"Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels"

Henry Adams imagines taste as a pocket-sized measuring stick: familiar, comforting, and comically inadequate for the vastness of the world. The “inch rule” suggests a narrow, rigid standard, small in scope, precise in its own way, but oblivious to dimensions it cannot register. People carry this rule everywhere, not simply to evaluate art, fashion, or food, but to size up cities, customs, and entire civilizations. The act becomes a game of self-confirmation: applying a personal metric to everything encountered, then delighting when the world appears to fit.

There is a sly critique here of provincialism. Travel promises exposure to difference, yet the traveler may simply repackage difference into familiar categories, praising what resembles home and dismissing what does not. The pleasure is less discovery than domination: the world reduced to units that flatter the measurer’s sensibility. Taste becomes a private victory parade.

Yet the observation is not only scolding; it is diagnostic. Humans think with tools they trust, and taste is one such tool, rooted in upbringing, class, and habit. To demand neutrality is unrealistic; to pretend one’s preferences are universal is naïve. The task is neither to abandon standards nor to canonize them, but to notice the ruler in one’s hand: its scale, its limits, the places it fails.

Maturity in taste begins when the rule meets objects it cannot neatly measure: a ritual you don’t understand, a cuisine that defies your palette, a building that refuses your categories. Instead of shrinking the world, you enlarge the instrument, adding units, learning new scales, even borrowing others’ rulers. Travel then turns from amusement to apprenticeship, from triumph to conversation.

Ultimately, Adams nudges toward humility. Taste is real, but partial. The world offers more than any inch rule can capture. The wise traveler keeps measuring, and lets himself be measured in return.