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. No doubt we daily come into the closest contact with matters which, if we saw all that appertains to them, would cause us to shake and shudder. In other countries we do not see all this, but in the Western States we do. I have eaten in Bedouin tents, and have been ministered to by Turks and Arabs. I have sojourned in the hotels of old Spain and of Spanish America. I have lived in Connaught, and have taken up my quarters with monks of different nations. I have, as it were, been educated to dirt, and taken out my degree in outward abominations. But my education had not reached a point which would enable me to live at my ease in the Western States. A man or woman who can do that may be said to have graduated in the highest honors, and to have become absolutely invulnerable, either through the sense of touch, or by the eye, or by the nose. Indifference to appearances is there a matter of pride. A foul shirt is a flag of triumph. A craving for soap and water is as the wail of the weak and the confession of cowardice. This indifference is carried into all their affairs, or rather this manifestation of indifference. A few pages back, I spoke of a man whose furniture had been sold to pay a heavy tax raised on him specially as a secessionist; the same man had also been refused the payment of rent due to him by the government, unless he would take a false oath. I may presume that he was ruined in his circumstances by the strong hand of the Northern army. But he seemed in no wise to be unhappy about his ruin. He spoke with some scorn of the martial law in Missouri, but I felt that it was esteemed a small matter by him that his furniture was seized and sold.

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