A good many minor people--hotel baggagemen, clerks, etc., tram conductors, policemen and the like--will seem to you to be monstrously rude and unobliging. You will be right; they are undoubtedly God-damned uncivil brutes. That is one of the unhappy conditions of our life there. _Don't_ be tempted even to wrangle with them or talk back to them. Pass on, and keep still. If you try to do anything else, the upshot will be your appearing somewhere in print as a damned Britisher for whom American ways are not good enough. The whole country is one vast sounding board, and it vibrates with perilous susceptibility in response to an English accent.
Don't mention the word Ireland. Perhaps that is most important of all. You will hear lots of Americans--good men, too--damning the Irish. Listen to this, and say nothing, unless something amiable about the Irish occurs to you. Because here is a mysterious paradox. The America always damns the Irishman. It is his foible. But if an Englishman joins in, instantly every American within earshot hates him for it. I plead with you to avoid that pitfall. The bottom of it is paved with the bones of your compatriots.
So I could go on indefinitely, but I have already taxed your patience. Briefly then--
1. Express no opinions on American subjects, political, social or racial-save in praise.
2. Be polite and ready to talk affably wit everybody; men who speak to you in a railway train, or the bar tender or the bootblack, quite as much as the rest.
3. Avoid like poison eccentricities of dress and all contact with actors an theatrical people.
4. Rebuff no interviewer. Be invariably affable and reserved with him talk literature to him, and reminicences of Reade, Matthew Arnold, Dean Stanley, anybody you like especially mention things in America which you like, and shut-up about what you don't like.
5. Keep appointments to a minute. No one else will, but they respect immensely in others.
6. Bear in mind always that people think of you as a big novelist, and will be only too glad to treat you at your own valuation, gently exhibited or rather suggested by courteous reserve. There is nothing they won't do for you, if only you impress them as liking them, and appreciating their kindliness, and being studious of their sensibilities.