YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

FROM DUBLIN
TO CHICAGO
SOME NOTES ON A TOUR IN AMERICA

BY
GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM Ps*u.
AUTHOB Off "SPANISH GOLD," "GENERAL JOHN BEGAN," "THE LOST TBIBES,"
"the bed hand of ULSTEB," etc.

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1914
BY
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Printed in 1914

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
The Spdiit op Adventure  9

CHAPTER II
Pressmen and Politicians  40
CHAPTER III
The "Hustling" Legend  66
CHAPTER IV
Holiday Fever  93
CHAPTER V
The Iron Trail  , . 113
CHAPTER VI
Advance, Chicago!  132
CHAPTER VII
Memphis and the Negro  149
CHAPTER VIII
The Land op the Free  .177

CONTENTS CHAPTER IX PA(3E
Woman in the States  210
CHAPTER X
Men and Husbands  229
"CHAPTER XI
The Open Doob  247
CHAPTER XII
Colleges and Students  270
CHAPTER XIII
The Irishman Abroad  299

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO

FROM DUBLIN TO
CHICAGO CHAPTER I
THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
"From Dublin to Chicago." You can
take the phrase as the epitome of a tragedy,
the long, slow, century and a half old tragedy
of the flight of the Irish people from their
own country, the flight of the younger men
and women of our race from the land of their
birth to the "Oilean tJr," the new island of
promise and hope across the Atlantic. Much
might be written very feelingly about that
exodus. The first part of it began in reality
long ago, in the middle of the 18th century,
when the farmers of north-east Ulster were
making their struggle for conditions of life
which were economically possible. When the
land war of those days was being waged and
[9]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
the fighters on the one side were called
"Hearts of Steel," that war which resulted in
the establishment of the once famous Ulster
Custom, hopeless men fled with their families
from Belfast, from Derry, and from many
smaller northern ports. They settled in Amer
ica and avenged their wrongs in the course of
the War of Independence. For the rest of
Ireland the great exodus began later. Not
until the middle of the 19th century when the
famine of 1846 and the following years
showed unmistakably that the social order of
Connaught and Munster was impossible. It
continued, that exodus, all through the years
of the later land war. It is still going on,
though the stream is feebler to-day. I could
write a good deal about this exodus, could
tell of forsaken cottages, of sorrowful de
partures, of broken hearts left behind. But
it was not in the spirit of tragedy that we made
our expedition to America, from Dublin to
Chicago. The phrase has another connotation. It car
ries with it a sense of adventuring. It was
[10]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
often, almost always, the bravest and most ad
venturous of our people who went. It was
those who feared their fate too much who
stayed at home. There is something fascinat
ing in all the records of adventuring. We
think of Vasco da Gama pushing his way
along an unknown coast till he rounded the
Cape of Good Hope. We think of Columbus
sailing after the setting sun, and our hearts
are lifted up. Less daring, but surely hardly
less romantic, were the goings forth of our
Irish boys and girls. They went to seek sus
tenance, fortune, life at its fullest and freest
in an unknown land in unguessed ways. I
like to think of the hope and courage of those
who went. They had songs — in the earlier
days of the adventuring — one seldom hears
them now — which express the spirit of their
going. I remember taking a long drive,
twenty years ago, through a summer night
with a young farmer who for the most part
was tongue-tied and silent enough. But the
twilight of that June evening moved him be-
[11]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
yond his self-restraint and he sang to me with
immense emotion:
"To the West! to the West! To the Land
of the Free!" I was vaguely uncomfortable
then, not understanding what was in his heart.
I know a little better now. He was a man with
a home, settled and safe, with a moderate
comfort secured to him, but the spirit of ad
venturing was in his blood, and America repre
sented to him in some vague way the Hy
Brasil, the Isles of the Blest, which had long
ago captivated the imagination of his ances
tors. Well, we went adventuring, too; but com
pared to theirs our adventure was very tame,
very unworthy. Our ship was swift and safe,
or nearly safe. It seemed hardly worth while
to make our wills before we started. There
were waiting for us on the other side friends
who would guide our steps and guard us from
— there were no dangers — all avoidable discom
fort. We even had a friend, such is our as
tounding good fortune, who offered to go with
us and actually did meet us in New York. He
[12]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
had spent much time in America and was well
accustomed to the ways of that country. We
were dining in his company, I remember, in
the familiar comfort of a London club, when
the news that we were really to go to America
first came to us.
"I'd better go, too," he said, "you'll want
some one to take care of you. I don't think
that either one or other of you is to be trusted
to the American newspaper reporters without
an experienced friend at your elbows."
Next time we dined in our friend's company
it was in the restaurant of the Ritz Carlton in
New York, and very glad we were to see him,
though the newspaper reporter in America is
by no means the dangerous wild beast he is
supposed to be.
There was thus little enough of real adven
turing about our journey to America. Yet to
us it was a strange and wonderful thing. We
felt as Charles Kingsley did when he wrote
"At Last," for a visit to America had long
been a dream with us. There are other places
in the world to which we wanted and still want
[13]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
to go.' Egypt is one of them, for we desire to
see the deserts where St. Antony fasted and
prayed. The South Pacific Archipelago is
another, for we are lovers of Stevenson; but
for me, at least, the United States came first.
I wanted to see them more than I wanted to
see the Nitrian Desert or Samoa. It was not
Niagara that laid hold on my imagination, or
the Mississippi, though I did want to see it
because of "Huckleberry Finn." What I de
sired most was to meet American people in
their own native land, to see for myself what
they had made of their continent, to under
stand, if I could, how they felt and thought, to
hear what they talked about, to experience their
way of living. I wanted to see Irish friends
whom I had known as boys and girls. I had
been intimate with many of them before they
went out. I had seen them, changed almost be
yond recognition, when they returned, on rare
short visits to their homes. I wanted to know
what they were doing out there, to see with my
own eyes what it was which made new men and
women of them. I wanted to know why some
[14]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
of them succeeded and grew rich, why others,
not inferior according to our Irish judgment,
came back beaten and disillusioned to settle
down again into the old ways. Neither Egypt
nor Samoa, not India, not Jerusalem itself,
promised so much to me as America did.
There is besides a certain practical advan
tage, in our particular case, which America has
over any other country to which we could
travel. The Americans speak English. This
is a small matter, no doubt, to good linguists,
but we are both of us singularly stupid about
foreign tongues. My French, for instance, is
despicable. It is good enough for use in Italy.
It serves all practical purposes in Spain and
Portugal, but it is a very poor means of con
veying my thoughts in France. For some
reason the French people have great difficulty
in understanding it, and their version of the
language is almost incomprehensible to me,
though I can carry on long conversations with
people of any other nation when they speak
French. It is the same with my Italian, my
German and my Portuguese. They are none
[15]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
of them much good to me in the countries to
which they are supposed to belong. This is
a severe handicap when traveling. We both
hate the feeling that we are mere tourists. We
do not like to be confined to hotels with poly
glot head waiters in them, or to be afraid to
stir out of the channels buoyed out with Cook's
interpreters. We see sights, indeed, visit pic
ture galleries, cathedrals, gape at mountains
and waterfalls ; but we never penetrate into the
inside of the life of these foreign countries.
We are never able to philosophize pleasantly
about the way in which people live in them.
The best we can do is to wander after nightfall
along the side streets of cities, or to rub shoul
ders with the shopping crowd during the after
noon in Naples or Lisbon. America is foreign
enough. It is as foreign as any European
country, as foreign as any country in the world
in which people wear ordinary clothes. I dare
say Algiers is more foreign. I am sure that
Borneo must be. But New York is just as
strange a place as Paris or Rome and therefore
just as interesting, with this advantage for us
[16]

Lki.tt SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
that we could understand, after a few days,
every word that was spoken round us.
Indeed this similarity of language was some
thing of a disappointment to us. We did not
actually expect to hear people say "I guess"
at the beginning of every sentence. We knew
that was as impossible as the frequent "Be-
gorras" with which we Irish are credited. But
we had read several delightful American
books, one called "Rules of the Game" with
particular attention, and we thought the
American language would be more vigorously
picturesque than it turns out to be. The
American in books uses phrases and employs
metaphors which are a continual joy. His con
versation is a series of stimulating shocks. In
real life he does not keep up to that level.
He talks very much as an Englishman does.
There are, indeed, ways of pronouncing cer
tain words which are strange and very pleasant.
I would give a good deal to be able to say
"very" and "America" as these words are said
across the Atlantic. "Vurry" does not repre
sent the sound, nor does "Amurrica," but I
[17]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
have tried in vain to pick up that vowel. I
suppose I am tone deaf. I either caricature it
as "vurry" or relapse into the lean English
version of the word. There are also some
familiar words which are used in ways strange
to me. "Through," for instance, is a word
which I am thoroughly accustomed to, and
"cereal" is one which I often come across in
books dealing with agriculture. But I was
puzzled one morning when an attentive Amer
ican parlor maid, with her eye on my porridge
plate, asked me whether I was "through with
the cereal." Solicitors on this side of the At
lantic are regarded as more or less respectable
members of society. Some of their clients may
consider them crafty, but no one would class
them, as actors used to be classed, with vaga
bonds. It was therefore a surprise to me to
read a notice on an office door: "Solicitors
and beggars are forbidden to enter this build
ing." I made enquiries about what the solici
tors had done to deserve this, and found that
"solicitor," in that part of America, perhaps
all over America, means, not a kind of lawyer,
[18]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
but one who solicits subscriptions, either for
some charity or for his own use and benefit.
There are other words, "Baggage check,"
for instance, which could not be familiar to
us, because we have not got the thing to which
they belong in the British Isles. And a highly
picturesque vigorous phrase meets one now
and then. There was an occasion in which a
laundry annoyed us very much. It did not
bring back some clothes which had gone to be
washed. We complained to a pleasant and
highly vital young lady who controlled all the
telephones in our hotel. She took our side in
the dispute at once, seized the nearest receiver,
and promised to "lay out that laundry right
now." We went up to our rooms comforted
with the vision of a whole staff of washer
women lying in rows like corpses, with napkins
tied under their chins, and white sheets over
them. Americans ought not to swear, and do,
in fact, swear much less than English people
in ordinary conversation. The Englishman,
when things go wrong with him, is almost
forced to say "Damn" in order to express his
[19]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
feelings. His way of speaking his native lan
guage offers him no alternative. The Amer
ican has at command a small battery of phrases
far more helpful than any oath. It is no temp
tation to damn a laundry when you can "lay
it out" by telephone.
I like the American use of the word "right"
in such phrases as "right here," "right now,"
and "right away." When you are told, by
telephone, as you are told almost everything in
America, that your luggage will be sent up to
your room in the hotel "right now," you are
conscious of the friendliness of intention in the
hall porter, which the English phrase "at once"
wholly fails to convey. Even if you have to
wait several hours before you actually get the
luggage you know that every effort is being
made to meet your wishes. You may perhaps
have got into a bath and find yourself, for the
want of clean clothes, forced to decide between
staying there, going straight to bed, and get
ting back into the dirty garments in which you
have traveled. But you have no business to
complain. The "right now" ought to comfort
[20]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
you. Especially when it is repeated cheerily,
while you stand dripping and embarrassed at
the receiver to make a final appeal. The word
"right" in these phrases does not intensify, it
modifies, the immediateness of the now. This
is one of the things to which you must get
accustomed in America. But it is a friendly
phrase, offering and inviting brotherliness of
the most desirable kind. That it means no more
than the "Anon, sir, anon," of Shakespeare's
tapster is not the fault of anybody. Some
sacrifices must be made for the sake of friend
liness. But taken as a whole the American language
is very little different from English. I imag
ine the tendency to diverge has been checked
by the growing frequency of intercourse be
tween the two countries. So many Americans
come to England and so many English go to
America that the languages are being reduced
to one dead level. What used to be called
"Americanisms" are current in common talk
on this side of the Atlantic and on the other
there is a regrettable tendency to drop even the
[21]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
fine old forms which the English themselves
lost long ago. "Gotten" still survives in
America instead of the degraded "got," but I
am afraid it is losing its hold. "Wheel" is in
all ways preferable to bicycle, and may per
haps become naturalized here. I cannot imag
ine that the Americans will be so foolish as to
give it up. Whether "an automobile ride" is
preferable to "a drive in a motor" I do not
know. They both strike me as vile phrases,
and it is difficult to choose between them.
America, as a country to travel in, had for
us another attraction besides its language.
Some people have relations in Spain to whom
they can go and in whose houses they can stay
as guests. Others have relatives of the same
convenient kind in Austria and even in Russia.
Many people have friends in France and Ger
many. We are not so fortunate. When we
go to those countries we spend our time in
hotels, or at best in pensions. We do not dis
cover intimate things about the people there.
It is impossible for us to learn, except through
books, and they seldom tell us the things we
[22]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
want to know, whether the Austrians are mo
rose or cheerful at breakfast time, and whether
the Germans when at home hate fresh air as
bitterly as they hate it when traveling. And
these are just the sort of things which it is
most interesting to know about any people.
The politics of a foreign country are more
easily studied in the pages of periodicals like
"The Nineteenth Century" than in the daily
press of the country itself. Statistics about
trade and population can be read up in books
devoted to the purpose. All sorts of other in
formation are supplied by the invaluable Bae
deker, so that it is in no way necessary to go to
Venice in order to find out things about St.
Mark's. But very intimate details about the
insides of houses, domestic manners and so
forth can only be obtained by staying in pri
vate homes. This we thought we might accom
plish in America because we had some friends
there before we started. In reality ready made
friends are unnecessary for the traveler in
America. He makes them as he goes along,
for the Americans are an amazingly sociable
[23]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
people and hospitable beyond all other nations.
To us Irish — and we are supposed to be hospi
table — the stranger is a stranger until he is
shown in some way to be a friend. In America
he is regarded as a friend unless he makes
himself objectionable, unless he makes him
self very objectionable indeed. We heard of
American hospitality before we started. We
feel now, as the Queen of Sheba felt after her
visit to King Solomon, that the half was not
told us. To be treated hospitably is always de
lightful. It is doubly so when the hospitality
enables the fortunate guest to learn something
of a kind of life which is not his own.
For all these reasons — I have enumerated
four, I think — we desired greatly to go to
America; and there was still another thing
which attracted us. You cannot go to America
except by sea. Even if you are seasick — and I
occasionally am, a little — traveling in a steam
er is greatly to be preferred to traveling in a
train. A good steamer is clean. The best
train covers you with smuts. The noise of the
train is nerve-shattering. The noise which a
[24]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
steamer makes, even in a gale, is soothing.
When a train stops and when it starts again it
jerks and bumps. It also runs over things
called points and then it bumps more. A
steamer stops far seldomer than a train, and
does so very gently and smoothly. It never
actually bumps, and though it very often rolls
or pitches, it does these things in a dignified
way with due deliberation. We chose a slow
steamer for our voyage out and if we are for
tunate enough to go to America again we shall
choose another slow steamer.
Having made up our minds to go — or rather
since these things are really decided for us and
we are never the masters of our movements —
having been shepherded by Destiny into a trip
to America we naturally sought for informa
tion about that country. We got a great deal
more than we actually sought. Everyone we
met gave us advice and told us what to expect.
Advice is always contradictory, and the only
wise thing to do is to take none of what is
offered. But it puzzled us to find that the ac
counts we got of the country were equally con-
[25]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
tradictory. English people, using a curious
phrase of which they seem to be very fond,
prophesied for us "the time of our lives." They
said that we should enjoy ourselves from the
day we landed in New York until the day when
we sank exhausted by too much joy, a day
which some of them placed a fortnight off,
some three weeks, all of them underestimating,
as it turned out, our capacity for enduring de
light. Americans on the other hand decried the
country, and told us that the lot of the traveler
in it was very far from being pleasant. This
puzzled us. A very modest and retiring people
might be expected to underestimate the attrac
tions of their own land. We Irish, for in
stance, always assert that it rains three days out
of every four in Ireland. But the Americans
are not popularly supposed to be, and in fact
are not, particularly modest. I can only sup
pose that the Americans we met before we
started were in bad tempers because they were
for one reason or another obliged to stay in
England, and that they belittled their country
[26]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
in the spirit of the fox who said the grapes
were sour.
One piece of advice which we got gave us,
incidentally and accidentally, our first glimpse
at one of the peculiarities of the American
people, their hatred of letter writing as a means
of communication. The advice was this:
"Do not attempt to take a sealskin coat into
America, because there is a law there against
sealskin coats and the Custom House officers
will hold up the garment."
This seemed to us very improbable. I re
membered the song I have already quoted
about the "Land of the Free" and could not
bring myself to believe that a great nation, a
nation that had fought an expensive war in
order to set its slaves at liberty, could possibly
want to interfere with the wearing apparel of
a casual stranger. The Law, which is very
great and majestic everywhere, is, according
to the proverb, indifferent to very small mat
ters. America, which is as great and majestic
as any law, could not possibly be supposed to
concern itself with the material of a woman's
[27]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
coat. So we reasoned. But the warning was
given with authority by one who knew a lady
who had tried to bring a sealskin coat into
America and failed. We thought it well to
make sure. An inquiry at the steamboat office
was useless. The clerk there declined to say
anything either good or bad about the Ameri
can Custom House regulations. I have no
ticed this same kind of cautious reticence
among all Americans when the subject of cus
toms comes up. I imagine that the people of
ancient Crete avoided speaking about that god
of theirs who ate young girls, and for the same
reason. There is no use running risks, and
the American Custom House officer is a per
son whom it is not well to offend. This is the
way with all democracies. In Russia and Ger
many a man has to be careful in speaking about
the Czar or the Kaiser. In republics we shut
our mouths when a minor official is mentioned,
unless we are among tried and trusted friends.
I myself dislike respecting any one ; but if re
spect is exacted of me I should rather yield it
to a king with a proper crown on his head than
[28]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
to an ordinary man done up with brass buttons.
However, Anglo-Saxons on both sides of the
Atlantic seem to like doing obeisance to offi
cials, and their tastes are no affairs of mine.
Having failed 5n the steamboat office, I
wrote a letter to a high American official in
England — not the Ambassador. I did not
like to trouble him about a sealskin coat. An
English official, high, or of middling station,
would have answered me by return of post,
because he is glad of an opportunity of writing
a letter. In fact, he likes writing letters so
much that he would have sent me two answers,
the first a brief but courteous acknowledgment
of my letter and an assurance that it was re
ceiving attention; the second an extract from
the Act of Parliament which dealt with my
particular problem. The American official does
not like writing letters. No American does.
Rather than write a letter, an American will
pursue you, viva voce, over hundreds of miles
of telephone wire, or spend an hour of valuable
time in having an interview with you in some
more or less inaccessible place. Not even pro-
[29]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
motion to a high official position will cause an
American to feel kindly toward a pen. The
official to whom I wrote would, I am sure, have
told me all there is to know about the Ameri
can dislike of sealskin coats, if he could have
got me on a telephone. He could not do that,
because my name is not in the London tele
phone directory. He would, although he is a
most important person and I am less than the
least, have come to me and talked face to face
if he had known where to find me ; but I wrote
from a club, and the chances were five to one
at least against his finding me there. There
was nothing for it but to write a letter ; but it
took him several days to make up his mind to
the effort. His answer, when he did write it,
followed me to New York, and the sealskin
coat problem had solved itself then.
I noticed, when in New York, that it takes
a posted letter much longer to get from one
street in that city to another quite near at hand
than it does in London for a letter posted in
the same way to get from Denmark Hill to
Hampstead. I connect this fact with the dis-
[30]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
like of letter- writing which is prevalent among
Americans. But I do not know which is cause
and which is effect. It may be that the Amer
ican avoids letters because he knows that they
will go to their destination very slowly. It
may be, on the other hand, that the American
post-office has dropped into leisurely ways be
cause it knows that it is seldom used for busi
ness purposes. Love letters it carries, no doubt,
for it is difficult to express tender feelings on
a telephone, and impossible to telegraph them;
but love letters are hardly ever urgent. The
"Collins" or "Hospitable Roof" communica
tion must be a letter and must go through the
post, but the writer and the recipient would
both be better pleased if it never arrived at
all. Business letters are different things, and
I am sure the American post-office carries com
paratively few of them.
I wish that some one with a taste for statis
tics would make out a table of the weights of
the mail bags carried on Cunard steamers. I
am convinced, and nothing but statistics will
make me think differently, that the westward [31]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
bound ships carry far more letters than those
which travel eastward. All Englishmen, ex
cept for obvious reasons English journalists,
write letters whenever they have a decent ex
cuse. Americans only write letters when they
must. It was, I think, the late Charles Stew
art Parnell who observed that most letters an
swered themselves if you leave them alone long
enough. This is profoundly true, although
Englishmen do not believe it. I have tried
and I know. Americans have either come
across Parnell's remark or worked out the same
truth for themselves. I applaud their wisdom,
but I was once sorry that they practice this
form of economy. If we had got an answer
to our letter before we sailed, we should have
left the coat behind us. As it was, we took
the coat with us and carried it about America,
giving ourselves indeed a good deal of trouble
and reaping very little in the way of comfort
or credit by having it. When we did get the
letter it showed us that the Americans really
do object strongly to these coats and have
made a law against them. If we had known
[32]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
that before starting, we should have left the
coat behind us at any cost to our feelings.
We are not aggressive people, either of us,
and we always try to conform to the customs
of the country in which we are, and to respect
the feelings of the inhabitants. We cannot,
indeed, afford to do anything else. Members
of powerful, conquering nations go about the
world insisting on having their own way wher
ever they are. The English, for instance, have
spread the practice of drinking tea in the after
noon all over Europe. They make it under
stood that wherever they go afternoon tea must
be obtainable. Other peoples shrug their shoul
ders and give in. The Americans have in
sisted that hotels shall be centrally heated and
all rooms and passages kept up to a very high
temperature. No one else wants this kind of
heat, and until the Americans took to traveling
in large numbers we were all content with fire
places in rooms and chilly corridors. But the
Americans are a great people, and there is
hardly a first-rate hotel left in Europe now
which has not got a system of central heating
[33]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
installed. The French have secured the use of
their language, or a colorable imitation of their
language, on all menu cards and bills of fare.
No self-respecting mattre d 'hotel, even if 90%
of his patrons are Americans, English and
Germans, would dare to call soup anything ex
cept potage or consomme. I think we owe it
to the Russians that ladies can now smoke
cigarettes without reproach in all European
restaurants, though they cannot do this yet in
America because very few Russians of the
tourist classes go to America. It must be very
gratifying to belong to one of these great na
tions and to be able to import a favorite cus
tom or a valued comfort wherever you go.
We are mere Irish. We have never conquered
any one ourselves, although we are rather good
at winning other people's battles for them.
We have not money enough to make it worth
anybody's while to consider our tastes; nor,
indeed, are we sure enough of ourselves to
insist on having our own way. There is al
ways at the backs of our minds the paralyzing
thought that perhaps the other people may be
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THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
right and we may be wrong. We submit
rather than struggle.
We like, for instance, good tea at break
fast, strong dark brown tea, which leaves a
distinct stain on the inside of the cup out of
which we drink it. Nobody else in the world
likes this kind of tea. If we were a conquer
ing, domineering people, we should go about
Europe and America saying: "This which we
drink is tea. Your miserable concoction is slop
or worse." If we were rich enough and if
large numbers of us traveled, we should es
tablish our kind of tea as an institution. It
would be obtainable everywhere. At first it
would be called "The a VIrlandaise" and we
should get it by asking for it. Afterwards
it would be "the" simply, and if a traveler
wanted anything else he would have to ask for
that by some special name. But we are not
that kind of people. There are not enough of
us, and the few there are have not sufficient
money to make them worth considering. Be
sides, we are never self-confident enough to as
sert that our kind of tea is the true and
[35]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
superior kind. We are uneasily conscious that
it is rude to describe other people's favorite
beverages as "slop" even when they call ours
"poison." And there is always the doubt
whether we may not be wrong, after all. Great
peoples do not suffer from this doubt. The
American is perfectly certain that houses ought
to be centrally heated. To him there does not
seem to be any possibility of arguing about
that. He has discovered a universal truth,
and the rest of the world must learn it from
him. The German is equally sure that fresh air in
a railway carriage brings death to the person
who breathes it. He is as certain about that
as he is that water wets him when it is poured
over him. There is no room for discussion.
But we Irish are differently constituted. When
any one tells us that our type of tea reduces
those who drink it to the condition of nervous
wrecks and ultimately drives them into lunatic
asylums, we wonder whether perhaps he may
not be right. It is true that we have drunk
the stuff for years and felt no bad effects ; but
[36]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
there is always "the plaguy hundredth chance"
that the bad effects may have been there all
the time without our noticing them, and that,
though we seem sane, we may be jibbering im
beciles. Thus it is that we never have the heart
to make any real struggle for strong tea.
This same infirmity would have prevented
our dragging that coat into America if we
had found out in time that sealskin coats strike
Americans as wicked things. To us it seems
plain that seals exist mainly for the purpose
of supplying men, and especially women, with
skins; just as fathers have their place among
created things in order to supply money for
the use of their children, or steam in order
that it may make engines work. Left to our
selves, we should accept all these as final truths
and live in the light of them. But the moment
any one assails them with a flat contradiction
we begin to doubt. The American says that
the seal, at all events the seal that has the luck
to live in Hudson Bay, ought not to be
deprived of his skin, and that men and
women must be content with their own skins,
[37]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
supplemented when necessary by the fleeces of
sheep. The Englishman or the German would
stand up to the American.
"I will," one of them would say, "kill a Hud
son Bay seal if I like or have him killed for
me by some one else. I will wear his skin
unless you prevent me by actual force, and I
will resist your force as long as I can."
We do not adopt that attitude. We cannot,
for the spirit of defiance is not in us. When
we were assured, as we were in the end, that
the American really has strong feelings about
seals, we began to think that he might be right.
"America," so we argued, "is a much larger
country than Ireland. It is much richer. The
buildings in its cities are far higher. Who are
we that we should set up our opinions about
tea or skins or anything else against the
settled convictions of so great a, people?"
Therefore, though we brought our coat into
America, we did so in no spirit of defiance.
Once we found out the truth, we concealed the
coat as much as possible, carrying it about
[38]

THE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE
folded up so that only the lining showed. It
was hardly ever worn, only twice, I think, the
whole time we were there. The weather, in
deed, was as a rule particularly warm for that
season of the year.

[39]

