Frances Trollope - Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832)

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There is less alms-giving in America than in any other Christian country on the face of the globe. It is not in the temper of the people either to give or to receive.

Frances Trollope
The total and universal want of manners, both in males and females, is... remarkable... that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of.

Frances Trollope
I never saw any people who appeared to live so much without amusement as the Cincinnatians.... Were it not for the churches,... Ithink there might be a general bonfire of best bonnets, for I never could discover any other use for them.

Frances Trollope
Whatever may be the talents of the persons who meet together in [American] society, the very shape, form, and arrangement of the meeting is sufficient to paralyze conversation. The women invariably herd together at one part of the room, and the men at the other... The gentlemen spit, talk of elections and the price of produce, and spit again. The ladies look at each other's dresses till they know every pin by heart...

Frances Trollope
The American spring is by no means so agreeable as the American autumn; both move with faltering step, and slow; but this lingering pace, which is delicious in autumn, is most tormenting in the spring.

Frances Trollope
It was not very unusual at Washington for a lady to take the arm of a gentleman, who was neither her husband, her father, norher brother. This remarkable relaxation of American decorum has been probably introduced by the foreign legations.

Frances Trollope
I have listened to much dull and heavy conversation in America, but rarely to any that I could strictly call silly (if I except the every where privileged class of very young ladies).

Frances Trollope
In a bright day, during any of the summer months, your walk is through an atmosphere of butterflies, so gaudy in hue, and so varied in form, that I often thought they looked like flowers on the wing.

Frances Trollope
Is it to be imagined... that women were made for no other purpose than to fabricate sweetmeats and gingerbread, construct shirts, darn stockings, and become mothers of possible presidents? Assuredly not. Should the women of America ever discover what their power might be, and compare it with what it is, much improvement might be hoped for.

Frances Trollope
All the freedom enjoyed in America, beyond what is enjoyed in England, is enjoyed solely by the disorderly at the expense of the orderly.

Frances Trollope
It seems hardly fair to quarrel with a place because its staple commodity is not pretty, but I am sure I should have liked Cincinnati much better if the people had not dealt so very largely in hogs.

Frances Trollope
He had never overheard Americans conversing without the word dollar being pronounced between them. Such unity of purpose, such sympathy of feeling, can, I believe, be found nowhere else, except, perhaps, in an ants' nest.

Frances Trollope
To an American writer, I should think it must be a flattering distinction to escape the admiration of the newspapers.

Frances Trollope
I very seldom, during my whole stay in the country, heard a sentence elegantly turned, and correctly pronounced from the lips of an American.

Frances Trollope
I heard an Englishman, who had been long resident in America, declare that in following, in meeting, or in overtaking, in the street, on the road, or in the field, at the theatre, the coffee-house, or at home, he had never overheard Americans conversing without the word DOLLAR being pronounced between them. Such unity of purpose... can... be found nowhere else, except... in an ant's nest.

Frances Trollope
When newspapers are the principal vehicles of the wit and wisdom of a people, the higher graces of composition can hardly be looked for.

Frances Trollope
Situated on an island, which I think it will one day cover, it rises like Venice, from the sea, and like the fairest of cities in the days of her glory, receives into its lap tribute of all the riches of the earth.
For a comment on New York society

Frances Trollope
The great height of the trees, the quantity of pendant vine branches that hang amongst them; and the variety of gay plumaged birds, particularly the small green parrot, made us feel we were in a new world.

Frances Trollope
Let no one who wishes to receive agreeable impressions of American manners, commence their travels in a Mississippi steamboat.

Frances Trollope
It was, however, really mortifying to see this splendid hall, fitted up in so stately and sumptuous a manner, filled with men sitting in the most unseemly attitudes, a large majority with their hats on, and nearly all spitting to an excess that decency forbids me to describe.

Frances Trollope
Throughout all ranks of society, from the successful merchant, which is the highest, to the domestic serving man, which is the lowest, they are all too actively employed to read, except at such broken moments as may suffice for a peep at a newspaper. It is for this reason, I presume, that every American newspaper is more or less a magazine.

Frances Trollope