During a journey of over four thousand miles, made last spring as the guest of a gentleman who knows our country thoroughly, I was impressed most painfully with this abject air.Never in all those days did we see a fruit-tree trained on some sunny southern wall, a smiling flower-garden or carefully clipped hedge.My host told me that hardly the necessary vegetables are grown, the inhabitants of the West and South preferring canned food.It is less trouble!
If you wish to form an idea of the extent to which slouch prevails in our country, try to start a "village improvement society," and experience, as others have done, the apathy and ill-will of the inhabitants when you go about among them and strive to summon some of their local pride to your aid.
In the town near which I pass my summers, a large stone, fallen from a passing dray, lay for days in the middle of the principal street, until I paid some boys to remove it.No one cared, and the dull-eyed inhabitants would doubtless be looking at it still but for my impatience.
One would imagine the villagers were all on the point of moving away (and they generally are, if they can sell their land), so little interest do they show in your plans.Like all people who have fallen into bad habits, they have grown to love their slatternly ways and cling to them, resenting furiously any attempt to shake them up to energy and reform.
The farmer has not, however, a monopoly.Slouch seems ubiquitous.
Our railway and steam-boat systems have tried in vain to combat it, and supplied their employees with a livery (I beg the free and independent voter's pardon, a uniform!), with but little effect.
The inherent tendency is too strong for the corporations.The conductors still shuffle along in their spotted garments, the cap on the back of the head, and their legs anywhere, while they chew gum in defiance of the whole Board of Directors.
Go down to Washington, after a visit to the Houses of Parliament or the Chamber of Deputies, and observe the contrast between the bearing of our Senators and Representatives and the air of their CONFRERES abroad.Our law-makers seem trying to avoid every appearance of "smartness." Indeed, I am told, so great is the prejudice in the United States against a well-turned-out man that a candidate would seriously compromise his chances of election who appeared before his constituents in other than the accustomed shabby frock-coat, unbuttoned and floating, a pot hat, no gloves, as much doubtfully white shirt-front as possible, and a wisp of black silk for a tie; and if he can exhibit also a chin-whisker, his chances of election are materially increased.
Nothing offends an eye accustomed to our native LAISSER ALLER so much as a well-brushed hat and shining boots.When abroad, it is easy to spot a compatriot as soon and as far as you can see one, by his graceless gait, a cross between a lounge and a shuffle.In reading-, or dining-room, he is the only man whose spine does not seem equal to its work, so he flops and straggles until, for the honor of your land, you long to shake him and set him squarely on his legs.
No amount of reasoning can convince me that outward slovenliness is not a sign of inward and moral supineness.A neglected exterior generally means a lax moral code.The man who considers it too much trouble to sit erect can hardly have given much time to his tub or his toilet.Having neglected his clothes, he will neglect his manners, and between morals and manners we know the tie is intimate.
In the Orient a new reign is often inaugurated by the construction of a mosque.Vast expense is incurred to make it as splendid as possible.But, once completed, it is never touched again.Others are built by succeeding sovereigns, but neither thought nor treasure is ever expended on the old ones.When they can no longer be used, they are abandoned, and fall into decay.The same system seems to prevail among our private owners and corporations.
Streets are paved, lamp-posts erected, store-fronts carefully adorned, but from the hour the workman puts his finishing touch upon them they are abandoned to the hand of fate.The mud may cake up knee-deep, wind and weather work their own sweet will, it is no one's business to interfere.
When abroad one of my amusements has been of an early morning to watch Paris making its toilet.The streets are taking a bath, liveried attendants are blacking the boots of the lamp-posts and newspaper-KIOSQUES, the shop-fronts are being shaved and having their hair curled, cafe's and restaurants are putting on clean shirts and tying their cravats smartly before their many mirrors.
By the time the world is up and about, the whole city, smiling freshly from its matutinal tub, is ready to greet it gayly.
It is this attention to detail that gives to Continental cities their air of cheerfulness and thrift, and the utter lack of it that impresses foreigners so painfully on arriving at our shores.
It has been the fashion to laugh at the dude and his high collar, at the darky in his master's cast-off clothes, aping style and fashion.Better the dude, better the colored dandy, better even the Bowery "tough" with his affected carriage, for they at least are reaching blindly out after something better than their surroundings, striving after an ideal, and are in just so much the superiors of the foolish souls who mock them - better, even misguided efforts, than the ignoble stagnant quagmire of slouch into which we seem to be slowly descending.
