As
Regards The People Of The West, I Must Say That They Were Not Such
As I Expected To Find Them.
With the Northerns we are all more or
less intimately acquainted.
Those Americans whom we meet in our own
country, or on the continent, are generally from the North, or if
not so they have that type of American manners which has become
familiar to us. They are talkative, intelligent, inclined to be
social, though frequently not sympathetically social with ourselves;
somewhat soi-disant, but almost invariably companionable. As the
traveler goes southward into Maryland and Washington, the type is
not altered to any great extent. The hard intelligence of the
Yankee gives place gradually to the softer, and perhaps more
polished, manner of the Southern. But the change thus experienced
is not great as is that between the American of the Western and the
American of the Atlantic States. In the West I found the men gloomy
and silent - I might almost say sullen. A dozen of them will sit for
hours round a stove, speechless. They chew tobacco and ruminate.
They are not offended if you speak to them, but they are not
pleased. They answer with monosyllables, or, if it be practicable,
with a gesture of the head. They care nothing for the graces or -
shall I say - for the decencies of life. They are essentially a
dirty people. Dirt, untidiness, and noise seem in nowise to afflict
them. Things are constantly done before your eyes which should be
done and might be done behind your back.
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