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AMERICA AND THE AMERICANS
From a French point of view
London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

America To-Day

Observations &' Reflections

By
William Archer

London
William Heinemann
1900

PREFACE
The letters and essays which make up this little
book appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette Sind Pall Mall
Magazine respectively, and are reprinted by kind
permission of the Editors of these periodicals. My
original intention in crossing the Atlantic was simply
to make a study of the American stage. The en
largement of my scheme, to which this book owes its
existence, was due to the personal suggestion of Mr.
Astor, whose encouragement overcame the diffidence
I felt in venturing so far beyond the limits of my own
narrow province. Whether Mr. Astor's encourage
ment was well inspired it is for the reader to deter
mine. Let me only say that while no one can
recognise more clearly than I the superficiality of the
hasty survey here recorded, I should have been
exceedingly sorry not to have put on record a few of
the innumerable pleasant impressions I received
during my eight-weeks' stay in the United States.

PREFACE
The letters which form the first part of the book
were published in the New York Times (simul
taneously with their appearance in England) under
the title of " American Jottings." This word exactly
describes them ; they are jottings and no more. As
the term, however, seemed scarcely applicable to
the essays composing the second part of the book, I
was forced to choose for it a more general, and I
fear more pretentious, title.
In the letters, and in the last of the essays, I
have inserted a few passages which were in my
mind, if not on paper, from the first, and were
omitted only from considerations of space. All after
thoughts have been added either in footnotes or in
postscripts. The essay on "American Literature,"
which appeared in the Pall Mall Magazine about
eighteen months ago, has been largely re-written
and brought up to date.
London, October 31, 1899.

FACE

CONTENTS PART I
OBSERVATIONS
Letter I: The Straits of New York — When is a
Ship not a Ship ? — Nationality of Passengers —
A Dream Realised  3
Letter II : Fog in New York Harbour— The Cus
toms — The Note-Taker's Hypersesthesia — A
Literary Car-Conductor — Mr. Kipling and the
American Public — ^The City of Elevators . . ii
Letter III : New York a much-maligned City — Its
Charm — Mr. Steevens's Antitheses — New York
compared with Other Cities — Its Slums — Ad
vertisements — Architecture in New York and
Philadelphia  20
Letter IV : Absence of Red Tape — " Rapid Transit "
in New York — The Problem and its Solution —
The Whirl of Life— New York by Night— The
" White Magic " of the Future .... 32
Letter V : Character and Culture — American Uni
versities—Is the American " Electric " or Phleg
matic ? — Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie —
Postscript : The University System . . , 43

CONTENTS
PAGE
Letter VI : Washington in April — A Metropolis in
the Making — The White House, the Capitol, and
the Library of Congress — The Symbolism of
Washington  5g
Letter VII: American Hospitality — Instances —
Conversation and Story-Telling — Over -Profusion
in Hospitality — Expensiveness of Life in America
— The American Barber — Postscript : An Anglo-
American Club  6
Letter VIII : Boston — Its Resemblance to Edin
burgh — Concord, Walden Pond, and Sleepy
Hollov/ — Is the " Yankee " Dying Out ? —
America for the Americans— Detroit and Buffalo
—The "Middle West"  78
Letter IX : Chicago — Its Splendour and Squalor —
Mammoth Buildings — Wind, Dust, and Smoke —
Culture — Chicago's Self-Criticism — Postscript :
Social Service in America  87
Letter X: New York in Spring — Central Park —
New York not an Ill-governed City— The United
States Post Office— The Express System — Vale
dictory  99

PART II
REFLECTIONS
North and South  m
The Republic and the Empire . . . .138
American Literature  168
The American Language  181
viii

PART I
OBSERVATIONS

LETTER I
The Straits of New York — When is a Ship not a Ship ?
— Nationality of Passengers — A Dream ReaUsed.
R.M.S. Lucania.
The Atlantic Ocean is geographically a misnomer,
socially and politically a dwindling superstition.
That is the chief lesson one learns — and one has
barely time to take it in — between Queenstown and
Sandy Hook. Ocean forsooth I this little belt of
blue water that we cross before we know where we
are, at a single hop-skip-and-jump I From north
to south, perhaps, it may still count as an ocean ;
from east to west we have narrowed it into a strait.
Why, even for the seasick (and on this point I speak
with melancholy authority) the Atlantic has not half
the terrors of the Straits of Dover ; comfort at sea
being a question, not of the size of the waves, but
of the proportion between the size of the waves and
the size ofthe ship. Our imagination is still beguiled
by the fuss the world made over Columbus, whose
exploit was intellectually and morally rather than
physically great. The map-makers, too, throw dust
3

AMERICA TO-DAY
in our eyes by their absurd figment of two " hemi
spheres," as though Nature had sliced her orange in
two, and held one half in either hand. We are slow
to realise, in fact, that time is the only true measure
of space, and that London to-day is nearer to New
York than it was to Edinburgh a hundred and fifty
years ago. The essential facts of the case, as they
at present stand, would come home much more
closely to the popular mind of both continents if we
called this strip of sea the Straits of New York,
and classed our liners, not as the successors of
Columbus's caravels, but simply as what they are :
giant ferry-boats plying with clockwork punctuality
between the twin landing-stages of the English-
speaking world.
To-morrow we shall be in New York harbour ; it
seems but yesterday that we slipped out of the Cove
of Cork. As I look at the chart on the companion
staircase, where our daily runs are marked off, I feel
the abject poverty of our verbs of speed. We have
not rushed, or dashed, or hurtled along — these words
do grave injustice to the majesty of our progress. I
can think of nothing but the strides of some Titan,
so vast as to beggar even the myth-making imagina
tion. It is not seven-league, no, nor hundred-league
boots that we wear — we do our 520, 509, 518, 530
knots at a stride. Nor is it to be imagined that we
are anywhere near the limit of speed. Already the
Lucania' s record is threatened by the Oceanic; and
the Oceanic, if she fulfils her promises, will only spur
4

THE ATLANTIC FERRY
on some still swifter Titan to the emprise.* Then,
again, it is hard to believe that the difficulties are
insuperable which as yet prevent us from utilising,
as a point of arrival and departure, that almost mid-
Atlantic outpost of the younger world, Newfound
land — or at the least Nova Scotia. By this means the
actual waterway between the two continents will be
shortened by something like a third. What with
the acceleration of the ferry-boats and the narrowing
of the ferry, it is surely no visionary Jules-Vernism
to look forward to the time when one may set foot on
American soil within, say, sixty-five hours of leaving
the Liverpool landing-stage ; supposing, that is to
say, that steam navigation be not in the meantime
superseded. As yet, to be sure, the Atlantic possesses a certain
strategic importance as a coal-consuming force. To
contract its time-width we have to expand our coal-
bunkers ; and the ship which has crossed it in six
days, be she ferry-boat or cruiser, is apt to arrive,
as it were, a little out of breath. But even this
drawback can scarcely be permanent. Science must
presently achieve the storage of motive-power in
some less bulky form than that of crude coal. Then
* The Oceanic, it appears, is designed to break the record in
punctuality, not in speed. Nevertheless there are several indi
cations that our engineers are not resting on their oars, but will
presently put on another spurt. The very shortest Atlantic pas
sage, I understand, has been made by a German ship. Surely
England and America cannot long be content to leave the record
for speed, of all things, in the hands of Germany.
5

AMERICA TO-DAY
the Atlantic will be as extinct, politically, as the
Great Wall of China; or, rather, it will retain for
America the abiding significance which the " silver
streak " possesses for England — an effectual bulwark
against aggression, but a highway to influence and
world-moulding power.
Think of the time when the Lucania shall have
fallen behind in the race, and shall be plying to
Boston or Philadelphia, while larger and swifter
hotel-ships shall put forth almost daily from Liver
pool, Southampton, and New York ! Think of the
growth of intercourse which even the next ten years
will probably bring, and the increase of mutual
comprehension involved in it ! Is it an illusion of
mine, or do we not already observe in England,
during the past year, a new interest and pride in our
trans-Atlantic service, which now ranks close to the
Navy in the popular affections ? It dates, I think,
from those first days of the late war, when the Paris
was vainly supposed to be in danger of capture by
Spanish cruisers, and when all England was wishing
her god-speed.
For my own taste, this sumptuous hotel-ship is
rather too much of a hotel and too little of a ship, I
resent the absolute exclusion of the passengers from
even the most distant view of the propelling and
guiding forces. Practically, the Lucania is a ship
without a deck ; and the deck is to the ship what
the face is to the human being. The so-called pro
menade-deck is simply a long roofed balcony on

THE SHIP HOTEL
either side of the hotel building. It is roofed by the
"shade deck," which is rigidly reserved "for navi
gators only." There the true life of the ship goes
on, and we are vouchsafed no ghmpse of it. One is
reminded of the Chinaman's description of a three-
masted screw steamer with two funnels : " Thlee
piecee bJimboo, two piecee puff-puff, wklk-along
inside, no can see." Here the "walk-along," the
motive power, is " inside " with a vengeance. I have
not at this moment the remotest conception where
the engine-room is, or where lies the descent to that
Avernus. Not even the communicator-gong can be
heard in the hotel. I have not set eyes on an en
gineer or a stoker, scarcely on a sailor. The captain
I do not even know by sight. Occasionally an officer
flits past, on his way up to or down from the " shade
deck " ; I regard him with awe, and guess reverently
at his rank. The ship's company, as I know it,
consists of the purser, the doctor, and the army of
stewards and stewardesses. The roof of the pro
menade-deck weighs upon my brain. It shuts off
the better half of the sky, the zenith. In order even
to see the masts and funnels of the ship one has to
go far forward or far aft and crane one's neck
upward. Not a single human being have I ever
descried on the " shade-deck " or on the towering
bridge. The genii of the hundred-league boots
remain not only inaccessible but invisible. The
effect is inhuman, uncanny. All the luxury of the
saloons and staterooms does not compensate for the
7

AMERICA TO-DAY
lack of a frank, straightforward deck. The Lucania,
in my eyes, has no individuality as a ship. It — I
instinctively say "it," not "she" — is merely a rather
low-roofed hotel, with sea-sickness superadded to all
the comforts of home. But a first-rate hotel it is :
the living good and plentiful, if not superfine, the
service excellent, and the charges, all things con
sidered, remarkably moderate.
What chiefly strikes one about the passengers is
their homogeneity of race. Apart from a small (but
influential) Semitic contingent, the whole body is
thoroughly Anglo-Saxon in type. About half are
British, I take it, and half American ; but in most
cases the nationality is to be distinguished only by
accent, not by any characteristic of appearance or of
demeanour. The strongly-marked Semites always
excepted, there is not a man or woman among the
saloon passengers who strikes me as a foreigner, a
person of alien race. I do not feel my sympathies
chill toward my very agreeable table-companion be
cause he drinks ice-water at breakfast ; and he views
my tea with an eye of equal tolerance. It is not till
one looks at the second-class passengers that one
sees signs of the heterogeneity of the American
people ; and then one remembers with misgivings
the emigrants who crowded on board at Queenstown,
with their household goods done up in bundles and
gaping, ill-roped boxes. The thought of them recalls
an anecdote which was new to me the other day,
and may be fresh to some of my readers. In any

LANDFALL
case it will bear repetition. An Irishman coming to
America for the first time, found New York gay with
bunting as he sailed up the harbour. He asked an
American fellow-passenger the reason of the display,
and was told it was in honour of Evacuation Day.
" And what's that ? " he inquired. " Why, the day
the British troops evacuated New York." Presently
an Englishman came up to the Irishman and asked
him if he knew what the flags were for. "For
Evacuation Day, to be sure I " was the reply.
" What is Evacuation Day ? " asked the Sassenach.
" The day we drove you blackguards out of the
country, bedad ! " was the immediate reply. If not
literally true, the story is at least profoundly typical.
There is a hght on our starboard bow : my first
glimpse, for two and twenty years, of America. It
has been literally the dream of my life to revisit the
United States. Not once, but fifty times, have I
dreamed that the ocean (which loomed absurdly
large even in my waking thoughts) was comfortably
crossed, and I was landing in New York. I can
clearly recall at this moment some of the fantastic
shapes the city put on in my dreams — utterly differ
ent, of course, from my actual recollections of it.
Well, that dream is now realised ; the gates of the
Western world are opening to me. What experience
awaits me I know not ; but this I do know, that the
emotion with which I confront it is not one of idle
curiosity, or even of calmly sympathetic interest. It
9

AMERICA TO-DAY
is not primarily to my intelligence, but to my ima
gination, that the word "America" appeals. To
many people that word conveys none but prosaic
associations ; to me it is electric with romance.
Only one other word in existence can give me a
comparable thrill ; the word one sees graven on a
roadside pillar as one walks down the southern
slope of an Alpine pass : ITALIA. But that word
carries the imagination backward only, whereas
AMERICA stands for the meeting-place of the past
and the future. What the land of Cooper and Mayne
Reid was to my boyish fancy, the land of Washing
ton and Lincoln, Hawthorne and Emerson, is to my
adult thoughts. Does this mean that I approach
America in the temper of a romantic schoolboy ?
Perhaps ; but, bias for bias, I would rather own to
that of the romantic schoolboy than to that of the
cynical Old-Worldling.

