ABSTRACT
On landing in New York, the European expects new impressions and surprises– most of all, from the evidences of general equality in this New World. The spirit of social self-assertion requires the intrinsic equality of all one's neighbours who belong to the social community in question. The fundamental feeling is that the whole social interplay would have no meaning, and social ambition and success would yield no pleasure, if it were not clearly understood that every other member of the social community is equal to one's self, and that he has the absolute right to make such a claim. A man who asserts his true equality and expects in every other honourable man the same self-assertion, scarcely understands how purely technical differences of social position can affect the inner relations of man to man. The spirit of self-assertion educates to politeness, helpfulness, good-nature, and magnanimity.
