第9章
He asks innumerable questions, but they are easy to answer, for he has a sweet credulity.He made me rather ashamed; he is a better American than so many of us; he takes us more seriously than we take ourselves.He seems to think that an oligarchy of wealth is growing up here, and he advised me to be on my guard against it.I don't know exactly what I can do, but I promised him to look out.He is fearfully energetic; the energy of the people here is nothing to that of the inquiring Briton.If we should devote half the energy to building up our institutions that they devote to obtaining information about them, we should have a very satisfactory country.
Mr.Antrobus seemed to think very well of us, which surprised me, on the whole, because, say what one will, it's not so agreeable as England.It's very horrid that this should be; and it's delightful, when one thinks of it, that some things in England are, after all, so disagreeable.At the same time, Mr.Antrobus appeared to be a good deal pre-occupied with our dangers.I don't understand, quite, what they are; they seem to me so few, on a Newport piazza, on this bright, still day.But, after all, what one sees on a Newport piazza is not America; it's the back of Europe! I don't mean to say that I haven't noticed any dangers since my return; there are two or three that seem to me very serious, but they are not those that Mr.
Antrobus means.One, for instance, is that we shall cease to speak the English language, which I prefer so much to any other.It's less and less spoken; American is crowding it out.All the children speak American, and as a child's language it's dreadfully rough.
It's exclusively in use in the schools; all the magazines and newspapers are in American.Of course, a people of fifty millions, who have invented a new civilisation, have a right to a language of their own; that's what they tell me, and I can't quarrel with it.
But I wish they had made it as pretty as the mother-tongue, from which, after all, it is more or less derived.We ought to have invented something as noble as our country.They tell me it's more expressive, and yet some admirable things have been said in the Queen's English.There can be no question of the Queen over here, of course, and American no doubt is the music of the future.Poor dear future, how "expressive" you'll be! For women and children, as I say, it strikes one as very rough; and moreover, they don't speak it well, their own though it be.My little nephews, when I first came home, had not gone back to school, and it distressed me to see that, though they are charming children, they had the vocal inflections of little news-boys.My niece is sixteen years old; she has the sweetest nature possible; she is extremely well-bred, and is dressed to perfection.She chatters from morning till night; but it isn't a pleasant sound! These little persons are in the opposite case from so many English girls, who know how to speak, but don't know how to talk.My niece knows how to talk, but doesn't know how to speak.A propos of the young people, that is our other danger;the young people are eating us up,--there is nothing in America but the young people.The country is made for the rising generation;life is arranged for them; they are the destruction of society.
People talk of them, consider them, defer to them, bow down to them.
They are always present, and whenever they are present there is an end to everything else.They are often very pretty; and physically, they are wonderfully looked after; they are scoured and brushed, they wear hygienic clothes, they go every week to the dentist's.