10

LETTER II
Fog in New York Harbour— The Customs— The Note-
Taker's Hypersesthesia- A Literary Car-Conductor—
Mr. Kipling and the American Public— The City of
Elevators. New York.
By way of making us feel quite at home, New York
receives us with a dank Scotch mist. On the shores
of Staten Island the leafless trees stand out grey
and gaunt against the whity-grey snow, a legacy, no
doubt, from the great blizzard. Though I keep a
sharp look-out, I can descry no Liberty Enlightening
the World. Liberty {absit omen .') is wrapped away
in grimy cotton-wool. There, however, are the
" sky-scraper " buildings, looming out through the
mist, like the Jotuns in Niflheim of Scandinavian
mythology. They are grandiose, certainly, and not,
to my thinking, ugly. That word has no application
in this context. " Pretty " and "ugly" — why should
we for ever carry about these aesthetic labels in our
pockets, and insist on dabbing thera down on every
thing that comes in our way ? If we cannot get,
with Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und BSse, we might
at least allow our souls an occasional breathing-space
II

AMERICA TO-DAY
in a region " Back of the Beautiful and the Ugly,"
as they say in President's English. While I am
trying to formulate my feelings with regard to this
deputation of giants which the giant Republic sends
down to the waterside to welcome us, behold, we
have crept up abreast of the Cunard wharf, and
there stands a little crowd of human welcomers,
waving handkerchiefs and American flags. An
energetic tug-boat butts her head gallantly into the
flank of the huge liner, in order to help her round.
She glides up to her berth, the gangway is run out,
and at last I set foot upon American — lumber.
What are my emotions ? I have only one ; single,
simple, easily-expressed : dread of the United States
Custom-House. Its terrors and its tyrannies have
been depicted in such lurid colours on the other side
that I am almost surprised to observe no manifest
ogres in uniform caps, but only, it would seem,
ordinary human beings. And, on closer acquaintance
ship, they prove to be civil and even helpful human
beings, with none of the lazy superciliousness which
so often characterises the European toll-taker. At
first the scene is chaotic enough, but, by aid of an
arrangement in alphabetical groups, cosmos soon
emerges. The system by which you declare your
dutiable goods and are assigned an examiner, and if
necessary an appraiser, is admirably simple and free
from red-tape. I shall not describe it, for it would
be more tedious in description than in act. Enough
that the whole thing is conducted, so far as I could

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE
see, promptly, efficiently, and with perfect good
temper. One brief discussion I heard, between an
official and an American citizen, who was heavily
assessed on some article or articles which he declared
to have been manufactured in America and taken
out of the country by himself only a few months
before. The official insisted that there was no proof
of this ; but just as the discussion threatened to
become an altercation (a " scrap " they would call it
here) some one found a way out. The goods were
forwarded in bond to the traveller's place of residence
(Hartford, I think), where he declared that he could
produce proof of their American origin. For myself,
I had to pay two dollars and a half on some magic-
lantern slides. I could have imported the lantern,
had I owned one, free of charge, as a philosophical
instrument used in my profession ; but the courts
have held, it appears, that though the lantern comes
under that rubric, the slides do not. I cannot pretend
to grasp the distinction, or to admire the system which
necessitates it. But whatever the economic merits or
demerits of the tariff, I take pleasure in bearing testi
mony to the civility with which I found it enforced.
My companion and I express our baggage to our
hotel and jump on the platform of a horse-car on
West-street, skirting the wharves. The roadway is
ill paved, certainly, and the clammy atmosphere has
congealed on its surface into an oily black mud ;
while in the middle of the side streets one can see
relics of the blizzard in the shape of httle grubby
13

AMERICA TO-DAY
glaciers slowly oozing away. The prospect is not
enlivening ; nor do the low brick houses, given up
to nondescript longshore traffic, and freely punctuated
with gilt-lettered saloons, add to its impressiveness.
Squalid it is without doubt, this particular aspect of
New York ; but what is the squalor of West Street
to that of Limehouse or Poplar ? Are our own dock
thoroughfares always paved to perfection ? And if
we had a blizzard like that of three weeks ago, how
long would its vestiges linger in the side-streets of
Millwall ? Even as I mark the grimness of the scene,
I am conscious of a sort of hypersesthesia against
which one ought to be on guard. The note-taking
traveller is very apt to forget that the mere act of
note-taking upsets his normal perceptivity. He
becomes feverishly observant, morbidly critical. He
compares incommensurables, and flies to ideal stand
points. He is so eager to descry differences that
he overlooks similarities — nay, identities. Thus only
can I account for many statements about New York,
occurring in the pages of recent and reputable
travellers, both French and English, which I find to
be exaggerated almost to the point of monstrosity.
What should we say of an American who should
criticise the Commercial Road from the point of view
of Fifth Avenue ? After a week's experience of New
York I cannot but fancy that certain travellers I
could mention have been guilty of similar errors of
proportion. To return to our street-car platform. The con-
H

A HORSE-CAR CRITIC
ductor gathers from our conversation that we have
just landed from the English steamer, and he at once
overflows upon the one great topic of all classes in
New York. " I s'pose you've heard," he says, " that
Kipling has been very ill ? " Yes, we had heard of
his illness before we left England. "He's pulling
through now, though," says the conductor with heart
felt satisfaction. That, too, we had ascertained on
board. " He ought to be the next poet-laureate,"
our friend continues eagerly ; "he don't follow no
beaten tracks. He cuts a road for himself, every
time, right through ; and a mighty good road, too I "
He then proceeded to make some remarks, which in
the rattle of the street I did not quite catch, about
" carpet-bag knights." I gathered that he held a low
opinion of the present wearer of the bays, and con
founded him (not inexcusably) with one or other of
his titled compeers. My companion and I were too
much taken aback to pursue the theme and ascertain
our friend's opinions on Mr. Ruskin, Mr. Meredith,
Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Marie CorelU.
Think of it ! We have travelled three thousand
miles to find a tram-conductor whose eyes glisten
as he tells us that Kipling is better, and who dis
cusses with a great deal of sense and acuteness the
question of the English poet-laureateship ! Could
anything be more marvellous or more significant ?
Said I not well when I declared the Atlantic Ocean
of less account than the Straits of Dover ?
This was indeed a welcome to the New World.
IS

AMERICA TO-DAY
Fate could not have devised a more ingenious and at
the same time tactful way of making us feel at
home ; though at home, indeed, a Mile End 'bus con
ductor is scarcely the authority one would turn to for
enlightened views upon the Laureateship. The mere
fact of our friend's having heard of Mr. Kipling's
existence struck us as surprising enough, until we
learned that the poet of Tommy Atkins is at the
present moment quite the most famous person in the
United States. When his illness was at its height,
hourly bulletins were posted in factories and work
shops, and people meeting in the streets asked each
other, " How is he ? " without deeming it necessary
to supply an antecedent to the pronoun. It was
grammatically as well as spiritually a case of " Kip
ling understood."
At a low music-hall into which I strayed one
evening, one of the nigger corner-men sang a song
of which the nature may be sufficiently divined
from the refrain, " And the tom-cat was the cause
of it all." This lyric being loudly encored, the
performer came forward, and, to my astonishment,
began to recite a long series of doggerel verses upon
Mr. Kipling's illness, setting forth how
" His strong will made him famous, and his strong will pulled
him through."
They were imbecile, they were maudlin, they
were in the worst possible taste. So far as the
reciter was concerned, they were absolutely insincere
clap-trap. But the crowded audience received them
i6

POPULAR HEROES
with rapture ; and the very fact that an astute caterer
should serve up this particular form of clap- trap showed
how the sympathy with Mr. Kipling had permeated
even the most un-literary stratum of the public. To
an Englishman, nothing can be more touching than
to find on every hand this enthusiastic affection for
the poet of the Seven Seas — a writer, too, who has
not dealt over-tenderly with American susceptibilities,
and has, by sheer force of genius, lived down a good
deal of unpopularity.
For the moment, neither President McKinley
nor Mr. Fitzsimmons can vie with him in noto
riety. His sole rival as a popular hero is Admiral
Dewey, whose name is in every mouth and on
every hoarding. He is the one living celebrity
whom the Italian image-vendors admit to their
pantheon, where he rubs shoulders with Shake
speare, Dante, Beethoven, and the Venus of Milo.
It is related that, at a Camp of Exercise last year,
President McKinley chanced to stray beyond bounds,
and on returning was confronted by a sentry, who
dropped his rifle and bade him halt. " I have for
gotten the pass-word," said Mr. McKinley, " but if you
will look at me you will see that I am the President."
" If you were George Dewey himself," was the reply,
" you shouldn't get by here without the password."
This anecdote has a flavour of ancient history, but it
is aptly brought up to date.*
* A similar story is told of the Confederate President. Chal
lenged by a sentinel, he said, " Look at me and you will see that
17 B

AMERICA TO-DAY
We bid adieu to our poetical conductor, take a
cross-town car, and are presently pushing at the re
volving doors — a draught-excluding plate-glass turn
stile — of a vast red-brick hotel, luxurious and laby
rinthine. A short colloquy with a clerk at the bureau,
and we find ourselves in a gorgeously upholstered
elevator, whizzing aloft to the thirteenth floor. Not
the top floor — far from it. If you could slice off the
stories above the thirteenth, as you slice off the top
of an egg, and plant them down in Europe, they
would of themselves make a biggish hotel according
to our standards. This first elevator voyage is the
prelude to how many others ! For the past week I
seem to have spent the best part of my time in ele
vators. I must have travelled miles on miles at right
angles to the earth's surface. If all my ascensions
could be put together, they would out-top Olympus
and make Ossa a wart.
This is the first sensation of life in New York—
you feel that the Americans have practically added
a new dimension to space. They move almost as
much on the perpendicular as on the horizontal
plane. When they find themselves a little crowded,
they simply tilt a street on end and call it a sky
scraper. This hotel, for example (the Waldorf-
Astoria), is nothing but a couple of populous streets
soaring up into the air instead of crawling along the
ground. When I was here in 1 877, I remember look-
I am President Davis." " Well," said the soldier, " you do look
like a used postage-stamp. Pass, President Davis ! "
18

MANSIONS IN THE SKY
ing with wonder at the Tribune building, hard by the
Post Office, which was then considered a marvel of
architectural daring. Now it is dwarfed into abso
lute insignificance by a dozen Cyclopean structures
on every hand. It looks as diminutive as the Adelphi
Terrace in contrast with the Hotel Cecil. I am
credibly informed that in some of the huge down
town buildings they run " express " elevators, which
do not stop before the fifteenth, eighteenth, twentieth
floor, as the case may be. Some such arrangement
seems very necessary, for the elevator Bummelzugs,
which stops at every floor, take quite an appreciable
slice out of the average New York day. I wonder
that American ingenuity has not provided a system
of pneumatic passenger-tubes for lightning communi
cation with these aerial suburbs, these " mansions in
the sky."