CHAPTER II
PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
Our ship, after a prosperous and pleasant
voyage, steamed up the Hudson River in a
blinding downpour of rain which drove steadily
across the decks. Our clothes had been packed
up since very early in the morning, and we
declined to get soaked to the skin when there
was no chance of our being able to get dry
again for several hours. Therefore, we missed
seeing the Statue of Liberty and the Wool-
worth Building. We were cowards, and we
suffered for our cowardice by losing what
little respect our American fellow travelers
may have had for us. They went out in the
rain to gaze at the Statue of Liberty and the
Woolworth Building. We saw nothing
through the cabin windows except an adver
tisement of Colgate's tooth paste. The Wool-
worth Building we did indeed see later on.
[40]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
The Statue of Liberty we never saw at all. I
could of course write eloquently about it with
out having seen it. Many people do things of
this kind, but I desire to be perfectly honest.
I leave out the Statue of Liberty. I am per
fectly sure it is there; but beyond that fact I
know nothing whatever about it.
We actually landed, set foot at last on the
soil of the new world, a little before 8 a.m.,
which is a detestable hour of the day under
any circumstances, and particularly abomi
nable in a downpour of rain. If a stranger
with whom I was very slightly acquainted
were to land at that hour in Dublin, and if it
were raining as hard there as it did that morn
ing in New York — it never does, but it is con
ceivable that it might — I should no more think
of going to meet him at the quay than I should
think of swimming out a mile or two to wave
my hand at his ship as she passed. A year
ago I should have made this confession with
out the smallest shame. It would not have
occurred to me as possible that I should make
such an expedition. If a very honored guest
[41]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
arrived at a reasonable hour and at an acces
sible place — steamboat quays are never acces
sible anywhere in the world — if the day were
fine and I had nothing particular to do, I
might perhaps go to meet that guest, and I
should expect him to be surprised and grati
fied. I now confess this with shame, and I
intend to reform my habits. I blush hotly
when I think of the feelings of Americans who
come to visit us. They behave very much bet
ter than we do to strangers. There were three
people to meet us that morning when we landed
and two others arrived at the quay almost
immediately afterwards. Of the five there
was only one whom I had ever seen before, and
him no oftener than twice. Yet they were
there to shake our hands in warm welcome, to
help us in every conceivable way, to whisper
advice when advice seemed necessary.
There were also newspaper reporters, inter
viewers, and we had our first experience of
that business as the Americans do it, in the
shed where our baggage was examined by Cus
tom House officers.
[42]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
"Don't," said one of my friends, "say more
than you can help about religion."
The warning seemed to me unnecessary. I
value my religion, not as much as I ought to,
but highly. Still it is not a subject which I
should voluntarily discuss at eight o'clock in
the morning in a shed with rain splashing on
the roof. The very last thing I should dream
of offering a newspaper reporter is a formal
proof of any of the articles of the Apostle's
Creed. Nor would any interviewer whom I
ever met care to listen to a sermon. I was
on the point of resenting the advice; but I
reflected in time that it was certainly meant for
my good and that the ways of the American
interviewer were strange to me. He might
want to find out whether I could say my cate
chism. I thanked my friend and promised to
mention religion as little as possible. I confess
that the warning made me nervous.
"What," I whispered, "are they likely to
ask me?"
"Well, what you think of America, for one
thing. They always begin with that." [43]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
I had been told that before I left home. I
had even been advised by an experienced trav
eler to jot down, during the voyage out, all
the things I thought about America, and have
them ready on slips of paper to hand to the
interviewers when I arrived. This plan, I was
assured, would save me trouble and would give
the Americans a high opinion of my business
ability. I took the advice. I had quite a num
ber of excellent remarks about America ready
in my pocket when I landed. They were no
use to me. Not one single interviewer asked
me that question. Not even the one who chat
ted with me in the evening of the day on which
I left for home. I do not know why I was not
asked this question. Every other stranger who
goes to America is asked it, or at all events says
he is asked it. Perhaps the Americans have
ceased to care what any stranger thinks about
them. Perhaps they were uninterested only
in my opinion. I can understand that.
Nor was I tempted or goaded to talk about
religion. The warning which I got to avoid
that subject was wasted. No one seemed to
[44]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
care what I believed. I do not think I should
have startled the very youngest interviewer if
I had confided to him that I believed nothing
at all. The nearest I ever got to religion in an
interview was when I was asked what I thought
about Ulster and Home Rule. That I was
asked frequently, almost as frequently as I was
asked what I thought of Synge's "Playboy of
the Western World"; and both these seemed
to me just the sort of questions I ought to be
asked, if, indeed, I ought to be asked any
questions at all. I do not, indeed cannot, think
about Ulster and Home Rule. Nobody can.
It is one of those things, like the fourth dimen
sion, which baffle human thought. Just as you
hope that you have got it into a thinkable shape
it eludes you and you see it sneering at your
discomfiture from the far side of the last ditch.
But it was quite right and proper to expect
that an Irishman;, especially an Irishman who
came originally from Belfast, would have
something to say about it, some thought to ex
press which would illuminate the morass of
that controversy. I could not complain about
[45]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
being asked that question. I ought to have
had something to say about Synge's play, too,
but I had not. I think it is a wonderful play,
by far the greatest piece of dramatic liter
ature that Ireland has produced; but I cannot
give any reasons for the faith that is in me.
Therefore, I am afraid I must have been a
most unsatisfactory subject for the interview
ers. They cannot possibly have liked me.
I, on the other hand, liked them very much
indeed. I found them delightful to talk to,
and look back on the hours I spent with them
as some of the most interesting of my whole
American trip. They all, without exception,
seemed to want to be pleasant. They were the
least conceited set of people I ever came across
and generally apologized for coming to see
me. The apologies were entirely unnecessary.
Their visits were favors conferred on me.
They were strictly honorable. When, as very
often happened, I said something particularly
foolish and became conscious of the fact, I
used to ask the interviewer to whom I had said
it not to put it in print. He always promised
[46]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
to suppress it and he always kept his promise,
though my sillinesses must often have offered
attractive copy. Nor did any interviewer ever
misrepresent me, except when he failed to un
derstand what I said, and that must always
have been more my fault than his. At first I
used to be very cautious with interviewers and
made no statements of any kind without hedg
ing. I used to shy at topics which seemed dan
gerous, and trot away as quickly as I could to
something which offered opportunity for
platitudes. I gradually came to realize that
this caution was unnecessary. I would talk
confidently now to an American interviewer
on any subject, even religion, for I know he
would not print anything which I thought
likely to get me into trouble.
I cannot understand how it is that Ameri
can interviewers have such a bad reputation
on this side of the Atlantic. They are a highly
intelligent, well-educated body of men and
women engaged in the particularly difficult
job of trying to get stupid people, like me,
or conceited people to say something interest-
[47]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
ing. They never made any attempt to pry
into my private affairs. They never asked
obviously silly questions. I have heard of
people who resorted to desperate expedients
to avoid interviewers in America. I should as
soon think of trying to avoid a good play or
any other agreeable form of entertainment.
After all, there is no entertainment so pleas
ant as conversation with a clever man or
woman. I have heard of people who were de
liberately rude to interviewers and gloried in
their rudeness afterwards. That seems to me
just as grave a breach of manners as to say
insolent things to a host or hostess at a dinner
party. Every now and then an interviewer, using a
very slender foundation of fact, produces
something which is brilliantly amusing. There
was one, with whom I never came into per
sonal contact at all, who published a version
of a conversation between Miss Maire O'Neill
and me. What we actually said to each other
was dull enough. The interviewer, by the
simple expedient of making us talk after the
[48]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
fashion which "Mr. Dooley" has made popu
lar, represented us as exceedingly interesting
and amusing people. No one but a fool would
resent being flattered after this fashion.
The one thing which puzzles me about the
business is why the public wants it done. It is
pleasant enough for the hero of the occasion,
and it is only affectation to call him a victim.
The man who does the work, the interviewer,
is, I suppose, paid. He ought to be paid very
highly. But where does the public come in?
It reads the interview — we must, I think, take
it for granted that somebody reads interviews,
but it is very difficult to imagine why. The
American public, judging from the number of
interviews published, seems particularly fond
of this kind of reading. Yet, however clever
the interviewer, the thing must be dull in nine
cases out of ten.
My first interviewer, my very first, photo
graphed me. I told him that he was wasting
a plate, but he went on and wasted three. Why
did he do it? If I were a very beautiful
woman I could understand it, though I think
[49]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
it would be a mistake to photograph Venus
herself on the gangway of a steamer at eight.
o'clock in the morning in a downpour of rain.
If I had been a Christian missionary who had
been tortured by Chinese, I could understand
it. Tortures might have left surprising marks
on my face or twisted my spine in an inter
esting way. If I had been an apostle of physi
cal culture, dressed in a pair of bathing draw
ers and part of a tiger skin, the photograph
ing would have been intelligible. But I am
none of these things. What pleasure could the
public be expected to find in the reproduction
of a picture of a common place middle-aged
man? Yet the thing was done. I can only
suppose that reading interviews and looking
at the attendant photographs has become a
habit with the American public, just as carry
ing a walking stick has with the English gen
tleman. A walking stick is no real use ex
cept to a lame man. The walker does not push
himself along with it. He does not, when he
sets out from home, expect to meet any one
whom he wants to hit. It cannot be contended
[50]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
that the stick is ornamental or adds in any
way to the beauty of his appearance. He car
ries it because he always does carry it and
would feel strange if he did not. The Ameri
cans put up with interviews in their papers for
the same sort of reason. After all, no one,
least of all the subject, has any right to com
plain. Those were our two first impressions of
America, that it was a country of boundless
hospitality and a country pervaded by agree
able newspaper men. I am told by those who
make a study of such /things that the first
glance you get at a face tells you something
true and reliable about the man or woman it
belongs to, but that you get no further infor
mation by looking at the face day after day
for months. When you come to know the man
or woman really well, and have studied his
actions and watched his private life closely for
years, you find, if you still recollect what it
was, that your first impression was right. I
knew an Englishman once who lived for ten
years in Ireland and was deeply interested in
[51]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
our affairs. He told me that when he had
been a week in the country he understood it,
understood us and all belonging to us thor
oughly. At the end of three months he began
to doubt whether he understood us quite as
well as he thought. After five years he was
sure he did not understand us at all. After
ten years — he was a persevering man — he be
gan to understand us a little, and was inclined
to think he was getting back to the exact po
sition he held at the end of the first week. Ten
years hence, if he and I live so long, I intend
to ask him again what he thinks about Ire
land. Then, I expect, he will tell me that he
is quite convinced that his earliest impressions
were correct. This is my justification for re
cording my first impressions of America. I
hope to get to know the country much better as
years go on. I shall probably pass through
the stage of laughing at my earliest ideas, but
in the end I confidently expect to get back to
my joyous admiration for American hospital
ity and my warm affection for American jour
nalists. [52]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
Almost immediately — certainly before the
end of our second day — we arrived at the con
clusion that New York was a singularly clean
city. We are, both of us, by inclination dwell
ers in country places. The noise of great towns
worries us. The sense of being closely sur
rounded by large numbers of other people
annoys us. But we should no doubt get used
to these things if we were forced to dwell long
in any city. I am, however, certain that I
should always loathe the dirt of cities. The
dirt of the country, good red mud, or the slime
of wet stems of trees, does not trouble me, even
if I am covered with it. I enjoy the dirt of
quiet harbors, fish scales, dabs of tar and rust
off old anchor chains. I am happier when
these things are clinging to me than when I am
free of them. I am no fanatical worshipper
of cleanliness. I do not rank it, as the Eng
lish proverb does, among the minor divinities
of the world. But I do not like, I thoroughly
detest, the dirt of cities, that impalpable grime
which settles down visibly on face, hands, col
lar, cuffs, and invisibly but sensibly on coats,
[53]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
hats and trousers. New York, of all the cities
I have ever been in, is freest of this grime.
You can open your bedroom window at night
in New York, and the pocket handkerchief you
leave on your dressing table will still be white
in the morning, fairly white. You can walk
about New York all day and your nose will
not be covered with smuts in the evening. I
am told that the cleanness of New York is
partly due to the fact that trains running in
and out of the city are forced by the municipal
authorities to use electricity as a motive power
and are forbidden to burn coal till they get
into the country. I am told that only a hard,
comparatively smokeless coal may be burned by
any one in the city. If these things are true,
then the City Fathers of New York ought to
be held up as a pattern to Town Councillors
and corporations all over the world.
As a matter of fact — such is the injustice of
man — the municipal government of New York
is not very greatly admired by the rest of the
world. It is supposed to be singularly cor
rupt, and my fellow countrymen are blamed
[54]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
for its corruptness. When an European city
feels in a pharisaical mood it says: "Thank
God I am not as other cities are, even as this
New York." European cities may be morally
cleaner. I do not know whether they are or
not. They are certainly physically much dirt
ier. And from the point of view of the or
dinary citizen physical dirt is more continu
ously annoying than the moral kind. If I
lived in a community whose rulers openly sold
contracts and offices, I should break out into
a violent rage once a year or so, and swear that
I would no longer pay taxes for the benefit of
minor politicians and their henchmen. All the
rest of the year I should be placid enough, for
I should forget the corruption if I escaped the
perpetual unpleasantness of dirt, city dirt. No
government, after all, is honest. The most
that can be expected from men placed in au
thority is that they should not outrage public
opinion by flaunting their dishonesty. But I
cannot help feeling that men in authority,
whom after all the rest of us pay, should do
their business, and part of their business is to
[55]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
keep smuts away from our faces. If it is
really true that we Irish govern New York,
then men ought to give up speaking of us as
"the dirty Irish." Dirty! It appears that we
are the only people who have ever kept a city
clean. I wish we could do it at home.
This Irish political corruption in New York
is a very interesting thing, and I tried hard to
arrive at some understanding of it. Tammany
was defeated while we were in New York, and'
Mr. Mitchel became Mayor, promising a clean,
morally clean, administration. He also is of
Irish descent, so that there were countrymen
of ours on both sides in the struggle, and we
are, evidently, not all of us lovers of corrup
tion. The scene in Broadway when the defeat
of Tammany was announced surpassed any
thing I have ever beheld in the way of a demon
stration of popular rejoicing, except perhaps
"Maf eking Night" in London. Huge crowds
paraded the streets. Youths with horns
marched in procession making music like that
of Edouard Strauss, but even louder. Hawk
ers did an immense trade in small gongs with
[56]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
balls attached to them which made a noise like
cymbals. Grave-looking men wore on their
heads huge plumes of cut, wrinkled paper, like
the paper with which some people hide fire
places in summer time. Others had notices on
their hats which declared "We told you so,"
notices printed beforehand and equally ap
plicable to a victory of the other side. Sky
signs and lights of all sorts blazed above our
heads. Newspaper offices flashed election fig
ures on screens in front of their windows. Now
and then an explosion rose clear above the din,
and we knew that some enterprising photog
rapher was making a flashlight picture of the
scene. There was no question about the fact that
New York was pleased with itself. The
demonstration of popular delight would have
followed very appropriately the capture of a
Bastille, some stronghold of an ancient tyr
anny which held people down against their
will. The supporters of Tammany Rule were,
of course, not in Broadway that night. They
may have been sitting at home behind drawn
[57]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
blinds, meditating on the fickleness of men, or
perhaps on the ingratitude of democracies.
Tammany was corrupt, no doubt, but the water
supply of New York is very good, and it was
no easy matter to get water there. Also the
city is strikingly clean. But there was no ques
tion about the general disgust with Tammany
rule. No man whom I talked to before or
after the election had a good word to say for
the organization. Only, if I were suspected
of glorying in their shame, patriotic Ameri
cans used occasionally to remind me of Mar
coni scandals at home and the English sale of
patents of nobility. And this was no real de
fense of Tammany. But I was not glorying,
and Heaven forbid that I should ever hold up
European political methods as a model to any
one. All I wanted was to understand. I was
eagerly curious to know how Tammany came
to be, whence its power came. It did not sat
isfy me to be told that Tammany bribed people
and sold offices, and therefore was powerful.
That is like saying that Mohammed spread his
religion by force of arms. I am sure that
[58]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
Tammany did bribe, and I am sure that Mo
hammedans did ultimately conquer and put
pressure on the conquered to accept the Koran.
But before you can conquer you must have
soldiers, soldiers who believe of their own free
will. Before you can bribe you must have
money to bribe with. Before you can sell offi
ces you must have offices to sell. How did
Tammany get itself into the position of being
able to bribe?
I was always asking these questions and al
ways failing to get satisfying answers to them.
In the end, when I had almost given up hope,
I did get a little light of the sort I wanted.
It was after dinner one night at a private house
in New York. The ladies had left the room,
and there were five men sitting round the table.
Four of them were clever and distinguished
men, and they might have talked very satis
factorily about things which interested them.
But with that thoughtful courtesy which is one
of the charms of American hospitality, they
allowed the fifth man, the stranger in their
midst, to guide the conversation. I asked one
[59]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
of my usual questions about Tammany. For
a time I got nothing but the familiar stories of
Tammany corruption given with more than the
usual detail. We had names and dates put to
scandalous achievements, and learned who had
been allowed a "rake off" on this or that finan
cial transaction. I heard about the alliance,
under the banner of Tammany, between the
Irish and the Jews. I reflected that other
things besides misfortune makes strange bed
fellows. Then came the illumination. One
of the men present leaned back in his chair and
laid down his cigar.
"A Tammany ward boss," he said, "has the
confidence of the people in his ward. If he
had not he would not be a ward boss."
I did not want to interrupt by asking ques
tions, and felt that I could guess sufficiently
nearly the functions and business of a "ward
boss" to do without an explanation.
"He wouldn't," said my friend, "win or keep
the confidence of the people unless he deserved
it more or less, unless he deserved it a good
deal, unless he really was a friend to the people.
[60]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
He may not be a man of much ability. He
generally isn't, but he has a good heart."
This was startling. My preconceived idea
of a Tammany boss of any kind was of a man
of considerable ability and a bad heart. I sup
pose I looked surprised. The speaker quali
fied his statement a little.
"A good heart, to start with. Every one in
the ward who is in any kind of difficulty or
trouble goes to the boss. Most of them are
poor ignorant people and don't know how to
manage things for themselves. There's a sick
child who ought to be got into a hospital. The
ward boss sees about it. There's a boy who
ought to be in a situation. The ward boss gets
a situation for him. There's a man who has
been badly treated by his employer  Oh!
you know the sort of things which turn up.
They're the same with poor people all the world
over." I did know, very well. I was also beginning
to understand.
"Then I suppose," I said, "the people vote
the way the ward boss tells them." [61]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
"Naturally."
Well, yes, naturally. What do political
rights and wrongs matter to them?
"After a while," my informant went on,
"if he manages well, he is let a little bit into
the inner ring. He gets a bit of money
dropped to him here and another bit there.
That makes a difference to him. He begins to
do himself pretty well, and he likes it."
Most men do. These "bits of money," how
ever they come, bring very pleasant things
with them. That is the same everywhere.
"After a while— I don't say this is exactly
what happens every time, but it's something
like this. After a while he goes uptown and
dines at one of the swagger restaurants, just
to see what it's like. He is a bit out of it at
first, but he goes again. He sees people there
and he picks up their names. They are people
with very impressive names, names he's been
hearing all his life and associating with mil
lions and automobiles and diamonds. It gives
him rather a pleasant feeling to find himself
sitting at the next table and hearing the voices
[62]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
of these men; seeing the women with their
jewels, and smelling the scent off their clothes.
You know the sort of thing."
I could guess. I have, in my time, dined at
restaurants of the kind, though not often
enough to get to know the looks of their native
millionaires. "Then some night or other one of these men
steps across to our man's table and talks to
him. He's as friendly as the devil. He intro
duces him to one or two others, and perhaps
to some women; but women don't come much
into business over here. Well, the poor fellow
is a little bit above himself, and no wonder.
He's never been anything before but just a
'Mick,' and never expected to be anything
else." Here I had to interrupt.
"A Mick?" I said.
"An Irishman. That's what we generally
call Irishmen."
They call us "Pat" on this side of the Atlan
tic, and I think I prefer it, but I have no par-
[63]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
ticular quarrel with "Mick." Both names are
conveniently short.
"There's nothing more than friendliness at
first. Then, perhaps a week later, there's some
thing said about a contract or a new loan that
is to be floated. Influence, a word in the right
quarter, comes in useful in these cases. Our
man, the man we're talking of, doesn't know
very clearly what the talk is about. He doesn't
know that he has any influence; but it rather
pleases him to feel that the other men think he
has. There is a hint dropped about a sub
scription to the party funds and — well, that's
how it's done."
I grasped at ideas which flitted past me.
There always are "party funds." Politics
cannot go on without them. There always are
desirable things, whether contracts, rakes off,
appointments, or — as in our monarch-ridden
states — titles. But I wonder where the blame
for the corruption really lies, the heavy part of
the blame. Tammany Mick had a good heart
to start with and he was not a man of much
ability. [64]

PRESSMEN AND POLITICIANS
However, these are only the speculations of
an inquisitive man. They do not matter. New
York smashed Tammany last autumn and per
haps will keep it smashed. But a mere alliance
of anti- Tammany forces will not permanently
get the better of a well-constructed machine,
nor is enthusiasm for clean government good
in a long-distance race. An American poet
has noted as one of the characteristics of truth
that, though slain, it will rise again, and of
error that when vanquished it dies among its
worshippers. In politics it is the machine which
possesses truth's valuable powers of recupera
tion, and idealism which gets counted out after
a knockdown blow. It seems as if a machine
will only go under finally in competition with
another more efficient machine, and the new,
more efficient machine is just as great a danger
to political morality as the old one was. This
is the vicious circle in which democracies go
round and round. Perhaps the truth is that
politics, like art, are non-moral in nature, that
politicians have nothing to do with right or
wrong, honesty or dishonesty. [65]

CHAPTER III
THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
I walked through New York late at night,
shortly after I landed, and had for compan
ions an Englishman who knew the city well
and an American. The roar of the traffic had
ceased. The streets were almost deserted.
Along Fifth Avenue a few motors rushed
swiftly, bearing belated revelers to their homes.
Save for them, the city was as nearly silent as
any city ever is. We talked. It was the Eng
lishman who spoke first.
"New York and the sound of blasting go
together," he said. "They are inseparably con
nected in my mind. New York is built on
rock out of material blasted off rock with dy
namite. This fact explains New York. It is
the characteristic thing about New York. No
other city owes its existence in the same way
to the force of explosives shattering rock."
[66]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
"New York," said the American, "is one
of the soldiers of Attila the Hun."
The night was warm. He unbuttoned his
overcoat as he spoke and flung it back from
his chest. He squared his shoulders, looked
up at the immensely lofty buildings on each
side of us, looked round at the shadow-patched
pavements, fixed his eyes finally on the lamps
of a motor which was racing toward us from
a great distance along the endless avenue.
Then he pursued his comparison.
"Attila's soldier," he said, "went through
some Roman city with his club over his shoul
der. There were round him evidences of old
civilizations which puzzled him. He gazed at
the temples, the baths, the theaters with won
dering curiosity; but he was conscious that he
could smash everything and kill every one he
saw. He was the barbarian, but he was also
the strong man. New York is like that among
the cities of the world."
I contributed a borrowed comment on
America. "An Irishman once told me," I said, "that
[67]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
America isn't a country. It's a great space in
which there are the makings of a country lying
about. He might have said the same sort of
thing about New York. There are the mak
ings of a city scattered round."
"Chunks of blasted rock," said the Eng
lishman. "The Hun had a lot to learn," said the
American, "but he was the strong man. He
could smash and crush. Nobody else could."
There is a very interesting story or sketch —
I do not know how it ought to be described —
by the late "O. Henry"— which he called "The
Voice of the City." He imagines that certain
American cities speak and each of them utters
its characteristic word. Chicago says, "I will."
Philadelphia says, "I ought." New Orleans
says, "I used to." If I had "O. Henry's"
genius I should try to concentrate into phrases
the voices of the cities I know. I should like
to be able to hear distinctly what they all say
about themselves. Belfast, I am convinced,
says, "I won't." Dublin occasionally mur
murs, "It doesn't really matter." So far I
[68]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
seem to get, but there I am puzzled. I should
like to hear what Edinburgh says, what Paris
says, what Rome would say if something
waked her out of her dream. I should be
beaten by London, even if I had all his genius,
just as "O. Henry" was beaten by New York.
He failed to disentangle the motif from the
clamorous tumult of mighty chorus with which
that city assails the ear. There is a supreme
moment which comes in the Waldstein Son
ata. The listener is a-quiver with maddening
expectation. He is wrought upon with sound
until he feels that he must tear some soft thing
with his teeth. Then, at the moment when the
passion in him becomes intolerable, the great
scrap of melody thunders triumphantly over
the confusion and it is possible to breathe
again. This is just what does not happen in the
case of places Hke London and New York. A
Beethoven yet unborn will catch their melodies
for us some day and the sonata of great cities
will be written. Till he comes it is better to
leave the thing alone. Neither blasting nor
dynamite is the keyword. Attila's Hun with
[69]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
his club fails us, though he helps a little. And
there is more, a great deal more, about New
York than the confused massing of materials
on the site of what is to be a temple or a rail
way station.
When I was in New York they were build
ing a large edifice of some kind in Broadway,
not far from Thirty-fifth Street. I used to
see the work in progress every day, and often
stopped to watch the builders for a while.
Whenever I think of New York I shall re
member the shrill scream of the air drill
which made holes in the steel girders. The
essential thing about that noise was its sugges
tion of relentlessness. Perhaps New York is
of all cities the most relentless. The steel suf
fers and shrieks through a long chromatic
scale of agony. New York drills a hole, pauses
to readjust its terrible force, and then drills
again. That is one aspect of New York. The
stranger cannot fail to be conscious of it. It
is brought home to him by the rush of the over
head railway in Sixth Avenue, by the hurry
[70]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
of the crowds in Broadway, by the grinding
clamor of the subway trains. It is this, no
doubt, which has given rise to the theory that
New York is a city of hustle. It seems to me
a very cruel thing to say of any people that
they hustle. The word suggests a disagree
able kind of spurious activity. The hustler is
not likely to be efficient. He makes a fine show
of doing things ; but he does not, somehow, get
much done. The hustler is like a football
player who is in all parts of the field at differ
ent times, sometimes in the forward line, some
times among the backs, always breathless, gen
erally very much in the way, and contributing
less than any one else to the winning of the
game for his side. If New York were a city
of hustlers, New York would drill no holes in
steel girders.
The fact is that America has, in this matter
of hustle, been grossly slandered in Europe.
I am not sure that the Americans, with a curi
ous perversity, have not slandered themselves,
and done as much as any one to keep the hustle
myth aHve. The American understands the
[71]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
value of not hurrying as well as any one in the
world. He has, justly, a high opinion of him
self and declines to be a slave to a wretched
machine Hke a clock. I realized this leisure-
liness the first time I went into a restaurant to
get something to eat. I could have smoked a
cigarette comfortably between the ordering
and the getting of what I ordered. I could
have smoked other cigarettes, calmly, as cigar
ettes ought to be smoked, between each course.
American men do actually smoke in this way
during meals, and I trace the custom not to an
excessive fondness for tobacco but to the lei
surely way in which the business of eating
is gone about. And it is not in restaurants
only that this quiet disregard of time's abom
inable habit of going on is evident. The New
York business man gets through his work —
it is evident that he does get through it — with
out feeling it necessary to give every one the
impression that each half hour of the day is
dedicated to a separate affair and that the
entire time-table will be reduced to chaos if
[72]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
a single minute strays out of its proper com
partment into the next.
Perhaps it is because I am Irish that I like
this way of doing business. There is a char
acter in one of the late Canon Sheehan's novels
who says that there are two things which are
plenty in Ireland — water and time. There are
undoubtedly places in the world where water
is scarce, the Sahara desert for instance ; but I
suspect that time is quite abundant everywhere
though some people affect to believe that it is
not. I know EngHsh business men who scowl
at you if you venture, having settled the Httle
affair which brought you to their office, to
make a pleasant remark about the chances of
a general election before Christmas. They
pretend that they have not time to talk about
General Elections. They do this, as Bob Saw
yer used to have himself summoned from
church, in order to keep up their reputation.
They want you to think that they are over
whelmed with pressing things. I have always
suspected that, having got rid of their visitor,
they spend hours reading about General Elec-
[73]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
tions in the daily papers. The American busi
ness man is, apparently, never too busy to en
joy a chat. He invites you to lunch with him
when you go to his office. He shows you the
points of interest in the neighborhood after
luncheon. He discusses the present condition
of Ireland, a subject which demands an im
mense quantity of time. He settles the little
matter which brought you to his office with
three sentences and a wave of the hand. He
does not write you a letter afterwards begin
ning: "In confirmation of our conversation to
day I note that you are prepared to  " It
is, I suppose, a man's temperament which
settles which way of doing business he prefers.
It is also very largely a question of temper.
In my normal mood I prefer the American
method. There is a broad humanity about it
which appeals to me strongly. But if I have
been annoyed by anything early in the day,
broken a bootlace, for instance, or lost a collar
stud, I would rather do business in the Eng
lish way. In the one case I like to come in
contact with a fellow man, to feel that he has
[74]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
affections and weaknesses like my own. It is
pleasant to get to know him personally. In
the other case, thanks to the misfortunes of
the morning, I am filled with a gloomy hatred
of my kind. I want, until the mood has worn
off, to see as little as possible of any one and
to keep inevitable people at arm's length. It
is much easier to do this when the inevitable
people also want to keep me at arm's length,
and the English business man generally does.
The friendliness of the American business man
is a Httle trying sometimes to any one in a
bad temper. Sometimes, not always. I re
member one occasion on which I was excep-
tionaHy cross. I forget what had happened
to me in the morning, but it was worse than
breaking a bootlace. It may have had some
thing to do with telephones, instruments which
generally drive me to fury. At all events,
though in a bad temper, I had to go to see a
man in his office. He was a man of extraor
dinarily friendly spirit, even for an American.
I dreaded my interview, fearing that I might
say something actually rude before it was over.
[75]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
Nothing could have been more soothing than
my reception. This wonderful man cast a
single quick glance at me as I entered his of
fice. He realized my condition and got
through with the wretched necessity which had
brought me there with a rapidity and precision
which would have done credit to any English
man. Then he ushered me out again without
making or giving me time to make a single
remark of a miscellaneous kind. I apologized
to him afterwards. He patted me reassuringly
on the shoulder.
"That's all right," he said. "I saw the
minute you came into the room that you were
a bit rattled."
That seems to me a splendid example of
tact. I do not suggest that all American busi
ness men have this faculty for swift, self-sac
rificing sympathy. It must be rare, even in
New York. Does it exist at all in England?
If I called on an English merchant some
morning when the spring was in my blood and
I felt that I wanted to leap and spring Hke a
lamb, would he divine my mood, join hands
[76]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
and dance with me on his hearth rug? I doubt
it. He would not do it even if I were a hun
dred times more important than I am. He
would not do it if I were chairman of a f an-
tasticaHy prosperous company. Yet it must
have been just as hard for my American friend
to be austere as it would be for an Englishman
to be inanely gay.
I am not a business man myself. I have
for many years practiced the art of getting
other people to manage my small affairs for
me, so perhaps I ought not to write about busi
ness men. But an author is always on the
horns of a dilemma. He knows he ought not
to write about anything that he does not thor
oughly understand. But if he confined him
self to those subjects, he would never write
anything at all. Even if he gave himself some
latitude and allowed himself to write about
things of which he knows a little, he would
still find himself in a narrow place. His best
hope is that if he writes freely on every sub
ject that comes into his head he will only be
found out by a few people at a time. Sailors
[77]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
will find him out when he writes about the sea.
Insurance agents will laugh at his ignorance
when he writes about premiums; doctors will
be irritated when he sets down what he thinks
about measles. But the sailors will believe that
he knows a great deal about insurance and dis
ease in general; doctors will think him an ex
pert about ships, and so forth. And there are
always far fewer people in any given profes
sion than there are people out of it. The
writer has therefore a good hope that those
who find him out in any point in which he
touches will always be a minority. Minorities
do not matter.
It is the consideration of this fact which
gives me courage to write about business men,
and more courage now to go on and write about
buildings. I know nothing about architec
ture, but the people who do are very few, so
that the penalty of being found out will be
Hght. There does not seem at first glance to be any
connection between business men and archi
tecture. But there is a very real one. There
[78]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
is also a private connection of thought in my
own mind. It was from the windows of an
office, high up in one of the skyscraper build
ings, that I got my first comprehensive view of
New York. There is, generally, a certain
sameness about these bird's-eye views of cities.
The bird, and the man who gets into the posi
tion of the bird, sees a number of spires of
churches sticking up into the sky and below
them a huddled mass of roofs. Sometimes tall
chimneys assert themselves beside the spires.
But the spires are the dominating things. The
chimneys may have every appearance of arro
gance, but one feels that they are upstarts.
The spires hold the place of a recognized aris
tocracy. The bird, if he were say an eagle,
and had not the sparrow's intimate knowledge
of the life of the streets, would naturaHy come
to the conclusion that the worship of God is
the most potent factor in the life of the Euro
pean city. He would, perhaps, be -wrong, but
he would have a good case to make for him
self when he was recounting his experiences
to the other eagles. [79]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
"I have seen," he would say, "these vast nest
ing places of men, and the spires of the
churches are far the most important things in
them. They reach up higher than anything
else, and there are great numbers of them."
But the eagle would not say that about New
York. It is not spires, nor is it factory chim
neys which stick up highest there and catch
the attention of a spectator from a height.
Office buildings are the dominant things.
Churches are kept in what many people re
gard as their proper place. You can see them
if you look for them, but they are subordi
nate. The same thing is true of another view
of New York, that marvelous spectacle of the
city's profile which you get in the evening from
any of the Hudson River ferry boats. The
sky line is jagged and the silhouettes are not
those of cross-crowned domes or spires, but of
large buildings dedicated to commerce.
The philosophic eagle might, reasoning as
he did before, leap to the conclusion that God
is of little importance in the city of New York;
that bank books there count for more than
[80]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
Bibles. I am not at all sure that he would be
right. It looks, any one who has seen New
York must admit it, as if the American who
coined the phrase, "the almighty doUar," had
really expressed the faith of his countrymen.
But I am inclined to think that he was led into
injustice by a desire to be epigrammatic. It
may be that my experience was singularly for
tunate, but I came to the conclusion that God
counts for a good deal in the life of New York
and of America generaUy. I do not mean that
any creed has obtained for itself national
recognition, or that any particular church has
reached a position analogous to that of the
EngHsh established church. ReHgion in
America seems to me a confused force, which
has not yet fully found itself; but it is a force.
The desire to do justly, to love mercy, though
scarcely perhaps to walk humbly, is present
and is coming to be mightier than the dollar.
Yet it is certainly true that the most strik
ing buildings in New York are not ecclesias
tical, but commercial. This is a defiance of
the old European tradition, a breach even of
[81]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
that feebler tradition which America took over
from Europe before she entered into posses
sion of her own soul. I am reminded of At
tila's Hun with his contempt for Roman civiH-
zation and his confidence in his own strength.
Business used to look askance at magnifi
cence. It was the pride of the London mer
chant that he managed mighty affairs in an
unpretentious counting house. But we are
learning from the Americans. Our insurance
companies were the first to start building
sumptuous habitations for themselves. Banks
and other corporations are following their ex
ample. Yet even to-day the offices in the city
of London are singularly unimpressive to the
eye, and many a house with world-wide influ
ence scorns to appeal to the passerby with
anything more striking than a "Push" or
"Pull" stamped in worn letters on the brass
plates of a pair of swinging doors. It was a
great tradition, this total lack of ostentation
where mighty forces were. At first New York
too felt the attraction of it. Wall Street,
which is one of the older parts of the city, is
[8.2]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
not impressive to look at. The Cotton Ex
change is a building of a very middling kind.
Yet I am inclined to think that the instinct for
magnificence displayed by the newer Ameri
can captains of commerce is sound. I am not
considering the advertisement value of a great
building. It may be worth something in that
way, though grubbiness can also be an effec
tive advertisement. What seems to lie at the
back of the display is the desire of life to ex
press itself in sumptuousness. The Venetians,
a nation of merchants, felt this and built in
the spirit of it. After aU, commerce is a very
great kind of life. There is energy in it, ad
venture, romance. It offers opportunities for
struggle, promises victory, threatens defeat.
Is it any wonder that men absorbed in it should
feel the thrill of the "superbia vitce" and build
to secure visible embodiment for the emotion?
Men have always tried to build finely for their
governors. Kings' palaces and parliament
houses are impressive everywhere. This was
right when kings and parliaments were im
portant. Now that the offices of financiers [83]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
are much more important than the habitations
of law makers, they too are becoming splendid.
It is, I suppose, to be expected that these
mighty buildings should have forms which at
first are repellent in their strangeness. We,
who were nursed in an older artistic tradition,
have learned to value, perhaps too highly, re
straint and dignity. The outstanding char
acteristics of the American skyscraper seem
to me to be exuberance. I am reminded of the
wild spirit of one or two European buildings,
of the cloisters of Belem, for instance, though
there the sense of exultation expresses itself
in a very different way. But the essential
spirit is similar. I could imagine the builders
chanting as they worked: "Behold ye are gods.
Ye are all children of the Highest." They
are gods who have not experienced the tedium
vitce of Olympian happiness. But New York
is not so drunken with exuberance that it can
not build with quiet dignity. Tiffany's shop
in Fifth Avenue, and, a little lower down, Alt-
man's great department store, are buildings
on which the eye rests with undisturbed satis-
[84]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
faction. The men who built these had more in
mind than the erection of houses in which rings
or stockings might conveniently be sold. They
felt that commerce in jewelry or clothes was
in itself a worthy thing which might be under
taken in a lofty spirit, and greatly carried on.
There is a feeling of nobility in the propor
tion of windows and doors, in the severity of
the street fronts. These might be palaces of
noblemen of an ancient lineage. They are —
shops. Has America discovered a dignity in
shop-keeping? The station of the Pennsyl
vania Railway is one of the glories of New
York, and here again New York is certainly
right, though I — it is a purely personal feel
ing — am infuriated to find the calm self-re
straint of the Greeks associated with anything
so blatant as a railway train. Anywhere else
in the world the great hall of the Central
Station would be the nave of a Cathedral. It
is impossible not to feel — even when hurrying
for a train — that the porters are really acolytes
masquerading for a moment in honor of some
fantastic fool's day. [85]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
The churches of New York are of subor
dinate interest. Trinity Church has a singu
larly suggestive position, right opposite the
end of WaU Street, God in protest against
Mammon. But the building itself might be
anywhere in England. I can fancy it in Not
tingham or Bath, and there would be no need
to alter the place of a stone in it. It is a dig
nified and beautiful parish church, but it has,
as a building, nothing American about it. It
has not, apparently, influenced the spirit of
New York architecture. The people have not
found self-expression in it. St. Patrick's
Cathedral, in Fifth Avenue, is a fine, a very
fine example of modern Gothic. Except the
new Graduate CoHege buildings at Princeton,
this cathedral strikes me as the finest example
of modern Gothic I have ever seen. But ought
New York to have Gothic buildings? Here,
I know, I come up against the difficult ques
tion. There are those who hold that for certain
purposes — for worship and for the dignified
ceremonial life of a university — the Gothic
building is the one perfect form which man
[86]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
has devised. We cannot better it. All we can
do is soak ourselves in the spirit of the men of
the great centuries of this style and humbly
try to feel as they felt so that we may build
as they. It may be granted that we shall de
vise nothing better. I, for one, gladly admit
that St. Patrick's in New York and the HaU
at Princeton are conceived in the old spirit and
are as perfect as any modern work of the kind
is, perhaps as perfect as any modern Gothic
work can be. But when all this is said it re
mains true that the life of New York is not
the life of mediaeval Rouen, of the London
which built Westminster or of the Cologne
which paid honor to the Three Kings. Can
New York accept as its vision of the divine
the conception, however splendid, of those
"dear dead days"?
It may well be that I am all wrong in my
feeling about modern Gothic, that what is
wanting in these buildings is not the spirit
which was in the old ones. It may be that, Hke
certain finer kinds of wine, they require ma
turing. I can conceive that a church which
[87]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
seems remote now, almost to the point of frig
idity, may not only seem, but actuaHy be, dif
ferent two hundred years hence. It is scarcely
possible to think that the prayers of genera
tions have no effect upon the walls of the
building in which they are uttered. There
must cling to the place some aroma, some
subtle essence of the Teachings after God of
generation after generation. The repentances
of broken hearts, the suppHcations of sorrow
ing women, the vows of strong, hopeful souls,
the pieties of meek priests, must be present
stiU among the arches and the dim places above
them. Men consecrate their temples, but it
takes them centuries to do it. Perhaps West
minster would have left me cold if I had
walked its aisles four hundred years ago. This
lack of maturity and not, as I suppose, the
fact that they do not come of the spirit of our
time, may be what is the matter with our newer
Gothic buildings.
There is one church in New York — there
may be others unknown to me — which gives the
impression of having grown out of the life
[88]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
which dwelt in it, in the same sense in which
certain EngHsh churches, those especiaUy of
the Sussex country side, have grown rather
than been deliberately and consciously built.
This is the unpretentious building known as
"The Little Church Round the Corner." The
affectionate familiarity of the name suits the
place and means more to the discerning soul
than any dedication could mean. The student
of architecture would perhaps reckon this
church contemptible, and having seen it once
would bestow no second glance upon it. It is
built in no style of recognized orthodoxy. I
do not know its history, but it looks as if bits
had been added on to it time after time by
people who knew nothing and cared nothing
for unity of design, but who had in their hearts
a genuine love for the building. It is an ex
pression of life, this little church, but not, I
think, of the life of New York. It is as if
someone had made a little garden and filled it
with all kinds of delicate sweet-smeUing flow
ers in a glade of a mighty forest. Within the
garden are the flowers, tended and well-be-
[89]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
loved. Outside and all around are great trees
with gnarled trunks and far-off branches
which have fought their own way in desper
ate competition to the sunlight. I could, I
think, worship very faithfully in that "Little
Church Round the Corner," but I should have
to shut New York out of my heart every time
I passed through the doors of it. Just so I
can find delight in the sweetness of Keble's
"Christian Year," but while I do I must for
get the sea, and how "at his word the stormy
wind ariseth which lifteth up the waves there
of." I must cease to be in love with the perils
of adventuring.
There is one church in New York which
seems to me to have caught the spirit of the
city, the unfinished cathedral of St. John the
Divine. It gives the worshipper within its waUs
a strange sense of titanic strength striving
majestically to express itself in stone. I am
told that the building is to be finished in some
other way, in accordance with the rules and
orthodoxies of some school of architecture.
This may not be true, but, even if it is, there
[90]

