The Ways of Men — Text and Context

From Brickyard to Icon: The Making of Uncle Sam

The first chapter traces 'Uncle Sam' to a real person: Samuel Wilson, a kindly supplier of meat to the army during the War of 1812. Gregory emphasizes the contrast between the humble origin—a 'slender youth' with a 'nutcracker face' who gave sweets to children—and the later patriotic weight of the term. He notes that the governor who named Troy and Mount Ida 'little dreamed' that a boy on those slopes would become a global synonym for the United States. The account is deliberately local, mentioning Perry Street and Greenbush, and avoids mythologizing: the Wilson brothers' business grew from brickyard to slaughterhouse, and Samuel became Inspector of Provisions. Gregory's tone is wryly appreciative, not reverential.

Art as a Moving Target

In 'What is “Art”?' Gregory recounts his youthful confusion in Parisian studios when masters dismissed whole schools with the phrase 'It’s all very well in its way, but it’s not Art.' He observes that eighteenth-century painting and Italian music were alternately praised and rejected, and that the reputation of Bastien-Lepage rose and fell within a single generation. The essay cites a critic who called Meissonier’s '1815' metallic, and notes that Rembrandt’s work once sold for little. Gregory does not offer a definition; instead, he concludes that most people settle for knowing what they like. The piece is a skeptical look at artistic fashion, grounded in specific examples from the 1870s–1890s.

Hypocrisy and Self-Deception in Everyday Life

Chapter 17 (excerpted briefly) presents a character named Eccles who steals a toy from his grandson and justifies it with a 'grandiloquent soliloquy' about protecting the weak. Gregory comments that many people 'take liberties with those whom we do not fear' and excuse cowardice with fallacious arguments. This moral observation is typical of the collection's interest in the gap between self-image and behavior. The tone is dry and unsparing, but the example is concrete: a drunken old man, a baby, a stolen toy. Gregory does not moralize at length; he lets the scene illustrate the point.

Readers approaching The Ways of Men should expect a series of discrete essays rather than a unified argument. Gregory writes as an observer of American and European manners, with a journalist's eye for detail and a skeptic's distrust of received opinion. The catalog classifies the book under 'American essays,' but the excerpts reveal a writer equally interested in French art criticism and the folk etymology of a national symbol. The volume rewards those who read for specific, grounded observations rather than sweeping claims.

I keep thinking about how Gregory watches the shifting stories we tell ourselves—what we call “American” today wasn’t what anyone meant yesterday. It left a quiet ache, that passing of certainty. I felt something similar reading Letters from the Raven: Correspondence of L. Hearn with Henry Watkin — Story, Setting & Ideas, where old letters hold voices searching for a fixed self, never quite finding it. Just that lingering feel of lives lived between versions.