19

LETTER III
New York a much-maligned City — Its Charm— Mr.
Steevens's Antitheses — New York compared with Other
Cities — Its Slums — Advertisements — Architecture in
New York and Philadelphia. New York.
Many superlatives have been applied to New York
by her own children, by the stranger within her
gates, and by the stranger without her gates, at a safe
distance. I, a newcomer, venture to apply what I
believe to be a new superlative, and to call her the
most maligned city in the world. Even sympathetic
observers have exaggerated all that is uncouth,
unbeautiful, unhealthy in her life, and overlooked,
as it seems to me, her all-pervading charm. One
must be a pessimist indeed to feel no exhilaration
on coming in contact with such intensity of upward-
striving fife as meets one on every hand in this
league-long island city, stretching oceanward
between her eastern Sound and her western estuary,
and roofed by a radiant dome of smokeless sky.
" Upward-striving life," I say, for everywhere and
in every branch of artistic effort the desire for beauty
is apparent, while at many points the achievement is

PLASTICITY
remarkable and inspiriting. I speak, of course,
mainly of material beauty ; but it is hard to believe
that so marked an impulse toward the good as one
notes in architecture, painting, sculpture, and litera
ture, can be unaccompanied by a cognate impulse
toward moral beauty, even in relation to civic life.
The New Yorker's pride in New York is much more
alert and active than the Londoner's pride in
London ; and this feeling must ere long make itself
effective and dominant. For the great advantage, it
seems to me, that America possesses over the Old
World is its material and moral plasticity. Even
among the giant structures of this city, one feels that
there is nothing rigid, nothing oppressive, nothing
inaccessible to the influence of changing conditions.
If the buildings are Cyclopean, so is the race that
reared them. The material world seems as clay on
the potter's wheel, visibly taking on the impress of
the human spirit ; and the human spirit, as embodied
in this superbly vital people, seems to be visibly
thrilling to all the forces of civilisation.
One of the latest, and certainly one of the most
keen-sighted, of English travellers in America is
Mr. G. W. Steevens, a master journalist if ever
there was one. I turn to his Land of the Dollar and
I find New York writ down " uncouth, formless,
piebald, chaotic." " Never have I seen," says
Mr. Steevens, " a city more hideous. . . . Nothing
is given to beauty; everything centres in hard
UtiHty." Mr. Steevens must forgive me for saying

AMERICA TO-DAY
that this is simply libellous. It is true, I do not
quote him fairly; I omit his laudatory antitheses.
The truncated phrase in the above passage reads
in the original "more hideous or more splendid,"
and after averring that "nothing is given to beauty,"
Mr. Steevens immediately proceeds to celebrate the
beauty of many New York buildings. Are we to
understand, then, that the architects thought of
nothing but " hard utility," and that it was some
sesthetic divinity that shaped their blocks, rough-
hew them how they might ? For my part, I cannot
see how truth is to result from the clash of con
tradictory falsehoods. There are a few cities more
splendid than New York ; many more hideous. In
point of concentrated architectural magnificence,
there is nothing in New York to compare with the
Vienna Ringstrasse, from the Opera House to the
Votive Church. In the splendour which proceeds
from ordered uniformity and spaciousness, Paris is,
of course, incomparable; while a Scotchman may
perhaps be excused for holding that, as regards
splendour of situation, Edinburgh is hard to beat.
Nor is there any single prospect in New York so
impressive as the panorama of London from
Waterloo Bridge, when it happens to be visible—
that imperial sweep of river frontage from the
Houses of Parliament to the Tower. Except in the
new region, far up the Hudson, New York shares
with Dublin the disadvantage of turning her meaner
aspects to her river fronts, though the majesty of

SPLENDOUR AND SQUALOR
the rivers themselves, and the grandiose outlines of
the Brooklyn Bridge, largely compensate for this
defect. In the main, then, the splendour of New
York is as yet sporadic. It is emerging on every
hand from comparative meanness and commonplace.
At no point can one as yet say, " This prospect is
finer than anything Europe can show." But every
where there are purple patches of architectural
splendour ; and one can easily foresee the time when
Fifth Avenue, the whole circuit of Central Park, and
the up-town riverside region will be magnificent
beyond compare.
As for the superlative hideousness attributed by
Mr. Steevens to New York, I can only inquire, in
the local idiom : " What is the matter with Glas
gow ? " Or, . indeed, with Hull ? or Newcastle ? or
the north-east regions of London ? No doubt New
York contains some of the very worst slums in the
world. That melancholy distinction must be con
ceded her. But simply to the outward eye the slums
of New York have not the monotonous hideousness
of our English "warrens of the poor." In spite ofher
hard winter. New York cannot quite forget that her
latitude is that of Madrid and Naples, not of London,
or even of Paris. Her slums have a Southern air
about them, a variety of contour and colour — in
some aspects one might almost say a gaiety — un
known to Whitechapel or Bethnal Green. For one
thing, the ubiquitous balconies and fire escapes serve
of themselves to break the monotony of line, and
23

AMERICA TO-DAY
lend, as it were, a peculiar texture to the scene ; to
say nothing of the opportunities they afford for the
display of multifarious shreds and patches of colour.
Then the houses themselves are often brightly, not
to say loudly, painted; so that in the clear, sparkling
atmosphere characteristic of New York, the most
squalid slum puts on a many-coloured Southern
aspect, which suggests Naples or Marseilles rather
than the back streets of any English city. Add to
this that the inhabitants are largely of southern
origin, and are apt, whenever the temperature will
permit, to carry on the main part of their daily
lives out of doors ; and you can understand that,
appalling as poverty may be in New York, the
average slum is not so dank, dismal, and suicidally
monotonous as a street of a similar status in
London. "The whole city," says Mr. Steevens, "is plastered,
and papered, and painted with advertisements";
and he instances the huge " H-O " (whatever that
may mean) which confronts one as one sails up the
harbour, and the omnipresent "Castoria" placards.
Here Mr. Steevens shows symptoms of the note-
taker's hypersesthesia. The facts he states are
undeniable, but the implication that advertisement
is carried to greater excess in New York than
in London and other European cities seems to me
utterly groundless. The " H-O " advertisement is
not one whit more monstrous than, for instance, the
huge announcements of cheap clothing-shops, &c.,
24

ADVERTISEMENTS
painted all over the ends of houses, that deface the
railway approaches to Paris ; nor is it so flagrant
and aggressive as the illuminated advertisements of
whisky and California wines that vulgarise the
august spectacle of the Thames by night. It is
true that the proprietors of " Castoria " have occu
pied nearly every blank wall that is visible from
Brooklyn Bridge ; but their advertisements are so
far from garish that I should scarcely have noticed
them had not Mr. Steevens called my attention to
them. Sky-signs, as Mr. Steevens admits, are
unknown in New York ; so are the flashing out-
and-in electric advertisements which make night
hideous in London. One or two large steady-
burning advertisements irradiate Madison Square
of an evening ; but being steady they are com
paratively inoffensive. Twenty years ago, when I
crossed the continent from San Francisco, I noticed
with disgust the advertisements stencilled on every
second rock in the canyons of Nevada, and defacing
every coign of vantage around Niagara. Whether
this abuse continues I know not; but I know that
the pill placards and sauce puffs which blossom in
our English meadows along every main line of
railway are quite as offensive. Far be it from me
to deny that advertising is carried to deplorable
excesses in America ; but in picking this out as a
differentia, Mr. Steevens shows that his intentness
of observation in New York has for the moment
dimmed his mental vision of London. It is a case,
25

AMERICA TO-DAY
I fancy, in which the expectation was father to the
thought. Similarly, Mr. Steevens notes, " No chiropodist
worthy of the name but keeps at his door a modelled
human foot the size of a cab-horse ; and other trades
go and do likewise." The " cab-horse " is a monu
mental exaggeration ; but it is true that some
chiropodists use as a sign a foot of colossal pro
portions — the size of a small sheep, let us say, if we
must adopt a zoological standard. So far good ; but
the implication that the streets of New York swarm,
like a scene in a harlequinade, with similarly
Brobdingnagian signs is quite unfounded. Thus it
is, I think, that travellers are apt to seize on isolated
eccentricities or extravagances (have we no mon
strous signs in England ?) and treat them as typical.
Mr. Steevens came to America prepared to find every
thing gigantic, and the chiropodist's foot so agreeably
fulfilled his expectation that he thought it unneces
sary to look any further — "ex pede Herculem."*
The architecture of New York, according to
Mr. Steevens, is " the outward expression of the
freest, fiercest individualism. . . . Seeing it, you
can well understand the admiration of an American
* One method of advertisement which I observed in Chicago
has not yet, so far as I know, been introduced into England.
One of the windows of a vast dry-goods store on State Street
was fitted up as a dentist's parlour ; and when I passed a young
lady was reclining in the operating-chair and having her teeth
stopped, to the no small delectation of a, little crowd which
blocked the side-walk. 26

; HAUSSMANN AVAUNT!
for something ordered and proportioned — for the
Rue de Rivoli or Regent Street." I heard this
admiration emphatically expressed the other day by
one of the foremost and most justly famous of
American authors ; but, unlike Mr. Steevens, I could
not understand it. "What!" I said, "you would
Haussmannize New York I You would reduce the
glorious variety of Fifth Avenue to the deadly
uniformity of the Avenue de I'Opera, where each
block of buildings reproduces its neighbour, as
though they had all been stamped by one gigantic
die 1 " Such an architectural ideal is inconceivable
to me. It is all very well for a few short streets,
for a square or two, for a quadrant like that of
Regent Street, or a crescent or circus like those of
Bath or Edinburgh. But to apply it throughout a
whole quarter of a city, or even throughout the
endless vistas of a great American street, would be
simply maddening. Better the most heaven-storm
ing or sky-scraping audacity of individualism than
any attempt to transform New York into a Fourierist
phalanstery or a model prison. I do not doubt that
there will one day be some legal restriction on
Towers of Babel, and that the hygienic disadvan
tages of the microbe-breeding "well" or air-shaft
will be more fully recognised than they are at
present. A time may come, too, when the ideal of
an unforced harmony in architectural groupings may
replace the now dominant instinct of aggressive
diversity. But whatever developments the future
27

AMERICA TO-DAY
may have in store, I must own my gratitude to the
"fierce individualism" of the present for a new
realisation of the possibilities of architectural beauty
in modern life. At almost every turn in New York
one comes across some building that gives one a
little shock of pleasure. Sometimes, indeed, it is
the pleasure of recognising an old friend in a new
place — a patch of Venice or a chunk of Florence
transported bodily to the New World. The
exquisite tower of the Madison Square Garden, for
instance, is modelled on that of the Giralda, at
Seville ; while the New University Club, on Fifth
Avenue, is simply a Florentine fortress-palace of
somewhat disproportionate height. But along with
a good deal of sheer reproduction of European
models, one finds a great deal of ingenious and
inventive adaptation, to say nothing of a very
delicate taste in the treatment of detail. New York
abounds, it is true, with monuments of more than
one bygone and detestable period of architectural
fashion ; but they are as distinctly survivals from a
dead past as is the wooden shanty which occupies
one of the best sites on Fifth Avenue, in the very
shadow of the new Delmonico's. I wish tasteless,
conventional, and machine-made architecture were
as much of a " back number " in England as it is
here. A practised observer could confidently date
any prominent building in New York, to within a
year or two, by its architectural merit ; and the
greater the merit the later the year.
28

DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE
In short, architecture is here a living art. Go
where you will in these up-town regions, you can
see imagination and cultured intelligence in the act,
as it were, of impressing beauty of proportion and
detail upon brick and terra-cotta, granite and marble.
And domestic or middle-class architecture is not
neglected. The American " master builders " do not
confine themselves to towers and palaces, but give
infinite thought and loving care to " homes for
human beings." The average old-fashioned New
York house, so far as I have seen it, is externally
unattractive (the characteristic material, a sort of
coffee-coloured stone, being truly hideous), and
internally dark, cramped, and stuffy. But modern
houses, even of no special pretensions, are generally
delightful, with their polished wood floors and
fittings, and their airy suites of rooms. The
American architect has a great advantage over his
English colleague in the fact that in furnace-heated
houses only the bedrooms require to be shut off
with doors. The halls and public rooms can be
grouped so that, when the curtains hung in their
wide doorways are drawn back, two, three, or four
rooms are open to the eye at once, and charming
effects of space and light-and-shade can be obtained.
Of this advantage the modern house-planner makes
excellent use, and I have seen more than one quite
modest family house which, without any sacrifice of
comfort, gives one a sense of almost palatial spacious
ness. An architectural exhibition which I saw the
29

AMERICA TO-DAY
other day proved that equal or even greater care and
attention is being bestowed upon the country house,
in which a characteristically American style is being
developed, mainly founded, I take it, upon the suave
and graceful classicism of Colonial architecture.
The wide " piazza " is its most noteworthy feature,
and the opportunity it offers for beautiful cloister-
work is being utilised to the full. Furthermore, the
large attendance at the exhibition showed what a
keen interest the public takes in the art — a symptom
of high vitality.
In Philadelphia, too, where I spent some time last
week, there is a good deal of exquisite architecture
to be seen. The old Philadelphia dwelling house,
" simplex munditiis," with its plain red-brick front
and white marble steps, has a peculiar charm for
me ; but it, of course, is not a product of the present
movement. I do not know the date of some lovely
white marble palazzetti scattered about the Ritten
house Square region ; but the Art Club on Broad
Street, and the Houston Club for Students of the
University of Pennsylvania, are both quite recent
buildings, and both very beautiful. I could mention
several other buildings that are, as they say here,
" pretty good " (a phrase of high commendation) ;
but I had better get safely out of New York before
I enlarge on the merits of Philadelphia. There is
only one city the New Yorker despises more than
Philadelphia, and that is Brooklyn. The New York
schoolboy speaks of Philadelphia as " the place the
3°