THE "HUSTLING" LEGEND
still remains the hope that enough has been al
ready done to preserve for the finished work its
character of relentless strength. If its build
ers are brave enough to go as they have begun,
this cathedral should rank in the eyes of fu
ture generations as one of the great houses of
God in the world. St. Mark's, with its fan
tastic spires and gorgeous coloring, expresses
all the past history of Venice and her com
merce with the East, aU which that strange
republic leamt of the Divine, from the glow
of Syrian deserts, where sun-baked caravans
crawled slowly, and from the heavy scents of
Midianitish merchandise in the market places
of Damascus. The confused and misty aisles
of Westminster embody in stone a realized
conception of the tumultuous life of London,
of its black river weary with the weight of the
untold wealth it bears, of its crowds thronging
narrow places, of its streets where past and
present look suspiciously into each other's eyes,
while things which are to be already push for
elbow room. The Cathedral of St. John the
Divine, standing on the very edge of its steep,
[91]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
broken hiU, gives me as no other building does
the sense of strength of the kind of strength
which will do rather than endure, which is un
willing to abide restraint of any kind.
The building is a fit mate for the skyscrap
ers, can hold its own among them because its
spirit is their spirit, touched with the flame of
inspiration by the torch of the divine. The
very absence of unity of style seems the crown
ing glory of it. It is Attila's Hun once more.
What did he care that the spoils in which he
decked himself were of various fashionings?
It is the dynamite blasting living rock. It is,
as it seems to me, New York in process of
being given in stone an interpretation which
neither words nor music have given her yet. It
will be a loss, not only to New York but to the
world, if the builders of the Cathedral of St.
John the Divine allow themselves to be fright
ened by the spectre of European artistic tra
dition. They may tame their church, civilize
it, curl and comb the seven locks of its hair.
If they do, the strength will surely depart from
it and it will become a common thing.
[92]

CHAPTER IV
HOLIDAY FEVER
We shall always be thankful that we paid a
visit to Atlantic City. It is not, I believe, one
of the places of which Americans are particu
larly proud. The trains which connect it with
New York have indeed the reputation of being
the fastest in the world, but that may not be
because every one is in a great hurry to get to
Atlantic City. They run at high speed both
ways, and it is quite possible that some men
may be in an equal hurry to get away. Our
friends were certainly a little cold when we
said we were going there. Left to ourselves,
or meekly foUowing, as we generaHy do, the
advice given to us by weU-instructed people,
we should not have gone to Atlantic City. But
we were shepherded there by circumstance,
fate, or whatever the power is called which
regulates the minor affairs of life. And we
[93]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
were glad we went. No one, says Tennyson,
can be more wise than destiny. Our visit to
Atlantic City went to prove the truth of that
profound remark.
The mean which destiny used for getting us
to Atlantic City was a play. We had a play
of our own, and it was produced there for the
first time on the west side of the Atlantic.
American theatrical managers believe in ex
perimenting with a play in some minor place
before taking the plunge of the New York
production. They call this — in a phrase not
unknown in England — "trying it on the dog."
It seems to me rather a good plan. The ver
dict of the dog is not indeed of great value.
Dogs, human dogs, are the same everywhere.
They are afraid to say they like anything which
has not got the seal of a great city's approval
set on it. They take refuge in damning with
dubious phrase; and, in fact, no one with any
experience much minds what they say. But
the experimental production has a value of its
own apart from the opinion of the dog. The
company shakes down and learns to work to-
[94]

HOLIDAY FEVER
gether. The first performance in an impor
tant place, when the time comes for it, is much
more likely to go smoothly if the actors have
faced audiences, even audiences of the dog
kind, every night for a week beforehand.
We did not understand the philosophy of
these dog productions at first, and were there
fore a little nervous all the time we were in
Atlantic City, but not, I am glad to say, ner
vous enough to have our enjoyment of the
place spoiled. Nothing would induce me to
say, or for a single moment to think, that At
lantic City is in any way a characteristic prod
uct of American civilization. AH our civiliza
tions produce places of this kind. . But it is
fair, I think, to say that America does this
particular thing better than any other country.
Superior people might say that America does
it worse; but I am not superior. I recognize
that the toiling masses have a right to revel
during their brief holidays in the way that
appeals to them as most delightful. I do not
revel in that way myself; but that is not be
cause I have found better ways, but only be-
[95]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
cause I am growing older and prefer to take
my humble pleasures quietly. When I was
young I enjoyed tumultuous pleasures as much
as any one. I reveHed with the best of my
day in the town of Douglas ; and, if I did not
get as much out of it as I might now if I were
young again, it was only because there was
not, in those days, nearly so much in it. The
holiday resort has been enormously developed
during the last twenty-five years, and Amer
ica, judging by Atlantic City — and I am told
Coney Island is better — is in the very van of
human progress.
I have seen Portrush, our humble Irish at
tempt at a pleasure city. I have seen Black
pool, which far surpasses Portrush in its op
portunities for delight. I have seen the Lido,
where the Germans bathe. I have seen Brigh
ton, which is spoiled by a want of abandon and
a paralyzing respect for gentility. Atlantic
City outdoes them all. Atlantic City is Port-
rush, Blackpool, Brighton, the Lido, and Os-
tend roUed into one, and then, in all the essen
tial features of such places, raised to the third
[96]

HOLIDAY FEVER
power, so to speak; multiplied by itself and
then multiplied by itself again.
Our friends, as I have hinted, warned us
against Atlantic City. They said:
"You won't enjoy that place."
Or, varying the emphasis in a way very flat
tering to our reputations for cultivated gen-
tifity: "You won't enjoy that place."
Or, altering the emphasis once more, after
we had explained apologeticaUy that we went
there on business:
"You won't enjoy that place."
When we persisted in going, they took it for
granted that we wanted to argue with them.
Then they closed the discussion with an em
phatic insistence on the one word which had
hitherto escaped them.
"You won't enjoy that place."
One friend, mistaking us for cynical stu
dents of the weaknesses and follies of human
ity, varied the warning in another way:
"You won't," he said, "enjoy it now. It's
not the season." [97]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
They were all wrong. In spite of the pri
vate anxiety which gnawed at our hearts, we
did enjoy Atlantic City. We enjoyed it all
the more because we went there out of season.
It is our deliberate practice to visit places of
this kind out of season, and the date of the
production of our play at Atlantic City was a
most fortunate one for us. We no longer
want to revel. The time for that is past for
us, but we do want to understand, and we seem
to get nearer that when the chief side shows
are closed, when the hotels are being painted,
and when the sea has given up the attempt to
sparkle and look cheerful. In one of Mr. Aji-
thony Hope's novels there is a statesman of
great craftiness who warns a Prince Consort
that he must not think he knows the Queen,
his wife, because he is allowed to see her in
her stays. I daresay there is a good deal in
the warning. But I cannot help feeling that
you would understand a queen better if you
saw her frequently, let us say in her dressing
gown, than if you never saw her except in her
robes of state, with the crown royal firmly
[98]

HOLIDAY FEVER
fixed on her head with hairpins. It must be
the same with pleasure cities. One knows them,
not well, but a little better when they have
tucked up their skirts, put on old blouses and
turned to the task of cleaning up after the
festivities. It is more instructive to walk along the broad
sea front of Blackpool through a fine chill mist
of January rain than to stand there on a blaz
ing August day when the colliers' week of
holiday is in full swing. Deeper thoughts
come to him who gazes at the forlorn rows of
notices that lodgings are to let within than
to him who hurries through street after street,
looking for some place in which to lay his
head. I am sure that I catch the essential
spirit of the Lido when the November sea is
brown, when the sands are drab, when the thou
sands of bathing boxes stand locked and
empty, than I would if smiling wavelets en
ticed plump Germans to splash in them and
bruat paars lingered, indecently affectionate,
in the shadows behind. I did once, accident-
aHy, see Portrush in the very height of its sea-
[99]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
son, and it was a disappointment to me. Bevies
of girls, hatless but with hair elaborately
dressed, paraded the streets with their arms
round each others' waists. Critical young men,
in well-creased suits of the kind supposed to
be suitable for yachting, watched other girls
being taught to swim in a deep pool. Nurse
maids helped children to build sand castles.
Mothers of forty years of age or thereabouts
sat uncomfortably knitting with their backs
against the rocks. More than five thousand
people carried hand cameras about. Lovers,
united for a day or two, wrote each others'
names in huge letters on the sand, where the
retiring tide had left it smooth and dry. There
was too much to feel, far too much to think
about. I grew confused and desperate. I
could not understand. Out of season the ob
server has a better chance. If Portrush con
fused me, Atlantic City, seen in its fuU glory,
would have bewildered me utterly. Also out
of season I am not tormented with vain re
grets. I am spared the vexation of feeling
that a yachting suit, carefully creased, would
[100]

HOLIDAY FEVER
no longer lift my heart up to the skies. It is
not forced upon me that my pulses no longer
throb wildly at the sight of girls who smile.
I do not think how sad it is that I shall never
again want to win the applause of a crowd
by taking a header into deep water from a
giddy height. I am glad that we visited At
lantic City out of season.
I forget how many piers Atlantic City has,
but it is unusuaUy rich in these structures, and
I have no doubt that the builders of them were
wise. A pier makes an irresistible appeal to
the pleasure-seeker. He would rather dance
on a pier, under proper shelter, of course, and
on a good floor, than in a well-appointed salon
on solid land. He would rather eat ices on a
pier than in an ordinary shop, though he has
to pay more for them, the cost of the ice being
the same and the two pence for entry into the
enchanted region being an extra. A cinemato
graph show draws more customers if it is on a
pier. The reason of this is that the normal
and properly constituted holiday-maker wants
to get as much sea as he can. When he is not
[101]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
in it he likes to have it all round him, or as
nearly all round him as possible without going
in a boat. Boats, for several reasons, are un
desirable. They sometimes make people sick.
They are expensive. They demand an undi
vided allegiance. You cannot have a cine
matograph, for instance, in a boat. The near
est thing to a boat is a pier. It is almost sur
rounded by the sea. That is why piers are a
regular feature of up-to-date pleasure cities,
and why Atlantic City has so many of them.
It is all to the credit of our revelers that they
love to be near the sea, to feel it round them,
to hear it splashing under their feet. The sea
is the cleanest thing there is. You can vulgar
ize it, but it is almost impossible, except at the
heads of long estuaries, to dirty it. It seems
as if pleasure-seekers, who are also seekers of
the sea, must be essentially clean people, clean-
hearted, otherwise they would not feel as
strongly impelled as they evidently do to get
into touch with the ocean. And it is real ocean
at Atlantic City. Far out one sees ships pass
ing, the lean three-masted schooners of the
[102]

HOLIDAY FEVER
American coasting trade, trawlers in fleets,
tramp steamers, companionless things, all of
these given to the real business of the sea, not
to pleasure voyaging. The eye lingers on
them, and it is hard afterwards to adjust the
focus of the mental vision to the long wooden
parade, itself almost a pier, the flaunting sky
signs, the innumerable tiny shops where every
kind of useless thing is sold. Atlantic City
has, indeed, some boats of its own, boats which
go out from a haven tucked away behind the
north corner of the parade, and pass up and
down across the sea front. Their sails are
covered with huge advertisements of cigar
ettes and chewing gums. They are manned,
no doubt, by the kind of longshoremen who
cater for the trippers' pleasure. They have in
them as passengers whoever in America cor
responds to the London cockney. Among
ships which sail these are surely as the women
of the streets. But you cannot altogether de
grade a boat. She retains some pathetic rem
nant of her dignity, even if you make her sails
into advertisement hoardings. It was good to
[103]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
watch these boats, their masts set far forward,
after the American catboat fashion, making
short, swift tacks among the sand banks over
which the Atlantic rollers foamed threaten
ingly. It is easy to understand why the shops along
seafronts of places like Atlantic City are for
the most part devoted to the sale of useless
things. Picture postcards I reckon to be very
nearly useless. They give a transient gleam
of pleasure to the buyer, none at aU to the
person who receives them. The whole class of
goods called souvenirs is entirely useless. The
photographs taken by seaside artists are not
such as can give any satisfaction to the sitters
afterwards. Yet the impulse to buy these
things and to be photographed is almost irre
sistible. We yielded, not to the seductions of
the photographers, nor to the lure of the souve
nir-sellers, but with shameless self-abandon
ment to the postcard shops. I found it very
hard to pass any of them without buying. I
still have many of the Atlantic City postcards,
and I look at them whenever I feel in danger
[104]

HOLIDAY FEVER
of growing conceited in order to reduce my
self to a proper condition of humility. We
also — moved by what strange impulse? —
bought several instruments for cutting up po
tatoes. Under ordinary circumstances a po
tato-chopper has no attractions whatever for
me. I could pass a shop window fiUed with
them and not feel one prick of covetous de
sire. And Atlantic City, of all places in the
world, was for us — I suppose in some degree
for every visitor — most unsuitable for the pur
chase of kitchen utensils. We knew, even
while we bought them, that we should have to
haul them with us round America and back
across the Atlantic, that they would be a per
petual nuisance to us all the time, and in aH
probability no use whatever when we got them
home. Yet we bought them. If the dollar we
spent on them had been the last we possessed
we should have bought them all the same.
Such is the strange effect of places Hke At
lantic City on people who are in other places
sane enough. I can analyze and understand
the impulse weU enough though I cannot re-
[105]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
sist it. It is the holiday spirit of the place
which gets a hold on visitors. All a whole
long year we commonplace people, who are not
millionaires, are spending our money warily
on things of carefully calculated usefulness.
We watch each shilling and see that it buys
its full worth of something which will make
life more tolerable or pleasant. Then comes
the brief holiday, and with it the sudden loos
ing of all bonds of ordinary restraint. Our
souls revolt against spending money on things
which are any real good to us. We want, we
are compeHed to fling it from us, asking in
exchange nothing but trifles Hght as air. In
desperate reaction against the tyranny of do
mestic economics we even insist oil buying
things, like potato cutters, which will be an
actual encumbrance to us afterwards.
Cowper represents John Gilpin's wife as
insisting on taking her own wine on a pleasure
party and writes of her that
"Though on pleasure she was bent
She had a frugal mind."
[106]

HOLIDAY FEVER
I refuse to believe that of any human being,
and I count Cowper a good poet but a bad
psychologist. The man who brought a load
of potato-cutters down to Atlantic City was
probably not a poet at all, but he had a pro
found knowledge of human nature. He knew
that he would seU the things there. It was
the place of all places in the world for his
trade. It is a high tribute to Atlantic City
as a holiday resort that it forced us to buy
two of these machines. None of the other
pleasure cities we have visited have had such a
drastic effect upon us. Postcards we yield to
everywhere. Even the dreariest of second-
rate watering places can sell them to us. In
Blackpool I found a paper-knife irresistible.
In Portrush I once bought a colored mug.
Atlantic City alone could have sold me potato-
choppers, two of them.
In towns and rural districts where men and
women live their ordinary lives, work, love and
ultimately die, it is the rarest thing possible
to see any grown person wheeled about in a
perambulator or bath chair. Occasionally some
[107]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
pitiful victim of a surgeon's skfll is lifted out
of the door of a nursing home and placed
tenderly in one of these vehicles. He is
wheeled about in the fresh air in obedience to
the doctor's orders, no doubt in hope that he
will recover sufficient strength to make another
operation possible. But a bath chair, even now
when surgery has become a recognized form of
sport, is a very unusual sight. In aU pleas
ure cities it is quite common. In Brighton,
for instance, or at Bournemouth, any one who
can, with any chance of being believed, repre
sent himself as an invalid, takes advantage of
his infirmity to get himself wheeled about in
a bath chair. At international exhibitions and
in some of the greater picture gaHeries which
are also pleasure resorts it is generaHy possible
to hire a bath chair. Atlantic City, being, as
I believe, the greatest of all such places, has
devised a kind of glorified perambulator, some
thing far more seductive than a bath chair.
It has room for two in it, and this in itself is
a great advance. It has the neatest imagi
nable hood, which you can pull over you in case
[108]

HOLIDAY FEVER
of rain or if you desire privacy. It looks some
thing like a very small but sumptuously ap
pointed motor car.
You need not even pretend to be a cripple
in Atlantic City in order to make good your
right to enter one of these chairs. All sorts
of people, brisk-looking young girls and men
whose limbs are plainly sound, are wheeled
about, not only shamelessly but with evident
enjoyment. There are immense numbers of
these vehicles, more, surely, than there are in
valids in the whole world. Out of season,
when we saw them, they are absurdly cheap,
almost the only thing in America except oys
ters and chocolates, and, curiously enough, silk
stockings, which are cheap judged by Euro
pean standards. I longed very earnestly to
go in one of these vehicles, but at the last mo
ment I always shrank from the strangeness
of it. Neither the taxi of the London streets
nor the outside car of my native land ever
made so strong an appeal to me as these peram
bulators of Atlantic City. I suppose it was
the holiday spirit of the place again. Girls
[109]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
and young men, certainly middle-aged men,
would feel like fools if they sat in perambu
lators anywhere else, but it is a sweet and pleas
ant thing — according to a Latin poet who
must have known — to play the fool in the
proper place. Atlantic City is the proper
place. Hence the enormous numbers of per
ambulators. The hotels in Atlantic City are, most of
them, as fantastic in appearance as the place
itself. I imagine that the architects who
planned them must, before they began their
work, have been kept for weeks on the sea-
front and forced to go to all the entertain
ments which offered themselves by day and
night. They were probably fed on crab dressed
in various ways and given gin rickeys to drink.
Then, when allowed to drop to sleep in the
early morning, they would naturally dream.
At the end of a fortnight or so of this treat
ment their dreams would be imprinted on their
memories and they would draw plans of hotels
suitable for Atlantic City. Only in this way,
I think, can some of the newer hotels have
[110]

HOLIDAY FEVER
been conceived. They are not ugly, far from
it. Crab, dressed as American cooks dress it,
does not induce nightmares, nor is a gin rickey
nearly so terrific a drink as it sounds, The
architect merely dreams, as Coleridge did when
his Kubla Khan decreed a stately pleasure
dome in Xamadu. But Coleridge dreamed on
opium and his visions were of stately things.
The Atlantic City hotel is less stately than
fantastic. It is a building which any one would
declare to be impossible if he did not see it in
actual existence.
It will always be a source of regret to me
that I did not stay in one of these hotels which
captivated me utterly. It was just what, as a
boy, I used to imagine that the palace of the
Sleeping Beauty must be. A look at it brought
back dear memories of the transformation
scenes of pantomimes, in the days before
transformation scenes went out of fashion. It
was colored pale green all over, and, looked at
with half -closed eyes, made me think of mer
maids. I am sure that it was perfectly de-
Hghtf ul inside ; but we did not stay there. A
[111]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
friend had recommended to us another hotel,
of great exceUence and comfort, but built be
fore Atlantic City understood the proper way
to treat architects. In any case we could not
have stayed in the pale green hotel. It was
closed. We were in Atlantic City out of
season.

[112]

CHAPTER V
THE IRON TRAIL
Our luck, which had up to that point been
as good as luck could be, failed us miserably
when we started for Chicago. The very day
before we left New York there was a blizzard
and a snowstorm. Not in New York itself.
There was only a very strong wind there. Nor
in Chicago, but all over the district which lay
between. One train was held up for eighteen
hours in a snowdrift. The last fragments of
food in the restaurant car were consumed, and
the passengers arrived chiUed and desperately
hungry at their destination. We might have
been in that train. It was not, indeed, pos
sible for us to leave New York a day sooner
than we did; but I cannot see why the bliz
zard could not have waited a little. Twenty-
four hours' -delay would have made no differ
ence to it. It might even have gathered force.
[113]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
To us it would have made all the difference in
the world. We missed a great experience.
That is why I say that our luck failed us at
this point.
It would not, at the moment, have been a
pleasant experience, and I do not pretend that
we should have enjoyed either the cold or the
hunger; and we are not the sort of people who,
under such circumstances, secure the last sar
dine. We should, owing to our feebleness in
self-assertion, have been among the first to go
foodless. But afterwards we could have
thought about it and aU our lives told steadily
improving stories about the adventure. The
recollection of it would have added zest to
every remaining hour of comfort in our lives.
What is a short speU of suffering compared
to such enduring joys? But in these matters
we have been singularly unlucky through life.
We have never been in a shipwreck or a rail
way accident or been forced to escape from a
burning house. Only once did a horse run
away with us, and it fell almost immediately
after making its dash for liberty. No burglar
[114]

THE IRON TRAIL
has roused us to do battle with him in the
middle of the night. It seems hard, when we
have been denied all the great adventures of
life, to miss by the narrow margin of a single
day the minor excitement of being snowed up
in a train.
However, it is useless to complain. The
thing was not to be and it was not. Our jour
ney was commonplace and unadventurous. We
hired what is caUed a drawing-room car on our
train. This is an extravagant thing to do.
For people of our humble means it is almost
criminally reckless. Some day when we can
not afford to have our boots re-soled, when we
are looking at the loaves in the windows of
bakers' shops with vain desire, when we have
neither money nor credit left to us, we shall
think with poignant regret of the huge sums
we spent on that drawing-room car. We shall
be sorry, at least one of us will be sorry that
we were not more careful when he or she, the
survivor, cannot afford a simple tombstone to
mark the grave of the other. But at the mo
ment the money, in spite of Atlantic City,
[115]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
being actually in our pockets, we felt that the
drawing-room car was an absolute necessity.
I should take it again if I were going to Chi
cago. But then we are not yet reduced to
penury. The alternative to a drawing-room car, on
most trains, is a section in a Pullman sleeping-
car. Against this we rose in revolt. I cannot
imagine how the Americans, who are in many
ways much more highly civilized than Euro
peans, tolerate the existence of PuHman sleep
ing-cars. I am not physicaUy — though I am
in every other way — an exceptionally modest
man. I have, for instance, no objection to
mixed bathing, and it does not make me blush
to meet one of the housemaids in a hotel when,
dressed only in my pajamas, I am searching
for the bathroom. But I do object to un
dressing in the corridor of a Pullman sleeping-
car, and I cannot, not being a professional ac
robat, undress in my berth. For a lady the
thing is, of course, much worse. Besides the
undressing and the still more difficult dressing
again, there is the business of washing in the
[H6]

THE IRON TRAIL
morning, washing and, for most men, shaving.
You go into a sort of dressing-room to do
that. There are not nearly basins enough.
There is not room enough. Somebody is sure
to walk on your sponge, wiH walk on your
toothbrush, too, unless you happen to be a
clerk, and therefore practiced in the art of
holding things behind your ear.
I think Americans are beginning to recog
nize that these sleeping-cars are barbarous. I
met one lady who told me that she would al
ways gladly sacrifice a new dress in order to
spend the money on a drawing-room car. I
entirely sympathize with her; but, even if you
are prepared for these heroic extravagances,
you cannot always get a drawing-room car.
There was one occasion on which we failed,
though we telegraphed three days before to
engage one. On some of the best trains of
the best lines there are also what are called
"compartments." These are comparable in
comfort to the cabins of the International
Company of Wagon Lits on the Continental
trains de luxe, though inferior to the London
[117]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
and North Western Railway Company's sleep
er. No one has any right to grumble who
secures a compartment. Unfortunately, it is
not every railway company which has them,
and it is by no means every train on which they
are run.
The drawing-room car, when you get it, is
in itself a comfortable thing to travel in.
There is a good deal of room in it. There
is satisfactory lavatory accommodation. The
attendants are civil and competent. Any
one who can sleep in a train at all could sleep
in a drawing-room car if only he were not
waked up every time the train stops or starts.
Trains must stop occasionally, of course. But
there is no real need for emphasizing the stops
as American trains do. It is possible — I know
this, because both the French and English
trains do it — to stop without giving inexperi
enced passengers the impression that there has
been a collision. Stopping is not a thing a
train ought to be proud of. There is no reason
why the attention of passengers should be
drawn to it forcibly. For starting with a bang
[118]

THE IRON TRAIL
there is, of course, more excuse. To start at
all is a triumph. It is a victory of mind over
inert matter, and any one who accomphshes it
wants, naturally and properly, to be admired.
I can understand the annoyance of the train,
conscious of being able to start, at feeling that
its passengers, who ought to be praising it, are
perhaps sound asleep. Yet I cannot help
thinking that all the admiration any train
ought to want might be secured without ex
cessive violence. Suppose a notice were hung
up in every coach: "This train wiU stop twice
during the night and after each stop will start
again. Passengers are requested to realize
that this is not an easy thing to do. They will
therefore admire the train." No passenger
with a spark of decent feeling in him would
refuse an appreciative pat to the engine in
the morning. We do as much for horses who
cannot drag us nearly so far or half so fast.
We do it for dogs who do not drag us at all,
only fetch things for us. We should certainly
treat engines with the same kindness if they
were a little tenderer to us. But I refuse to
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FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
pat, stroke or in any way fondle an engine
which, out of mere vanity, wakes me up by
starting boisterously.
We ran during the night through the tail
of the snowstorm which had stopped the train
the day before. We had left New York in
pleasant autumn weather, on one of those days
which, without being cold, has an exhilarating
nip about it. We arrived in Chicago in what
seemed to us midsummer weather, though I
believe it was not really hot for Chicago. We
passed on our way through a snow-covered
district and had the greatest difficulty in keep
ing warm during the night. This is one of
the advantages of traveling in America. The
distances are so immense that in the course of
a single journey you have the chance of trying
several kinds of climate. In England you get
the same result by staying in one place. But
the American plan is much better. There,
having discovered a climate which suits you,
you can settle down in it with a fair amount
of confidence that it wiU remain what it is for
a week or two at a time. In England, whether
[120]

THE IRON TRAIL
you travel about or stay still, you have got to
accustom yourself to continual variety.
After breakfast, when the train had passed
the snow-covered region and the air became a
little warmer, we sat on the platform at the
end of the observation car and looked out at
the country through which we were going.
Nothing could conceivably be more monoto
nous. The land was quite flat, the railway line
was absolutely straight. The train sped on
at a uniform pace of about forty miles an
hour. As far back as the eye could see were
the rails of the track, narrowing and narrow
ing until they looked like a single sharp line,
ruled with remorseless precision from some
point at an infinite distance in the east. On
each side of us were broad spaces of flat land,
reaching, still flat, to the horizons north and
south of us. Every half -hour or so we passed
a village, a collection of meanly conceived, two-
storied houses with a hideous little church
standing just apart from them. Hour after
hour we rushed on with no other change of
scenery, no mountain, no lake, no river, just
[121]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
flat land, with a straight line ruled on it. It
was incredibly monotonous. I suppose that
the life of the people who inhabit that region
is as interesting, in reality, as any other life.
The seasons change there, I hope. Harvests
ripen, cows calve, men die; but on us, strang
ers from a very different land, the unvarying
flatness of it aU lay Hke an intolerable weight.
Yet that journey gave me, more than any
thing else I saw, a sense of the greatness of the
American people. There is, I suppose, some
one thing in the history of every nation which
impresses the man who realizes, even dimly,
the meaning of it, more than anything else
does. Elizabethan England's buccaneering
adventures to the Spanish main seem to me
to make intelligible the peculiar greatness of
England more than anything else her people
have ever done. Revolutionary France in arms
against Europe is France at her most glori
ous, with her special splendor at its brightest.
So my imagination fixes on America's settle
ment of her vast central plain as the greatest
thing in her story. Her fight for independ-
[122]

THE IRON TRAIL
ence was fine, of course; but many other na
tions have fought such wars and won, or, just
as finely, lost. Her civil war stirs thoughts of
greatness in any one who reads it. But this
tremendous journey of the American people
from the east to the Mississippi shores, half
way across a continent, was something greater
than any war.
First, no doubt, hunters went out from the
narrow strip of settled seaboard land. They
pushed their adventurous way across the Alle-
ghanies, finding passes, camping in strange
fastnesses. They came upon the westward-
flowing waters of the great network of rivers
which drain into the Mississippi. They made
their long, dim trails. They fought, with
equal cunning, bands of Indian braves. They
returned, in love with wildness, weaned from
the ways of civilization, to tell their tales of
strange places by the firesides of sober men.
Or they did not return. They were great men,
and their achievements very great, but not the
greatest. More wonderful was the accomplishment of
[123]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
those long streams of settlers who crossed Vir
ginia and Pennsylvania to find the upper
reaches of the waterways which should lead
and bear them mile by mile to the Mississippi
shore. It is barely a century since these men,
home lovers, not wanderers with the caH of
the wild in their ears, home builders, not hunt
ers, went floating in rude arks down the Ohio,
the Cumberland, the Tennessee. With unim
aginable courage and faith they took with them
women, children, cattle, and household plen
ishing. Somewhere each ark grounded and
the work of settlement began. I saw the
woods which stretch for miles over roHing
hills and round lakes beyond that curious col
ony of very wealthy people at Tuxedo. My
imagination pictured for me, as I gazed at
these woods, the outpost settlements of one
hundred years ago. The "half-faced camp,"
rudest of the dwellings of civiHzed man, was
built. Trees were "girdled" or cut down with
patient toil. A smaH clearing was made amid
the interminable miles of forest land. I im
agined the men, lean and grim, the anxious
[124]

