in political matters they are
long-enduring, and do not form themselves into mobs for the
expression of hot opinion.
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