Voices in Time

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The first requisites for the enjoyment of a tour of the United States are an absence of prejudice and a willingness to accommodate oneself to the customs of the country. If the traveler exercise a little patience, he will often find that ways which strike him as unreasonable or even disagreeable are more suitable to the environment than those of his own home would be. He should from the outset reconcile himself to the absence of deference or servility on the part of those he considers his social inferiors, but if ready himself to be courteous on a footing of equality, he will seldom meet any real impoliteness. In a great many ways traveling in the United States is, to one who understands it, more comfortable than in Europe. The average Englishman will probably find the chief physical discomforts in the dirt of the city streets, the roughness of the country roads, the winter overheating of hotels and railway cars (70-75 degrees F being by no means unusual), and (in many places) the habit of spitting on the floor—but the Americans themselves are now keenly alive to these weak points and are doing their best to remove them.

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