54 MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

thing. The American is often vociferous in
these extlltations and his vociferations sometimes
give offence to foreigners. But if you* hear him
out to the end of his amazing story you will often
find reason to suspect that vociferation is a means
he adopts to stifle a doubt, even a dread, lest the
whole fabric of achievement he has been
describing should suddenly collapse and come to
nothing. He is like the Englishman who had
to pass a cemetery on his way to business and,
being subject to melancholy thoughts and sus-
ceptible to the influence of tombstones, made a
regular practice of singing " Rule Britannia " to
keep up his courage when he came to that dismal
part of the walk. The American may often be
met with, especially among the less educated, for
whom the proposition that the Americans are the
Lord's elect and America God's own country are
the most certain truths in the universe; but these
boasters are invariably rebuked when they become
vocal in presence of the more educated and
apologies made for them afterwards to the
foreigner who has overheard their boastings, or
to whom perhaps they have been rather pointedly
addressed-—this last being regarded by the well-
bred as an intolerable breach of good manners.

The boastings still go on and tend to increase

as^one travels westward, reaching their peak, I

think, in California, though everywhere greatly

'moderated both in pitch and volume by the

prevailing economic depression (1931). But in