The Sam Johnson said no more.

The Sam Johnson said no more.

At a ranch in Wyoming were a number of Americans and one Englishman, a man of note, bearing a celebrated name. He was telling the company what one could do in the way of amusement in the evening in London.

"And if there's nothing at the theatres and everything else fails, you can always go to one of the restaurants and hear the Americans eat."

There you have them, my anecdotes. They are chosen from many. I hope and believe that, between them all, they cover the ground; that, taken together as I want you to take them after you have taken them singly, they make my several points clear. As I see it, they reveal the chief whys and wherefores of friction between English and Americans. It is also my hope that I have been equally disagreeable to everybody. If I am to be banished from both countries, I shall try not to pass my exile in Switzerland, which is indeed a lovely place, but just now too full of celebrated Germans.

Beyond my two early points, the right to privacy and the mother-tongue, what are the generalizations to be drawn from my data? I should like to dodge spelling them out, I should immensely prefer to leave it here. Some readers know it already, knew it before I began; while for others, what has been said will be enough. These, if they have the will to friendship instead of the will to hate, will get rid of their anti-English complex, supposing that they had one, and understand better in future what has not been clear to them before. But I seem to feel that some readers there may be who will wish me to be more explicit.

First, then. England has a thousand years of greatness to her credit. Who would not be proud of that? Arrogance is the seamy side of pride. That is what has rubbed us Americans the wrong way. We are recent. Our thousand years of greatness are to come. Such is our passionate belief. Crudity is the seamy side of youth. Our crudity rubs the English the wrong way. Compare the American who said we were going to buy England for a summer resort with the Englishman who said that when all other entertainment in London failed, you could always listen to the Americans eat. Crudity, "freshness" on our side, arrogance, toploftiness on theirs: such is one generalization I would have you disengage from my anecdotes.