He reports the American joke correctly. In Boston
they ask, How much does he know? in New York, How
much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Who were his parents?
And when an alien observer turns his telescope upon
us—advertisedly in our own special interest—a
natural apprehension moves us to ask, What is the
diameter of his reflector?
I take a great interest in M. Bourget’s chapters,
for I know by the newspapers that there are several
Americans who are expecting to get a whole education
out of them; several who foresaw, and also foretold,
that our long night was over, and a light almost divine
about to break upon the land.
“His
utterances concerning us are bound to be weighty and
well
timed.”
“He
gives us an object-lesson which should be thoughtfully
and
profitably
studied.”
These well-considered and important verdicts were
of a nature to restore public confidence, which had
been disquieted by questionings as to whether so young
a teacher would be qualified to take so large a class
as 70,000,000, distributed over so extensive a schoolhouse
as America, and pull it through without assistance.
I was even disquieted myself, although I am of a cold,
calm temperament, and not easily disturbed.
I feared for my country. And I was not wholly
tranquilized by the verdicts rendered as above.
It seemed to me that there was still room for doubt.
In fact, in looking the ground over I became more
disturbed than I was before. Many worrying questions
came up in my mind. Two were prominent.
Where had the teacher gotten his equipment?
What was his method?
He had gotten his equipment in France.
Then as to his method! I saw by his own intimations
that he was an Observer, and had a System that used
by naturalists and other scientists. The naturalist
collects many bugs and reptiles and butterflies and
studies their ways a long time patiently. By
this means he is presently able to group these creatures
into families and subdivisions of families by nice
shadings of differences observable in their characters.
Then he labels all those shaded bugs and things with
nicely descriptive group names, and is now happy,
for his great work is completed, and as a result he
intimately knows every bug and shade of a bug there,
inside and out. It may be true, but a person
who was not a naturalist would feel safer about it
if he had the opinion of the bug. I think it
is a pleasant System, but subject to error.
The Observer of Peoples has to be a Classifier, a
Grouper, a Deducer, a Generalizer, a Psychologizer;
and, first and last, a Thinker. He has to be
all these, and when he is at home, observing his own
folk, he is often able to prove competency.
But history has shown that when he is abroad observing
unfamiliar peoples the chances are heavily against
him. He is then a naturalist observing a bug,
with no more than a naturalist’s chance of being
able to tell the bug anything new about itself, and
no more than a naturalist’s chance of being
able to teach it any new ways which it will prefer
to its own.