GIBES AT PHILADELPHIA
chestnuts go to when they die " ; and to the most
popular wit in New York at this moment (an
Americanised Englishman, by the way) is attributed
the saying, " Mr. So-and-so has three daughters —
two alive, and one in Philadelphia." Six different
people have related this gibe to me ; it is only less
admired than the same gentleman's observation as he
alighted from an electric car at the further end of
the Suspension Bridge, when he heaved a deep sigh,
and reraarked, "In the midst of life we are in
Brooklyn." Another favourite anecdote in New
York is that of the Philadelphian who went to a
doctor and complained of insomnia. The doctor
gave him a great deal of sage advice as to diet,
exercise, and so forth, concluding, " If after that
you haven't better nights, let me see you again."
" But you mistake, doctor," the patient replied ; " I
sleep all right at night— it's in the daytime I can't
sleep ! "

31

LETTER IV
Absence of Red Tape—" Rapid Transit " in New York
—The Problem and its Solution— The Whirl of Life-
New York by Night— The "White Magic" of the
Future. New York.
Whatever turn her fiscal pohcy may take in the
future, I hope America will keep an absolutely pro
hibitive duty upon the import of red tape, while at
the same time discouraging the home manufacture of
the article. The absence of red tape is, to me, pne
of the charms of life in this country. One gathers,
indeed, that the art of running a Circumlocution
Office is carried to a high pitch in the political
sphere. But there it is exercised with a definite
object ; it is a means to an end, cunningly devised
and skilfully applied ; it is not a mere matter of
instinct, inertia, and routine. The Tite Barnacles of
Dickens's satire were perfectly honest people accord
ing to their lights. They were sincerely convinced
that the British Empire would crumble to pieces
the moment its ligaments of red tape were in the
slightest degree relaxed. Their strength lay in the
fact that they represented an innate tendency in the
32

A STOCKING-LIKE CITY
nation, or at any rate in the dominant class at the
period of which Dickens wrote. In America there is
no such innate tendency. The Tite Barnacles do not
imagine or pretend that they are saving the Republic;
they simply make use of a convenient political
machinery to serve their private ends. Therefore
their position, however strong it may seera for the
moment, is insecurely founded. It rests upon no
moral basis, it finds no stronghold in the national
character. Outsiders may think the average Ameri
can citizen strangely tolerant of abuses, and indeed I
find him smiling with placid amusement at things
which, were I in his place, would raake ray blood
boil. But he is under no illusion as to the real
nature of these things. An abuse reraains an abuse
in his eyes, though he may not for the moment see
his way to rectifying it. The red tape which is used
to embarrass justice or " tie up " reforra comraands
no reverence even from the party that employs it.
Cynicism raay endure for the night, but indignation
ariseth in the raorning.
The Araerican character, in a word, does not
naturally run to red tape. Observe, for instance, the
system of transit in New York : it is adrairably
successful in grappling with a very difficult problem,
and its success proceeds from the absence of by
laws and restrictions, the omnipresence of good
nature and coraraon-sense. The problem is rendered
difficult, not only by the enormous numbers to be
conveyed, but by the stocking-like configuration of
33 c

AMERICA TO-DAY
Manhattan Island. The business quarter of New
York is in the foot, the residential quarters in the
calf and knee. Therefore there is a great rush of
people down to the foot in the morning and up to the
knee in the afternoon. The business quarter of
London is like the hub of a wheel, from which the
railway and omnibus lines radiate like spokes. In
New York there is very little radiation or dispersion
of the multitude. Practically the whole tide sets
down a narrow channel in the morning, and up again
in the evening. At the time, then, of these tidal
waves, it is a flat impossibility that transit can be
altogether corafortable. The " elevated " trains and
electric trolleys are overcrowded, certainly ; but you
can always find a place in them, and they carry you
so rapidly that the discomfort is rendered as little
irksome as possible. A society has been forraed, I
see, to agitate against this overcrowding ; but it
seems to me it will only waste its pains. Let
it agitate for an underground railway, by all
means ; and if, as I gather, the underground railway
scheme is obstructed by self-seeking vested interests,
let it do its best to break down the obstruction.
Until some altogether new means of transport are
provided, the attempt to restrict the number of pas
sengers which a car or trolley may carry is, I think,
anti-social, and must prove futile. The force of public
convenience would break the red-tape barrier like a
cobweb. The trains and trolleys follow each other
at the very briefest intervals; it does not seem
34

THE '¦L"ROAD
possible that a greater number should be run on the
existing lines ; and, that being so, there is no alter
native between overcrowding and the far greater
inconvenience of indefinite delay. Fancy having to
" take a number," as they do in Paris, and await your
turn for a seat ! New York would be simply para
lysed. It is needless to point out, of course, that
where steara or electricity is the motive power there
is no cruelty to animals in overcrowding.
The Araerican people, rightly and admirably as it
seems to me, choose the lesser of two evils, and
minimise it by good temper and rautual civility. At a
certain hour of every raorning, the " L " railroad
trains are as densely packed as our Metropolitan trains
on Boat-Race Day. There are people clinging in
clusters to each of the straps, and even the platforras
between the cars are crowded to the very couplings.
It often appears hopelessly irapossible for any new
comer to squeeze in, or for those who are wedged in
the middle of a long car to force their way out. Yet
when the necessity arises, no force has to be applied.
People manage somehow or other to " welcorae the
coraing, speed the parting guest." Every one recog
nises that cantankerous obstructiveness would only
make matters worse, nay, absolutely intolerable.
The first comer makes no attempt to insist upon his
position of advantage, because he knows that to
morrow he may be the last comer. The sense of
individual inconvenience is swamped in the sense of
general convenience. People laugh and rather enjoy
35

AMERICA TO-DAY
the joke when a too sudden start or an abrupt curve
sends a whole group of them cannoning up against
one another. It must be remembered that the transit
is rapid, so that there is no irritating sense of wasted
time : and that the cars are brilliantly lighted, and,
on the whole, well ventilated, so that there is no fog,
smoke, or sulphurous air to get on the nerves and
strain the temper. The scene as a whole, even on
a wet, disagreeable evening, is not depressing, but
rather cheerful. For my part, I regard it with
positive pleasure, as a manifestation of the national
character. Less admirable, to be sure, is the public
acquiescence in the political manoeuvring which
blocks the proposed underground railway. Yet the
opponents of the scherae have doubtless something
to say on their side. It appears, at any rate, that
the profits of the "L" road are not exorbitant. It is
said to be only through overcrowding that it pays
at all. The passengers it seats barely suffice to
cover expenses, and " the profits hang on to the
straps." Idealists hope that when the underground comes
the elevated will go ; but I, as an outsider, cannot
share this hope. In the first place, I don't see how
the mere substitution of one line for another is to
relieve the congestion of traffic ; in the second place,
the elevated seems to me an admirable institution,
which it would be a great pity to abolish. Even
aesthetically there is rauch to be said for it. The-
road itself, to be sure, does not add to the beauty of
-^6

IMAGINARY DISCOMFORTS
the avenues along which it runs, but it is not by any
means the eyesore one might iraagine ; and the trains,
with their light, graceful, and elegantly proportioned
cars, so different from our squat and formless railway
carriages, seem to me a positively beautiful feature
of the city life. They are not very noisy, they are
not very smoky, and they will be smokeless and
almost noiseless when they are run by electricity.
The discomfort they cause to dwellers on the avenues
is, I am sure, greatly exaggerated. People who do
not live on the avenues suffer in their sympathetic
imagination much more than the actual martyrs to
the "L" road suffer in fact. Iraagination raakes
cowards of us all. For my part, I endured agonies
from the rush, whirl and clatter of New York before
I left London ; but here I find nothing that, to
healthy nerves, is not rather enjoyable than other
wise. Neither up town nor down town is the traffic
so dense, the roar and bustle so continuous, as that
of London ; while the service of trains and cars is
so excellent and so simply arranged that it costs
much less thought, effort, and worry to " get about "
in Manhattan than in Middlesex. In saying this
I may perhaps offend American susceptibilities.
There is nothing we moderns are raore apt to brag
of than the nervous overstrain of our life. But
sincerity comes before courtesy, and I must gently
but firraly decline to allow New York a raonopoly
of neurasthenia, or of the conditions that pro
duce it. 37

AMERICA TO-DAY
One great difference is, I take it, that while New
York exhausts it also stimulates, whereas the days
of the year when there is any positive stimulus in
the air of London may be counted on the ten fingers.
Muggy and misty days do occur here, it is true ; but
though the natives tell me that this month of March
has been exceptionally unpleasant, the prevailing
impression I have received is that of a lofty and
radiant vault of sky, with keen, sweet, limpid air that
one drank in eagerly, like sparkling wine. More
than once, after a slight snowfall, I have seen the
air full of dancing particles of light, like the gold
leaf in Dantzic brandy. One of the most irapressive
things I ever saw, though I did not then realise its
tragic significance, was the huge column of smoke
that rose into the clear blue air from the Windsor
Hotel fire. I happened to come out on Fifth
Avenue, close to the Manhattan Club, just as the
tail of the St. Patrick's Day procession was passing ;
and, looking up the avenue after it, I was aware of
a gigantic white pillar standing raotionless, as it
seemed to rae, and cleaving the limitless blue dome
almost to the zenith. The procession moved quietly
on ; no one appeared to take any notice ; and as
fires are ineffective in the daylight, I turned down
the avenue instead of up, and saw no more of the
spectacle. But I shall never forget that " pillar of
cloud by day," standing out in the sunshine, white
as raarble or sea foam.
At night, again, under the purple, star-lit sky,
38

ELECTRICITY
street life in the central region of New York is
indescribably exhilarating. From Union Square to
Herald Square, and even further up, Broadway and
many of the cross streets flash out at dusk into the
most brilliant illuraination. Theatres, restaurants,
stores, are outlined in incandescent lamps ; the huge
electric trolleys come sailing along in an endless
stream, profusely jewelled with electricity ; and down
the thickly gemraed vista of every cross street one
can see the elevated trains, like luminous winged
serpents, skimming through the air.* The great
restaurants are crowded with gaily dressed merry
makers ; and altogether there is a sense of festivity
in the air, without any flagrantly meretricious
eleraent in it, which I plead guilty to finding very
enjoyable. Frora the raorai, and even from the loftily
sesthetic point of view, this gaudy, glittering Vanity
Fair is no doubt open to criticism. What reconciles
me to it sesthetically is the gemlike transparency of
its colouring. Garish it is, no doubt, but not in the
least stifling, smoky, or lurid. The application of
electricity — light divorced from smoke and heat — to
* I find the same idea (a suificiently obvious one) finely ex
pressed by Mr. Richard Hovey in his book of poems entitled
Along t'he Trail :
Look, how the overhead train at the Morningside curve
Loops like a sea-born dragon its sinuous flight,
Loops in the night in and out, high up in the air,
Like a serpent of stars with the coil and undulant reach of
waves. 39

AMERICA TO-DAY
the beautifying of city life is as yet in its infancy.
Even the Araericans have scarcely got beyond the
point of raaking lavish use of the raw raaterial. But
the raw raaterial is beautiful in itself, and in this
pellucid air (the point to which one always returns)
it produces raagical effects.
The other night, at a restaurant, I sat at the
next table to Mr. Edison, and could not but
look with interest and adrairation at his furrowed,
anxious, typically American and truly beautiful
face. Here, if you like, was an example of ner
vous overstrain ; but the soft and yet brilliant
light of the restaurant was in itself a sufficient
reminder that the overstrain had not been incurred
for nothing. Electricity is the true " white magic "
of the future ; and here, with his pallid face and
silver hair, sat the master magician — one of the
great light-givers of the world. A light-giver, I think,
in raore than a merely material sense. The moral
influence of the electric lamp, its effect upon the
hygiene of the soul, has not yet been duly estimated.
But even in a merely material sense, what has not
the Edison raovement, as it may be called, done for
this city of New York ! Its influence is felt on
every hand, in comfort, convenience, and beauty.
The lavish use of electricity, both as an illurainant
and as a motive power, corabines with its cliraate,
its situation, and its architecture to raake New York
one of the raost fascinating cities in the world.
Why good Americans, when they die, should go to

THE WHIRL OF LIFE
Paris, is a theological enigma which raore and raore
puzzles rae.
Postscript. — Since my return to England, I
have carefully reconsidered my impression that the
rush, whirl, and claraour of street life is greater in
London than in New York. Every day confirras it.
On our raain thoroughfares, the streara of omnibuses
is quite as unbroken as the streara of electric and
cable cars in New York ; our van traffic is at least
as heavy ; and we have in addition the host of
creeping " growlers " and darting hansoras which is
alraost without counterpart in New York. I know
of no crossing in New York so trying to the nerves
as Piccadilly Circus or Charing Cross (Trafalgar
Square). The intersection of Broadway, Fifth
Avenue and 23rd Street, at Madison Square, is the
nearest approach to these bewildering ganglia of
traffic. It must be owned, too, that the Bowery,
vnth its two "elevated" tracks and four lines of
trolley-cars, is a place where one cannot safely let
one's wits go wool-gathering, especially on a rainy
evening when the roadway is under repair. Let
me add that there is one place in New York where
the whirl of traffic (" whirl " in a literal sense) is
unique and amazing. I mean the covered area at the
New York end of Brooklyn Bridge where the trans
pontine electric cars, in an incessant stream, swoop
down the curves of the bridge and sweep round on
their return journey. The scene at night is inde-

AMERICA TO-DAY
scribable. The air seeras supersaturated with
electricity, flashing and crackling on every hand.
One has a sense of having strayed unwittingly into the
raidst of a rainiature planetary system in full swing,
with the boom of the trolleys, in their mazy courses,
to represent the music of the spheres.