THE IRON TRAIL
women, ever on the alert because of the per
petual menace of the Indians who might lurk
a stone's throw off among the shadows of the
trees. We can guess at the satisfaction of each tri
umph won; the day when the lean-to shed with
its open side gave place to the log hut, still
rude enough; the day when some great tree,
sapless from its "girdling," was hewn down
at last ; the adding of acre after acre of cleared
land; the incredibly swift growth of villages
and towns; the pushing out of settlements,
south and north, into yet stranger wilder
nesses, away from the friendly banks of the
waterways. The courage and endurance of
these settlers must have been far beyond that
required of soldiers, explorers or adventurers.
Step by step, almost literally step by step,
they made this wonderful journey, conquer
ing every acre as they passed it. Yet we know
very Httle about them. Homer made a list
of the ships which sailed for Troy. Who has
chronicled the arks and rafts of these still
braver men? Camoens wrote his Luciad to
[125]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
glorify the voyage of Vasco da Gama round
the African coast. All England's Elizabethan
literature is, rightly understood, an interpre
tation of the spirit of Drake and Raleigh. No
one has written an epic of these American
pioneer settlers. Yet surely if ever men de
served such commemoration they did.
Our train ran on and on at forty miles an
hour, and my spirit was cowed by the vast
monotony. What sort of spirit had the men
who faced it first, to whom the conquest of a
mile was a great achievement, to whom it must
have seemed that there was no end to it at aH?
I wonder whether there was in them some great
kind of faith, of which we have lost the secret
now, a belief that God Himself had bidden
them go forward? Or perhaps there was
strong in them that instinct for the conquest
of nature which, whether he knew it or not,
has always been in man, which has made him
greater than the beasts, only a Httle lower than
the angels. Or perhaps it was hunger for life
itself, not for a fuller or a richer life, but for
the bare material existence, which sent them
[126]

THE IRON TRAIL
on, threatened by want in civilized places, to
look for ground where things would grow,
where the fruit of their toil would not be taken
from them. To find a parallel for the achieve
ment of these men the mind must go back to
dim ages before history began, when our an
cestors — why and how we cannot guess —
learned to light fires, chip flints, snare beasts,
make laws ; groped through a palpable obscur
ity toward justice and right, fought those im
possible battles of theirs which have won for
us the kingship of the world. Theirs was an
achievement greater indeed than that of Amer
ica's pioneer settlers, but of the same kind.
I went to church in New York on Thanks
giving Day, and I, though a stranger, was
given the privilege of reading aloud that won
derful chapter in the Book of Deuteronomy
which tells how God led His people through a
great and terrible wilderness. I forgot, as I
read it, all about Israel and Sinai. I remem
bered how the people among whom I was had
journeyed across their vast continent. They
are not my people. Their glory is none of
[127]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
mine. Their Thanksgiving Day had nothing
to do with me, but emotion thrilled me strange
ly as I read. I wondered, thanked, and bent
my head with fear, so great was the past which
is remembered, so terrible the warning which
follows the recital. "Beware lest thou at all
forget the Lord thy God."
The observation car, with its sheltered plat
form at the back of it, is a pleasant feature of
the long-distance American train, one which
might, with advantage, be copied in Europe.
But the best thing, the most whoDy satisfac
tory, about American railway traveHng is that
certain trains are fined for being late. This
happens in England, I think, certainly in Ire
land, in the case of mail trains. It does them
a lot of good, but gives smaH gratification to
the suffering passengers, because the Post-
Office authorities take the money. In Amer
ica the passengers get the fine. Our train was
an hour and a quarter late in getting to Chi
cago, and we were handed a dollar each as
compensation for our annoyance. I felt sor
rier than ever that we had not traveled the day
[128]

THE IRON TRAIL
before in the train that was delayed by the
blizzard. Then we should have got eighteen
dollars each and been able to buy several splen
did dinners to make up for our starvation.
It is not every train in America which pays
for unpunctuality in this way. I am not sure
that the rule applies even to express trains all
over the continent, nor do I know whether the
railway companies deal thus justly with their
passengers of their own free will. It seems
very unlikely that they do. I am inclined to
think that there must be a law on the subject,
either a law made by the State of Illinois or,
as I hope, one made by Congress itself. How
ever this may be, I have no doubt at all that the
law, if it is a law, ought to be made and strictly
enforced in every civilized country. I traveled
once by a London & North Western Railway
express train, which was three hours late; and
I suffered a loss, was actuaHy obliged to dis
perse no less a sum than £2-18-0 in conse
quence. I tried in vain to make the company
see that it ought to pay me back that £2-18-0.
I never got a penny. Yet the offense of the
[129]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
American company was a trifling one in com
parison. It was one hour and a quarter late
in a journey supposed to occupy twenty- three
hours. The London & North Western Rail
way took nine hours over a journey which it
professed to do in six. I cannot help feeling
that the English company would have got its
train to London on that occasion much more
rapidly if it had known beforehand that it
might have to pay each passenger fifteen shill
ings at Euston. We hear a great deal on this
side of the Atlantic about the scandalous way
in which American railway magnates control
American legislation. It appears that occa-
sionaHy, at aU events, the legislators exercise a
very salutary control over the railways.
Charges of corrupting senates are certainly
made against American railway directors.
They may conceivably be true. If they are it
seems desirable, in the interests of the pas
sengers, that some of the British railways
would take in hand the task of corrupting the
House of Commons in the American way. The
morals of that assembly could in no case be
[130]

THE IRON TRAIL
much worse than they are, so there would be
little loss in that way, while the gain to the
public would be immense if trains, even a few
of the best trains, were forced under heavy
penalties to keep time.

[131]

CHAPTER VI
advance, Chicago!
Chicago possesses one exceedingly good
hotel. We know this by experience. The
other hotels in the city may be equally good,
but we shall never try them. Having found
one almost perfect hotel, we shaU, whenever
we visit that city again, go back to it. But I
expect that all the other hotels there are good
too, very good; for Chicago appears to take an
interest in its hotels. In most cities, perhaps
in all other cities, hotels are good or bad ac
cording as their managers are efficient or the
reverse. The city itself does not care about
its hotels any more than it cares about its boot
makers. A London bootmaker might provide
very bad leather for the soles of a stranger's
boots. "The Times" would not deal with that
bootmaker in a special article. It might be
[132]

ADVANCE, CHICAGO!
very difficult to obtain hot water in one of the
great London hotels — I have seen it. stated, on
the authority of an American, that it is very
difficult — but London itself does not care
whether it is or not. The soling of boots and
the comfort of casual guests are, according to
the generaHy prevailing view, affairs best
settled betwen the people directly interested,
the traveler on the one hand and the boot
maker or manager on the other. No one else
thinks that he has a right to interfere.
Chicago takes a different view. It has a
sense of civic responsibility for its hotels, pos
sibly also for its bootmakers. I did not try the
bootmakers and therefore cannot say anything
certainly about them. But I am sure about
the hotels. It happened that there was a let
ter awaiting my arrival at the hotel, the very
exceHent hotel, in which we stayed. This let
ter was not immediately delivered to me. I
believe that I ought to have asked for it, that
the hotel manager expects guests to ask for
letters, and that I had no reasonable ground
of complaint when the letter was not delivered
[133]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
to me. Nor did I complain. I am far too
meek a man to complain about anything in a
large hotel. I am desperately afraid of hotel
officials. They are all much grander than I am
and occupy far more important positions in
the world. I should not grumble if a princess
trod on my toe. Princesses have a right, ow
ing to the splendour of their position, to
trample on me. But I would rather grumble
at a princess than complain to a head waiter or
the clerk in charge of the offices of a large ho
tel. Princesses are common clay compared to
these functionaries. But even if I were a very
brave man, and even if I believed that one man
was as good as another and I the equal of the
manager of a large hotel, I should not have
complained about the failure to deHver that let
ter. The hotel when we were there was very
full, and full of the most important kind of
people, doctors. It was not to be expected that
such a trifle as a letter for me would engage the
attention of anybody.
Next morning there was a paragraph in one
of the leading Chicago papers about my let-
[134]

ADVANCE, CHICAGO!
ter and the manager of the hotel was told
plainly, in clear print, that he must do his
business better than he did. I was astonished
when the manager, taking me solemnly apart,
showed me the paragraph, astonished and ter
ror-stricken. I apologized at once for daring
to have a letter addressed to me at his hotel.
I apologized for not asking for it when I ar
rived. I apologized for the trouble his staff
had been put to in carrying the letter up to my
room in the end. Then I stopped apologizing
because, to my amazement, the manager be
gan. He apologized so amply that I came
graduaHy to feel as if I were not entirely in
the wrong. Also I realized why it is that this
hotel — and no doubt all the others in Chicago
— is so superlatively good. Chicago keeps an
eye on them. The press is alive to the fact that
every citizen of a great city, even a hotel man
ager, should do not merely his duty but more,
should practice counsels of perfection, per
form works of supererogation, deliver letters
which are not asked for.
The incident is in itself unimportant, but
[135]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
it seems to me to iUustrate the spirit of Chi
cago. It is a great city and is determined to
get things done right. It has besides, and this
is its rare distinction, an unfaltering convic
tion that it can get things done right. Most
communities are conscious of some limitations
of their powers. For Chicago there are no
limitations at aU anywhere. Whatever ought
to be done Chicago will do. Nothing is too
smaD, nothing too great to be attempted and
carried through. It may be an insignificant
matter, Hke the comfort of a helpless and fool
ish stranger. It may be a problem against
which civilized society has broken its teeth for
centuries, like the evil of prostitution. Chicago
is convinced that it can be got right and Chi
cago means to do it.
I admire this sublime self-confidence. I
ought always to be happy when I am among
men who have it, because I was born in Bel
fast and the first air I breathed was charged
with exactly this same intensely bracing ozone
of strong-willedness.
Belfast is very like Chicago. If a Belfast
[136]

ADVANCE, CHICAGO!
man were taken while asleep and transported
on a magic carpet to Chicago, he would not,
on waking up, feel that anything very strange
had happened to him. The outward circum
stances of Hfe would indeed be different, but
he would find himself in all essential respects
at home. He would talk to men who said "We
will," with a conviction that their "We wiU"
is the last word which can or need be said on
any subject; just as he had all his life before
talked to men who said, "We won't," with the
same certainty that beyond their "We won't"
there was nothing.
Chicago is, indeed, greater than Belfast, not
merely in the number of its inhabitants and
the importance of its business, but in the fact
that it asserts where Belfast denies. It is a
greater and harder thing to say "Yes" than
"No." But there is a spiritual kinship between
the two places in that both of them mean what
they say and are quite sure that they can make
good their "yes" and "no" against the world.
If all the rest of America finds itself up
against Chicago as the British empire is at
[137]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
present up against Belfast, the result will be
the bewilderment of the rest of America.
I was in Chicago only for a short time. I
did not see any of the things which visitors
usually see there. I went there with certain
prejudices. I had read, like every one else,
Mr. Upton Sinclair's account of the slaughter
of pigs in Chicago. I had read several times
over the late Mr. Frank Norris's "The Pit."
I had read and heard many things about the
wonderful work of Miss Jane Addams. I had
a vague idea that Chicago was both better and
worse than other places, that God and the devil
had joined battle there more definitely than
elsewhere, that the points at issue were plainer,
that there was something nearer to a straight
fight in Chicago between good and evil than
we find in other places.
"We are here," says Matthew Arnold, "as on
a darkling plain,
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and
flight,
Where ignorant armies strive by night."
[138]

ADVANCE, CHICAGO!
In Chicago I felt the armies would be less
ignorant, the alarms a Httle less confused. I
am not sure now that this is so. It may be
quite as hard in Chicago as it is anywhere else
to find out quite certainly what is right ; which,
in certain tangled matters, is God's side and
which the devil's. But I do not believe that
the Chicago man, any more than the Belfast
man, is tormented with the paralysis of inde
cision. He may and very likely will do a great
many things which will turn out in the end
not to be good things. But he will do them
quite unfalteringly. When, having done them,
he has time to look round at the far side of
them, he may discover that there was some
mistake about them somewhere. Then he will
undo them and do something else instead with
the same vigorous conviction. He will, in any
case, keep on doing things and believing in
them. I was in a large bookseller's shop while I
was in Chicago. It was so large that it was
impossible to discover with any certainty what
pleases Chicago most in the way of literature.
[139]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
There seemed to me to be copies of every
book I had ever heard of waiting there for
buyers, and, I presume, they would not wait
unless buyers were likely to come. But I was
struck with the very large number of books
dealing with those subjects which may be
classed roughly under the term Eugenics.
There were more of these books in that shop
than I had ever seen before. I should not have
guessed that there were so many in the world.
I may, of course, have received a wrong im
pression. This particular shop had its books
arranged according to subjects. There was
not, as generally in England and Ireland, a
counter devoted to the latest publications, or
a series of shelves given over to books priced
at a shiUing. In this shop all books on eco
nomics, for example, whether old or new, cheap
or dear, were in one place; aU books on music
in another; and so forth. The idea underlying
the arrangement being that a customer knows
more or less the subject he wants to read about
and is pleased to find aU books on that subject
ready waiting for him in rows. Our idea, on
[140]

ADVANCE, CHICAGO!
the other hand, that which underHes the ar
rangements of our shops, is that a customer
wants, perhaps a new book, perhaps a ten-and-
sixpenny book, perhaps a shilling book, with
out minding much what the book is about. He
is best suited by finding all the new books in
one place, aU the ten-and-sixpenny books in
another, and all the shilling books in a third.
I do not know which is the better plan, but
that adopted in the Chicago shop has the effect
of making the casual customer realize the very
large number of books there are on every sub
ject. I may therefore have been deceived
about the popularity of books on eugenics in
Chicago. There may be no more on sale there
than elsewhere. But I think there are. Of
some of these books there were very large num
bers, twenty or thirty copies of a single book
aU standing in a row. Plainly it was antici
pated that there were in Chicago twenty or
thirty people who would want that particular
book. I never, in any book shop elsewhere,
saw more than five or six copies of a eugenic
book in stock at the same time. I also no-
[141]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
ticed that the majority of these books were
cheap; not detailed and elaborate treatises on,
let us say, Weissmannism and the mechanism
of heredity; but short handbooks, statements
of conclusions supposed to be arrived at and
practical advice suited to plain people. I
formed the opinion that the study of eugenics
is popular in Chicago, more popular than else
where, and that a good many people beHeve
that some good is to be got out of knowing
what science has to teach on these subjects.
I was told by a man who ought to have
known that these books are steadily becoming
more popular. The demand for them was
very small five years ago. It is very large
now and becoming steadily larger. This
seems to me a very interesting thing. For a
long time people were content just to take
children as they came, and they did not bother
much about the hows and the whys of the busi
ness. Grown-up men and women did not in
deed believe that storks dropped babies down
chimneys or that doctors brought them in
bags. But they might just as well have be-
[142]

ADVANCE, CHICAGO!
lieved these things for all the difference such
knowledge as they had made in their way of
conducting the business. Their philosophy
was summed up in a proverb. "When God
sends the mouth He sends the food to fiU it."
To go further into details struck people,
twenty years ago, as rather a disgusting pro
ceeding. Now we have all, everywhere, grown out of
this primitive innocence. We have been driven
away from our old casual ways of reproducing
ourselves, and are forced to think about what
we are doing. There is nothing very interest
ing or curious about this. It is simply a rather
unpleasant fact. What is interesting is that
Chicago seems to be thinking more than the
rest of us, is at all events more interested than
the rest of us in the range of subjects which
I have very roughly called eugenics. Chicago
is, apparently, buying more books on these
subjects, and presumably buys them in order
to read them. Is this a symptom of the exist
ence of a latent vein of weakness in Chicago?
I am not a very good judge of a question
[143]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
of this sort. The whole subject of Eugenics
and all the other subjects which are associated
with it are extremely distasteful to me. I like
to think of young men and young women fall
ing in love with each other and getting mar
ried because they are in love without consider
ing overmuch the almost inevitable conse
quences until these are forced upon them. I
fancy that in an entirely healthy community
things would be managed in this way, and that
the result, generaHy speaking and taking a
wide number of cases into consideration, would
be a race of wholesome, sound children, fairly
weU endowed with natural powers and fitted
to meet the struggle of Hfe. But Chicago
evidently thinks otherwise. The subject of
Eugenics is studied there, and, as a conse
quence of the study, a number of clergy of
various churches have declared that they wiU
not marry people who are suffering from cer
tain diseases. They have aH reason on their
side. I admit it. I have nothing to urge
against them except an old-fashioned preju
dice in favor of the fuUest possible Hberty to
[144]

ADVANCE, CHICAGO!
the individual. Yet I cannot help feeling that
it is not a sign of strength in a community that
it should think very much about these things.
A man seldom worries about his digestion or
reads books about his stomach until his stom
ach and his digestion have gone wrong and
begun to worry him. A great interest in what
is going on in our insides is either a sign that
things are not going on properly or else a
deliberate invitation to our insides to give us
trouble. It is the same with the community.
But I should not Hke to think that anything
either is or soon will be the matter with Chi
cago. It would be a lamentable loss to the
world if Chicago's definite "I will" were to
weaken, if the native hue of this magnificent,
self-confident resolution were to be sicklied
o'er with a pale cast of thought.
At present, at all events, there is very little
sign of any such disaster. It happened that
while we were in Chicago there was some sort
of Congress of literary men. They dined to
gether, of course, as all civilized men do when
they meet to take counsel together on any sub-
[145]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
ject except the making of laws. In all prob
ability laws would be better made if ParHa-
ments were dining clubs; but this is too wide
a subject for me to discuss. The literary men
who met in Chicago had a dinner, and I was
highly honored by receiving an invitation to
it. I wish it had been possible for me to be
there. I could not manage it, but I did the
next best thing, I read the report of the pro
ceedings in the papers on the following morn
ing. One speaker said thatihe looked forward
to the day when Chicago would be the world
center of literature, music and art. He was
not, of course, a stranger, one of the literary
men who had gathered there from various parts
of America. He was a citizen of Chicago.
No stranger would have ventured to say so
magnificent a thing. As long as Chicago says
things like that, simply and unaffectedly, and
believes them, Chicago can study eugenics as
much as it likes, might even devote itself to
Christian Science or take to Spiritualism. It
would still remain strong and sane. For this
was not a siHy boast, made in the name of a
[146]

ADVANCE, CHICAGO!
community which knows nothing of literature,
music or art. Chicago knows perfectly well
what literature is and what art is. Chicago
understands what England has done in liter
ature and art, what France has done, what
Germany has done. Chicago has even a very
good idea of what Athens did. If I were to
say that I looked forward to inventing a per
fect flying machine I should be a fool, because
I know nothing whatever about flying ma
chines and have not the dimmest idea of what
the difficulties of making them are. If Chi
cago were as ignorant about literature and art
as I am about aeronautics, its hope of becom
ing the world center of these things would be
fit matter for a comic paper. What makes
this boast so impressive is just the fact that
Chicago knows quite well what it means.
There are no bounds to what a man can do
except his own self -distrust. There is noth
ing beyond the reach of a city which unfalter
ingly believes in itself. No other city believes
in itself quite so whole-heartedly as Chicago
does, and I expect Chicago will be the world
[147]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
center of Hterature, music and art. There is
nothing to stop it, unless indeed Chicago itself
gives up the idea and chooses to be something
else instead. It may, I hope it will, decide to
be the New Jerusalem, with gates of pearl and
streets of gold and a tree of life growing in the
midst of it. Then Chicago will be the New
Jerusalem and I shaU humbly sue to be ad
mitted as a citizen. My petition will, I am
sure, be granted, for the hospitality of the
people of Chicago seems to me to exceed, if
that be possible, the hospitaHty of other parts
of America. I am not sure that I should be
altogether happy there, even under the new,
perfected conditions of life; but perhaps I
may. I was indeed born in Belfast, and as a
young man shared its spirit. That gives me
hope. But I left Belfast early in life. I have
dwelt much among other peoples, and learned
self-distrust. It may be too late for me to go
back to my youth and learn confidence again.
If it is too late, I shaU not be reaUy happy in
Chicago. [148].

CHAPTER VII
MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
Chicago is generous as well as strong.
There is no note of petty jealousy in its judg
ment of other cities. Memphis belongs to the
South and is very different from the cities of
the East and the middle West. It is easily
conceivable that Chicago might be a little con
temptuous of Memphis, just as Belfast is
more than a little contemptuous of Dublin.
But Chicago displays a fine spirit. I was
assured, more than once, when I was in Chi
cago, that Memphis is a good business city,
and I suppose that no higher praise could be
given than that. I never met a Belfast man
who would say as much for Dublin. But, of
course, Chicago is not in this matter so highly
tried as Belfast is. Memphis does not assume
an air of social superiority to Chicago as Dub-
[149]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
lin does to Belfast. It is not therefore so very
hard for Chicago to be generous in her judg
ment. Perhaps "generous" is the wrong word to
use; "just" would be better. No generosity
is required, because Memphis reaDy is one of
those places in which business is efficiently
done. Timber, I understand, is one of the
things in which Memphis deals. Cotton is
another. I do not know which of the two is a
greater source of trade, but cotton is the more
impressive to the stranger. The place is full
of cotton. Mule carts drag great bales of it
to and from railway stations. Sternwheel
steamers fuH of it ply up and down the Mis
sissippi. I shall never again take out a pocket
handkerchief — I use the cheaper, not the linen
or silken handkerchief — without looking to see
if there is a little piece of white fluff sticking
on my sleeve. When I next visit one of the
vast whirling mills of Lancashire I shall think
of a large quiet room in Memphis full of tables
on which are laid little bundles of cotton, each
bearing a neat ticket with mysterious numbers
[150]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
and letters written on it. As I watch the op
eratives tending the huge machines which spin
their endless threads, I shall think of the men
who handle the samples of the cotton crop in
that Memphis office. They take the stuff be
tween their fingers and thumbs and slowly pull
it apart, looking attentively at the fine fibers
which stretch and separate as the gentle pull is
completed. By some exquisite sensitiveness of
touch and some subtle skill of glance they can
teU to within an eighth of an inch how long
these fibers are. And on the length of the fiber
depends to a great extent the value of the
crop of the particular plantation from which
that sample comes. Outside the windows of
the room is the Mississippi, — a broad, sluggish,
gray river when I saw it; where the deeply
laden steamers splash their way from riverside
plantations to Memphis and then down to New
Orleans, where much of the cotton is shipped
to Europe.
Beyond the room where the cotton is graded
is an office, a sunlit pleasant place with com
fortable writing desks and a case full of vari-
[151]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
ous books. You might fancy yourself in the
private room of some cultivated lawyer in an
English country town, if it were not that in a
corner of that office there stands one of those
machines which, with an infinite amount of
fussy ticking, disgorge a steady stream of rib
bon stamped with figures. In New York and
Liverpool men are shouting furiously at each
other across the floors of Cotton Exchanges.
Prices are made, raised, lowered by their
shouts. Transactions involving huge sums of
money are settled by a gesture or two and a
shouted number. A hand thrust forward,
palm outward, seHs what twenty panting
steamers carry to the Memphis quays. A nod
and a swiftly penciled note buys on the assur
ance that the men with the sensitive fingers
have rightly judged the exact length of a fiber,
impalpable to most of us. AH the time the
shouting and the gestures are going on thou
sands of miles away this machine, with de
tached and unexcited indifference, is stamping
a record of the frenzied bidding, there in the
sunlit Memphis office. Chicago is no more
[152]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
than just when it says that Memphis is a city
where business is done.
Modern business seems to me the most won
derful and romantic thing that the world has
ever seen. A doctor in London takes a knife
and cuts a bit out of a man's side. By doing
that he acquires, if he chooses to exercise it,
the right to levy a perpetual tax on the earn
ings of a raflway somewhere in the Argentine
Republic. No traveler on that railway knows
of his existence. None of the engine drivers,
porters, guards or clerks who work the railway
have ever heard of that doctor or of the man
whose side was cut. But of the fruit of their
labors some portion wiU go to that doctor and
to his children after him if he chooses, with
the money his victim pays him, to buy part of
the stock of that railway company. An ob
scure writer, living perhaps in some remote cor
ner of Wales, tells a story which catches the
fancy of the ladies who subscribe to Mudie's
library. He is able, because he has written
feelingly of Evangelina's first kiss, to take to
himself and assure to his heirs some part of the
[153]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
steel which sweating toilers make in Pitts
burgh, or, if that please him better, he can
levy a toU upon the gold dug from a mine in
South Africa. What do the Pittsburgh steel
workers know or care about him or Evangelina
or the ladies who thrill over her caress? Why
should they give up part of the fruit of their
toil because an imaginary man is said to have
kissed a girl who never existed? It is very
difficult to explain it, but aU society, all na
tions, peoples and languages agree that they
must. The whole force of humanity, combined
for this purpose only, agrees that the doctor,
because of his knife, which has very likely
killed its victim, and the novelist because of his
silly simpering heroine, shall have an indefeas
ible right to tax for their own private benefit
almost any industry in the whole wide world.
This is an unimaginable romance. So is all
business; but Memphis brought home the
strangeness of it to me most compellingly.
Here is a dainty lady, f urclad, scented, pac
ing with delicate steps across the floor of one
of our huge shops. In front of her, not less
[154]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
exquisitely dressed, a handsome man bows low
with the courtesy of a great lord of other days :
"Lingerie, madam, this way if you please.
The second turning to the left. This way,
madam. Miss Jones, if you please. Madam
wishes to see  "
And madam, with her insolent eyes, deigns
to survey some frothy piles of frilly garments,
touches, appraises the material, peers at the
stitches of the hems, plucks at inserted strips of
lace. Here are broad acres of black, caked earth
and all across them are rows and rows of
stunted bushes, like gooseberry bushes, but
thinner and much darker. On all their prickly
branches hang little tufts of white fluff — cot
ton. Among the bushes go men, women and
children, black, negroes every one of them,
dressed in bright yellow, bright blue and flam
ing red. From their shoulders hang long sacks
which trail on the ground behind them. They
steadily pick, pick, pick the fluffs of cotton
out of the opened pods, and push each little bit
into a sack. There you have the beginning of
[155]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
all, the ending of part of this wonderful sub
stance which clothes, so they tell us, nine-
tenths of the men and women in the world who
wear clothes. What is in between the dainty
English lady and the negro in Tennessee?
The plantation owner drives his mule along
winding tracks through the fields where the
bushes are and watches. He is a man harassed
by the unsolvable negro problem, in constant
dread of insect pests, oppressed by economic
difficulties. Men in mills nearby comb the
thick seeds from the raw cotton, press it tight
and bind it into huge bales. Men grade and sort
the samples of it. Men shout at each other in
great marts, buy and sell cotton yet unsorted,
unpicked, ungrown; and the record of their
doings is flashed across continents and oceans.
Ships laden down to the limit of safety plunge
through great seas with tired men on their
bridges guiding them. In Lancashire, in
Russia, in Austria, huge factories set their en
gines working and their wheels go whirling
round. Men and women sweat at the ma
chines. In Derry and a thousand other places
[156]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
women in gaunt bare rooms with sewing ma
chines, or in quiet chambers of French con
vents with needles in their hands, are working
at long strips of cotton fabric. In shops
women again, officered by men, are selling
countless different stuffs made out of this
same cotton fluff.
And the whole complex organization, the
last achieved result of man's age-long struggle
for civiHzation, works on the perilous verge of
breaking down. The fine lady at the one end
of it may buy what she cannot pay for and
disturb the delicately balanced calculations of
the shopkeeper. Some well-intentioned Gov
ernment somewhere may insist that the women
who sew shaU have fire and a share of the sun-
fight, things which cost money. Inspectors
come, with pains and penalties ready in their
pockets, and it seems possible that they will dis
locate the whole machine. Labor, painfully
organized, suddenly claims a larger share of
the profits which are flowing in. The wheels
of aU the factories stop whirling. Their stop
ping affects every one through the whole
[157]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
length of the tremendous chain, alters the man
ner of life in the tiniest of the negroes' huts.
A sanguine broker may speculate disastrously
and the long chain of the organization quivers
through its entire length and threatens break
ing. A ship owner raises rates, the servants of
a railway company go on strike. Some one
makes a blunder in estimating the size of a
future crop. Negroes prove less satisfactory
than usual as workers. The possibilities of a
breakdown somewhere are almost uncountable.
Yet somehow the thing works. It is a won
derful accomplishment of man that it should
work and break down as seldom as it does ; but
the dread of breakdown is present everywhere.
Everyone, the whole way from the lady who
wants lingerie to the negro who picks at the
bushes, is beset with anxiety. But fortunately
no one ever really feels more than his own im
mediate share of it. The cotton planter will
indeed be affected seriously by an epidemic of
speculation in New York, or a strike in Lanca
shire or the legislation of some well-meaning
government. He knows all this, but it does
[158]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
not actually trouble him much. He has his
own particular worry and it is at him so con
stantly that it leaves all the other worries no
time to get at him at aU. His worry is the
negro. According to the theory of the American
constitution the negro is a free man, a brother,
as responsible as anyone else for the due order
ing of the state. In actual practice the negro
is either slowly emerging from the slave status
or slowly sinking back to it again. It does not
matter which way you look at it, the essential
thing is, whichever way he is going, he is not
yet settled down in either position. It is im
possible — on account of the law — to treat him
as a slave. It is impossible— on account of his
nature, so I am told — to treat him as a free
man. He is somewhere in between the two.
He is economically difficult and socially un
desirable. But he is the only means yet dis
covered of getting cotton picked. If anyone
would invent a machine for picking cotton he
would benefit the world at large immensely and
make the cotton planter, save for the fear of
[159]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
certain insects, a happy man. But the shape of
the cotton bush renders it very difficult to get
the cotton off it except by the use of the human
finger and thumb. We are not nearly so clever
at inventing things as we think we are. The
cotton bush has so far defeated us. The ne
gro, who supplies the finger and thumb, has
very nearly defeated us too. It is hard to get
him to work at aH and stiU harder to keep him
at it. He does not seem to be responsive to
the ordinary rules of political economy. If he
can earn enough in one day to keep him for
three days he sees no sense in working during
the other two.
The southern American does not seem to be
trying to solve this negro problem. He makes
all sorts of makeshift arrangements, tries
plans which may work this year and next year
but which plainly will not work for very many
years. These seem the best he can do. Per
haps they are the best anyone could do. Per
haps it is always wisest to be content to keep
things going and to let the remoter future take
care of itself. The cotton crop has to be
[160]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
picked somehow this year, and it may have to
be picked next year too. After that — well
nobody speculates in futures as far ahead as
1916. The problem of the social position of the
negro seems to be quite as difficult to solve
as that created by his indifference to the laws
of political economy. The "man and brother"
theory has broken down hopelessly and the
fine drawn between the white and colored parts
of the population in the South is as weU de
fined and distinct as any line can be. The
stranger is told horrible tales of negro doings
and is convinced that the white men believe
them by the precautions they take for the pro
tection of women. There may be a good deal
of exaggeration about these stories, and in any
case the morality or immorality of the negro
is not the most difficult element in the problem.
Education, the steady enforcement of law, and
the gradual pressure of civilization will no
doubt in time render outrages rarer. It is at
all events possible to look forward hopefully.
The real difficulty seems to me to lie in the
[161]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
strong, contemptuous dislike which white peo
ple who are brought into close contact with ne
groes almost invariably seem to feel for them.
In the northern parts of America where ne
groes form a very smaH part of the population,
this feeling does not exist. A northern Amer
ican or an Englishman would not feel that he
were insulted if he were asked to sit next a
negro at a public banquet. A southern Amer
ican would decline an invitation if he thought it
likely that he would be called upon to do such a
thing. A southern lady, who happened to be
in New York, was offered by a polite stranger
a seat in a street car next a negro. She indig
nantly refused to occupy it. The very offer
was an outrage.
The feeling would be intelligible if it were
the outcome of instinctive physical prejudice.
An Englishwoman, who had hardly ever come
into contact with a negro, once found herself
seated at tea in the saloon of a steamer opposite
a negress who was in charge of some white
children. She found it impossible to help her
self to cake from the dish from which the ne-
[162]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
gress had helped herself. The idea of doing
so filled her with a sense of sickness. Yet she
did not feel herself insulted or outraged at
being placed where she was. A southern Amer
ican woman would have felt outraged. But
the southern American woman has no instinc
tive shrinking from physical contact with black
people. She is accustomed to it. She has at
home a black cook who handles the food of the
household, a black nurse who minds the chil
dren, perhaps a black maid who performs for
her aH sorts of intimate acts of service. As
servants she has no objection to negroes.
There is in her nothing corresponding to the
Englishwoman's instinctive shrinking from the
touch of a black hand.
Nor is the southern American's contempt
for the negroes anything at all analogous to
the contempt which most people feel for those
who are plainly their inferiors. A brave man
has a thoroughly intelligible contempt for one
who has shown himself to be a coward. But
this is an entirely different thing, different in
kind, not merely in degree, from a southern
[163]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
white man's contempt for a negro. It is the ex
istence of this feeling, intensely strong and
very difficult to explain, which makes the prob
lem of the negro's social future seem hopeless
of solution. No moral or intellectual advance
which the negro can make affects this feeling
in the slightest. It is not the brutalized negro
or the ignorant negro, but the negro, whom the
white man refuses to recognize as a possible
equal. Memphis, in spite of its negro problem,
seems to me to be rapidly emerging from the
ruins of one civilizatiomand to be pressing for
ward to take a foremost place in another. I
do not suppose that Memphis now regrets the
past very much or even thinks often of the
terrible humiliation of the Civil War and the
years of blank hopeless ruin which followed it.
There was that indeed in the past which must
have left indelible marks behind it. It was not
easy for a proud people, essentially aristo
cratic in their outlook upon life, to accept de
feat at the hands of men whom they looked
down upon. It is not easy to forget the in-
[164]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
tolerable injustice which, inevitably, I suppose,
followed the defeat. But Memphis is looking
forward and not back, is grasping at the pos-
sibifities of the future rather than brooding
over the past.
But if Memphis and the South generaHy
are content to forget the past, it does not fol
low that the past has forgotten them. The
spirit of the older civilization abides. It haunts
the new life like some pathetic ghost, doomed
to wander helplessly among people who no
longer want to see it. There is a certain suav
ity about Memphis which the stranger feels
directly he touches the Hfe of the place. It is
a fingering perfume, delicate, faint but ap
preciable. I am told that it is to be traced to
Europe, that the business men in Memphis
have closer relations with England, Austria
and Russia than with the northern states of
their own country. I am also told that we
must look to the origin of it to the Cavalier
settlers of the southern states from whom the
people who live there now claim descent. I
do not like either explanation. A man does
[165]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
not catch suavity by doing business with Lan
cashire. The quality is not one on which the
northern Englishman prides himself, or indeed
which is very obvious in his way of living. The
blood of those original cavaHers, gentlemen all
of them I am sure, must have got a good deal
mixed in the course of the last two hundred
years, especially as strangers are always pour
ing into the South. It must be an attenuated
fluid now, scarcely capable of flavoring per
ceptibly a new and vigorous life. I prefer my
own hypothesis of a ghost. Some of these
creatures smell of sulphur and leave a reek of it
behind them when they pay visits to their old
homes on earth. Others betray their presence
by the damp, cold earthy air they bring with
them from the tombs in which their bodies were
laid. This Memphis ghost, which no one in
Memphis sees, but which yet has its influence
on Memphis life, is of quite a different kind.
It is scented with pot-pourri, and the delicate
rose water which great ladies of bygone gen
erations made and used. It is the ghost of
some grande dame like Madame Esmond, who
[166]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
owned slaves and used them with no misgiving
about her right to do so, whose pride was very
great, whose manners were dignified, whose
ways among those of her own caste were ex
ceedingly gracious. There is something, some
lingering suggestion of great ladies about
Memphis still, in spite of its new commercial
prosperity. I think it must be because the
spirits of them haunt the place.
Someone must surely have written a book
on the philosophy of American place names.
The subject is an interesting one, and the world
has a lot of authors in it. It cannot have es
caped them aU. But I have not seen the book.
If I ever do see it I shall turn straight to the
chapter which deals with Memphis and Cairo,
for I very much want to know how those two
places came to have Egypt for their god
father. Most American place names are easy
enough to understand, and they seem to me to
surpass, in their fascinating suggestion of ro
mance, our older Irish and EngHsh names. It
is, of course, interesting to know that all the
chesters in England — Colchester, Dorchester, [167]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
Manchester and Chester itself — were once Ro
man camps ; and that most of the Irish kils —
Kilkenny, Kildare, Killaloe, Kilrush — were
the churches of once honored saints, But the
Romans and the saints are very remote. They ,
were important people in their day no doubt,
but it is very hard to feel the personal touch
of them now. American place names bring us
closer to men with whom we feel that we can
sympathize. There is a whole range of names
taken straight from old homes, New York,
for instance, Boston, New Orleans. We do
not need to go back in search of emotions to
the original meaning of York or to worry
over the derivation of Orleans. It is enough
for us that these names suggest all the pathetic
nostalgia of exiles. The men who named these
places must have been thinking of dearly loved
cathedral towers, of the streets and market
places of country towns whose every detail was
well remembered and much regretted, of homes
which they would scarcely hope to see again.
It is not hard, either, to catch the spirit of the
Puritan settlers in theological and biblical
[168]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
names, in Philadelphia, Salem and so forth.
The men who gave these names to their new
homes must have felt that Hke Abraham they
had gone forth from their kindred and their
people, from the famifiar Ur of the Chaldees,
to seek a country, to find that better city whose
builder and maker is God. Philadelphia is
perhaps to-day no more remarkable for the
prevalence of brotherly love among its people
than any other city is. But there were great
thoughts in the minds of the men who named
it first; and reading the name to-day, even in
a railway guide, our hearts are lifted up into
some sort of communion with theirs. Then
there are the Indian names, of lakes, moun
tains and rivers chiefly, but occasionaHy of
cities too. Chicago is a city with an Indian
name. Perhaps these are of all the most sug
gestive of romance. It must have been the
hunters and explorers, pioneers of the pioneers,
who fixed these names. One imagines these
men, hardened with intolerable toil, skilled in
all the lore of wild life, brave, adventurous,
picking up here and there a word or two of
[169]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
Indian speech, adopting Indian names for
places which they had no time to name them
selves, handing on these strange syllables to
those who came after them to settle and to
build. Greater, so it seems, than the romance
of the homesick exile, greater than the ro
mance of the Puritan with his Bible in his
hand, is the wild adventurousness which comes
blown to us across the years in these Indian
names. But there are names like Memphis which
entirely baffle the imagination. It is almost
impossible to think that the people who named
that place were homesick for Egypt. What
would Copts be doing on the shores of the
Mississippi? How could they have got there?
Nor is it easy to think of any emotion which
the name Memphis would be likely to stir in
the mind of a settler. Memphis means noth
ing to most men. It is easy to see why there
should be an American Rome. A man might
never have been in Rome, might have no more
than the barest smattering of its history, yet
the name would suggest to him thoughts of
[170]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
imperial greatness. Any one who admires im
perial greatness would be inclined to call a new
city Rome. But Memphis suggests nothing
to most of us, and to the few is associated
only with the worship of some long forsaken
gods. I can understand Indianapolis. There
was Indiana to start with, a name which any
one with a taste for sonorous vowel sounds
might easily make out of Indian. The Greek
termination is natural enough. It gives a very
desirable suggestion of classical culture to a
scholar. But a scholar would be driven far
afield indeed before he searched out Memphis
for a name.
I asked several learned and thoughtful peo
ple how Memphis came by its name. I got no
answer which was really satisfactory. It was
suggested to me that cotton grows in Egypt
and also in the neighborhood of Memphis.
But cotton does not immediately suggest
Egypt to the mind. Mummies suggest Egypt.
So, though less directly, does corn. If a cache
of mummies had been discovered on the banks
of the Mississippi it would be easy to account
[171]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
for Memphis. If Tennessee were a great
wheat state one could imagine settlers saying
"There is corn in Egypt, according to the
Scriptures. Let us caU our new city by an
Egyptian name." But I doubt whether cot
ton suggested Memphis. It certainly did not
suggest Cairo, for Cairo is not a cotton place.
I was told, — though without any strong con
viction — that the sight of the Mississippi re
minded somebody once of the NHe. It would
of course remind an Egyptian fellah of the
Nile; but the original settlers in Memphis
were almost certainly not Egyptian fellaheen.
Why should it remind any one else of the Nile?
It reminds me of the Shannon, and I should
probably have wanted to caU Memphis Ath-
lone if I had had a voice in the naming of it.
It would remind an Englishman of the Severn,
a German of the Rhine, an Austrian of the
Danube, a Spaniard — it was, I think, a Span
iard who went there first — of the Guadal-
quiver. I cannot believe that the sight of a
very great river naturally suggests the Nile to
[172]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
anyone who is not f amifiar with Egypt before
hand. It is indeed true that both the Mississippi
and the Nile have a way of overflowing their
banks, but most large rivers do that from time
to time. The habit is not so peculiar as to
force the thought of the Nile on early observ
ers of the Mississippi. Indeed there is a great
difference between the overflowings of the Nile
and those of the Mississippi. The Nile, so I
have always understood, fertilizes the land
round it when it overflows. The Mississippi
destroys cotton crops when it breaks loose.
South of Memphis for very many miles the
river is contained by large dykes, called levees,
a word of French origin. These are built up
far above the level of the land which they pro
tect. It is a very strange thing to stand on one
of these dykes and look down on one side at
the roofs of the houses of the viHage, and on
the other side at the river. When we were
there the river was very low. Long banks of
sand pushed their backs up everywhere in the
main stream and there was half a mile of dry
[173]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
land between the river and the bank on which
we stood. But at flood time the river comes
right up to the dyke, rises along the slope of
it, and the level of the water is far above that
of the land which the dykes protect. Then
the people in the villages near the dyke live in
constant fear of inundation, and I saw, be
side a house far inland, a boat moored — should
I in such a case say tethered? — to a tree in a
garden ready for use if the river swept away
a dyke. I suppose the people get accustomed
to living under such conditions. Men culti
vate vines and make excellent wine on the
slopes of Vesuvius though Pompeii lies, a
bleached skeleton, at their feet. I should my
self rather plant cotton behind a dyke, than
do that. But I am not nearly so much afraid
of water as I am of fire.
I was told that at flood time men patrol the
tops of the dykes with loaded rifles in their
hands, ready to shoot at sight anyone who at
tempts to land from a boat. The idea is that
unscrupulous people on the left bank, seeing
that their own dyke is in danger of coUapsing,
[174]

