NO TYPICAL AMERICAN.

Te Aroha News, Volume VIII, Issue 485, 2 July 1890, Page 5

NO TYPICAL AMERICAN.

Andrew Describes Americans as He Sees Them. Mr Andrew Lang and Mr Paul Bloueb—the delightfully humorous 4 Max O’Rell ’ — have been invited by the editor of tho 1 North American Review’ to define for the edification of the great American people their conception of the * typical American ’ Mr Lang admits that if there is atypical representative American he has not yet had the satisfaction of meeting him : whilst Mr Bloueb says tout court that there is no typical American. These very untypical English and French gentlemen could nob, however, address themselves to this taking topic without saying many things both acute and humorous. Mr Lang scorns the idea that a man who wears a huge straw hat, tilts his chair back, whittle* assiduously with a bowie knife at a big stick, chews plug tobacco, and has acquired the delicate art of hitting the exact centre of a spittoon three yards off at every expectoration, is in any sense a type. He is a Tradition, with as much truth to nature as the 4 typical ’lrishman, Frenchman, or country yokel of the stage, so smartly 4 hit off’ by Mr Jerome K. Jerome in his * Stage Land,’ Mr Lang feels thab he can only speak with any show of reason of the educated class. The educated American he considers to bo more like a Frenchman than an Englishman,’ bub still more like an American. He is much more vivacious than an Englishman, more original in manner, more fertile in ideas, more modern in every way. He is almost too good company. He is usually rather fond of the Irish and their cause, bub he never goes to Ireland. Ho takes more interest in baseball than in cricket, and seems deeply learned in Cookery and Delicacies with strange names. Ho very seldom talks with an English accent, and even when ho does his idioms betray him. To bring him into a room full of dejected Britons is like pouring fresh water among the fish in a pail. If he has a national trait, is is his fondness for swopping anecdotes. In short, he is a thoroughly good fellow, but what of the ‘typical’ is there in that? In speaking on the subject to two eminent Americans, Mr Bloueb was solemnly informed by one thab the typical American was taciturn ; by the other, very emphatically, that ho was talkative. Mr Blouiit believes neither of these assertions, but rather that the American is

Being Slowly Evolved. But he will not say when he will be finished, or what he will bo like when the process is complete. Thatbherearo distinct American characteristics he is free to admit. It struck him, as an intelligent one, that the newspapers should take more notice of his shirt front, patent leather boots, and light grey trousers, than of his lecture. Another characteristic is the general inquisitiveness of Americans, but he attributes this more to good nature, and a genuine desire to make themselves agreoable, than to mere idle curiosity. „The American is audacious also, because he has done some great things in a short time, and simply believes nothing is impossible to him. He lives on a continent so vast that the word ‘ big ’ is carved on his cranium, and it is no wonder that sometimes it should be cut so deeply as to make a hole, or a crack, in it. Mr BlouiiC says that he believes there is a typical American woman, but as he has not been asked to say anything on that point he wiil abstain.