42

LETTER V
Character and Culture — American Universities — Is the
American "Electric" or Phlegmatic? — Alleged Laxity
of the Family Tie — Postscript : The University System.
New York.
It is four weeks to-day since I landed in New York,
and, save for forty hours in Philadelphia and four
hours in Brooklyn, I have spent all that time in
Manhattan Island. Yet, to my shame be it spoken,
I am not prepared with any generahsation as to the
American character. It has been my good fortune
to see a great deal of literary and artistic New York,
and, comparing it with literary and artistic London,
I am inclined to say "Pompey and Caesar berry
much ahke — specially Pompey ! " The New Yorker
is far raore cosmopolitan than the Londoner ; of that
there is no doubt. He knows all that we know
about current Enghsh Uterature. He knows all that
we do not know about current American literature.
He is much more interested in and influenced by
French literature and art than the average educated
Englishman — so much so that the leading French
critics, such as M. Brunetifere and M. Rod, lecture
43

AMERICA TO-DAY
here to crowded and appreciative audiences. More
over, an excellent Gerraan theatre permanently
established in the city keeps the literary world well
abreast of the dramatic movement in Germany. But
the cosraopolitanisra of the educated New Yorker
raerely raeans that he has everything in common
with the educated Londoner — and a little over. His
traditions are ours, his standards are ours, his ideals
are ours. He is busied with the same problems of
ethics, of aesthetics, of style, even of grararaar. I
had not been three days in New York when I found
myself plunged in a hot discussion of the " split
infinitive," in which I was ranged with two Ameri
cans against a recreant Briton who defended the
collocation. " It is a mistake to regard it is an
Americanism," said one of the Araericans. " It is
as old as the English language, or at least as old as
Wickliff. But it is unnecessary, and the best modern
practice discountenances it." I felt like falling
on the neck of an ally of half an hour's standing,
and swearing eternal friendship. What matters
Alaska, or Venezuela, or Nicaragua, " or all the
stones of stumbling in the world," so long as we
have a common interest in (and sorae of us a coramon
distaste for) the split infinitive ?
To put the matter briefly, while the outlook of the
New Yorker is wider than ours, his standpoint is the
same. We gather from a well-known anecdote that
some, at least, of the cultivated Americans of
Thackeray's time were inchned to "think of
44

EDUCATION
Tupper." To-day they do not " think of Tupper "
any raore than we do — and by Tupper I mean, of
course, not the veritable Martin Farquhar, but the
Tuppers of the passing hour. In America as in
England, no doubt, there is a huge half-educated
public, ravenous for doughnuts of romance served
up with syrup of sentiment. The enthusiasms of
the Araerican shopgirl, I take it, are very rauch the
sarae as those of her English sister. But the line of
deraarcation between the educated and the half-
educated is just as clear in New York as in London.
For the cultivated American of to-day, the Boomster
booms and the Sibyl sibyllates in vain. I find no
justification, in this city at any rate, for the old
saying which described Araerica as the most common-
schooled and least educated country in the world.
If we must draw distinctions, I should say that the
effect of the American systera of university education
was to raise the level of general culture, while
lowering the standard of special scholarship. I
believe that the general Araerican tendency is to
insist less than we do on sheer raental discipline for
its own sake, whether in classics or mathematics, to
allow the student a wider latitude of choice, and to
enable him to specialise at an earlier point in his
curriculum upon the studies he raost affects, or
which are raost likely to be directly useful to hira in
practical life. Thus the Araerican universities, prob
ably, do not turn out raany raen who can "read
Plato with their feet on the hob," but many who can,
45

AMERICA TO-DAY
and do, read and understand him as Colonel New-
come read Csesar — " with a translation, sir, with a
translation." The width of outlook which I have
noted as characteristic of literary New York is
deliberately aimed at in the university system, and
most successfully attained. The average young
man of parts turned out by an American university
has a many-sided interest in, and comprehension of,
European literature and the intellectual movement
of the world, which may go far to compensate for his
possible or even probable inexpertness in Greek
aorists and Latin elegiacs.
The academic and literary New Yorker, I am well
aware, is not "the American." But who is "the
American " ? I turn to Mr. G. W. Steevens, and find
that "the American is a highly electric Anglo-
Saxon. His temperament is of quicksilver. There
is as rauch difference in vivacity and eraotion between
him and an Englishman as there is between an
Enghshraan and an Italian." Well, Mr. Steevens is
a keener observer than I ; when he wrote this he
had been two months in America to ray one ; and he
had travelled far and wide over the continent. I am
not rash enough, then, to contradict hira ; but I must
own that I have not met this " Araerican," or any
thing like hira, in the streets, clubs, theatres, restau
rants, or public conveyances of New York. On the
contrary, as I take my walks abroad between Union
Square and Central Park, or hang on to the straps of
an elevated train or cable car, I am all the time occu-
46

BEAUTY
pied in trying — and failing — to find marked differ
ences of appearance and manners between the people
I see here and the people I should expect to see under
similar circumstances in London. Differences of
dress and feature there are, of course — but how
trifling I Difference of raanners there is none, unless
it lie in the general good-nature and unobtrusive
politeness of the American crowd, upon which I have
already remarked. We all know that there is a
distinctively American physical type, recognisable
especially in the sex which aims at self-development,
instead of self-suppression, in its attire. When one
raeets her in Bloomsbury (where she abounds in the
tourist season) one readily distinguishes the American
lady ; but here specific distinctions are absorbed in
generic identity, and the only difference between
American and English ladies of which I am habitually
conscious lies in the added touch of Parisian elegance
which one notes in the costumes on Fifth Avenue.
The average of beauty is certainly very high in New
York. I will not say higher than in London, for
there too it is reraarkable ; but this I will say, that
night after night I have looked round the audiences
in New York theatres, and found a clear majority of
notably good-looking women. There are few Euro
pean cities where one could hope to make the same
observation. It is especially to be noted, I think,
that the American lady has the art of growing old
with comely dignity. She loses her complexion,
indeed, but only to put on a new beauty in the
47

AMERICA TO-DAY
contrast between her olive skin and her silvering or
silver hair. This contrast may almost be called the
characteristic feature of the specially American type,
which is rauch more clearly discernible in middle-
aged and old than in young women.
As for the men, what strikes one in New York is
the total absence of the traditional " Yankee " type.
It must have a foundation in fact, since the Americans
themselves have accepted it in political caricature.
No doubt I shall find it in its original habitat — New
England. It has certainly not penetrated into New
York. On close examination, the average man-in-the-
street is distinguishable from his fellow in London
by certain trifling differences in " the cut of his jib"
— his fashion in hats, in moustaches, in neckties.
But the intense electricity that Mr. Steevens dis
covers in hira has totally eluded ray observation.
The fault raay be raine, but assuredly I have failed
to " faire jaillir I'etincelle." I have looked in vain for
any syraptora of the " temperaraent of quicksilver."
Mr. Steevens, it is true, raade his observations during
the last Presidential election. Perhaps the quick
silver is generated in the American citizen by political
exciteraent, and when that is over " runs out at the
heels of his boots."
But, surely, it is a monstrous exaggeration to
state in general terras that the difference in "viva
city and eraotion " between the average American
and the average Englishman is as great as the differ
ence between an Enghshraan and an Itsilian. By
48

" VIVACITY "
what inconceivable error does it happen, then, that
the American of fiction and drama — English, Conti
nental, and American to boot — is always represented
as outdoing John Bull himself in Anglo - Saxon
phlegm ? In the courts of ethnology, I shall be told,
" what the caricaturist says is not evidence " ; but no
caricature could ever have gained such world-wide
acceptance without a substratura of truth to support
it. The probabilities of the case are greatly against
the development of any special " vivacity " of tem
perament, for though there has no doubt been a
large Keltic admixture in the Anglo-Saxon stock,
there has been a large Teutonic infusion (German
and Scandinavian) to counterbalance it. Simply as
a matter of observation, the differences between
English and Italian manners hit you in the eye, while
the differences between Araerican and English raan
ners are really raicroscopic ; and raanners, I take it,
are the outward and visible signs of teraperaraent.
A Scotchman by birth, a Londoner by habit, I walk
the streets of New York undetected, to the best of
my belief, until I began to speak ; in Rorae, on the
contrary, every one recognises me at a glance as an
" Inglese," unless they mistake rae for an " Ameri
cano." To rae it is amazing how inessential is the
change produced by the Anglo-Saxon type and tem
perament by influences of climate and admixture of
foreign blood. There are great foreign cities in New
York — German, Italian, Yiddish, Boheraian, Hun
garian, Chinese — but the New York of the New
49 D

AMERICA TO-DAY
Yorker is scarcely, to the Englishman, a foreign
city. The other day I heard an Englishman, who has
lived for twenty-five years in America, raaintaining
very emphatically that the chief difference between
England and America lay in the greater laxity of the
family bond on this side of the Atlantic. He
declared that, in the raain, " home " raeant less to
the Araerican than to the Englishman, and especially
that the Araerican boy between thirteen and twenty
was habitually insurgent against home influences.
It would be ludicrous, of course, to set up the obser
vations of a month against the experience of a
quarter of a century ; yet I cannot but feel that
either I have been rairaculously fortunate in the
glimpses I have obtained of American horae life, or
else there is something amiss with my friend's
generalisation. Perhaps he brought away with him
from England in the early seventies a conception of
the " patria potestas " which he would now find out
of date there as well as here. No doubt the
migratory habit is stronger in America than in
England, and family life is not apt to flourish in
hotels or boarding-houses. The Saratoga trunk is
not the best cornerstone for the home : so rauch we
may take for granted. But the Araerican families
who are content to go through life without a thres
hold and hearthstone of their own must, after all, be
in a vanishing minority. They very naturally cut a
larger figure in fiction than in fact. It has been my
5°

FATHERS AND SONS
privilege to see something of the daily life of a good
many families living under their own roof-tree, and
in every case without exception I have been struck
with the beauty and intiraacy of the relation between
parents and children. When ray friend laid down
his theory of the intractable American boy, I could
not but think of a youth of twenty whora I had seen
only two days before, whose manner towards his
father struck rae as an ideal blending of affectionate
coraradeship with old-fashioned respect.* True,
this was in Philadelphia, " the City of Horaes," and
even there it raay have been an exceptional case.
I ara not so illogical as to pit a single observation
against (presumably) a wide induction ; I merely
offer for what it is worth one item of evidence.
Again, it has been my good fortune here in New
York to spend an evening in a household which
suggested a chapter of Dickens in his tenderest and
most idyllic raood. It was the horae of an actor and
* "Affectionate comradeship" rather than "old-fashioned
respect " is exemplified in the following anecdote of young
America. A Professor of Pedagogy in a Western university
brings up his children on the most advanced principles. Among
other things, they are encouraged to sink the antiquated terms
" father " and " mother," and call their parents by their Christian
names. On one occasion, the children, playing in the bathroom,
turned on the water and omitted to turn it off again. Observing
it percolating through the ceiling of his study, their father
rushed upstairs to see what was the matter, flung open the bath
room door, and was greeted by the prime mover in the mischief,
a boy of six, with the remark, " Don't say a word, John— bring
the mop! " 51