MEMPHIS AND THE NEGRO
might try to relieve the pressure on it by dig
ging down a dyke on the right bank and in
undating the country behind it. The people
on the other side of course take similar precau
tions. Most men, such unfortunately is human
nature, would undoubtedly prefer to see their
neighbors' houses and fields flooded rather
than their own. But I find it difficult to be
lieve that anyone would be so entirely un
scrupulous as to dig down a protecting dyke.
The rifle men can scarcely be reaHy necessary
but their existence witnesses to the greatness of
the peril.
I saw, while I was in Memphis, a place where
the river had torn a large piece of land out
of the side of a public park. The park stood
high above the river and I looked down over
the edge of a moderately lofty cliff at the
marks of the river's violence. Some unex
pected obstacle or some unforeseen alteration
in the river bed had sent the mighty current
in f uH force against the land in this particular
place. The result was the disappearance of a
tract of ground and a semicircle of clay cliff
[175]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
which looked as if it had been made with a
gigantic cheese scoop. The river was placid
enough when I saw it, a broad but lazy stream.
But for the torn edge of the park I should have
failed to realize how terrific its force can be.
The dykes were convincing. So were the
stories of the riflemen. But the other brought
the reality home to me almost as weH as if I
had actually seen a flood.

[176]

CHAPTER VIII
THE LAND OF THE FREE
We should have been hard indeed to please
if we had not enjoyed our visits to Chicago and
Memphis. We should be ungrateful now if
we confessed that there was any note of dis
appointment in the memory of the joyous time
we had. Yet there is one thing we regret about
that journey of ours to the Middle West and
South. We should dearly have liked to see a
dozen other places, smaller and less important,
which lay along the railway line between Chi
cago and Memphis, and between Memphis and
Indianapolis. We made the former of these
journeys entirely, and the latter partly, by day.
Some unimaginative friends warned us be
forehand that these journeys were dull, that
it would be better to sleep through them if pos
sible, rather than spend hours looking out of
[177]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
rafiway carriage windows at uninteresting
landscapes. These friends were entirely wrong.
The journeys were anything but duU. The
trains dragged us through a whole series of
small towns, and, after the manner of many
American trains, gave us ample opportunity
of looking at the houses and the streets.
In other countries trains are obfiged to hide
themselves as much as possible when they come
to towns. They go into tunnels when they
can or wander round the backs of mean houses
so that the traveler sees nothing except patches
of half bald earth sown with discarded tins
and rows of shirts and stockings hanging out
to dry. European peoples, it appears, do not
welcome trains. In America the train seems to
be an honored guest. It is aUowed, perhaps in
vited, to wander along or across the chief
streets. I have been told by a very angry
critic that this way of stating the fact is wrong,
misleading, and abominably unjust to the
American people. The towns, he says, did not
invite the train, but the train, being there first,
so to speak, invited the towns to exist. Very
[178]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
likely this is so. But it seems to me to matter
but little whether the train or the town came
first. The noticeable thing is that the town
evidently Hkes the train. It is just as sure a
mark of affection to lay out a main street
alongside the railway line as it would be to
invite the railway to run its line down the mid
dle of the main street. An English town, if it
found that a railway was established on its
site before it got there would angrily turn its
back to the line, would, even at the cost of
great inconvenience, run its streets away from
the railway. The American plan from the
point of view of the passenger is far better.
He gets the most delightful glances of human
activity and is set wondering at ways of life
that are strange to him.
Our imagination would, I think, have in any
case been equal to the task of conjuring up
mental pictures of what life is like in these
small isolated inland towns. We should, no
doubt, have gone grievously wrong, but we
should have enjoyed ourselves even without
guidance. Fortunately we were not left to
[179]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
our own imaginative blunderings. We had
with us a volume of Mr. Irvin Cobb's stories
for the possession of which we selfishly dis
puted. It gave us just what we wanted, a sure
groundwork for our imaginings. We peopled
those little towns with the men and women
whom Mr. Cobb revealed to us. His humor
and his delightful tenderness gave us real
glimpses of the lives, the hopes, the fears, the
prejudices and memories of many people who
otherwise would have been quite strange to us.
Each little town as we came to it was in
habited by friendly men and women. Thanks
to Mr. Cobb they were our friends. AH that
was wanted was that we should be theirs.
Hence the bitter disappointment at not being
able to stop at one after the other of the towns,
at being denied the chance of completing a
friendship with people whom we already liked.
But it may well be that we should not reaHy
have got to know them any better. We have
not, alas ! Mr. Cobb's gift of gentle humor or
his power of sympathetic understanding. Also
it takes years to get to know anyone. We
[180]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
could not, in any case, have stayed for years in
all these towns. Life has not years enough in
it. Besides the towns there were the people we
met on the trains. There. was, for instance, a
man who went up and down selling apples and
grapes in little paper bags. We bought from
him and while buying we heard him speak.
There was no doubt about the matter. He was
an Irishman, and not merely an Irishman by
descent, the son or grandson of an emigrant,
but one who had quite recently left Ireland.
His voice to our ears was like well-remembered
music. I know the feeling of joy which comes
with landing from an English-manned steamer
on the quay in Dublin and hearing again the
Irish intonation and the Irish turns of phrase.
But that is an expected pleasure. It is noth
ing compared to the sudden delight of hearing
an Irish voice in some place thousands of miles
from Ireland where the last thing you expect
to happen is a meeting with an Irishman. I
remember being told of an Irishwoman who
was traveling from Singapore to Ceylon in a
[181]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
steamer. She lay in her cabin, helplessly iH
with some fever contracted during her stay in
the Far East. She seemed incapable of taking
an interest in anything until two men came to
mend something in the corridor outside her
cabin door. They talked together and at the
sound of their voices the sick lady roused her
self. She had found something in life which
still interested her. She wanted very much to
know whether the men came from County An
trim or County Down. She was sure their
homes were in one or the other. The Irish
voices had stirred her.
We were neither sick nor apathetic, but we
were roused to fresh vitality by the sound of
our Irish apple seHer's voice. He came from
County Wicklow. He told us so, needlessly
indeed, for we knew it by his talk. He had
been in America for two years, had drifted
westward from New York, was selfing apples
in a train. Did he like America? Was he
happy? Was he doing well? and — crucial,
test question — would he Hke to go back to Ire
land? [182]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
"I would so, if there was any way I could
get my Hving there."
I suppose that is the way it is with the most
of us. We have it fixed somehow in our minds
that a living is easier got anywhere than at
home. Perhaps it is. Yet surely apples might
be sold in Ireland with as good a hope of profit
as in IUinois or Tennessee. Baskets are cheap
at home, and a basket is the sole outfit required
for that trade. The apples themselves are as
easy to come by in the one place as in the
other. But possibly there are better openings
in America. The profession may be over
crowded at home. Many professions are,
medicine, for instance, and the law. Apple
selfing may be in the Hke case. At all events,
here was an Irishman, doing fairly weH by his
own account in the middle west of America
yet with a sincere desire to go back again to
Ireland if only he could get a living there.
There was another man whom we met and
talked to with great pleasure. Our train lin
gered, as trains sometimes will, for an hour or
more at a junction. It was waiting for an-
[183]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
other train which ought to have met ours, but
did not. We sat on the platform of the ob
servation car, and gazed at the blinking signal
lights, for the darkness had come. Suddenly
a man climbed over the rail of the car and sat
down beside us. He had, as we could see, a
very dirty face, and very dirty hands. He wore
clothes like those of an engine stoker. He
was, I think, employed in shunting trains. He
apologized for startling us and expressed the
hope that we had not mistaken him for a mur
derous red Indian. He was a humorist, and he
had seen at a glance that we were innocent
strangers, the sort of people who might expect
an American train to be held up by red Indians
with scalping knives. He told us a long story
about a lady who was walking from coach to
coach of a train while he was engaged in
shunting it about and was detaching some
coaches from it. She was crossing the bridge
between two coaches at an unlucky moment
and found herself suddenly on the line between
two portions of the train. The expression of
her face had greatly amused our friend. His
[184]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
account of the incident greatly amused us.
But the most interesting thing about this man,
the most interesting thing to us, was his un
affected friendliness. In England a signal
man or a shunter would not climb into a train,
sit down beside a passenger and chat to him.
A miserable consciousness of class distinction
would render this kind of intercourse as impos
sible on the one side as on the other. Neither
the passenger nor the shunter would be com
fortable, not even if the passenger were a Lib
eral politician, or a newly made Liberal peer.
In America this sense of class distinction does
not seem to exist. I have heard English peo
ple complain that Americans are disrespectful.
I should rather use the word unrespectful, if
such a word existed. For disrespectful seems
to imply that respect is somehow due, and I
do not see why it should be. I am quite pre
pared to sign my assent to the democratic creed
that one man is as good as another. I even go
further than most Democrats and say that one
man is generally better than the other, when
ever it happen that I am the other. I see no
[185]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
reason why a railway signal man should not
talk to me or to anyone else in the friendly
tones of an equal, provided of course that he
does not turn out to be a bore. It is a glory
and not a shame of American society that it
refuses to recognize class distinction.
My only complaint is that America has not
gone far enough in the path of democratic
equality. There are Americans who take tips.
Now men neither take tips from nor give tips
to their equals. If a friend were to sfip six
pence into my hand when saying good-by I
should resent it bitterly. Unless I were quite
sure that he was either drunk or mad, I should
feel that he was deliberately treating me as his
inferior. I should admit that I was his inferior
if I pocketed the tip. I should feel bound to
touch my hat to him and say "Thank you,
Sir," or "Much obliged to your honor." No
man is in any way degraded by taking wages
for the work he does, whatever that work may
be, cleaning boots or lecturing in a University.
But a man does lower himself when, in addi
tion to his wages, he accepts gifts of money
[186]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
from strangers. He is being paid then not f br
courtesy or civility, which he ought to show in
any case, but for servility; and that no one can
render except to a recognized superior. The
tip in a country where class distinctions are a
regular part of the social order is right
enough. It is at all events a natural outcome
of the theory that some men by reason of their
station in life are superior to others. In a so
cial order which is based upon the principle of
equality among men the tip has no proper
place. The distinction between tips and wages is a
real one, although it is sometimes obscured by
the fact that the wages of some kinds of work
are paid entirely or almost entirely in the form
of tips. A waiter in a restaurant or an hotel
lives, I believe, mainly on tips. Tips are his
wages. Nevertheless he places himself in a
position of inferiority by allowing himself to
be paid in this way. It is plain that this is so.
There is a sharp line which divides those who
are tipped from those who are not. It may,
for instance, be the misfortune of anyone to
[187]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
require the services of a hospital nurse ; but we
do not tip her however kind and attentive she
may be. She gets her wages, her salary, a
fixed sum. It would be insulting to offer her,
in addition, five shillings for herself. Hers is
a profession which neither involves nor is sup
posed to involve any loss of self respect. On
the other hand the chambermaid who makes
the beds in an hotel is tipped. She expects it.
And her profession, in the popular estimation
at least, does involve a certain loss of self
respect. The best class of young women are
unwilling to be domestic servants, but are not
unwiUing to be hospital nurses. Yet the hos
pital nurse works as hard as, if not harder
than, a housemaid. She does the same kind of
work. There is no real difference between
making the bed of a man who is sick and mak
ing the bed of a man who is well. In either
case it is a matter of handling sheets and blan
kets. But a suggestion of inferiority clings
to the profession of a housemaid and none to
that of a hospital nurse. The reason is that
the one woman belongs to the class which takes
[188]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
tips, while the other belongs to the class which
does not.
It is easy to see that in a country like Amer
ica into which immigrants are continually flow
ing from Europe there is sure to be a large
number of people — Italian waiters for in
stance, and Swedish and Irish domestic ser
vants — who have not yet grasped the American
theory of social equality. They have grown
up in countries where the theory does not pre
vail. They naturally and inevitably expect
and take tips, the largesse of their recognized
superiors. No one accustomed to European
life grudges them their tips. But there are,
unfortunately, many American citizens, born
and bred in America, with the American theory
of equality in their minds, who also take tips
and are very much aggrieved if they do not
get them. Yet they, by word and manner, are
continually asserting their position of equality
with those who tip them. This is where the
American theory of equality between man and
man breaks down. The driver of a taxicab
for instance can have it one way or the other.
[189]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
He cannot have it both. He may, like a doctor,
a lawyer, or a plumber, take his regular fee,
the sum marked down on the dial of his cab,
and treat his passenger as an equal. Or he
may take, as a tip, an extra twenty cents, in
which case he sacrifices his equality and pro
claims himself the inferior of the man who tips
him, a member of a tippable class. There
ought to be no tippable class of American
citizens. The English complaint of the dis-
respectfulness of Americans is, in my opinion,
a foolish one, unless the American expects and
takes tips. Then the complaint is well founded
and just. The tipper pays for respectfulness
when he gives a tip and what he pays for he
ought to get.
It is, I think, quite possible that the custom
of tipping has something to do with the dif
ficulty, so acute in America, of getting domes
tic servants. It is widely felt that domestic
service in some way degrades the man or wom
an who engages in it. There is no real reason
why it should. It is not in itself degrading
to do things for other people, even to render
[190]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
intimate personal service to other people. The
dentist who fills a tooth for me does something
for me, renders me a special kind of personal
service. He loses no self respect by supplying
me with a sound instrument for chewing food.
Why should the person who cooks the food
which that tooth will chew lose self respect by
doing so? There is no real distinction between
these two kinds of service. Nor is there any
thing in the contention that the domestic ser
vant is degraded by abrogating her own will
and' taking orders from someone else. Nine
men out of ten take orders from somebody.
From the soldier on the battlefield, the most
honorable of men, to the clerk in a bank, we
are almost aU of us obeying orders, doing not
what we ourselves think best or pleasantest but
what someone in authority thinks right. What
is the difference between obeying when you are
told to clean a gun and obeying when you are
told to wash a jug? The real reason why a
suggestion of inferiority clings to the profes
sion of domestic service is that domestic ser
vants belong to the tippable class. Society
[191]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
can, if it likes, raise domestic service to a place
among the honorable professions, by ceasing
to tip and paying wages which do not require
to be supplemented by tips. If this were done
there would be far less difficulty in keeping up
the supply of domestic servants.
I find myself on much more difficult ground
when I pass on to discuss the impression made
on me by the claim of America to be, in some
special way, a free country.
"To the West! to the West! to the land of
the free." So my farmer friend sang to me
twenty years ago. The tradition survives.
The American citizen believes that a man is
freer in Ajnerica than he is for instance in
England. If freedom means the power of the
individual to do what he likes without being in
terfered with by laws then no man can ever
be quite free anywhere except on a desert
island. I, as an individual, may earnestly de
sire to go out into a crowded thoroughfare and
shoot at the street cars with a revolver. I am
not free to do this in any civilized country in
the world. For people with desires of that
[192]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
kind there is no such thing as liberty. The
freedom of the individual is everywhere a com
promise between his personal inclination and
the general sense of the community. Men are
more free where the community makes fewer
laws, less free where the community makes
more. In England I can, if I like, buy, and
drink at dinner, a bottle of beer in the restau
rant car of any train which has a restaurant
car, in any part of the country. In certain
states in America I cannot buy a bottle of beer
in the restaurant car of the train. There is a
law which stops me. It may be a very good
law. The infringement of my liberty which
it entaHs may be for my good and the good of
society in general; but where that law exists
I am certainly less free than where it does not
exist. The tendency of modern democratic states
is to make more and more laws and thereby to
confine within ever narrower limits the free
dom of the individual man. A few years ago
an Engfishman could send his child to school
or keep his child at home without any educa-
[193]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
tion just as he chose. Now he must send his
child to school. The law insists on it. The
Irishman, in most parts of Ireland, can still,
if he Hkes, allow his child to grow up without
ever going to school. There is no law to inter
fere with him. In that particular respect Ire
land is freer than England, for England has
gone further along the path of curtailing in
dividual liberty. In the matter of buying beer
England is freer than America, because you
can buy beer anywhere in England if you go
to a house licensed to sell beer. In some parts
of America there are no houses licensed to seH
beer and you cannot buy it. America has, in
this particular respect, gone further than Eng
land along the path of curtailing individual
liberty. There are several other things about which
there are laws in America which do not exist
in England and with regard to which America
is not so free a country as England is. But
there are also laws in England which do not
exist in America. The EngHshman is more
or less accustomed to his laws. He has got
[194]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
into the habit of obeying them and they do not
seem to interfere with his freedom. The
American laws, to which he is not accustomed,
strike him as unwarrantable examples of minor
tyranny. But it is likely that the American
is, in the same way, accustomed to his laws
and is not irritated by them. He has got into
the way of not wanting to buy beer in Texas,
and does not feel that his liberty is curtailed
by the existence of a law which it does not
occur to him to break. He may be, on the
other hand, profoundly annoyed by English
laws, to which he is not accustomed. It may
strike him, when he comes to England, that
his liberty is being continuaUy interfered with
just as an EngHshman feels himself continu
aUy hampered in America. I can, for instance,
understand that an American in England
might feel that his liberty was most unwar
rantably interfered with by the law which
obfiges him to have a penny stamp on every
check he writes. It must strike him as mon
strous that he cannot get his own money out
of a bank without paying the government for
[195]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
being allowed to do so. After aU it is his
money and the Government is not even a
banker. Why should he pay for taking a
sovereign from the little pile of sovereigns
which his banker keeps for him when he would
not have to pay for taking one out of a stock
ing if he adopted the old-fashioned plan of
keeping his money there? The EngHshman
feels no annoyance at the payment of this
penny. He is so entirely accustomed to it that
it seems to him a violation of one of the laws
of nature to write a check on a simple, un
stamped piece of paper.
On the whole, although the citizens of both
countries feel free enough when they are at
home, there is probably less freedom, that is
to say there are more laws, in America than in
England. America is more thoroughly demo
cratic in constitution than England is and
therefore less free. This seems a paradox,
but is in reality a simple statement of obvious
fact, nor is there any difficulty in seeing the
reason for it. Democracies produce profes
sional pofiticians. The professional politician
[196]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
differs from the amateur or voluntary politi
cian exactly as any professional differs from
any amateur. An amateur carpenter saws
wood and hammers nails for the fun of the
thing, and stops sawing and hammering as
soon as sawing and hammering cease to amuse
him. The professional carpenter must go on
sawing and hammering even if he does not
want to, because it is in this way that he earns
his bread. He therefore gets a great deal
more sawing and hammering done in a year
than any amateur does. It is the same with
politicians. The amateur politician makes a
law now and then when he feels like it. When
law-making ceases to interest him he goes off
to hunt or fish. The professional politician
must go on making laws even though the busi
ness has become inexpressibly wearisome. Thus
it is that in states where there are professional
politicians, in democratic states, there are more
laws, and therefore less freedom, than in states
which only have amateur politicians. Amer
ica, being slightly more democratic than Eng-
[197]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
land, has slightly more laws and slightly less
freedom. But it would be easy to make too much of
this difference between England and America.
The freedom which men value most is very
little affected by laws. Laws neither give nor
withhold it. Freedom is really an atmosphere
in which we are able to breathe without anx
iety or fear. There are some societies in which
a man must be constantly watching himself
lest he should give expression to a thought or
an opinion which is liable to offend some
powerful interest or outrage some cherished
conviction. AU sorts of unpleasant conse
quences follow incautious utterance of an un
popular opinion, or even the discovery that
unpopular opinions are held. It may be that
the rash individual is looked on very coldly.
It may be that those who seem to be his friends
graduaUy draw away from him. It may be —
this is not so unpleasant but quite unpleasant
enough — that he is assailed in newspapers and
held up in their columns to public odium. It
may be that he is made to suffer in more ma-
[198]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
terial ways, that he loses business or runs the
risk of being deprived of some position which
he holds. In very uncivilized communities he
is sometimes actually treated with physical
violence. The windows of his house are broken
or he is mobbed. The dread of some or all of
these penalties makes him very cautious. He
goes through life glancing timidly from side
to side, always anxious, always a little fright
ened and therefore — since fear is the real an
tithesis of Hberty — never free.
AU communities suffer from spasmodic fits
of this kind of intolerance. In England in
the year 1900 it was not safe to be a pro-Boer,
and England at that time was not a free
country. England is now free to quite an
extraordinary extent. A man may hold and
express almost any conceivable opinion with
out suffering for it. He can stand up in a
public assembly and say hard things about
England herself, point out her faults in plain
and even bitter language. The English people
as a whole remain totally indifferent to what
he says about them. If the hard thing is said
[199]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
wittily they laugh. If it is said dully they
yawn. In neither case do they display any
signs of anger. They succeed in giving the
stranger in their midst the impression that
nothing he does or says matters in the least so
long as he avoids crossing the indefinable line
which separates "good form" from bad. His
manners may get him into trouble. His opin
ions will not.
America is free too in this same way, but
is not, I think, so free as England. There
are several subjects about which it is not wise
to talk quite freely in America. The ordinary
middle class American, the man with whom
one falls into casual conversation in a train,
is sensitive about criticism of his country and
its institutions in a way that the ordinary Eng
lishman is not. It may very well be that in
this he is the Englishman's superior. A per
fectly detached judge of humanity, some epi
curean deity observing all things with passion
less calm and weighing all emotion in the scales
of absolute justice — might, quite conceivably,
rank a slightly resentful patriotism higher
[200]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
than tolerant apathy. We Irishmen are not
tolerant of criticism, and I sincerely hope that
ours is the better part. We do not like the
expression of opinions which differ from our
own and are inclined to suppress them with
some violence when we can. As a nation we
value truth far more than liberty; truth being,
of course, the thing which we ourselves be
lieve ; obviously that, for we would not believe
it unless we were quite sure that it was true.
Americans are not so whole hearted as we are
in this matter. The more highly educated
Americans are even inclined to drift into a tol
erant agnosticism which is almost English.
But most Americans are stiU a Httle intolerant
of strange opinions and still have enough con
scious patriotism to resent criticism.
It is the fault of a great quafity. No so
ciety can be both enthusiastic and free. It is
the tips and the equality over again. We can
not have things both ways. If society allows
a man, without pain or penalty, to say exactly
what he means, it is always because that so
ciety is convinced, deep down in its soul, that
[201]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
he cannot possibly mean what he says. A man
is free to speak what he chooses, to criticize,
to abuse, to sneer, wherever his feUow men
have made up their minds that it does not mat
ter what he says how keenly he criticizes,
abuses or sneers. On the other hand, a society
which is very much in earnest about anything,
— and a great many Americans are — will not
suffer differences of opinion patiently and will
always be resentful of criticism. Say to an
Englishman that American f ootbaU is superior
to the Rugby Union game. He will look at
you with a sleepy expression in his eyes, and,
after a short pause, politeness requiring some
answer from him, he wHl say: "Is it reaHy?"
His tone suggests that he does not care
whether it is or not, but that he means to go
on playing the Rugby Union game if he plays
at all, a point about which he has not quite
made up his mind. Say to an American that
Rugby Union football is superior to his game
and he will look at you with highly alert but
slightly troubled eyes. He wants to respect
you if he can, and he does not like to hear you
[202]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
saying a thing which cannot possibly be true.
But he too is polite.
"There may be," he says, "some points of
superiority about the English game — but on
the whole — think of the organization of our
forwards. Think of the amount of thought
required. Think of the rapid decisions which
have to be made. Think of  But come
and see the match next Saturday and then
you'U understand."
There is stiU another kind of freedom — free
dom to behave as we like, freedom of man
ners. This is almost as important as freedom
to speak and think without fear of conse
quences. Indeed, for most people it is more
important. Only a few of us think, or want
to say what we think. AU of us have to be
have, to have manners of some sort either good
or bad. It is curious to notice that, while men
everywhere are acquiescing without much pro
test to the curtailment of the sort of freedom
which is affected by law, they are steadily
claiming and securing more and more freedom
of manners. We are far less bound by con-
[203]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
ventions than we used to be. There was a time
when everybody possessed and once a week
wore what were called "Sunday clothes." One
hardly ever hears the phrase now, and men
go to church in coats which would have struck
their grandmothers as distinctly unsuited to a
place of worship. Sunday clothes were a bond
age and we have broken free. There was, very
long ago, a definite code of manners binding
upon men and women when they met together.
When it prevailed the intercourse between the
sexes must have been singularly stiff and un
comfortable. There were many things which
a woman could not do without losing her char
acter for womanliness, and many things which
a man could not do in the company of ladies
— smoke, for instance.
It is, I think, women and not men who de
cide how much of this sort of liberty people
are to enjoy. If I am right about this, then
American women are more generous than
English women. There is much more free
dom in the matter of clothes in America than
England. I remember hearing an English-
[204]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
woman complain that no matter how she tried
she never could succeed in dressing correctly
in America. In England she knew exactly
the kind of gown to wear at an afternoon
party, at a smaU dinner, at a large dinner, at
an evening reception, in the box of a theater.
In America she perpetually found herself
wearing the wrong thing. I imagine that in
reality she did not wear the wrong thing, be
cause there is no such rigid standard of ap
propriateness of dress in America as there is
in England. More latitude is allowed, and if
a gown is hardly ever correct it is also hardly
ever wrong. Every man who sits in the stalls
of a London theater must display eighteen
inches of white shirt above the top button of his
waistcoat. In America he may wear a blue
flannel shirt if he likes, and nobody cares
whether it is visible beneath his tie or not. In
England a man who dines in a very smart res
taurant must wear a tail coat and a white tie.
In Ajnerica he can, if he chooses, wear a tail
coat and a black tie, or a short coat and a
[205]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
white tie. There is no fixed rule determining
the connection between coats and ties.
It is not only the class of people who dine
in smart restaurants and sit in staUs of the
aters which is subject to rules of this kind.
Every class has its own conventions, and, so
far as my observation goes, every class is a
little freer in America than it is in England.
No English chauffeur with any self-respect
would consent to drive a motor car about Lon
don unless he were wearing some kind of uni
form. In America the most magnificent cars
are frequently driven by chauffeurs in gray
tweed suits with ordinary caps on their heads.
I am nearly sure that it is women, the women
of our own class, who decide what clothes we
shall wear and what clothes they wiU wear
themselves. I am quite sure that it is they
who regulate the degree of formal stiffness
there is to be in our intercourse with them.
English women have to a very considerable
extent given up requiring from men those sym
bols of respect which had long ago ceased to
be anything but the mere conventional sur-
[206]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
vivals of the mediaeval idea of chivalry. Men
and women in England meet on friendlier and
more equal terms than they used to. Ameri
can women have gone even further than the
English in setting themselves and us free from
the old restrictions. They invite comradeship
and have, as far as possible, swept away the
barriers to free intercourse between sex and
sex. To some people liberty of any sort, liberty
for its own sake, will always seem a desirable
thing. These will prefer the manners of
America to those of England, but will cling
to their admiration of the Englishman's toler
ance of criticism. There are others — it is a
matter of temperament — who prefer restraint,
who like to talk cautiously, who cling to social
conventions. To them it wUl be a comfort to
know that in one respect the American woman
is not so free as her English sister. In Eng
land a woman may, without loss of reputation,
smoke almost anywhere, anywhere that men
smoke, except in the streets and the entrance
halls of theaters. In New York there are only
[207]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
two or three restaurants in which a woman is
allowed to smoke. Even if she is indifferent
to her reputation and does not mind being
considered fast, she cannot smoke in the other
restaurants. The head waiter comes and stops
her if she tries. This may be quite right. I
do not know whether it is or not. Many very
strong arguments may be and are brought
against women smoking. It is, I am thankful
to say, no business of mine to weigh them
against the other arguments which go to show
that women are as well entitled to the solace
of tobacco as men are. What interests me far
more than the arguments on either side is the
fact that American women are in this one re
spect much less free than English women. The
women of both nations smoke, but the Ameri
can woman must do it in privacy or semi-
privacy. The Englishwoman inhales her cig
arette with untroubled enjoyment in any res
taurant in London. She must dress herself
strictly as convention prescribes for each oc
casion. She must be a little careful in her
intercourse with men. She has not yet got a
[208]

