Texas: the rise, progress, and prospects of the Republic of Texas, Vol.1 Page: 32 of 432

xxxii

PERSONAL NARRATIVE,

or merely a vicious custom, removable at will.
Neither have they the candour to set off the praiseworthy
against the censurable practices, or to discriminate
between those who have offended against
generally received etiquette, and those who are its
scrupulous adherents. For the solecisms in manners
which may be detected at the promiscuous
table of a steam-boat or hotel, a whole nation is put
unceremoniously to the ban; as Voltaire, when he
reached Alsace on a tour, and came under the roof
of a red-haired landlady, noted in his journal,
" Mem.-All the women of Alsace are red-haired."
In every foreign country, some practices and
observances will arise uncongenial to a stranger's
notion of the correct and the agreeable. The
Englishman in Paris and the Frenchman in London
have their several small afflictions, to which
nothing but time can reconcile them. Both will
deem themselves martyrs to reprehensible usage;
and John Bull, very likely, will commence by a
prodigious outburst of national wrath against France
and Frenchmen. Now such a demonstration in no
degree amends the order of things, but, on the contrary,
is the forerunner of disturbed digestion, and
therefore to be avoided by all prudent and prescription-shunning
men. Although not lacking