234
CHAPTER XV.
OF THE GRAVITY OF THE AMERICANS, AND WHY IT DOES NOT
PREVENT THEM FROM OFTEN COMMITTING INCONSIDERATE ACTIONS.
Men who live in democratic countries do not value the simple,
turbulent, or coarse diversions in which the people indulge in
aristocratic communities; such diversions are thought by them to be
puerile or insipid. Nor have they a greater inclination for the
intellectual and refined amusements of the aristocratic classes.
They want something productive and substantial in their pleasures;
they want to mix actual fruition with their joy.
In aristocratic communities the people readily give themselves up to bursts of tumultuous and boisterous gayety, which shake off at once the recollection of their privations: the natives of democracies are not fond of being thus violently broken in upon, and they never lose sight of their own selves without regret. They prefer to these frivolous delights those more serious and silent amusements which are like business, and which do not drive business wholly from their minds.
An American, instead of going in a leisure hour to dance merrily at some place of public resort, as the fellows of his calling continue to do throughout the greater part of Europe, shuts himself up at home to drink. He thus enjoys two pleasures; he can go on thinking of his business, and he can get drunk decently by his own fireside.
I thought that the English constituted the most serious nation on the face of the earth, but I have since seen the Americans and have changed my opinion. I do not mean to say that temperament has not a great deal to do with the character of the inhabitants of the United States, but I think that their political institutions are a still more influential cause.
I believe the seriousness of the Americans arises partly from