THE LAND OF THE FREE
vote. But she may smoke. The American
woman has much more freedom in the mat
ter of clothes. She can be as friendly with a
man as she likes. In several states she has
a vote. But society in general frowns on her
smoking and sets its policeman, the head
waiter, to prevent her doing it. I should my
self prefer a cigarette to a vote ; but I am fond
of tobacco, and all elections bore me, so I am
not an unprejudiced judge. American women
may be in this matter, as indeed they certainly
are in other matters, nobler than I am. They
may gladly sacrifice tobacco for the sake of
the franchise, but I do not see why they should
not have both.

[209]

CHAPTER IX
WOMAN IN THE STATES
There is a story told about Lord Beacons-
field which, if true, goes to show that he was
not nearly so astute a man as is generally sup
posed. A lady, an ardent advocate of Woman
Suffrage, once caUed on him and tried to con
vince him of the justice of her cause. She
was a very pretty lady and she spoke with
great enthusiasm. One imagines flashing eyes,
heightened color, graceful gestures of the
hands. Lord Beaconsfield listened to her and
looked at her. When she had finished speak
ing he said: "You darling!" The lady, we
are told, was angry, thinking that she had been
insulted. She was perfectly right. The re
mark, which might under other circumstances
have been received with blushing satisfaction,
was just then and there a piece of intolerable
[210]

WOMAN IN THE STATES
rudeness. It was stupid besides. But per
haps the great statesman meant to be rude.
Perhaps, on the other hand, he was carried
away for the moment and ceased to be intel
ligent. Perhaps the whole story was invented
by some maficious person and is entirely with
out foundation. In any case it is a serious
warning to the man who sits down to write
about American women. It makes him hesi
tate, fearfuUy, before venturing to say the
very first thing he must want to say. But he
who writes takes his life in his hands. I should
be little better than a poltroon if I shrank
from uttering the truth.
I was asked by an able and influential edi
tor in New York to write an article on Amer
ican women. It is not every day that I am
thus invited to write articles, so I take a par
donable pride in mentioning the request of
this American editor. It was after dinner
that he asked me, and a lady who was with us
heard him do it. I looked at her before I an
swered. If she had scowled or even frowned
I should not now be writing about American
[211]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
women. She encouraged me with a nod and a
smile. Yet she knew — she must have known
— what I should write first of all. Upon her
head be at least part of the blame. She not
merely smiled. She went on to persuade me
to write the article. By persuading me she
helped to make me quite certain that what I
am writing is true.
The American woman is singularly charm
ing. Is this an insult? I think of the many
American women whom I met who were kind
enough to talk to me, and I know that this
is not what they would like to have written
about them. Some of them were very earnest
knights errant, who rode about redressing hu
man wrongs. It happens occasionally, not
often, of course, but very occasionally, that
women with causes are not charming. They
are inclined to overemphasize their causes, to
keep on hammering at a possible convert, to
become just a little tiresome. This is, as far
as I could judge, never the case with the Amer
ican ladies who have causes. Others whom I
[212]

WOMAN IN THE STATES
met were learned and knew aU about philoso
phies dim to me. Others again were highly
cultured. I am an ignorant and stupid man.
Very clever women sometimes frighten me. I
was never frightened in America. Others
again, without being learned or particularly
cultured, were brilliant. They were aU charm
ing. That is the truth. I have written it, and
if the skies come tumbling indignantly about
my ears they just must tumble. "Impavidum
ferient ruince;" but I hope nothing so bad as
that wHl happen to me.
There are people in the world who believe
that we are born again and again, rising or
sinking in the scale of living things at each
successive incarnation according as we behave
ourselves well or badly in our present state.
If this creed were true, I should try very hard
indeed to be good, because I should want, next
time I am born, to be an American woman.
She seems to me to have a better kind of life
than the woman of any other nation, or, in
deed, than anybody else, man or woman. She
is, as I hope I have suggested, more free than
[213]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
her European sister. "So full of burrs," said
a great lady of old times, "is this work-a-day
world, that our very petticoats will catch
them." This is a true estimate of the position
of the European woman. They who wear petti
coats over here must walk warily with chaper
ons beside them. But in America there are
either fewer burrs or petticoats are made of
some better material. The American woman,
even when she is quite young, can go freely
enough and no scandalous suggestions attach
to her unless she does something very out
rageous. She has in other ways too a far
better time than the EngHsh woman. Ameri
can social life seems to me — the word is one
to apologize for — gynocentric. It is arranged
with a view to the convenience and delight of
women. Men come in where and how they
can. The late Mr. Price Collier observed
this, and drew from it the deduction that the
English man tends on the whole to be more
efficient than the American, everything in an
English home being sacrificed to his good.
That may or may not be true ; but I think the
[214]

WOMAN IN THE STATES
American woman is certainly more her own
mistress than the Englishwoman, just because
America does its best for women and only its
second best for men.
I do not pretend to be superior to these
advantages. I like a good time as well as any
one. But I have other ambitions. And I do
not want to be an American woman only for
the sake of material gains. She seems to me
to deserve her good luck because she has done
her business in life exceedingly well, better
on the whole than the American man has done
his. I am — I wish to make this clear at once — a
good feminist. No man is less inclined than
I am to endorse the words of the German
Emperor and confine woman's activities to
"Kirche, Kiiche und Kinder." I would, if I
had my way, give every woman a vote. I
would invite her to discuss the most intricate
political problems, with a full confidence that
she could not possibly make a worse muddle
of them than our male politicians do. I should
Hke to see her conducting great businesses, [215]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
doctoring her neighbors, pleading for them in
law courts, driving railway engines, and, if she
wanted to, carrying a rifle or steering a sub
marine. I would place woman in every pos
sible way on an equality with man and confine
her with no restriction except those with which
she voluntarily impedes her own activities, like
petticoats, stays, and blouses which hook up
the back. Having made this full confession
of faith, I shaU not, I hope, be reproached
for appearing to recognize a distinction be
tween woman's business in life, the thing which
the American woman has done very weU, and
man's business, which the American man
seems to me to have managed rather badly.
Strictly speaking, in the ideal state all public
affairs are women's just as much as men's.
Strictly speaking, again in the ideal state, man
is just as responsible as woman for the arts
of domestic life. But we are not yet living
in the ideal state, and for a long while now
the household has been recognized as woman's
sphere, while man has resented her interfer-
[216]

WOMAN IN THE STATES
ence with anything outside the circle of social
and family life.
It is in these matters which have been en
trusted to her that the American woman has
shown herself superior to the American man.
I admit, of course, that the American man has
done a great many things very brilliantly. But
he does not seem to me to have succeeded in
making the business of living, so far as it falls
within his province, either comfortable or
agreeable. The Englishman has done better.
Examples of what I mean absolutely crowd
upon me. Take the question of cooking food.
The American man, left to his own devices, is
not strikingly successful with food. The
highest average of cooking in England is to be
found in good men's clubs. You may, and
often do, get excellent dinners in private
houses in England; but you are surer of an
excellent dinner in a first rate club. In Amer
ica it is the other way about. Many men's
clubs have skilful cooks, but you are on the
whole more likely to get very good food in a
woman's club or in a private house than in a
[217]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
man's club. I am not myself an expert in
cooked food. The subject has never had a
real fascination for me. But I have a sense
of taste Hke my better educated gourmet
brethren, and I am convinced that where the
American woman has control of the cooking
the business is better done than it generally is
in England, and far better done than when it
is left to American men.
The kindred subjects of drinks, again,
marks the superiority of the American woman.
For some reason quite obscure to me, women
are not supposed to know anything about wine.
They either do not like it at aU or they like
bad kinds of wine. Wine is man's business in
all countries. In America wine is dear, and
usuaUy of indifferent quality. Man has mis
managed the ceUar. On the other hand,
women are supposed — again the reason is be
yond me — to like eating sweets, to be special
ists in that whole range of food which in
America goes under the name of candies. Men
have not created the demand for candies or
secured the supply. They are woman's affair.
[218]

WOMAN IN THE STATES
The consequence is that American candies are
better than any others in the world, better even
than the French. It is necessary to search
New York narrowly and patiently in order to
find a good bottle of claret. I speak on this
matter as an outsider, for I drink but Httle
claret myself; but I am assured by highly
skilled experts that the fact is as I state it.
On the other hand — I know this by experi
ence^ — you can satisfy your soul with an al
most infinite variety of chocolates without go
ing three hundred yards from the door of
your hotel in New York or Philadelphia.
The one form of alcoholic drink in which
America surpasses the rest of the world is the
cocktail. I have never yet seen a properly
written history of cocktails. The subject still
waits its philosopher. But I am inclined to
think that the cocktail, the original of the
species, Manhattan, Bronx or whatever it may
have been, was invented by a woman. True,
these drinks are now universaHy mixed by men.
But the inspiration is unquestionably feminine.
Formulae for the making of cocktails exist.
[219]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
I was once asked to review a book which con
tained several hundred receipts for cocktails.
But every one agrees that the formula is of
minor importance. The cocktail depends for
its excellence not on careful measurements,
but on the incalculable and indescribable thing
called personality. The most skilful phar
maceutical chemist, trained all his life to the
accurate weighing of scruples and measure
ment of drams, might well fail as a maker of
cocktails. He would fail if he did not possess
an instinct for the art. Now this is .charac
teristic of all women's work. Man reaches
his conclusions by argument, bases his convic
tions on reason, and is generaUy wrong.
Woman responds to emotion, f oUows instinct,
and is very often right. Man is the drudging
scientist, patient, duU. Woman is the dashing
empiricist, inconsequential, brilliant. The
cocktail must be hers. I shall continue, until
strong evidence to the contrary is offered to
me, to believe that the credit for this glory of
American life belongs to her* and not to man.
It would, no doubt, be insulting to say that
[220]

WOMAN IN THE STATES
part of the business of a woman, as dis
tinguished from a man, is to dress well and
be agreeable. I should not dream of saying
such a thing. But there can be no harm in
suggesting that it is the duty of both sexes to
do these things. There is no real reason why
an ideafist, man or woman, should not be pleas
ant to look at, nor is it necessary that very
estimable people should administer snubs to
the rest of us. It seems to me that even very
good people are better when they have nice
manners and pleasanter when they dress well.
It is not, I admit, their fault when they are
not good looking, but it is their fault if they
do not, by means of clothes, make themselves
as good looking as they can. There is no ex
cuse for the man or woman who emphasizes
a natural ugliness. Man, I regret to say, does
not often recognize his duty in these matters.
Woman, generaUy speaking, has done her best.
The American woman has made the very most
of her opportunities and has succeeded both
in looking nice and in being an agreeable com
panion. In the art of putting on her clothes
[221]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
she has no superior except the Parisienne, and
even in Paris itself it is often difficult to tell,
without hearing her speak, whether the lady
at the next table in a restaurant is French or
American. I knew an English mother who
sent her daughter to Paris for six months in
order that the girl might learn to dress herself.
The journey to America would have been
longer, but once there the girl would have had
just as good a chance of acquiring the art. I
am very unskUful in describing clothes, and
the finer nuances of costume are far beyond
the power of any language at my command
to express. But it is possible to appreciate
effects without being able to analyze the way
in which they are produced. The effect on
the emotions of a symphony rendered by a
good orchestra is almost as great for the man
who does not know exactly what the trombones
are doing as it is for the musician who under
stands that they are adding to the general
noise by playing chromatic scales, or whatever
it is that trombones do play. It is the same
with clothes. I cannot name materials, or dis-
[222]

WOMAN IN THE STATES
cuss styles in technical language, but I am
pleasantly conscious that the American woman
has the air of being very well dressed.
I am not attempting to make a comparison
between the clothes of very wealthy women
of the leisured classes in America and those
of women similarly placed in other countries.
Aristocracies and plutocracies are cosmopoli
tan. National characteristics are to a consid
erable extent smoothed off them. The women
of these classes dress almost equally well
everywhere. The possibility of comparison
exists only when one considers the compara
tively poor women of the middle and lower
middle classes. It is these who, in America,
have the instinct for dressing well unusuaUy
highly developed. Some women have this in
stinct. Others have not. It seems to be dis
tributed geographicaUy. There are cities — no
bribe would induce me to name one of them —
where the women are usually badly dressed.
You walk up and down the chief thorough
fares. You enter the most fashionable restau
rants and are oppressed by a sense of pre-
[223]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
vailing dowdiness. It is not a question of
money. The gowns which you see, the coats,
the hats have obviously cost great sums. For
half the expenditure women in other places
look well dressed. It is not a matter of the
skill of dressmakers and milliners. A woman
who has not got the instinct for clothes might
go to — I forget the man's name, but he is the
chief costumier in Paris — might give him a
free hand to do his best for her, and after
wards she would not look a bit better dressed.
It is not, I believe, possible to explain exactly
what she lacks. It is an extra sense, as incom
municable as an ear for music. A woman
either has it or has not. The American woman
has it.
I know — no one knows better than I do-
that it is a contemptible thing to take any no
tice of clothes. The soul is what matters. The
body may be in rags. The mind is what counts,
and fine feathers do not make fine birds. A
great prophet would not be the less a great
prophet though his finger nails were black. I
hope we should all adore him just the same
[224]

WOMAN IN THE STATES
even if he never washed his face or wore a
coUar. But just at first, before we got to
know him reaUy well, it is possible that we
might be a little prejudiced against him if he
looked as if he never washed. That is all I
wish or mean to say about the American
woman's power of dressing herself. It dis
arms prejudice. The stranger starts fair, so
to speak, when he is introduced to her. In the
case of women who cannot, or for any reason
wiU not, dress themselves nicely, there are pre
liminary difficulties in the way of appreciating
their real worth.
But the best clothes in the world are no help
when it comes to conversation, unless, indeed,
one is able to discuss them in detail, and I am
not. I have met exquisitely dressed women
who were very difficult to talk to. The Amer
ican woman is not one of these. Besides being
well dressed, she is a delightful talker on all
subjects. She may or may not be profound.
I am not profound myself, so I have no way
of judging about that. But profoundness is
not wanted in conversation. Its proper place
[225]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
is in scientific books. In conversation it is
merely a nuisance, and the American woman,
when she is profound, has more sense than to
show it. She talks weU because she is not in
the least shy or self-conscious. Even young
American girls are not shy. Brought into sud
den contact with a middle-aged man, they treat
him as an equal, with a frank sense of com
radeship. They have, apparently, no awe of
advanced or advancing years. They do not
pretend to think that elderly people are in any
way their superiors, or display in the presence
of the aged that kind of chilling aloofness
which is caHed respect. I detest people who
behave as if they respected me because I am
older than they are. I recognize at once that
they are hypocrites. Boys and girls must
know, in their hearts, just as weU as we do,
that respect is due to the young from the eld
erly and not the other way about. The ancient
Romans understood this: "Maxima debitur
reverentia pueris" is in the Latin grammar,
and the Latin grammar is a good authority
[226]

WOMAN IN THE STATES
on all subjects connected with ancient Roman
civilization. It is her power of making herself agreeable
which is the greatest charm of the American
woman, a greater charm than her ability in
dressing. I am a man very little practiced in
the art of conversation. A dinner party — a
party of any kind, but particularly a dinner
party — is a thing from which I shrink. I am
always very sorry for the two women who are
placed beside me. I know that they will have
to make great exertions to keep up a conver
sation with me. I watch them suffering and
am myself a prey to excruciating pangs of
self-reproach. But my agony is less in Amer
ica than elsewhere. The American woman
must of course suffer as much as the English
woman when I take her in to dinner; but she
possesses in an extraordinary degree the art
of not showing it. She frequently deceives
me for several minutes at a time, making me
think that she is actually enjoying herself.
She is able to do this because she has an amaz
ing vitality and a very acute kind of intelli-
[227]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
gence. Now, the highest compliment which a
woman can pay to a man is to enjoy his com
pany. The American woman understands this
and succeeds in pretending she is doing it. She
is wise, too. Recognizing that even her powers
have their limits, and that no woman, however
vital and intelligent, can go on disguising her
weariness for very long, she makes her din
ners and luncheons as short as possible, shorter
than similar functions are in England. She
does not attempt anything in the way of a
long-distance contest with the heavy stupidity
of the ordinary man. Her's is the triumph of
the sprinter. For a short time she flashes,
sympathizes, subtly flatters, talks with amaz
ing brilliance, charms. Then she escapes.
What happens to her next I can only guess,
but I imagine that she must be very much
exhausted.

[228]

CHAPTER X
MEN AND HUSBANDS
Comic papers on both sides of the Atlantic
have adopted the marriages between Ameri
can women and EngHsh men of the upper
classes as a standing joke; one of those jokes
of which the public never gets tired, whose
mfinite variety repetition does not stale. The
fun Hes in the idea of barter. The English
man has a title. The American woman has
doUars. He lays a coronet at her feet. She
hands money bags to him. Essentially the
joke is the same on whichever side of the At
lantic it is made. But there is a slight differ
ence in the way the parts of it are emphasized.
The tendency among American humorists is
to dweU a little on the greed of the English
man, who is represented as incapable of earn
ing money for himself. The English jester
[229]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
lays more stress on the American woman's de
sire to be called "my lady," and pokes sly fun
at the true democrat's fondness for titles. I
appreciate the joke thoroughly wherever it is
made, and I invariably laugh heartily at it.
But I decfine to take it as anything more than
a joke. It is not a precise and scientific ex
planation of fact.
There are a great many marriages between
American women of large or moderate for
tune and English men, or other Europeans, of
title. That is the fact. No doubt the dollars
are as attractive to noblemen as they are to any
body else. There are a number of pleasant
things, steam yachts, for instance, which can
be got by those who have doUars, but not by
those who are without them. They may occa
sionally be the determining factor in the choice
of a wife. But I feel sure that most English
men, when they marry American women, do
so because they like them. They marry the
woman, not the money. In the same way a
title is a very pleasant thing to have. I have
never enjoyed the sensation and never shall,
[230]

MEN AND HUSBANDS
but I know that it must be most agreeable to
be styled "Your Grace," or to have a coronet
embroidered on a pocket handkerchief. But
I do not believe that American women marry
coronets. They marry men. The coronet
counts, I daresay, but the man counts more.
It is interesting to notice that, although
there are many marriages between American
women and Englishmen, there are compara
tively few marriages between English women
and American men. If it were a mere ques
tion of exchanging money for titles we might
expect EngHsh women of title to marry Amer
ican men. There are a great many English
women with titles and a great many rich Amer
ican men. They might marry each other, but
they do not, not, at aU events, in large num
bers. It is true that the woman cannot, un
less she is a princess, give her husband a title,
as a man can give a title to his wife. But it
is no smaU thing to have a wife with a title.
It is a pleasure weU worth buying, if it is to
be bought. But apparently it is not. The
English woman of title prefers to marry an
[231]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
English man, however rich Americans may be.
The American man prefers American women,
though none of them have titles. Exact statis
tics about these marriages are not available,
but we may take the vitaHty of current jokes as
an indication of what the facts are. The joke
about the marriage between Miss Sadie K.
Bock, daughter of the well-known doUar dic
tator of Capernaum, Pa., U.S.A., and the
Viscount Fitzeffingham Plantagenet, is fresh
and always popular. But no one ever made a
joke about a marriage between the doUar dic
tator's pon and Lady Ermyntrude. There
would be no point in that joke if it were made
because the thing does not happen, or does not
happen often enough to strike the popular im
agination. The truth appears to be that American
women, apart from any question of their
dowries, are attractive both to English and
American men. English men, on the other
hand, are attractive both to English and
American women.
I occupy in this investigation the position
[232]

MEN AND HUSBANDS
of an unprejudiced outsider. I am neither
English nor American, but Irish, and I can
afford to discuss the matter without passion,
since Irish women are admittedly more attrac
tive than any others in the world and Irish
men are seldom tempted to marry outside their
own people. A very wise English lady, one
who has much experience of life, once said
that young Englishmen of good position are
lured into marrying music hall dancers, a thing
which occasionaUy happens to them, because
they find these ladies more entertaining and
exciting than girls of their own class. I do
not know whether this is true or not, but if it
is it helps to explain the attractiveness of
American women. There is always a certain
unexpectedness about them. They are always
stimulating and agreeable. It is much more
difficult to account for the attractiveness of the
English man.
The manners of a well-bred English man
are not superior to those of a weU-bred Amer
ican man. Nor are they inferior. Looked at
superficially, they are the same. As far as
[233]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
mere conventional behavior toward women is
concerned, there is no difference between an
Englishman and an American. A weU-man-
nered Englishman rises up and opens the door
for a woman when she leaves the room. So
does a well-mannered American. The Eng
lishman hands tea, bread and butter or cake
to a woman before he takes tea, bread and but
ter or cake for himself. So does the Ameri
can. The outward acts are identical. But
there is a subtle difference in the spirit which
inspires them. The English man does these
things because he is chivalrous. His manners
are based on the theory "Noblesse oblige."
The woman belongs to the weaker sex, he to
the stronger. AU courtesy is therefore due to
her. This is the theory which underlies the
behavior of Englishmen to women. Good
manners are a survival, one of the few sur
vivals, of the old idea of chivalry; and chivalry
was the nobly conceived homage of the strong
to the weak, of the superior to the inferior.
The American, performing exactly the same
outward acts, is reverent. And reverence is
[234]

MEN AND HUSBANDS
essentially the opposite of chivalry. It is not
the homage of the strong to the weak, but the
obeisance of the inferior in the presence of a
superior. This difference of spirit underlies the whole
relationship of men to women in England and
America. It helps to explain the fact that the
feminist movement in England is much fiercer
than it is in America. The English feminist
is up against chivalry and wants equality. The
American woman, though she may claim rights,
has no inducement to destroy reverence.
I should be very sorry to think, I should be
mad to say, that this difference in spirit has
anything to do with the attractiveness of Eng
lishmen, considered not as temporary compan
ions, but as husbands. But there are, or once
were, people who held the theory that the natu
ral woman — and all women are perhaps more
or less natural — prefers as a husband the kind
of man who asserts himself as her superior.
"O. Henry" has a story of a woman who
learned to respect and love her husband only
after she had goaded him into beating her.
[235]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
Up to that point she had despised him thor
oughly. Other novelists, deep students of hu
man nature all of them, have worked on the
same scheme. They are quite wrong, of
course. But if they were right they might
quote the Englishman's invincible chivalry as
the reason of his attractiveness; maintaining,
cynically, that a woman prefers, in a husband,
that kind of homage to the reverence that the
American man continually offers her.
The American man strikes me as more alert
than the Englishman. If this were noticeable
only in New York, I should attribute the alert
ness to the climate. The air of New York is
extraordinarily stimulating. The stranger
feels himself tireless, as if he could go on doing
things of an exhausting kind aU day long
without intervals for rest. It would be smaU
wonder if the natives of the place were eager
beyond other men. But they are not more
eager and alert than other Americans. There
fore we cannot blame, or thank, the climate
for these qualities. They must depend upon
some peculiarity of the American nervous sys-
[236]

MEN AND HUSBANDS
tern, unless indeed they are the result of fiv-
ing under the American constitution. A man
would naturally feel it his duty to be as alert
as he could if he felt that his country was pre
eminently the land of progress and that all
the other countries in the world were more or
less old-fashioned and effete. But wherever
the alertness comes from it is certainly one of
the characteristics of the American man.
With it goes sanguineness. Every man
who undertakes any enterprise looks at it from
two points of view. He thinks how very nice
life wiU be if the enterprise succeeds. He also
considers how disagreeable things will become
if, for any reason, it fails to come off. The
Englishman, unless he is a politician, is tem
peramentally inclined to give full weight to
the possibility of failure. The American
dwells rather on the prospects of success.
There are, of course, a great many sanguine
Englishmen. Most Members of Parliament,
for instance, must be extraordinarily hopeful,
otherwise they would not go on expecting to
get things done by voting and listening to
[237]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
speeches. Some Americans, though not many,
are cautious to the point of being almost pes
simistic. But, broadly speaking, Americans
are more sanguine than Englishmen. That is
why so many new faiths, and new foods, come
from America. Only a very hopeful people
could have invented Christian Science or ex
pect to be benefited by eating patent foods
at breakfast time. That is also, I imagine,
why Americans drink so much iced water.
Conscious of the dangers of being too san
guine, they try to cool down their spirits in
the way which is generally recognized as best
for reducing excessive hopefulness. To pour
cold water on anything is a proverbial expres
sion. The Americans pour gaUons of very
cold water down their throats, which shows
that they are on the watch against the defects
of their high qualities.
With the alertness and hopefulness there
goes, inevitably, a certain restlessness. "Bet
ter the devil you know than the devil you
don't" is a proverb which appeals to the Eng
lish man. It could never be popular in Amer-
[238]

MEN AND HUSBANDS
ica. The American, if he made up his mind
to go in for the acquaintance of devils at aU,
would be inclined to try the newer kinds, not
merely because he would be hopeful about
them, but because he would feel sure that the
old ones would bore him. He would never
settle down to a monotonous cat and dog life
with a thoroughly familiar devil. The Eng
lishman prefers to remain where he is unless
the odds are in favor of a change being a
change for the better. The American will
make a change unless he thinks it likely to be
a change for the worse.
We were greatly struck while we were in
America by the fact that there were very few
gardens there. The season of the year, late
autumn, was not, indeed, favorable to gardens.
StiU I think we should have recognized flower
beds and the remains of flowers if we had
seen them. At first we were inclined to think
that Americans do not care for flowers; but
we were constantly assured, on unimpeachable
authority, that they do. And we were not
dependent on mere assertion. We saw that
[239]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
Americans adorn their rooms with cut flowers,
sometimes at huge expense. They must there
fore like flowers. They also, we were told,
like growing them; but as a matter of fact
they do not grow them to anything like the
same extent that flowers are grown in Eng
land or Ireland. We used to ask why people
who like flowers and would like to grow them
have so few gardens. We got several an
swers. The climate, of course, was one. But
it is not fair to make the climate responsible
for too many things. Besides the climate, as
I have said before, is not the same aU over
America. It is difficult to befieve that it is
everywhere fatal to gardening.
Another answer — a much more satisfactory
one — was that it takes time to create a gar
den, and Americans do not usuaHy stay long
enough in one house to make it worth while to
start gardening. It is plainly an unsatisfac
tory thing to inaugurate a herbaceous border
in 1914 if you are likely to leave it early in
1915. As for yew hedges and defights of
that kind, no one plants them unless he has a
[240]

MEN AND HUSBANDS
good hope that his son will be there to enjoy
them after he has gone. The American, so
we were told, and so of course believed, is
always looking forward to moving into a new
house. This is because he is alert, sanguine
and a lover of change. The Englishman is
inclined to settle down in one house, and it is
very difficult to root him out of it. Therefore
gardens are commonly possible in England and
rarely so in America.
We did indeed see some gardens in America,
and they were tended with all the care which
flower lovers display everywhere. We saw
in them plants brought from very different
places, round which there doubtless gathered
aU sorts of associations, whose blossoms were
redolent with the perfume of happy memories
as weU as their own natural scents. But these
gardens belonged to men who either through
the necessity of their particular occupation or
through some eccentricity of character felt
that they were Hkely to remain in one place.
Gardens are generally best loved and most
carefuUy tended by women. I have known
[241]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
men who took a real interest in plants, but for
the most part men who spend their leisure
hours in gardens occupy themselves in mowing
the grass or scuffling the walks. They will
trim the edges of flowerbeds with shears, they
will sometimes even dig, but their hearts are
not with the growing plants. Often they con
fess as much openly, saying without shame
that mowing is capital exercise after office
hours, or that the celery bed must be properly
trenched if it is to come to perfection. No
one who works in this spirit is a gardener, nor
is a man who merely desires a tidy trimness.
To the real gardener neatness is an unimpor
tant detail. It is better that a flower should
grow in a bed with ragged edges than that it
should wither slowly in the middle of the
trimmest of lawns. It is women, far oftener
than men, who possess or are possessed by the
instinct for getting things to grow. It is
after all a sort of mother instinct, since flowers,
like children, only respond to those who love
them. Probably every woman who has the
mother instinct has the garden instinct too, and
[242]