AMERICA TO-DAY
actress. Two daughters, of about eighteen and
twenty, respectively, are on the stage, acting in their
father's company ; but the master of the house is a
bright Httle boy of seven or eight, known as "the
Commodore." As it happened, the mother of the
faraily was away for the day ; yet in the hundred
affectionate references made to her by the father and
daughters, not to rae, but to each other, I read her
character and influence raore clearly, perhaps, than
if she had been present in the flesh. A more
siraple, natural, unaffectedly beautiful " interior " no
novelist could conceive. If the family tie is seriously
relaxed in America, it seems an odd coincidence that
I should in a single raonth have chanced upon two
households where it is seen in notable perfection, to
say nothing of many others in which it is at least as
binding as in the average English horae.
Postscript. — The American university system is
a very large subject, to which none but a specialist
could do justice, and that in a volurae, not a post
script. Nevertheless I should like slightly to sup
pleraent the above allusion to it. In the first place,
let me quote from the Spectator (February I2, 1898)
the following passage :
" Some of the American Universities, in our judgment, come
nearer to the ideal of a true University than any of the other
types. Beginning on the old English collegiate system, they
have broadened out into vast and splendidly endowed institu
tions of universal learning, have assimilated some German
52

UNIVERSITIES
features, and have combined successfully college routine and
discipline vdth mature and advanced work. Harvard and
Princeton were originally English colleges ; now, without entirely
abandoning the college system, they are great semi-German
seats of learmng. Johns Hopkins at Baltimore is purely of the
German type, with no residence and only a few plain lecture
rooms, library, and museums. Columbia, originally an old
English college (its name was King's, changed to Columbia at
the Revolution), is now perhaps the first University in America,
magnificently endowed, with stately buildings, and with a school
of poUtical and legal science second only to that of Paris.
Cornell, intended by its generous founder to be a sort of cheap
glorified technical institute, has grown into a great seat of
culture. The quadrangles and lawns of Harvard, Yale, and
Princeton almost recall Oxford and Cambridge; their lecture-
rooms, laboratories, and post-graduate studies hint of Germany _
where nearly all American teachers of he present generation
have been educated ' '
Some authorities, however, deplore the Ger
manising of Araerican education. A Professor of
Greek, hiraself trained in Germany, and recognised
as one of the foremost of American scholars, con
fessed to me his deep dissatisfaction with the results
achieved in his own teaching. His students did
good work on the scientific and philological side, but
their relation to Greek literature as literature was
not at all what he could desire. This bears out the
remark which I heard another authority make, to
the effect that American scholarship was entirely
absorbed in the counting of accents, and the like
raechanical details ; while it seeras to run counter to
the above suggestion that the university systera
tends to raise the level of culture while lowering the
53

AMERICA TO-DAY
standard of erudition. At the same time there can
be no doubt that the immense width of the field
covered by university teaching in America must, in
some measure, make for " superficial omniscience "
rather than for concentration and research. The
truth probably is that the system cuts both ways.
The average student seeks and finds general culture
in his university course, while the born specialist is
enabled to go straight to the study he most affects
and concentrate upon it.
To exemplify the latitude of choice offered to the
American student, let me give a list of the "courses"
in English and Literature at Colurabia University,
New York, extracted frora the Calendar for 1898-99 :
RHETORIC AND ENGLISH COMPOSITION

I. English Composition. Lectures, daily themes, and fort
nightly essays. Professor G. R. Carpenter. Three hours*
first half-year.
2. English Composition. Essays, lectures, and discussions in
regard to style. Professor G. R. Carpenter. Three hours,
second half-year.
3. English Composition, Advanced Course. Essays, lectures,
and consultations. Dr. Odell. Two hours.
4. Elocution. Lectures and Exercises. Mr. Putnam. Two
hours. [5. The Art of English Versification. Professor Brander
Matthews. Not given in i8g8-g.-]
6. Argumentative Composition. Lectures, briefs, essays, and
oral discussions. Mr. Brodt. Three hours.
* That is, three hours a week ; so, too, in all subsequent
instances. 54

COLUMBIA COLLEGE
7. Seminar. The topics discussed in 1898-9 will be : Canons
of rhetorical propriety (first half-year) ; the teaching of formal
rhetoric in the secondary school (second half-year). Professor
G. R. Carpenter. ENGLISH AND LITERATURE
courses
I and 2. Anglo-Saxon Language and Historical English Gram
mar. Mr. Seward. Two hours.
3. Anglo-Saxon Literature : Poetry and Prose. Professor
Jackson. Two hours.
4. Chaucer's Language, Versification, and Method of Narrative
Poetry. Professor Jackson. Two hours.
[5. English Language and Literature of the Eleventh, Twelfth,
and Thirteenth Centuries. Professor Price. Not given in 1898-9.]
[6. English Language and Literature of the Fourteenth Cen
tury, exclusive of Chaucer, and of the Fifteenth Century ; Read
ing of authors, with investigation of special questions and writing
of essays. Professor Price. Not given in 1898-9.]
7. English Language and Literature of the Sixteenth Century ;
Reading of authors, with investigation of special questions and
writing of essays. Professor Jackson. Two hours.
Courses 5, 6, and 7 are designed for the careful study of the
language and literature of Early and Middle English Periods ;
Course 6 was given in 1897-8.
[8. Anglo-Saxon Prose and Historical English Syntax. Inves
tigation of special questions and writing of essays. Professor
Price. Not given in 1898-9. To be given in 1899-igoo.]
[10. English Verse- Forms : Study of their historical develop
ment. Professor Price. N ot giveti in iZg%-^.-\
II. History of English Literature from 1789 to the death of
Tennyson : Lectures. Professor Woodberry. Three hours.
12. Historyof English Literature from 1660 to 1789 : Lectures.
Mr. Kroeber. Three hours.
[13. History of English Literature from the birth of Shake
speare to 1660, with special attention to the origin of the drama
in England and to the poems of Spenser and Milton. Professor
Woodberry. Not given in iSg^-g.-\ 55

AMERICA TO-DAY
Courses 12 and 13 are given in alternate years.
[14. Pope : Language, Versification, and Poetical Method.
Professor Price. Not given in 1898-9.]
15. Shakespeare: Language, Versification, and Method of
Dramatic Poetry. Text : Cambridge Text of Shakespeare.
Professor Jackson. Two hours.
16. American Literature. Professor Brander Matthews.
Two hours.
[17. The Poetry, Lyrical, Narrative, and Dramatic, of Tenny
son, Browning, and Arnold. Professor Price. Not given in
1898-9.] LITERATURE

I. The History of Modern Fiction. Professor Brander
Matthews. Two hours.
2. The Theory, History, and Practice of Criticism, with special
attention to Aristotle, Boileau, Lessing, and English and later
French writers, and a study of the great works of imagination.
Professor Woodberry. Three hours.
[3. Epochs of the Drama. Professor Brander Matthews.
Not given in 1898-9.]
4. Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century. Professor Brander
Matthews. Two hours.
5. Moliere and Modern Comedy. Professor Brander Mat
thews. Two hours.
[6. The Evolution of the Essay. Professor Brander Mat
thews. Not given in 1898-9.]
7. Studies in Literature, mainly Critical ; Selected Works, in
Prose and Verse, illustrating the Character and Development of
National Literatures. Lectures. Professor Woodberry. Three
hours. 8. Studies in Literature, mainly Historical : Narrative Poetry
of the Middle Ages. Lectures and Conferences. Mr. Taylor
Two hours.
[9. The Lyrical Poetry of the Middle Ages. Professor G. R.
Carpenter. Not given in 1898-9.]
10. Hellenism : Its Origin, Development, and Diffusion, with
;6

THE SEMINAR
some account of the Civilisations that preceded it. Lectures and
Conferences. Mr. Taylor. Three hours.
II. Literary Phases of the Transition from Paganism to Chris
tianity, with illustrations from the other Arts of Expression.
Lectures and Conferences. Mr. Taylor. One hour.
Seminar in Literature. Professor Woodberry.
Seminar in the History of the Drama. Professor Brander
Matthews. A "seminar" is an institution borrowed from
Germany. The professor and a small number of
students (six or eight at the outside) sit together
round a table, with their books at hand, and pass an
hour in co-operative study and discussion. In going
through the noble library of Colurabia University,
I carae upon an alcove devoted to Scandinavian
literature, with a table on which lay some Danish
books. The gentleman who was guiding rae round
happened to be an instructor in the Scandinavian
languages. He pointed to the books and said, " I
have just been having a serainar here, in Danish
literature." Seeing on the shelves an edition of
Holberg, I asked hira if he had ever considered the
question why Holberg's comedies, so delightful in
the original, appeared to be totally untranslatable
into English. " One of ray students," he said, " put
the same question to me only to-day." One could
scarcely desire a better example of the all-embracing
range of the studies which an Araerican University
provides for and encourages. I have heard it said,
with a sneer, that " You can take an honours degree
in Marie Corelli." If you can graduate with honours
57

AMERICA TO-DAY
in Holberg, your tirae, in so far, has certainly not
been raisemployed.
Whatever the drawbacks of the German influence
which is so raarked in Araerica, I cannot doubt that
in one thing, at any rate, the Araericans are far
ahead of us — in the careful study they devote to the
science of education. No fewer than twenty courses
of lectures on the theory and practice of education
were given in Columbia College during 1898-99.
Teaching, I take it, is an art founded upon, and
intimately associated with, the science of psychology.
Why should we be content with antiquated and rule-
of-thumb methods, instead of going to the root of
the thing, studying its principles, and learning to
apply them to the best advantage ?

58

LETTER VI
Washington in April— A Metropolis in the Making—
The White House, the Capitol, and the Library of
Congress — The Symbolism of Washington. Washington.
To profess oneself disappointed with Washington in
this first week of April, 1899, would be like complain
ing of the gauntness of a rose-bush in December.
What would you have ? It is not the season, either
politicall}' or atmospherically. Congress is gone,
and spring has not come. In the city of leafy
avenues there is not a leaf to be seen, and, except
the irrepressible crocus, not a flower. A fortnight
hence, as I am assured, the capital of the Great
Republic will have put on a regal robe of magnolia
and other blossoms, that will " knock spots out of"
Solomon in all his glory. In the meantime, the
trees line the avenues in skeleton rows, like a pyro
technic set-piece before it is ignited. It is useless to
pretend, then, that I have seen Washington. The
trumpet of March has blown, the pennon of May is
not yet unfurled ; and even the cloudless sunshine of
the past two days has only reduplicated the skeleton
59

AMERICA TO-DAY
trees in skeleton shadows. Washington is not re
sponsible for the tardiness of the spring. It would be
unjust to take urabrage at the city because one finds
none in its avenues.
Yet I cannot but feel that I have, so to speak,
found Washington out. I have chanced upon her
without her make-up, and seen the real face of the
city divested of its wig of leafage and rouge of
blossoms. Here, for the first time, at any rate, I am
irapressed by that sense of rawness and incomplete
ness which is said to be characteristic of America.
Washington will one day be a raagnificent city, of
that there is no doubt ; but for the present it is dis
tinctly unfinished. The very breadth of its avenues,
contrasted with the comparative lowness of the build
ings which line them, gives it the air rather of a
raagnified and glorified frontier township than of a
great capital on the European scale. Here, for the
first tirae, I am really conscious of the newness of
things. The eastern cities — Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore — are, in effect, not a whit
newer than most English towns. Oxford and Cam
bridge, no doubt, and a few cathedral cities, give one
a habitual consciousness of dwelling araong the relics
of the past. They are our Nureraburg or Prague,
Siena or Perugia. In most English cities, on the
other hand, as in London itself, one has no habitual
sense of the antiquity of one's surroundings. Apart
from a few tourist-haunted monuraents, which the
resident passes with scarcely a glance, the general
60

WASHINGTON
run of buildings and streets, if not palpably raodern,
can at raost lay claira to a respectable, or disreputable,
raiddle-age. Now, an eminently respectable middle-
age is precisely the characteristic of the central
regions of Phfladelphia and Baltiraore ; while in New
York both reputable and disreputable raiddle-age are
amply represented. One may almost say that these
Eastern cities are fundamentally old-fashioned, and
that all their modern mechanism of electric cars, tele
phone wires, and what not, is but a thin and trans
parent outer network, through which the older order
of things is everywhere peering. And from this very
contrast between the old and the new, this sense of
visible time-strata in the structure of a city, there
results a very real effect of age.
Here, in Washington, one instinctively craves for
soraething of that uniformity which one instinctively
deprecates as an ideal for New York. The buildings
on the main streets are too haphazard, like the books
on an ill-arranged shelf : folios, quartos, and duode
cimos huddled pell-mell together. But when sorae
approach to a definite style is achieved, how noble
will be the radiating vistas of this spacious city !
The plan of the avenues and streets, as has been
aptly said, suggests a cart-wheel superimposed
upon a gridiron — an arrangement, by the way,
which may be studied on a small scale in Carlsruhe.
The result is dire bewilderment to the traveller ; my
bump of locality, usually not ill-developed, seems to
shrink into a positive indentation before the probleras
6i

