It was in San Francisco that I learned--and very quickly--that it is as
necessary to visit America in order to know what Americans are like
as it is to leave one's own country in order to know more about that.
Americans when abroad are less hearty, less revealing. They are either
suffering from a constraint or an over-assertiveness; and both moods may
be due to not being at home. In neither case are they so natural as
at home. I suppose that on soil not our own we all tend to be a little
over-anxious to proclaim our nationality, to maintain the distinction.
In our hats can perhaps be too firmly planted the invisible flag of our
country.
Be this as it may, I very quickly discerned a difference between
Americans in America and in England. I found them simple where I had
thought of them as the reverse, and now, after meeting others in various
parts of the country, even in complex and composite New York, I should
say that simplicity is the keynote of the American character. It is in
his simplicity that the American differs most from the European. Such
simplicity is perfectly consistent with the impatience, the desire for
novelty, for brevity, of the American people. We think of them as
always wishing to reduce life to formulae, as unwilling to express any
surprise, and these tendencies may easily be considered as signs of a
tiring civilisation. But in reality they are signs of youth too.