MEN AND HUSBANDS
most women, we may be thankful for it, are
potentially good mothers.
Perhaps it is the fact that he is content to
stay still long enough to render gardens pos
sible which makes the Englishman attractive
as a husband. It is easy to understand that
there is something very fascinating to a gar
den lover in the prospect of attachment to one
particular spot. It is a great thing to feel:
"Here I shaU live until the end of living comes,
and then my sons wiU live here after me. All
the rockeries I bufid, all the trees I plant, all
my pergolas and rose hedges are for delight
in coming years, for delight still in the years
beyond my span of living." This instinct for
a settled home, of which a garden is the sym
bol, is surely stronger in woman than in any
man. Woman is after all the stable part of
humanity. Man fights, invents, frets, fusses
and passes. Woman is the link between the
generations. Man makes life possible and
great. It is woman who continues life, hands
it on. Her nature requires stabUity. She
feels after settledness in the hope of finding it.
[243]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
If I were a philosopher I should pursue
these speculations and write several pages
about men and women which it would be very
difficult for any one to understand. But I
have no taste for hunting elusive thoughts
among the shadows of vague words. I am
content to note my Httle facts ; that American
men are more restless than Englishmen, that
there are fewer gardens in America than in
England, that most women Hke gardens, and
that there are more marriages between Ameri
can women and Englishmen than between
EngHsh women and American men.
I came across a curious example of Amer
ican restlessness a little while ago. There was
a footman, very expert in his business, who
lived and earned good wages in an EngHsh
house. He was an ambitious footman, and,
though his wages were good, he wanted them
to be better stiU. His opportunity came to
him. An American wanted a valet and was
prepared to pay very large wages indeed. The
footman offered his services, and being, as I
said, a very good footman, he secured the va-
[244]

MEN AND HUSBANDS
cant position, and the wages which were far
beyond any he would ever have earned in
England. At the end of two years he hap
pened to meet the butler under whom he had
served in the English house. The butler con
gratulated him on his great wealth. The foot
man, now a valet, replied that there are several
things in the world better worth having than
money. "I haven't," he said, "slept a fortnight at a
time in the same bed since I left you, and it's
kiUing me."
Now that would not have kiUed or gone near
kiUing an American born footman, if there is
such a thing as an American born footman.
He would have enjoyed it, just as his master
did; for that American, being very wealthy,
could if he liked have slept in the same bed
every night for a year, every night for many
years, until indeed the bed wore out. He pre
ferred to vary his beds as much as possible.
He had, no doubt, many beds which were in a
sense his own, beds in town houses, beds in
shooting boxes, beds in fishing lodges, beds in
[245]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
Europe, beds which he had bought with money
and to which he had an indefeasible title as
proprietor. But not one of these was, as an
Englishman would understand the words, his
own bed. There was not one to which he came
back after wandering as to a familiar resting
place. They were all just couches to sleep on,
to be occupied for a night or two, indistinguish
able from those which he hired in hotels.
I am told that the EngHsh are learning the
habit of restlessness from the Americans, as
indeed they have learned many other things.
If they learn it thoroughly they will, I think,
have to give up the hope of being able to marry
wealthy American women. Their titles will
not purchase desirable brides for them if they
are no longer able to offer settled homes. Ac
cording to a very learned German historian, it
was the introduction of the "stabilitas loci"
ideal into the western rules which made mon-
asticism the popular career it was in the church.
It is his old fondness for settling down and
staying there which made the Englishman so
popular as a husband.
[246]

CHAPTER XI
THE OPEN DOOR
Americans are forced by the restlessness of
their nature to move about frequently from
house to house, but they have arranged that
each temporary abode is very comfortable.
They are ahead of the English in their domes
tic arrangements. I pay this tribute to them
very unwiUingly, because I myself am more
at my ease in an inconveniently arranged
house. That is because I am accustomed to
inconvenience. The English houses are great
ly superior to the Irish, therefore to go straight
from an Irish house to an American, from
Connaught to Chicago, is to plunge oneself
too suddenly into strangely civUized surround
ings. I admire, but I fear it would be years
before I could enjoy, an American house. I
go to bed most contentedly in a bedroom in
[247]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
which a single candle lights a little circle round
it, leaving dim, fascinating spaces in which
anything may lurk. I like when the candle is
extinguished to see a faint glow of light from
a fire reflected on the ceiling. I find it pleas
ant to remember, after I have got into bed,
that I do not know in what part of the room
I left the matches, that if I awake in the night
and want the fight I must go on a dangerous
and exciting quest, feefing my way toward
the dressing table, sweeping one thing after
another off it while I pass my hand along in
search of the matchbox. The glare of the elec
tric light robs bed-going of its romance. The
convenient switch beside my hand cuts me off
from all chance of midnight adventure.
I like to get out of bed on a frosty morning
and find myself in a thoroughly cold room.
The effort to do this very trying thing braces
me for the day. I slip a hand, an arm, a foot,
from the blankets, feel the nip of the air, draw
them back again, go through a period of in
tense mental struggle, make a gallant effort,
fling all the bedclothes from me and stand
[248]

THE OPEN DOOR
shivering on the floor. I feel then that I am a
strong, virtuous man, fit to go forth and con
quer. The glow of righteousness becomes even
more delightful if I find a film of ice on the
water of my jug and break it with the handle
of a toothbrush. All this is denied me in an
American house. Getting out of bed there is
no real test of moral courage. The room is
pleasantly warm, a sponge is soft and pliable,
not a frozen stone.
I Hke, where this is stiU possible, to have my
bath in a large tin dish, shallow and flat, which
stands in the middle of the bedroom floor with
a mat under it. There are fine old Irish houses
in which this delightful way of bathing stiU
survives. Alas ! they are, even in Ireland, get
ting fewer every day. The next best thing is
to wander down chilly corridors in search of
the single bathroom which the house contains.
This is, fortunately, still necessary in most
English and nearly aU Irish houses. Any one
who is fond of the amusement of reading
house agents' advertisements must have no
ticed the English economy in bathrooms. [249]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
"Handsome mansion, four reception rooms,
lounge hall, billiard room, fifteen bedrooms,
bath, hot and cold." I do not believe that
there is a house like that in aU America. Im
agine the excitement of Hving in it when all
the fifteen bedrooms are fuU. It stimulates
a man to feel, as he saUies forth with his towel
over his arm, that any one of the other four
teen inhabitants may have reached the bath be
fore him, that thirteen people may possibly be
waiting in a queue outside the door. To get
into the bathroom in a house of that kind at the
first attempt must be like holding a hand at
bridge with four aces, four kings, four queens
and a knave in it, a thing worth living and
waiting for. In America aU this is denied us.
A bathroom, luxuriously arranged, adjoins
each bedroom. Washing is made so ridicu
lously easy that there ceases to be any virtue
in it. No one would say in America that
cleanliness is next to godliness. There is no
connection between the two things. It would
be as sensible to say that breathing is a subor
dinate kind of virtue. In England a dressing
[250]

THE OPEN DOOR
gown is well-nigh a necessity. I know a
thoughtful host who provides one for his
guests; a warm voluminous garment in which
it is possible to go comfortably to the bath
room. In America a dressing gown, for a
man, is a useless incumbrance. I dragged one
with me, but I shall never take it again; for,
like many other things, it is misnamed. It is
only when one has to stop dressing that a dress
ing gown is any use.
In these matters of the heating of houses
and the arrangement of baths I prefer what
I am accustomed to, but I know that I am
little better than a barbarian. I might, if I
had lived in the days when matches were first
invented, have sighed for my flint and steel,
but I hope I should have recognized the superi
ority of matches. I might, in the early days
of railways, have wished to go on traveling in
stage coaches, but I should have known that
steam engines are really better things than
horses at dragging heavy weights for long
distances. Thus I cling to the romance of icy
bedrooms and inconvenient baths, but I ac-
[251]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
knowledge freely that the Americans have
found the better way and made a step for
ward along the road of human progress.
I am not, however, so obstinately conserva
tive as to fail in appreciating some other points
in the American mastery of the domestic arts.
I may long for chilly rooms and remote baths,
but I thoroughly enjoy clean towels. Never
have I met so many clean towels as in Amer
ica. The English middle-class housekeeper is
behind her French sister in the provision of
towels, but the American is ahead even of
France. The American towel is indeed smaU,
the bath towel particularly small; but that
seems to me a trifling matter, hardly worth
mentioning, when the supply is abundant. I
would rather any day have three smaU apples
than one large one, and my feeling about tow
els is the same. It is a real pleasure to find a
row of clean ones waiting every time it becomes
necessary to wash. It is certainly a mark of
superior civilization to realize the importance
of house linen in daily life. On the other
hand, it must be admitted that the American
[252]

THE OPEN DOOR
fails in the matter of sheets. What you get
are good, very good, smooth and cool. You
are constantly given clean ones. But they
are not long enough. In England the sheet on
your bed covers your feet completely and leaves
a broad flap at the other end which you can
turn over the blankets and tuck under your
chin. In America you must either leave your
feet sheetless or be content with a mere ribbon
of Hnen under your chin, a narrow strip which
wiU certainly wriggle away during the night.
This may not be the fault of the American
housekeeper. There may be some kind of linen
drapers' trust which baffles the efforts of re
formers. I have heard that in one of the
western states, where the suffrage has been
granted to women, a law has been passed that
aU sheets must be made eighteen inches longer
than they usuaUy are in the other American
states. That law is a strong proof of the ad
vantages to the community of allowing women
to vote. It also seems to show that the Amer
ican woman, at all events, is alive to the neces
sity of reform in this matter of sheets, and is
[253]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
determined to do her best to remedy a defect
in her household management.
The disuse of doors in those parts of the
house which are inhabited during the daytime
is a very interesting feature of American do
mestic life. The first action of an Englishman
when he enters a room is to shut the door. His
first duty when leaving it, if any one remains
inside, is to shut the door. No well-trained
servant ever leaves a door open unless speciaUy
requested to do so. Children, from their very
earliest years, are taught to shut doors, and
punished — it is one of the few things for which
a child is systematically punished now — for
leaving doors open. An English mother calls
after her child as he leaves the room the single
word "door," or, if she is a very polite and
affectionate mother, two words, "door, dear,"
or "door, please." An American child would
not understand a request made in this elliptical
form. It knows of course what a door is, just
as it knows what a wall is, but it would be
puzzled by the mere utterance of the word,
just as an English child would be if its mother
[254]

THE OPEN DOOR
suddenly caUed to it, "waU," or "wall, dear,"
or "wall, please." The American child would
wonder what its mother wanted to say about
a door. The English child understands thor
oughly in the same way as we aU understand
what a dentist means when he says, "Open,
please." It is never our favorite books, our
tightly clenched hands, or our screwed up eyes
which he wants us to open, always our mouths.
The word "open" is enough for us. So the
word "door" through a long association of
ideas at once suggests to the English child the
idea of shutting it.
An Englishman is thoroughly uncomfort
able in a room with the door open. An Amer
ican's feeling about shut doors was very well
expressed to me by a lady who had been paying
a number of visits to friends in England.
"English houses," she said, "always seem to
me like hotels. When you go into them you
see nothing except shut doors."
If, after due apologies, you ask why Amer
icans have no doors between their sitting-
rooms, or why, when they have doors, they do
[255]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
not use them, you always get the same an
swer. "Doors," they say, "are necessary in Eng
land to keep out draughts, because the Eng
lish do not know how to heat their houses. In
our houses aU rooms and passages are kept
up to an even temperature and we do not re
quire doors."
This is an inteUigible but not the real ex
planation of this curious difference between
the Americans and the English. There are
some English homes which are centrally heated
and in which the temperature is as even, though
rarely as high, as in American houses ; but the
Engfishmen who live in them still shut doors.
An Englishman would shut the door of the
inner chamber of a Turkish bath if there were
a door to shut. In summer, when the days
are very warm, he opens all the windows he can,
but he does not sit with the door open. Tem
perature has nothing to do with his fondness
for doors. In the same way there are in Amer
ica some houses which are not centrally heated,
very old-fashioned houses, but they are as
[256]

THE OPEN DOOR
doorless as the others. The fact seems to be
not that doors were disused when central heat
ing became common, but that central heating
was invented so that people who disliked doors
could be warm without them.
I think the lady who told me that the Eng
lish houses seemed like hotels to her hinted
at the real explanation. The open door is a
symbol of hospitality. It is the expression of
sociability of disposition. The Americans are
hospitable and marvelously sociable. They
naturaUy like to live among open doors or with
no doors at all, so that any one can walk up
to him and speak to him without difficulty.
The Englishman, on the other hand, wants to
keep other people away from him, even mem
bers of his own family. His dearest desire is
to have some room of his own into which he
can shut himself, where no one has a right to
intrude. He calls it his "den," which means
the lurking place of a morose and solitary ani
mal. Rabbits, which are sociable creatures,
live in burrows. Bees, which have perfected
the art of life in community, have hives. The
[257]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO.
bear has its den. Every room in an old-
fashioned EngHsh middle-class house is reaUy
a den, though sometimes, as in the case of the
drawing-room, a den which is meant for the
use of several beasts of the same kind at once.
A change is indeed coming slowly over Eng
lish life in this matter. The introduction into
the middle classes of what is called by house
agents "the lounge hall" is a departure from
the "den" theory of domestic life. The "lounge
hall" is properly speaking a pubfic room. It
is available at aU hours of the day and no one
claims it specially as his own. It is accessible
at once to the stranger who comes into the
house from the street. It is still rare in Eng
land, but where it exists it marks an approach
toward American ideals. The term "fiving-
room" only lately introduced by architects into
descriptions of English houses is another sign
that we are becoming more sociable than we
were. It is not simply another name for a
drawing-room. It stands for a new idea, an
Ajnerican idea. The drawing-room — properly
the withdrawing-room — is for the use of peo-
[258]

THE OPEN DOOR
pie who want to escape temporarily from f am-
Uy life. The Hving-room for those who five it
to the fuU.
In the American house there are no "dens."
The American likes to feel that he is in direct
personal contact with the members of his f am-
Uy and with his guest. It does not annoy him,
even if he happen to be reading a book on
economics, to feel that his wife may sit down
beside him or his daughter walk past the back
of his chair humming a tune without his having
had any warning that either of them was at
hand. The noise made by a servant collecting
knives and plates after dinner, reaching him
through a drawn curtain, does not disturb his
enjoyment of a cigar. The servant is to him
a feUow human being, and the sound of her
activities is a pleasant reminder of the com
radeship of man. He too has had his mo
ments of activity during the day. A guest in
an American house is for the time being a
member of the family, not a stranger who,
however welcome he may be, does not pre
sume to intrude upon his host's privacy. [259]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
The "porch," as it is called, a striking fea
ture of the American house, is another evi
dence of the spirit of sociability. A "porch"
is a glorified and perfected veranda. In sum
mer it is a large open-air sitting-room. In
winter it can, by a common arrangement, be
made into a kind of sun parlor. It has its
roof, supported by wooden posts. Wnen the
cold weather comes, frames, like very large
window sashes, are fitted between the posts
and a glass-sided room is made. It is evident
that the life in these porches is of a very public
kind. The passer-by, the casual wanderer
along the road outside, sees the American fam
ily in its porch, can, if he cares to, note what
each member of the family is doing. The
American has no objection to this publicity.
He is not doing anything of which he is the
least ashamed. If other people can see him,
he can see them in return. The arrangement
gratifies his instinct for sociability. The Eng
lishman, on the other hand, hates to be seen.
Nothing would induce him to make a habit of
sitting in a veranda. Even in the depths of the
[260]

THE OPEN DOOR
country, when his house is a long way from
the road, he fits thin muslin curtains across the
lower part of his windows. These keep out a
good deal of light and in that way are annoy
ing to him, but he puts up with gloom rather
than run any risk, however small, that a
stranger, glancing through the window, might
actuaUy see him. Yet the Englishman com
monly leads a blameless life in his own home.
He seldom employs his leisure in any shame
ful practices. His casement curtains are
simply evidences of an almost morbid love of
privacy. The first thing an Englishman does when
he buUds a house is to surround it with a high
waU. This, indeed, is not an English peculiar
ity. It prevails all over western Europe. It
is a most anti-social custom and ought to be
suppressed by law, because it robs many
people of a great deal of innocent pleasure.
The suburbs of Dubfin, to take an example,
ought to be very beautiful. There are moun
tains to the south and hfils to the west and
north of the city, aU of them lovely in out-
[261]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
line and coloring. There is a wide and beau
tiful bay on the east. But the casual way
farer cannot see either the mountains or the
bay. He must walk between high yeUow
walls, waUs built, I suppose, round houses ; but
we can only know this by hearsay. For the
waUs hide the houses as weU as the view. In
Sorrento, which is even more exquisitely situ
ated than Dublin, you walk for miles and mUes
between high waUs, white in this case. The
only difference between the view you see at
DubHn and that which you see at Sorrento
is that the patch of sky you see in Dublin is
gray, at Sorrento generaUy blue. At Cintra,
one of the world's most famous beauty spots,
the waUs are gray, and there you cannot even
see the sky, because the owners of the houses
inside the waUs have planted trees and the
branches of the trees meet over the road. The
Americans do not build walls round their
houses. The humblest pedestrian, going afoot
through the suburbs of Philadelphia, Indian-
apofis or any other city, sees not only the
[262]

THE OPEN DOOR
houses but anything in the way of a view which
lies beyond them.
This is not because America is a republic
and therefore democratic in spirit. Portugal
is a repubfic too, having very vigorously got
rid of its king, but the waUs of Cintra are as
high as ever. No one in the world is more
democratic than an English Liberal, but the
most uncompromising Liberals build walls
round their houses as high as those of any
Tory. The absence of waUs in America is
simply another evidence of the wonderful so
ciability of the people. Walls outside houses
are Hke doors inside. The European Hkes both
because the desire of privacy is in his blood.
The American likes neither.
The "Country Club" is an institution which
could flourish only among a very sociable
people. There are of course clubs of many
sorts in England. There is the club proper,
the club without qualification, which is found
at its very best in London. In books like
Whitaker's Almanac, which classify clubs, it
is described as "social," but this is only in-
[263]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
tended to distinguish it from political or sport
ing clubs. There is no suggestion that it is
sociable, and in fact it is not. It is possible
to belong to a club in London for years with
out knowing a dozen of your fellow members.
It often seems as if the members of these clubs
went to them mainly for the purpose of not
getting to know each other; a misfortune
which might happen to them anywhere else,
but from which they are secure in their clubs.
There are also all over England clubs specially
devoted to particular objects, golf clubs,
yacht clubs and so forth. In these the mem
bers are drawn together by their interest in a
common pursuit, and are forced into some sort
of acquaintanceship. But these are very dif
ferent in spirit and intention from the Amer
ican Country Club. It exists as a kind of
center of the social life of the neighborhood.
There may be and often are golf links con
nected with it. There are tennis courts, some
times swimming baths. There is always a baU-
room. There are luncheon rooms, tea rooms,
reading rooms. In connection with one such
[264]

THE OPEN DOOR
club which I saw there are sailing matches for a
one design class of boats. But neither golf
nor tennis, dancing nor sailing, is the object
of the club's existence. Sport is encouraged
by these clubs for the sake of general sociabil
ity. In England sociabfiity is a by-product
of an interest in sport.
The Country Club at Tuxedo is not per
haps the oldest, but it is one of the oldest in
stitutions of the kind in America. In connec
tion with it a man can enjoy almost any kind
of recreation from a Turkish bath to a game
of tennis, either the lawn or the far rarer or
iginal kind. At the proper time of year there
are dances, and a debutante acquires, I be-
Heve, a certain prestige by "coming out" at one
of them. But the club exists primarily as the
social center of Tuxedo. It is in one way
the ideal, the perfect country club. It not only
fosters, it regulates and governs the social life
of the place.
Tuxedo has been spoken of as a mLUion-
aire's colony. It is a settlement, if not of mil-
Honaires, at aU events of wealthy people. The
[265]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
park, an immense tract of land, is owned by
the club. Ground for building can be obtained
only by those who are elected members of the
club and who are prepared to spend a certain
sum as a minimum on the building of their
houses. In theory the place is reserved for
people who either do or will know each other
sociaUy, who are approximately on the same
level as regards wealth and who all want to
meet each other frequently, for one purpose
or another, in the club. In practice, certain
difficulties necessarily arise. A man may be
elected a member of the club and build a house.
He may be a thoroughly desirable person, but
in course of time he dies. His son may be
very undesirable, or his son may sell the house
to some one whom the club is not wUling to ad
mit to membership. But Tuxedo society, in
stead of becoming, as might have been ex
pected, a very narrow clique, seems to be singu
larly broad minded and tolerant. The diffi
culty of preserving the character of the place
and keeping a large society together as, in all
its essentials, a club, is very much less than
[266]

THE OPEN DOOR
might be expected. The place is extremely
interesting to any observer of American social
life. The club regulates everything. It runs
a private police force for the park. It keeps
up roads. It supplies electric light and, what
is hardly less necessary in America, ice to all
the houses. It levies, though I suppose with
out any actual legal warrant, regular rates.
The fact that the experiment was not wrecked
long ago on the rocks of snobbery goes to
show that society in America is singularly fluid
compared to that of any European country.
That a considerable number of people should
want to five together in such a way is a wit
ness to the sociabUity of America. No other
country club has realized its ideal as the club
at Tuxedo has, but every country club — and
you find them all over America — has some
thing of the spirit of Tuxedo.
Tuxedo is immensely interesting in another
way. Nowhere else in the world, I suppose, is
it possible to see so many different kinds of
domestic architecture gathered together in a
comparatively small space. A walk round the
[267]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
shores of the lake gives you an opportunity of
seeing houses buUt in the dignified and spacious
colonial style, a happy modification of the
English Georgian. Beside one of these, close
to it, may be a house like that of a Mexican
rancher, and the hill behind is crowned with a
French chateau. There are houses which must
have had Italian models, others which suggest
memories of Tudor manor houses, others built
after the fashion of Queen Anne's time. There
are houses whose architects evidently had an
eclectic appreciation of all the houses built
anywhere or at any time, who had tried to em
body the most desirable features of very vari
ous styles in one building. The general effect
of a view of Tuxedo is exceedingly bewilder
ing at first, but almost every house is the ex
pression of some individual tastes, either good
or bad. An architect may start, apparently
very often does start, with the idea of building
a house with twelve rooms in it at a cost of
four thousand pounds. Having thus settled
size and price, he may go ahead, trusting to
luck about the appearance. Or an architect
[268]

THE OPEN DOOR
may start with the idea of building a house in
a certain style, or to express some feeling, dig
nity, homeliness, grandeur, or anything else.
The architects who built the Tuxedo houses aU
seem to have gone to work on the latter plan.
If the Tuxedo experiment in social fife fails
and the club goes into liquidation, the United
States Government might do worse than buy
the whole place as it stands and turn it into a
coUege of domestic architecture. The stu
dents could, without traveling more than a
mile or two, study every known kind of coun
try house. But, indeed, a college of this sort
seems less needed in America than anywhere
else. It is not only the insides of the houses
which are weU planned. The outsides of the
newer houses are for the most part beautiful
to look at. And one can see them, there being
no walls.

[269]