AMERICA TO-DAY
presented in such forraulas as " K Street, corner of
13th Street, N.E." But from the Capitol, whence
raost of the avenues spread fanwise, the views they
offer are superb ; and Pennsylvania Avenue, leading
to the Government offices and the White House,
will one day, undoubtedly, be one of the great
streets of the world. For the present its beauty is
not heightened by the new Postal Department, a
massive but somewhat forbidding structure in grey
granite, which dominates and frowns upon the whole
street. From certain points of view it seems almost
to dwarf the Washington Obelisk, the loftiest stone
structure in the world. It is a pity that this fine
monuraent should be placed in such a low situation,
on the very shore of the Potomac. From the central
parts of the city it loses much of its effect, but seen
frora the distance it stands forth irapressively.
People are discontented, it would seem, with the
White House, and talk of replacing it with a larger
and showier edifice. The latter change, at any rate,
would be a change for the worse. There could not
be a more appropriate and dignified residence for
the Chief Magistrate of a republic. On the other
hand, one cannot but foresee a gradual enrichment
and ennoblement of the interior of the Capitol.
Externally it is magnificent, especially now that the
side towards the city has been terraced and balus
traded ; but internally its decorations are quite
unworthy of modern Araerica. The floors, the doors,
the cornices and mouldings are cheap in material,
62

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
dingily garish in colour. Especially painful are the
crude blue-and-yellow mosaic tiles of the corridors.
The mural decorations belong to several artistic
periods, all equally debased. On the whole, it is
inconceivable that Congress should for long content
itself with an abode which, without being venerable,
is simply out of date. The raain architectural pro
portions of the interior are dignified enough. What
is wanted is raerely the transmutation of stucco into
marble, painted pine into oak, and pseudo-Italian
arabesques into American frescoes and mosaics.
Why should Congress itself be more meanly housed
than its Library ?
This new Library of Congress is certainly the
crown and glory of the Washington of to-day. It
is an edifice and an institution of which any nation
might justly boast. It is simple in design, rich in
material, elaborate, and for the most part beautiful,
in decoration. The general effect of the entrance
hall and galleries is at first garish, and sorae details
of the decoration will scarcely bear looking into.
Yet the building is, on the whole, in fresco, raosaic,
and sculpture, a veritable treasure-house of contera
porary American art. Even in this clear Southern
climate, the effect of gaudiness will in time pass off.
Fifty years hence, perhaps, when there are no living
susceptibilities to be hurt, some of the less success
ful panels and medallions may be " hatched over
again, and hatched different." But many of the
decorations, I am convinced, will prove possessions
63

AMERICA TO-DAY
for ever to the American people. As for the Rotunda
Reading Room, it is, I think, alraost above criti
cisra in its corabination of dignity with splendour.
Far be it from me to belittle that great and liberal
institution, the British Museum Reading Room. It
is considerably larger than this one; it is no less
imposing in its severe simplicity ; and it offers the
serious student a vaster quarry of books to draw
upon, together with wider elbow-room and com
pleter accoraraodations. But the Library of Con
gress is still more liberal, for it admits all the world
without even the formality of applying for a ticket ;
and it substitutes for the impressiveness of sim
plicity the allurements of splendour. It is impossible
to conceive a more brilliant spectacle than this
Rotunda when it is lighted at night by nearly
fifteen-hundred incandescent lamps. Nor is it
possible for me to describe in this place the
mechanical marvels of the institution — the huge
underground boiler-house, with its sixteen boilers ;
the electrician's room, clean and bright as a new
dollar, with its " purring dynaraos " and its immense
switch-board ; the tunnel through which books are
delivered by electric trolley to the legislators in the
Capitol, within eight minutes of the time they are
applied for ; and, most wonderful of all, the endless
chain, with its series of baskets, whereby books are
not only brought down to the reading-room, but
re-delivered, at the mere touch of a button, on what
ever " deck " of the nine-storied " book-stacks " they
64

SYMBOLISM
happen to belong to. So ingenious is this triuraph
of raechanism that the baskets seem positively to go
through coraplex processes of thought and selection.
Talking of thought and selection, by the way, every
one connected with the library speaks with
enthusiasra of President McKinley's wise and public-
spirited choice of the new chief librarian. Mr. Her
bert Putnam, late of the Boston Public Library, is
the ideal man for the post, and his appointraent
was raade, not only without suspicion of jobbery,
but in the teeth of strong political influence.
Mr. McKinley's action in this raatter is considered
to be not only right in itself, but an invaluable
precedent. Let rae not be understood, I beg, to make light of
the National Capital. I merely say that to the
outward eye it is not yet the city it is manifestly
destined to become. Its splendid potentialities do
some wrong to its eminently spacious and seeraly
actuality. But to the raind's eye, to the ideal sense,
it has the iraperishable beauty of absolute fitness.
Omniscient Baedeker informs us that when it was
founded there was some thought of calling it
" Federal City." How much finer, in its heroic and
yet human associations, is the name it bears !
Since Alfred the Great, the Anglo-Saxon race has
produced no loftier or purer personality than George
Washington, and his country could not blazon on
her shield a more inspiring narae. Carlyle's treat
ment of Washington is, perhaps, the most unpar-
65 E

AMERICA TO-DAY
donable of his many similar offences. One almost
wonders at the forgiving spirit in which the deco
rators of the Library of Congress have inscribed
upon the walls of the new building certain maxims
from the splenetic Sage. And if the city is named
with exquisite fitness, so are its radiating avenues.
Each of them takes its name from one of the States
of the Union — names which, as Stevenson long ago
pointed out, forra an unrivalled array of "sweet
and sonorous vocables." In its whole conception,
Washington is an ideal capital for the United States
— not least typical, perhaps, in its factitiousness,
since this Republic is not so much a product of
natural development as a deliberate creation of
will and intelligence. It represents the struggle of
an Idea against the crude forces of nature and
human nature. The Capitol, with its clear and
logical design, is as aptly symbolic of its history and
function as are our Houses of Parliament, with their
bewildering but grandiose agglomeration of shafts
and turrets, spires and pinnacles; and the two
buildings should rank side by side in the esteem of
the English-speaking peoples, as the twin foci of our
civilisation.

66

LETTER VII
American Hospitality — Instances — Conversation and
Story-Telling — Over-Profusion in Hospitality — Expen
siveness of Life in America — ^The American Barber —
Postcript : An Anglo-American Club. Boston.
Much has been said of American hospitahty; too
much cannot possibly be said. Here am I in
Boston, the guest of one of the foremost clubs of
the city. I sit, as I write, at my bedroom window,
with a view over the whole of Boston Comraon, and
the beautiful spires of the Back-Bay region beyond.
I step out on my balcony, and the gilded dome of
the State House — "the Hub of the Universe" — is
but a stone's-throw off. Through the leafless
branches of the trees I can see the back of
St. Gaudens's beautiful Shaw Monument, and
beyond it the graceful dip of upper Beacon Street.
My roora is as spacious and luxurious as heart
can desire, lighted by half a dozen electric laraps,
and with a private bath-room attached, which is
itself nearly as large as the bedroora assigned rae in
the "swagger" hotel of New York — an estabhsh
ment, by the way, of which it has been wittily said
67

AMERICA TO-DAY
that its purpose is " to provide exclusiveness for the
masses." All the coraforts of the club are at my
coramand ; the rooras are delightful, the food and
service excellent. In short, I could not be more
conveniently or agreeably situated. Of course I
pay the club charges for ray room and raeals, but it
is mere hospitality to allow me to do so. And how
do I come to be established in these quarters ? The
little story is absolutely commonplace, but all the
more typical.
In Washington I made the acquaintance of a
gentleraan who invited rae to lunch at the leading
diplomatic and social club. I had no claim upon
him of any sort, beyond the most casual introduction.
He regaled me with little-neck clams, terrapin, and
all the delicacies of the season, and invited to meet
me half a dozen of the most interesting raen in the
city, all of thera strangers to me until that raoment.
I found myself seated next an exceedingly amiable
man, whose name I had not caught when we were
introduced. One of the first things he asked me
was — not " What did I think of Araerica ? " no one
ever asked me that — but "Where was I going
next ? " To Boston. " Where was I going to put
up?" I thought of going to the T  Hotel.
"Much better go the U  Club," he replied;
" I've no doubt they will be able to give you a room.
As soon as lunch is over, I shall telegraph to the
club and make sure that everything is ready for
you." I, of course, thanked him warmly. "But
68

COURTESY AND HELPFULNESS
what credentials shall I present ? " " You don't
require any — just present your card. I shall make
it all right for you." This was a man whom I had
met ten rainutes before, whose narae I did not know,
and to whora I had been introduced by a man whora
I barely knew ! It did not appear that he, on his
side, knew or cared about anything I had said or
done in the world. He siraply obeyed the national
instinct of courtesy and helpfulness. And he was
as good as his word. Arriving in Boston at a some
what unearthly hour in the morning, I found my
roora allotted me and the club servants ready to
receive me with every attention. I felt like the
Prince in the fairy tale, only that I had done nothing
whatever to oblige the good fairy.
Another example. I had a letter of introduction
to the Governor of one of the States of the Union,
probably (what does not always happen) the most
universally respected raan in the State, and a
member of one of its oldest and most distinguished
families. I left the letter, with my card, at this
gentleman's house, and in the course of a few hours
received a note from his wife, telling me that, owing
to a death in the family, they were not then enter
taining at all, but saying that the Governor would
call upon me to offer me any courtesy or assistance
in his power. And so he did. He called, not once,
but twice. He presented me with a card for one of
the leading clubs of the city, and if my time had
allowed me to avail myself of his courtesy, he would
69

AMERICA TO-DAY
have put me in the way of seeing any or all of the
State institutions to the best advantage. The
governorship of an American State, let me add, is
no ornamental sinecure. This was not only a man
in high position, but a very busy man. Is there any
other country where a mere letter of introduction is
so generously honoured ? If so, it is to me an un
discovered country.
These are but two cases out of a hundred. The
Americans are said to be the busiest people in the
world (I have ray doubts on that point), but they
have always leisure to give a stranger "a good time."
Even, be it noted, during the working hours of the
day. My evenings being occupied with theatre-going,
I could not accept invitations to dinner ; wherefore
those who were hospitably inclined towards me had
to invite me to lunch; and a luncheon party in
America invariably absorbs the best part of an after
noon. A score of these delightful gatherings will
always remain in my meraory. The "bright"
Araerican is, to my thinking, the best talker in the
world — certainly the best talker in the English lan
guage. A light and facile humour, a power of giving
a pleasant little sparkle even to sufficiently common
place sayings, is in this country the rule and not the
exception. I must have met at these luncheon
parties, and actually conversed with, at least a
hundred different men of all ages and occupations,
and I do not remember among thera a single dull,
pompous, morose, or pedantic person. The parties
70

CONVERSATION AND ANECDOTE
did not usually exceed six or eight in number, so
that there was no necessity for breaking up into
groups. The shuttlecock of conversation was lightly
bandied to and fro across the round table. Each
took his share and none took more. All topics —
even the burning question of " expansion " — were
touched upon gaily, humorously, and in perfect good
temper. It is said that American conversation among men
tends to degenerate into a mere exchange of anec
dotes. I can remember only one party which was
in the least degree open to this reproach ; and there
the anecdotes were without exception so good and so
admirably told, that I, for one, should have been sorry
to exchange them for even the loftiest discourse on
Shakespeare and the musical glasses. Here, for
instance, is an exaraple of the American gift of pic
turesque exaggeration. On board one of the Florida
steamboats, which have to be built with exceedingly
light draught to get over the frequent shallows of
the rivers, an Englishman accosted the captain with
the remark, " I understand, captain, that you think
nothing of steaming across a meadow where there's
been a heavy fall of dew." "Well, I don't know
about that," replied the captain, " but it's true we
have soraetiraes to send a man ahead with a watering-
pot ! " Or take, again, the story of the southern
colonel who was conducted to the theatre to see
Salvini's Othello. He witnessed the performance
gravely, and remarked at the close, " That was a
71