CHAPTER XII
COLLEGES and students
The municipal elections in New York which
resulted in the defeat of Tammany were
fought out with great vigor in all the usual
ways. There were speeches, bands and flags.
The newspapers were fuU of the sayings of
the different candidates, and the leader writers
of each party seemed to be highly successful
in cornering the speakers of the other party.
It was shown clearly every day that orators
shamelessly contradicted themselves, went back
on their own principles, and must, if they had
any respect for logic or decency, either retract
their latest remarks or explain them. All this
was very interesting to us. It would have been
interesting to any one. It was particularly
interesting to us because it was almost new to
us. Elections are, I suppose, fought in more
[270]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
or less the same way everywhere; but in Con-
naught we hardly ever have elections. An in
dependent candidate bubbles up occasionally,
but as a rule we are content to return to Par
liament the proper man, that is to say the
man whom somebody, we never quite know
who, says we ought to return.
I gathered the impression that elections must
be an exciting sport for those engaged in them.
I do not think that the "pomp and circum
stance" of the business, the outward manifes
tations of activity, can make much difference
to the result. Speeches, for instance, are cer
tainly thriHing things to make, and I can un
derstand how it is that orators welcome elec
tions as heaven sent opportunities for the ex
ercise of their art. But the people who listen
to the speeches always seem to have their minds
made up beforehand whether they agree with
the speaker or not. They know what he is
going to say and are prepared with hoots or
cheers. I never heard of any one who came to
hoot remaining to cheer. I doubt whether
there is a single modern instance of a speech
[271]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
having affected the destiny of a vote. A very
good speech might indeed produce some effect
if it were not that there is always an equaUy
good speech made at the same time on the other
side. Election speeches are like tug boats pull
ing different ways at the opposite ends of a
large ship. They neutralize each other and
the ship drifts gently, sideways, with the tide.
It cannot be seriously maintained that bands
or flags help voters to make up their minds.
In nine cases out of ten it is impossible to tell
for which side a band is playing, and there
fore unlikely that it wiU draw voters to one
side rather than the other. In the tenth case,
when the band, by selecting some particular
tune, makes its meaning clear, the music is not
of a quality which moves the listener to any
feeling of gratitude to the candidate who pays
for it. I should, I think, feel bound to vote
for a man who gave me "panem et circenses"
but I should expect good bread and an attrac
tive circus. I should not dream of voting for
a candidate who provided me with inferior
music. The flags are a real addition to the
[272]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
gaiety of city life. The ordinary elector loves
to see them fluttering about. But the ordinary
elector is not by any means a fool. He knows
that the flags wiU be taken down very soon
after the election is over. If any candidate
promised to keep his flags flying as a perma
nent decoration of the city streets he might
capture a few votes. But we aU know that
none of them wiU do anything as useful as
that. Nor do I think that the editors of news
papers produce much effect by showing up
the inconsistencies of politicians and pinning
them down to-day, when they are driven to
say something quite different, to the things
which, under stress of other circumstances,
they said yesterday. It does not take a clever
man, Hke a newspaper editor, to corner a poli
tician. Any fool can do that, and the per
formance of an obviously easy trick does not
move an audience at all. An acrobat who
merely hops across the stage on one leg gets
no applause and the box office returns faU
away. The thing is too easy. It is the man
[273]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
who does something reaUy hard, balances him
self on the end of an umbrella and juggles
with twenty balls at once, who attracts the
public. If a newspaper editor at an election
time would, instead of showing up the other
side, offer proofs that the men on his own
side are consistent, logical and high-principled,
he would have enormous influence with the vot
ers. "Any one," so the ordinary man would
reason, "who can prove things like that about
politicians must be amazingly clever. If he is
amazingly clever, far cleverer than I ever hope
to be, then there is a strong probability that
his side is the right one. I shaU vote for it."
The ordinary man, so we ought to recoUect, is
not nearly such a fool as is generally supposed.
He is quite capable of reasoning, and he would
reason, I am sure, just in the way I have sug
gested, if he were given a chance.
The keen interest which we took in the
showy side of electioneering made us dUigent
readers of the newspapers. We were rewarded
beyond our hopes. We came across, on the
very evening of the election itself, a little para-
[274]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
graph, tucked away in a corner, which we
might very easily have missed if we had been
less earnest students. In a certain district in
New York, so this paragraph told us, there
was a queue of voters waiting outside a poll
ing station. Among them was a man who was
known to be or was suspected qf being hostUe
to Tammany. It was likely that he would cast
his vote on the other side. There were, look
ing thoughtfuUy at the queue, certain men
described by the newspaper as "gangsters" in
the pay of the Tammany organization. They
seized the voter whose principles seemed to
them objectionable and dragged him out of
the queue, plainly in order to prevent his re
cording his vote. So far there was nothing of
very special interest in the paragraph. We
knew beforehand — even in Ireland we know
this — that voters are a good deal influenced
by the strength of the party machine. The
strength is seldom displayed in its nakedly
physical form on this side of the Atlantic, but
it is always there and is really the determining
force in most elections. It was the thing which
[275]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
happened next which gave the incident its
value. A university student who happened to
be engaged in social work in the neighborhood
saw what was done. He was one man and
there were several "gangsters," but he attacked
them at once. He was, as might be supposed,
as he himself must surely have foreseen,
worsted in the fray which foUowed. The
gangsters, after the manner of their kind,
mauled, beat and kicked him to such an extent
that he had to be carried to a hospital. It did
not appear that this university student was a
party man, eager for the triumph of his side
as the gangsters were for the victory of theirs.
He seems to have acted on the simple principle
that a man who has a right to vote ought not
to be interfered with in the exercise of that
right. He was on the side of justice and lib
erty. He was not concerned with politics of
either kind.
I do not know what happened to that stu
dent afterwards. I searched the papers in
vain for any further reference to the incident.
I wanted to know whether the voter voted in
[276]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
the end. I wanted to know what was done to
the gangsters. I wanted to know whether the
student recovered from his injuries or not. I
wanted, above all, to know whether anyone
recognized how fine a thing that student did.
I never discovered another paragraph about
the incident.
I was talking some time afterwards to an
English friend, the friend to whom I have al
ready referred, who knows America very weU
and who offered to take care of me while I was
there. I told him the story of the voter and
the Tammany gangsters.
"These things," he said, "happen over here.
They are constantly happening. One gets into
the way of not being shocked by them. But
there always is that university student some
where round, when they do happen."
It is an amazingly high tribute to the Amer
ican universities. If my friend is right, if
blatant force and abominable injustice do in
deed find themselves faced, always and as a
matter of course, by a university student, then
the universities are doing a very splendid work.
[277]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
And I am inclined to think that my friend is
right. There is another story of the same
kind, one of many which might be told. This
one came to me, not in a newspaper but from
the lips of a man who told me that he was a
witness of what happened.
There was — -I forget where — a kind of set
tlement, half camp, half town, buUt in a lonely
place for the workmen of a company which
was conducting some mining or engmeering
enterprise. The town, if I am to call it a
town, was owned and ruled by the company.
The workmen were of various nationalities,
and, taken as. a whole, a rough lot. It was, no
doubt, difficult to keep them contented, diffi
cult enough to keep them at all in such a place.
It would probably be unjust to say that the
company encouraged immorafity; but the ex
istence of disorderly houses in the place was
winked at. The men wanted them. The offi
cials of the company, we may suppose, found
their line of least resistance in ignoring an evil
which they may have felt they could not cure.
After a while, during one summer vacation,
[278]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
there came to the place a university student.
He was not a miner or an engineer and had no
particular business with the company. He
was, apparently, on a kind of mission; but
whether he was preaching Christianity or social
reform of a general kind I was not told. He
was the inevitable university student of my
friend's remark.
He found himself face to face with an evil
thing which he at all events would not ignore.
He made his protest. Now no man of the
world, certainly no business man, objects to a
proper protest, temperately made, provided the
protester does not go too far. The man of the
world is tolerant. He is a consistent befiever
in the policy of living and letting live. He
recognizes that people with principles must be
allowed to state them. It is in order to be
stated that principles exist. But he holds that
in common fairness he ought to be allowed to
ignore these statements of principle. That
was just what this university student could not
understand. He went on protesting more and
more forcibly until he made the officials un-
[279]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
comfortable and the men exceedingly angry.
It was the men, either with, or, as I hope, with
out the knowledge of their superiors, who first
threatened, then beat that university student,
beat him on the head with a sandbag and finally
drove him from the place with a warning that
he had better not return again.
He did return, bringing with him certain
officers of the law. He was a man of some
strength of character and the recoUection of
the beating did not cause him to hesitate. Un
fortunately the officers of the law could not
do much. The disorderly houses were all quite
orderly when they appeared. They were small
shops selling apples, matches and other inno
cent things. There was no evidence to be got
that anything worse had ever gone on in them
than the sale of apples and matches. The
previous inhabitants of these houses were pic
nicking in the woods for a few days. AU that
the officers of the law were able to do was to
conduct the university student safely out of the
place. That was difficult enough.
I am not sure that this story is true, for I
[280]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
did not read it in a newspaper; but it is very
like several others which I heard. They may
aU be false or very greatly exaggerated, but
they show, at least, the existence of a popular
myth in which the university student figures,
always with the same kind of character. Be
hind every myth there is some reality. Even
solar myths, the vaguest myths there are, lead
back ultimately to the sun, which is indubi
tably there. It seems to me that whether he
actuaUy does these fine things or not the Amer
ican university student has succeeded in im
pressing the public with the idea that he is the
kind of man who might do them. That in it
self is no smaU achievement.
I wanted very much, because of the myth
and for other reasons, to see something of
American university life. I did see something,
a little of it, both at Yale and Princeton.
I have heard it said that the Englishman is
more attached to his school than to his univer
sity, that in after life he will think of himself
as belonging to Eton, to Harrow, to Winches
ter, rather than to Oxford or to Cambridge. [281]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
The school, for some reason, rather than the
university, is regarded as "the mother" from
whom the life of the man's soul flowed, to
whom his affection turns. An Oxford man or
a Cambridge man is indeed aU his life long
proud, as he very well may be, of his connec
tion with his university, but his school is the
subject of his deepest feeling. Round it
rather than the university gathers that emotion
which -for want of better words may be de
scribed as educational patriotism. An Irish
man, on the other hand, if he is a graduate of
Dublin University, thinks more of "Trinity"
than he does of his school. He may have been
at one of the most famous EngHsh public
schools, but his university, to a considerable
extent, obliterates the memories of it. He
thinks of himself through life as a T. C. D.
man. America is like Ireland in this respect. I
find, looking back on my memories of the
American men whom I met most frequently,
that I know about several of them whether they
are Yale men, Princeton men or Harvard men.
[282]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
I do not know about any single one of them
what school they belonged to. I never asked
any questions on the subject. Such informa
tion as I got came to me accidentaUy. It came
to me without my knowing that I was getting
it. Only afterwards did I realize that I knew
A. to be a Yale man, B. to be a Harvard man
and so forth. In England the information
which comes unsought about a man concerns
his school rather than his university. It is the
name of his school which drops from his lips
when he begins talking about old days. There
are oftener books about his school than about
his university on his shelves, photographs of
his school on the walls of his study.
I do not know that there is in the American
universities any definitely planned and delib
erate effort to create or foster this spirit of
patriotism. There is certainly no such effort
apparent in Dublin University. The spirit is
there. That is aU that can be said. It pervades
these institutions. Only an occasional and
more or less eccentric undergraduate escapes
its influence. [283]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
The patriotism is indeed much more obvious
and vocal in America than in Dublin. We had
the good luck to be present at a f ootbaU match
between Yale and Colgate Universities. It
was not a match of first-rate importance, but
an enormous crowd of spectators gathered to
witness it. The excitement of the supporters
of both sides was intense. There was no pos
sible mistake about the fact that professors
and undergraduates, old men who had gradu
ated long ago and boys who were not yet
undergraduates, wives, mothers and sisters of
graduates and undergraduates, were all eager
ly anxious about the result of the game. Yale,
in the end, was quite unexpectedly beaten. It
is not too much to say that a certain gloom was
distinctly noticeable afterward everywhere in
New Haven. It hung over people who were
not specially interested in athletics of any kind.
It affected the spirits of my host's parlormaid.
Very shortly after my return home I
watched a football match between Dublin Uni
versity and Oxford. The play was just as
keen and sportsmanlike as the play between
[284]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
Yale and Colgate ; but there was nothing like
the same general interest in the game. There
was a sprinkling of spectators round the
ground, an audience which could not compare
in size with that of Yale. They were interested
in the game, intelligently interested. They
applauded good play when they saw it; but
there was nothing to correspond to the tense
excitement which we witnessed in America.
The game was a game. If Dublin won, well
and good. If Oxford won, then Dublin must
try to do better next time. No one feared de
feat as a disaster. No one was prepared to
hafi victory with wUd enthusiasm. A stranger
could not have gone through New Haven on
the day of the Yale and Colgate football match
without being aware that something of great
importance was happening. The whole town
seemed to be streaming toward the football
ground. In DubHn you might have walked
not only through the city but through most
parts of the coUege itself on the day of the
match against Oxford and you would not have
discovered, unless you went into the park, that
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FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
there was a f ootbaU match. Yet the pride of
a Dublin man in his university is as deep and
lasting as that of any American.
The reason of the difference is perhaps to
be found in the fact that everything connected
with university athletics is far more highly or
ganized in America than on this side of the
Atlantic. The undergraduate spectators are
drilled to shout together. They practice be
forehand songs which they sing on the occasion
of the match for the encouragement of their
own side. Young men with megaphones stand
in front of closely packed rows of undergrad
uates. They give the signal for shouting.
With wavings of their arms they conduct the
yeUs of the crowd as musicians conduct their
orchestras. The result is something as differ
ent as possible from the casual, accidental ap
plause of our spectators. It is the difference
between a winter rainstorm and the shower of
an April morning. This organized enthusiasm
affects everyone present. Sober-looking men
and women shout and wave little flags tumul-
tuously. They cannot help themselves. I un-
[286]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
derstood, after seeing that f ootbaU match, why
it is that America produces more successful
religious revivalists than England does. The
Americans realize that emotion is highly infec
tious. They have mastered the art of spread
ing it. I do not know whether this is a useful
art or not. It probably is, if the emotion is
a genuine and worthy one; but it is not pleas
ant to think that one might be swept away,
temporarUy intoxicated, by the skill of some
organizer who is engaged in propagating a
morbid enthusiasm. However that may be,
love for a university is a thoroughly healthy
thing. It cannot be wrong to foster it by
songs and shouts or even — a curious reversion
to the totem religion of our remote ancestors —
by identifying oneself with a bulldog or a
tiger. I met one evening some young men who had
graduated in Trinity College, DubHn, and
afterwards gone over for a post-graduate
course to a theological coUege connected with
one of the American universities. We talked
[287]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
about Dublin chiefly, but I made one inquiry
from them about their American experience.
"I suppose," I said, "that you have to work
a great deal harder here than you did at
home?" Their answer was given with smiHng assur
ance. "Oh, dear no; nothing like so hard."
I should like very much to have further re
liable information on this point. Something
might be got, perhaps, by consulting a number
of Rhodes scholars at Oxford. My impres
sion, a vague one, is that the ordinary undis
tinguished American undergraduate is not re
quired to work so hard as an undergraduate of
the same kind is in England or Ireland. In an
American magazine devoted to education I
came across an article which complained that, in
the matter of what may be caUed examination
knowledge, the American undergraduate is not
the equal of the English undergraduate. He
does not know as much when he enters the uni
versity and he does not know as much when he
leaves it. This was an American opinion. It
[288]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
would be very interesting to have it confirmed
or refuted. But no one, on either side of the
Atlantic, supposes that the kind of knowledge
which is useful in examinations is of the first
importance. The value of a university does
not depend upon the number of facts which
it can drive into the heads of average men;
but on whether it can, by means of its teaching
and its atmosphere, get the average man into
the habit of thinking nobly, largely and sanely.
It seems certain that the American university
training does have a permanent effect on the
men who go through it, an effect like that pro
duced by EngHsh schools, and certainly also by
EngHsh universities, on their students. A man
who is, throughout life, loyal to his school or
university has not passed through it uninflu
enced. It seems likely that the American uni
versities are succeeding in turning out very
good citizens. The existence of what I have
caHed the university student myth, the exist
ence of a general opinion that university men
are likely to be found on the side of civic right-
[289]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
eousness, is a witness to the fact that the univer
sities are doing their main work weU.
The little, the very little I was able to see
of university life helped me to understand how
the work is being done. The chapel services,
on weekdays and Sundays, were in many ways
strange to me and I cannot imagine that I,
trained in other rituals, would find digestible
the bread of life which they provide. But I
was profoundly impressed by the reality of
them. Here was no official tribute to a God
conceived of as a constitutional monarch to
whom respect and loyalty is due but whose wiU
is of no very great importance, a tribute saved
perhaps from formality by the mystic devotion
of a few; but an effort, groping and tentative
no doubt, to get into actual personal touch with
a divinity conceived of as not far remote from
common fife. These chapel services — exercises
is the better word for them — can hardly fail to
have a profound effect upon the ordinary man.
I have stood in the chapel of Oriel College at
Oxford and felt that now and then men of
the finer kind, worshiping amid the austere
[290]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
dignity of the place, might grow to be saints,
might see with their eyes and handle with their
hands the mysterious Word of Life. I sat in
the chapel at Princeton, I listened to a sermon
at Yale, and felt that men of commoner clay
might go out from them to face a battering
from the fists and boots of Tammany gang
sters. It seems to me significant that Americans
have not got the words "don" and "donnish."
They are terms of reproach in England, but
the very fact that they are in use proves that
they are required. They describe what exists.
The Americans have no use for the words be
cause they have not got the man or the quafity
which they name. The teaching staffs of the
American universities do not develop the quafi-
ties of the don. They do not tend to become a
class apart with a special outlook upon life. It
is possible to meet a professor — even a profes
sor of English literature — in ordinary society,
to talk to him, to be intimate with him and not
to discover that he is a professor. Charles
Lamb maintained that school-mastering left an
[291]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
indelible mark upon a man, that having school-
mastered he never afterward was quite the
same as other men. I had a friend once who
boasted that he could "spot" a parson however
he was dressed, had spotted parsons who were
not dressed at all — in Turkish baths. I do not
believe that the most careful student of pro
fessional mannerisms could detect an Amer
ican professor out of his lecture room. It is
possible that this note of ordinary worldliness
in the members of the staff of the American
university has a beneficial effect upon the stu
dents. It may help to suggest the thought that
a university course is no more than a prepara
tion for life, is not, as most of us thought once,
a thing complete in itself.
In all good universities there is a broad
democratic spirit among the undergraduates.
They may, and sometimes do, despise the stu
dents of other universities as men of inferior
class, but they only despise those of their fel
low students in their own university who,
according to the peculiar standards of youth,
deserve contempt. In American universities
[292]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
this democratic spirit is stronger than it is with
us because there is greater opportunity for its
development. There are wider differences of
wealth — it is difficult to speak of class in
America — among the university students there
than here. There are no men in English or
Irish universities earning their keep by clean
ing the boots and pressing the clothes of their
better-endowed fellow students. In American
universities there are such men and it is quite
possible that one of them may be president of
an important club, or captain of a team, elected
to these posts by the very men whose boots he
cleans. If he is fit for such honors they will be
given him. The fact that he cleans boots wUl
not stand in his way. The wisdom of medi
eval schoolmen made room in universities for
poor students, sizars, servitors. The American
universities, with their committees of employ
ment for students who want to earn, are doing
the old thing in a new way ; and pubfic opinion
among the graduates themselves approves.
On the subject of the higher university
education of girls American opinion is sharply
[293]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
divided. There are people there, just as there
are in England, who say that the whole thing
is a mistake, that it is better for girls not to go
to college on any terms, under any system. I
suppose that we must call these people reac
tionary. There cannot be very many of them
anywhere. It was a surprise to me to find
any at all in America. They are not, I think,
very influential. Among those who favor the
higher education of girls there are many who
believe whole-heartedly in co-education. I had
no opportunity of seeing a co-educational col
lege, but I listened to a detailed description of
the life in one from a lady who had lived it.
According to her co-education is the one per
fect system yet hit upon. Its critics urge two
curiously inconsistent objections to it. One
man, who is a philosopher and also seemed to
know what he was talking about, told me that
boys and girls educated together lose the sense
of sex mystery, which lies at the, base of ro
mantic love and consequently do not want to
marry. According to his theory, based upon
a careful observation of facts, the students of
[294]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
co-educational universities never faU in love
with each other or with anyone else. If the
system were widely adopted and had this effect
upon the students everywhere, the results
would certainly be very unfortunate. Another
critic, equaUy well informed, said that the real
objection to co-education is that the students
do little else except fall in love with each other.
This, though no doubt educative in a broad
sense of the word, is not exactly the kind of
education we send boys and girls to universities
to get. It must be very gratifying to the
friends of the system to feel that these two ob
jections cannot both be sound.
Co-educational colleges are chiefly to be
found in the West, among the newer states. In
the. East girls get their higher education for
the most part in colleges of their own. Smith
CoUege for instance has no connection with
any of the men's universities. Nor has Vassar
nor Bryn Mawr. These institutions have their
own staffs, their own courses and examinations,
their own rules, and confer their own degrees.
Barnard CoUege, on the other hand, is closely
[295]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
connected with Columbia University, occupy
ing much the same position as Girton and St.
Margaret's HaU do with regard to Cambridge
and Oxford, scarcely as intimately joined to
Columbia as Trinity HaU is to Dublin Uni
versity. I had the opportunity of learning
something of the life of Smith CoUege. I was
immensely impressed by the spirit of the place,
as indeed I was by that of all the girls' schools
and colleges which I saw. There was an in
fectious kind of eagerness about both pupils
and teachers. There is a feeling of hopeful
ness. It is as if life were looked upon as a
great and joyful adventure in which many dis
coveries of good things may be expected, much
strenuous work may be done gladly, in which
no disiUusion waits for those who are of good
heart. Not the girls alone, but those who teach
and guide them, are young, young in the way
which defies the passing of years to make them
old. We are not young because we have seen
eighteen summers and no more, or old, because
we have seen eighty. We are old when we have
shut the doors of our hearts against the desire
[296]

COLLEGES AND STUDENTS
of new things and steeled ourselves against
the hope of good. We are young if we re
fuse, even when our heads are gray, to believe
that disappointment inevitably waits for us.
The world and everything in it belongs to the
young. It is this pervading sense of youthful-
ness which makes the American girls' colleges
so fascinating to a stranger. It is not diffi
cult to believe that the girls who come out of
them are able to take their places by the side
of men in business life, or if the commoner
and happier lot waits them, are well fitted to be
the partners of men who do great things and
the mothers of men who wiU do greater things
stffl. I take it that the American universities, both
those for men and women, are the greatest
things in America to-day. This, curiously
enough, is not the American idea. The ordi
nary American citizen is proud of every single
thing in his country except his universities.
He is always a little apologetic about them.
He compares his country with England and is
convinced that America is superior in every
,[297]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
respect, except the matter of universities.
When he speaks of the English universities
he shows a certain sense of reverence and makes
mention of his own much in the spirit of
Touchstone who introduced Audrey as "a poor
thing, but my own."

[298]

CHAPTER XIII
the irishman abroad
The educated American seems to have a
great deal of affection for Ireland, but is not
over fond of Irishmen. Our country, consid
ered as an Island situated on the far side of
the Atlantic, makes a strong appeal to him.
It is a land of thousand wrongs, a pitiful
waif on the hard highway of the world. It
smeUs strongly of poetry and music in a minor
key, and the American is, like all good busi
ness men, an incurable sentimentafist.
It is always pleasant to be loved and it is
nice to feel that America has this affection for
our poor, lost land. But the love would
gratify us much more than it does if there
were a little less pity mixed up in it, and if it
were not taken for granted that we all write
poetry. I remember meeting an American
[299]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
lady who was quite lyrical in her appreciation
of Ireland. She had penetrated into the coun
try as far as Avoca, making the trip from
Dublin in a motor car. She stayed, so she told
me, "in a dear old-fashioned inn in Dublin."
She had forgotten its name, but described its
situation to me very accurately. I could not
possibly make a mistake about it. My heart
was hot within me when I suggested that it
might have been the Shelbourne Hotel at
which she stayed. Her face lit up with a
gleam of recognition of the name.
"Yes," she said, "that's it, such a sweet old
place; just Ireland aU over, and reaUy quite
comfortable when you get used to it."
Now the Shelbourne Hotel is our idea of a
thoroughly up-to-date, cosmopofitan caravan
serai. Even after a visit to America and a consid
erable experience of American hotels, I cannot
think of the Shelbourne Hotel as an inn, as
old-fashioned, or as in any way Irish except
through the accident of its situation. It evi
dently suggests to the American mind tender
[300]

THE IRISHMAN ABROAD
thoughts of Mr. Yeats' "small cabin, of mud
and wattles made" on Inishfree. It suggests
no such thoughts to us. Dinner at the Shel
bourne Hotel costs five shiUings, nothing to an
American, of course, but a heavy price to us
in Ireland. It consists of several courses and
we think it quite a grand dinner. It seems to
the American that he is at last reduced to the
traditional Irish diet of potatoes and potheen
whiskey. It is this way of thinking about Ire
land which takes the sweetness out of the
American's genuine affection for our country.
We do not mind admitting that we are half a
century behind America in every respect, but
we Hke to think that we are making some prog
ress. An American's eyes soften when you talk to
him about Ireland, and you feel that at any
moment he may say "dear land," so deep is his
sentimental pity and affection for our country.
But his eyes harden when you mention Irish
men and you feel that at any moment he may
say something very nasty about them. The
plain fact is that Irishmen are not very popular
[301]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
in America. We have, it appears, managed
the American's municipal politics for him in
several of his principal cities and he does not
like it. But I am not sure that his resentment
is quite just. Somebody must manage munici
pal politics everywhere. For a good many
years the American would not manage them
himself. He was too busy making money to
bother himself about municipal politics. We
took over the job — at a price. He paid the
price with a shrug of the shoulders. I cannot
see that he has much to complain about. Lately
he has kicked — not against the size of the price
— it is not the American way to higgle about
money — but against there being any price at
aU. He has got it into his head that municipal
politics ought to be run "free gratis and for
nothing" by high-souled patriotic men. I sin
cerely hope that he will realize his ideal, though
I doubt whether any politics anywhere can be
run in that way. It wiU certainly be better for
my fellow countrymen to earn their bread in
any way rather than by politics. But there is
no sense in being angry with us or abusing us.
[302]

THE IRISHMAN ABROAD
We worked the machine and took our wages.
The American watched the machine running
and paid the wages. There was not much to
choose between him and us.
There is another reason why we are not as
popular as we might be — as, no doubt, we
ought to be— in America. We have remained
Irish. One of the most wonderful things about
America is its power of absorbing people. Men
and women flow into it from aU corners of the
world, and in a very short time, in a couple of
generations, become American. I have seen it
stated that the very shapes of the skulls of im
migrants alter in America; that the son of an
Italian man has an American not an Italian
skull, even if his mother also came from Italy.
Whether this change really takes place in the
bones of immigrants I do not know. Quite as
surprising a change certainly does take place in
their nature. They cease to be foreigners and
become American. But the Irish have never
been thoroughly Americanized. Their Ameri
can citizenship becomes a great and dear thing
to them, but they are stiU in some sense citizens
[303]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
of Ireland. If a question ever arose in which
American interests clashed with Irish interests
there might well be a solid Irish vote in favor
of sacrificing America to Ireland. The Irish
are a partial exception to the rule that America
absorbs its immigrants. It has not thoroughly
absorbed us.
This is the shape which the Irish problem
has assumed in America. Here at home the
question is, is England to govern Irishmen?
It has obviously failed to make Englishmen
of us. On the other side of the Atlantic the
question is : Are Irishmen to govern America ?
America has not succeeded in making Ameri
cans of all of us so far.
So far. But the position of Irishmen in
America is changing. There was a time when
we took our place in the American social order
as hewers of wood and drawers of water. We
were the navvies, the laborers, the men who
handled the pickaxe and spade. Now it is men
of other races who do this work — Itafians and
Slavs. We have risen in the scale. The Irish
emigrant who lands in New York to-day starts
[304]

THE IRISHMAN ABROAD
higher up than the Irish emigrant of twenty-
five years ago. So long as we were at the bot
tom of the social scale we were bound together
by a community of interest and outlook as
weU as by nationality. We were easily organ
ized as a voting unit. But men, as they rise
in the world, tend more and more to become in
dividuals. They have differing interests. They
look at things in different ways. They are far
more difficult to organize. The sense of origi
nal nationality wUl remain to us, no doubt, as
it remains among Americans of Scottish de
scent. But it may cease to be an effective po-
Htical force.
The Ulster Irishman went to America in
large numbers before there was any great im
migration of southern and western Irishmen.
He fought his way up in the social scale very
quickly and became thoroughly Americanized.
He has had a profound influence on American
civilization and character. It has been the in
fluence of digested food, not the force exercised
by a lump of dough swallowed hastily. But in
time even a lump of dough is digested by a
[305]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
healthy stomach and the gradual rise of the
Irish in the social life of America looks like
the beginning of the process of digestion.
There is something else besides the change in
his social position which wiU in time make it
easier for America to absorb thoroughly the
Irish immigrant. The Irish who went to
America during the last half of the 19th cen
tury left their homes with a sense in them of
burning wrong. They were men who hated.
They hated England and aU in Irish life which
stood for England. This hate bound them to
gether. Irish political struggles, whether of
the Fenian or the ParneU type, appealed to
them. Ireland was, in one way or the other,
up against England. But aU this has changed.
Irish politicians are no longer engaged in a
struggle with England. They are in alliance
with one set of Englishmen and only against
another set of Englishmen. There is in Irish
politics at home an appeal to the man of party
f eeling. He is keen enough for his own party,
keen enough against the other party, but when
he gets to America neither of the parties at
[306]

THE IRISHMAN ABROAD
home can move him to any special enthusiasm.
He no longer, when at home, hates England.
He hates, if hate is not too strong a word, some
Englishmen. There is a great difference be
tween hating England and hating some Eng
lishmen, when you are so far away that all
Englishmen get blurred. It is easy in Ireland
to feel that Codlin is the friend, not Short.
It is not so easy to distinguish Codlin from
Short, Liberal from Conservative, when they
are both no more than little dots, barely visible
at a distance of three thousand miles. Codlin
gets mixed up with Short. Some of the orig
inal party hatred of Short attaches to Codlin,
no doubt. But some of the love for Codlin,
love which is the fruit of long alliance, passes
to Short.
I do not mean to suggest that the sense of
nationality has passed away from Ireland. It
has not. In some ways the spirit of national
ity is stronger in Ireland to-day than it was
at any time during the last century. It has
certainly penetrated to classes which used to
have no consciousness of nationality at aU.
[307]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
There are fewer Irishmen nowwho are ashamed
of being Irish. There are more men now than
ever, in every class, who want the good of Ire
land as distinguished from that of England
or of any other country. But the sense of na
tionality has to a very large extent passed out
of Irish political life. The platform appeal
of the politician to the voter in Ireland now
is far oftener an appeal to Irishmen as part
of the British democracy than to Irishmen
as members of a nation governed against its
wiU by foreigners. The ideas of John
O'Leary, even the ideas of ParneU, have al
most vanished from Irish pofitical life. In
stead of them we have the idea of international
democracy. This change of feeling in Ireland itself wiU
make for a modification of the position of the
Irish in America. They will tend, as the older
generation passes, to become more American
and less Irish. This is already felt in Ire
land itself. Of late years there has arisen a
strong feeling against emigration. It is real
ized, as it used not to be, that Ireland loses
[308]

THE IRISHMAN ABROAD
those who go. The feeling is quite new. The
phrase "a greater Ireland beyond the seas" is
beginning to mean a little less than it did, and
the general consciousness of patriotic Irish
men at home is instinctively recognizing this.
But it is noticeable that this dislike of emigra
tion has not found expression among politi
cians. The movement is outside politics. The
local pofitical boss is frequently an emigration
agent and feels no inconsistency in his posi
tion. It would be quite easy to exaggerate the
present value of the change I have tried to in
dicate. The old solidarity of the Irish in
America remains a fact. It is to Irish friends
and relatives that our emigrants go. It is
among Irish people that they five when they
settle in America. It is Irish people whom
they marry. But the tendency is toward a
breaking away from this national isolation.
The movement against emigration at home
has much in it besides the instinctive protest
of a nation against the loss of its people. It is
in part religious and rests on a fear that faith
[309]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
is more easUy lost in America than in Ireland.
It is in part no doubt the result of shrinking
of sensitive and loving souls from the horror
of the great sorrow of fareweU.
All emotions lose their keenness with repeti
tion. The fine rapture of a joy is never quite so
delightful as it was when the joy came first and
was strange. The bitterness of sorrow and dis
appointment gradually loses its intensity when
sorrow and disappointment become familiar
things. Even insults cease after a while to move
us to fierce anger. The law is universal; but
there are some emotions which are only ver3'
slowly dulled. The sadness which comes of
watching the departure of a train full of Irish
emigrants is one of these. We are, or ought to
be, well accustomed to the sight. Those of us
who have lived long in the country parts of
Ireland have seen these trains and traveled a
little way in them many times ; but we are still
saddened, hardly less saddened than when we
saw them first.
There is one day in the week on which emi
grants go, and in the west of Ireland one train
[310]

THE IRISHMAN ABROAD
on that day by which they travel. It goes
slowly, stopping at every station no matter
how smaU, and at every station there is the
same scene. The platform is crowded long be
fore the train comes in. There are many old
women weeping without restraint, mothers
these, or grandmothers of the boys and girls
who are going. Their eyes are swoUen. Their
cheeks are tear-stained. Every now and then
one of them waUs aloud, and the others, catch
ing at the sound, waU with her, their voices
rising and falling in a kind of weird melody
Hke the ancient plain song of the church.
There are men, too, but they are more silent.
Very often their eyes are wet. Their lips,
tightly pressed, twitch spasmodically. Occa
sionally an uncontrollable sob breaks from one
of them. The boys and girls who are to go
are helplessly sorrow stricken. It is no longer
possible for them to weep, for they have wept
too much already. They are drooping despair
ingly. At their feet are carpet bags and little
yellow tin trunks, each bearing a great flaring
steamboat label. They wear stiff new clothes,
[311]|

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
shoddy tweed suits from the shop of the vil
lage draper, dresses and blouses long discussed
with some country dressmaker. These pitiful
braveries mark them out unmistakably from
the men in muddy frieze and the women in
wide crimson petticoats, with shawls over their
heads, who have come to say good-by.
The train comes in. There is a rush to the
carriage doors. Soon the windows of the car
riages are fiUed with tear-stained faces.
Hands are stretched out, grasped, held tight.
Final kisses are pressed on lips and cheeks.
The guard of the train gives his signal at last.
The engine whistles. A porter, mercifully
brutal, by main force pushes the people back.
The train moves slowly, gathers speed. For a
whUe the whole crowd moves along the plat
form beside the train. Then a long sad cry
rises, swelling to a pitch of actual agony.
Some brave soul somewhere chokes down a sob,
waves his hat and makes pretence to cheer.
Then the scene is over.
What happens next in the raUway carriages?
For a while there is sobbing or silence. Then
[312]

THE IRISHMAN ABROAD
wonder and the excitement of change begin to
take the place of grief. Words are whispered,
questions asked. Little stores of money are
taken out and counted over. Steamboat tickets
are examined, unfolded, folded, put in yet
securer places. Already the present is some
thing more than a duU ache; and the future is
looked to as weU as the past.
What happens next to the crowd which was
left behind? In little groups the men and
women go slowly back along the country roads
to the houses left at dawn, go back to take up
the work of every day. Poverty is a merciful
mistress to those whom she holds in bondage.
There are the fields to be dug, the cattle to
be tended, the bread to be made. The steady
succession of things which must be done duUs
the edge of grief. They suffer less who are
obliged to work as well as weep. But the sor
row remains. He has but a shaUow knowledge
of our people who supposes that because they
go about the business of their lives afterward
as they did before there is no lasting reality
in their grief. An Irish mother will say: "I
[313]

FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
had seven chUder, but there's only two of them
left to me now. I buried two and three is in
America." She classes those who have crossed
the sea with those who are dead. Both are
lost to her.
Sometimes those who have gone are indeed
lost utterly. There comes a letter once, and
after a long interval another letter. Then no
more letters nor any news at aU. More often
there is some kind of touch kept with the
people at home. Letters come at Christmas
time, often with very welcome gifts of money
in them. There are photographs. Molly,
whom we all knew when she was a bare-footed
child running home from school, whom we
remember as a half -grown girl climbing into
her father's cart on market days, appears al
most a stranger in her picture. Her clothes
are grand beyond our imagining. Her face
has a new look in it. There are few Irish
country houses in which such photographs are
not shown with a mixture of pride and grief.
It is a fine thing that Molly is so grand. It is
a sad thing that Molly is so strange.
[314]

THE IRISHMAN ABROAD
Sometimes, but not very often, a boy or girl
comes home again, like a frightened child to a
mother. America is too hard for some of us.
These are beaten and return to the old poverty,
preferring it because the ways of Irish pov
erty are less strenuous than the ways of Amer
ican success. Sometimes, but this is rare too,
a young man or woman returns, not beaten
but satisfied with moderate success. These
bring with them money, the girl a marriage
portion for herself, the man enough to restock
his father's farm, which he looks to inherit in
the future. Sometimes older people come back
to buy land, build houses and settle down. But
these are always afterward strangers in Irish
life. They never recapture the spirit of it.
They have worked in America, thought in
America, breathed in America. America has
marked them as hers and they are ours no
longer though they come back to us.
Often we have passing visits from those who
left us. The new easiness of traveling and the
comparative comfort of the journey make
these visits commoner than they were. Our
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friends come back for two months or three. It
is wonderful to see how quickly they seem to
fall into the old ways. The young man, who
was perhaps an insurance agent in New York,
will fold away his city clothes and turn to with
a loy at cutting turf. The girl, who got out
of the train so fine to look at that her own
father hardly dared to greet her, wiU be out
next day in the fields making hay with her sis
ters and brothers. But there is a restlessness
about these visitors of ours. They want us to
do new things. They find much amiss which
we had not noticed. They are back with us
and glad to be back; but America is calling
them all the time. There is very much that we
cannot give. Soon they will go again, and any
tears shed at the second parting are ours, not
theirs. There are many histories of Ireland dealing
sometimes with the whole, sometimes with this
or that part of her story. They are written
with the passion of patriots, with the bitterness
of enemies, with the blind fury of partisans,
with the cold justice of scientific men who
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THE IRISHMAN ABROAD
stand aloof. None of them are wholly satis
factory as histories of England are, or his
tories of America. No one can write a history
of Ireland which wUl set forth inteUigently
Ireland's place in the world. We wait for the
coming of some larger-minded man who wUl
write the history, not of Ireland, but of the
Irish. In one respect it is not with us as it is
with other nations. Their stories center in
their homes. Their conquerors go forth, but
return again. Their thinkers live amid the
scenes on which their eyes first opened. Their
contributions to human knowledge are con
nected in all men's minds with their own lands.
The statesmen of other nations rule their own
people, buUd empires on which their own flag
flies. The workmen of other nations, captains
of industry or sweating laborers, make wealth
in their home lands. It has never been so
with us.
Our historian when he comes and writes of
us may take as the motto of his book Virgil's
comment on the honey-making of the bees.
"Sic vos non vobis." Long ago we spread the
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FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
gospel of the Cross over the dark places of
Europe. The monasteries of our monks, the
churches of our missionary preachers were
everywhere. But our own land is still the prey
of that acrimonious theological bitterness which
is of all things the most utterly opposed to the
spirit of Christ. So we, but not for ourselves,
made sweetness. Kant is a German. Berg-
son is a Frenchman. All the world knows it.
Who knows or cares that John Scotus Erigena
or Bishop Berkeley were Irish? The great
ness of their names has shed no luster over us.
Our captains and soldiers have fought and
won under every flag in Europe and under the
Stars and Stripes of America. Under our
own flag they rarely fought and never won.
Statesmen of our race have been among the
governors of almost every nation under the
sun. Our own land we have never governed
yet. The names of Swift, of Goldsmith, of
Sheridan, of a score of other men of letters add
to the glory of the record of English literature,
not of ours. Our people by their toil of mind
and muscle have made other lands rich in
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THE IRISHMAN ABROAD
manufacture and commerce. Ireland remains
poor. That is why there is not and cannot be a his
tory of Ireland. It is never in Ireland that
our history has been made. The threads of our
story are ours, spun at home, but they are
woven into splendid fabrics elsewhere, not in
Ireland. But the history of the Irish people
will be a great work when it is written. There
will be strange chapters in it, and none
stranger than those which tell of our part in
the making of America. It wUl be a record
of mingled good and evil, but it wUl always
have in it the elements of high romance. From
the middle of the 18th century, when the tide
of emigration set westward from Ulster,
down to to-day when with slackening force it
flows from Connaught, those who went have
always been the men and women for whom life
at home seemed hopeless. There was no prom
ise of good for them here. But in spite of the
intolerable sadness of their going, in spite of
the fact that at home they were beaten men,
there was in them some capacity for doing
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FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO
things. We can succeed, it seems, elsewhere
but not here. This is the strange law which
has governed our history. We recognize its
force everywhere for centuries back. America
gives the latest example of its working. An
Irishman returns from a visit to America won
dering, despairing, hoping. The wonder is in
him because he knows those who went and has
seen the manner of their going. Success for
them seemed impossible, yet very often they
have succeeded. The despair is in him because
he knows that it has always been in other lands,
not in their own that our people succeed, and
because there is no power which can alter the
decrees of destiny. But hope survives in him,
flickering, because what our people can do else
where they can certainly do at home if only
we can discover the solution of the mafignant
riddle of our failure.

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