AMERICA TO-DAY
mighty good show, and I don't see but the coon did
as well as any of 'em." A third anecdote that
charmed me on this occasion was that of the man
who, being invited to take a drink, replied, " No, no,
I solemnly promised my dear dead mother never to
touch a drop; besides, boys, it's too early in the
morning ; besides, I've just had one ! "
Furthermore, as I recall the party in question, I
feel that I am wrong in implying that the conversa
tion was mainly coraposed of anecdotes. It was
mainly composed of narratives ; but that is a different
raatter. There is a clear distinction between the
raere story-teller and the narrator. Two or three of
the party were brilliant narrators, and delighted us
with accounts of personal experiences, quaint
character-sketches, novels in a nutshell. One of the
guests was, without exception, the raost ready-witted
raan I ever raet. His inexhaustible gift of Hghtning
repartee I saw illustrated on another occasion, when
he presided at the midnight "gambol " of a Bohemian
club, at which it needed the utmost tact and presence
of mind to "ride the whirlwind and direct the storm."
At the luncheon party, he related several episodes
from his chequered journalistic career in a style so
easy and yet so graphic that one felt, if they could
have been taken down in shorthand, they would
have been literature ready-made. It is a clear
injustice to confound such talk as this with a mere
bandying of Joe-Millers.
The one drawback to American hospitahty is that
72

OVER-PROFUSION
it is apt to be too profuse. I have more than once
had to offer a raild protest against being entertained
by a hard-working brother journalist on a scale that
would have befitted a raillionaire. The possibility
of returning the coraphment in kind affords the
canny Scot but poor consolation. A dinner three
times raore lavish and expensive than you want is
not sweetened by the thought that you may, in
turn, give your host a dinner three tiraes raore ex
pensive and lavish than he wants. Both parties, on
this system, suffer in digestion and in pocket, while
only Delmonico is the gainer. It seems to me, on
the whole, that in this country the millionaire is too
coramonly allowed to fix the standard of expendi
ture. Society would not be less, but raore, agree
able if, instead of always eraulating the splendours
of Lucullus, people now and then studied the art of
Horatian frugality. And I note that in club life, if
the plutocrat sets the standard of expenditure, the
aristocrat looks to the training of the servants.
Their obsequiousness is almost painful. There is
not the slightest trace of democratic equality in their
dress, their raanners, or their speech.
Take it all and all, Araerica is a trying place of
sojourn for the aforesaid canny Scot — the raan who
without being stingy (oh, dear, no !) has " all his
generous irapulses under perfect control." The
sixpences do not " bang " in this country : they
crepitate, they crackle, as though shot from a Maxim
quick-firer. For instance, the lowest electric-trolley
73

AMERICA TO-DAY
fare is twopence-halfpenny. It is true that for five
cents you can, if you wish it, ride fifteen or twenty
miles; but that advantage becoraes inappreciable
when you don't want to ride raore than half a mile.
Take, again, the harmless, necessary operation of
shaving. In a good English barber's shop it is a
brief and not unpleasant process ; in an American
" tonsorial parlour " it is a lingering and costly
torture. One of the many reasons which lead me to
regard the Araericans as a leisurely people rather
than a nation of "hustlers" is the patience with
which they submit to the long-drawn tyranny of the
barber. In England one grudges five minutes for
a shave, and one pays from fourpence to sixpence ;
in America one can hardly escape in twenty-five
minutes, and one pays (with the executioner's tip) *
from a shilling to eighteenpence. The charge would
be by no raeans excessive if one wanted or enjoyed
all the endless processes to which one is subjected ;
* I had read or been told that the tip system did not obtain in
America, except in the case of negroes and waiters. A very few
days in New York undeceived me. I went twice to a barber's
shop in the basement of the house in which I lived, paid fifteen
cents to be shaved, and gave the operator nothing ; but at my
second visit I found myself so lowered upon by that portly and
heavy-moustached citizen that I never again ventured to place
myself under his razor, but went to a more distant establishment
and tipped from the outset. There are, indeed, certain classes
of people — railroad conductors for instance — who do not expect
the tips which in England they consider their due ; but, according
to my experience, the safe rule in America is " when in doubt-
tip." 74

THE TONSORIAL PARLOUR
but for my part I would willingly pay double to
escape them. The essential part of the business,
the actual shaving, is, as a rule, badly performed,
with a heavy hand, and a good deal of needless
pawing-about of the patient's head. But when the
shave is over the horrors are only beginning. First,
your whole face is cooked for several rainutes in
relays of towels steeped in boiling water. Then a
long series of essences is rubbed into it, generally
with the torturer's naked hand. The sequence of
these essences varies in different " parlours," but one
especiaUy loathsorae hell-brew, known as "witch-
hazel," is everywhere inevitable. Then your wounds
have to be elaborately doctored with stinging
chemicals ; your hair, which has been hopelessly
touzled in the pawing process, has to be drenched
in some sickly-smelling oil and brushed ; your
moustache has to be lubricated and combed ; and at
last you escape frora the torraentor's clutches,
irritated, enervated, hopelessly late for an impor
tant appointment, and so reeking with unholy
odours that you feel as though all great Neptune's
ocean would scarcely wash you clean again. Only
once or twice have I submitted, out of curiosity, to
the whole interminable process. I now cut it short,
not without difficulty, before the " witch-hazel "
stage is reached, and am regarded with blank
astonishment and disapproval by the tonsorial pro
fessor, who feels his art and mystery insulted in his
person, and is scarcely mollified by a ten-cent tip.
75

AMERICA TO-DAY
Americans, on the other hand, go through all these
processes, and more, with stolid and long-suffering
patience. Yet this nation is credited with having
invented the maxira "Time is money," and is sup
posed to act up to it with feverish consistency !
Postscript. — As I have said a good deal about
clubs in this letter, let rae add to it a word as to
the influence of club life in keeping America in
touch with England. At all the leading clubs one
or two English daily papers and all the more impor
tant weekly papers are taken as a matter of course ;
so that the American club-man has not the slightest
difficulty in keeping abreast of the social, political,
and literary life of England. As a raatter of fact, the
educated Araerican's knowledge of England every
day puts to shame the EngUshman's ignorance of
America. Reciprocity in this raatter would be greatly
to the advantage of both countries. I am much
raistaken if there is a single club in London where
American periodicals are so well represented on the
reading-room table as are English periodicals in
every club in New York. Yet there is assuredly no
dearth of interesting weekly papers in America, some
connected with daily papers, others independent. It
raay be said that they are not taken at English clubs
because they would not be read. If so, the more's
the pity ; but I do not think it is so ; for this is a
case in which supply would beget demand. At any
rate, there must be numbers of people in London
76

AN INTERNATIONAL CLUB
who would be glad to keep fairly in touch with
Araerican life, if they could do so without too much
trouble. Why should there not be an Anglo-
American social club, organised with the special
purpose of bringing America horae (in a Uteral sense)
to London and England ? Why should not (say) the
Century Club of New York be reproduced in London,
with American periodicals as fully represented in its
news-room and reading-room as are English periodi
cals in an American club of the first rank ? Interest
in and sympathy with America would be the implied
condition of membership ; and by a judiciously-
devised system of non-resident merabership, American
visitors to London would be enabled to read their
home newspapers in greater corafort than at the exist
ing American reading-rooms, and would, moreover,
corae into easy contact with sympathetically-minded
Englishmen, to their rautual pleasure and profit.
Such a club might, in process of time, becorae a
potent factor in international relations, and forra a
new bond of union, of quite appreciable strength,
between the two countries.

77

LETTER VIII
Boston — Its Resemblance to Edinburgh — Concord,
Walden Pond, and Sleepy Hollow— Is the "Yankee"
Dying Out ? — America for the Americans — Detroit and
Buffalo— The " Middle West." Chicago.
The luxury of ray quarters in Boston seduced me
into a disquisition on Araerican hospitality which
would have come in equally well with reference to
any other city. Were I to search very deeply into
my soul (an exercise much in vogue in Boston), I
might perhaps find reasons for ray rarabling off. To
say that Boston did not interest rae would be the
reverse of the truth. It interested me deeply; but
it did not excite me with a sense of novelty or
vastness. One can only repeat the obvious truth
that it is like an exceptionally dignified and stately
English town. One instinctively looks around for a
cathedral, and finds the State House in its stead.
To the founders of this city, the glory of God was
not a thing to be furthered, or even typified, by any
work of men's hands; but the salvation of men's
souls, they thought, could be best achieved in a
well-ordered democratic polity. Their descendants
78

BOSTON
have of late years taken to decorating their places
of worship, and Trinity Church (by H. H.
Richardson), and the new Old South Church, are
ambitious and beautiful pieces of ecclesiastical
architecture. But the old Old South Meeting-
House, the ecclesiastical centre of the city, is the
flat and somewhat sour negation of all that is
expressed or implied in an English cathedral. Let
me not be understood to disparage the Old South or
the spirit which fashioned it. In my eyes, minster
and meeting-house are equally interesting historic
monuraents, and to my hereditary instincts the
latter is the more syrapathetic. I raerely note the
fact that the most conspicuous edifice in Boston, its
Duomo, its St. Peter's or St. Paul's, is dedicated,
not to the glory of God, but to the well-being of
man. Not physically, of course, but intellectually, Boston
has been Ukened to Edinburgh. The parallel is fair
enough, with this important reservation, that the
theological element in the atmosphere is not Presby
terian but Unitarian. The Boston of to-day, it must
be added, especially reserables Edinburgh in the fact
that its pre-erainence as an intellectual centre has
virtually departed. The Atlantic Monthly survives,
as Blackwood survives, a relic of the great days of
old; but Boston has no Scott Monument to bear
visual testiraony to her spiritual achieveraent. She
ought certainly to treat herself to a worthy Eraerson
Monument on the Common, whither the boy Emerson
79

AMERICA TO-DAY
used to drive his mother's cows : not, of course, a
Gothic pile like that which commemorates the genius
of Scott, but a statue bythe incoraparable St. Gaudens,
under a modest classic canopy.
But if, or when, such a raonument is erected, it
will absolve no one of the duty of raaking a pilgrimage
to Concord. Even if it had no historic or literary
associations, this siraple, dignified, beautiful New
England village, with its plain frame houses and its
stately elra avenues, would be well worth a visit.
Village I call it, but township would be a better
word. Let no one go there with less than half a
day to spare, for the places of interest are widely
scattered. My corapanion and I went first to Walden
Pond, then to the Eraerson and Hawthorne houses,
then to that ideal burying-place. Sleepy Hollow,
where Emerson and Hawthorne and Thoreau rest
side by side, and finally to the bridge —
Where once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
Everything here is beautifully appropriate. The com
raeraorative statue of the " minute-man " with his
musket is siraple and expressive, and the four lines
of Eraerson's hymn graven on the pedestal are the
right words written by the right man, entwining, as
it were, the historical and literary associations of the
place. An exquisite appropriateness, too, presides
over the Poets' Corner of Sleepy Hollow. The grave
of Emerson is marked by a rough block of pure white
80

THE«_YANKEE STOCK
quartz, in which is inserted a bronze tablet bearing
the words :
The passive master lent his hand
To the vast soul that o'er him planned.
Altogether, among the places of pilgriraage of the
English-speaking race, there is none raore satisfac-
factory or more inspiring than Concord, Mass.
If Boston is no longer a great centre of literary
production, it reraains, with its noble public library
in its raidst, and with Harvard University on its out
skirts, a great centre of culture. I shaU always
reraeraber a luncheon party at Harvard, where I was
the guest of an eminent Shakespearean critic, and
had for my fellow guests a very learned Dante
scholar (one of the raost delightful talkers imagin
able), a famous psychologist, a political economist,
and a lecturer on EngUsh literature. The talk fell
upon the depopulation of New England, or rather
the substitution of an alien race for (I had alraost
said) the indigenous Yankee stock. There was
some discussion as to whether the Yankee was really
dying out, or had merely spread throughout the
West, taking with him and disseminating the quali
ties which had made the greatness of New England.
It was not denied, of course, that westward emigra
tion has much to do with the matter. The New
England farraer, unable to stand up against the
competition of the prairies, has betaken himself to
the prairies so as to compete on the winning side.
8i F

AMERICA TO-DAY
But one of the company maintained that this did
not account for the whole phenomenon. " The real
key to it," he said, " lies in such a family history as
mine. My grandmother was the youngest of thirteen
children ; ray raother was the eldest of five ; my
brother and I are two ; and we are unmarried."
I am inclined to think that this story of a dwindling
stock is typical, not for New England alone, but for
other parts of the Union. It seems as though the
pressure of life in the Eastern States, and perhaps
some subtle influence of cliraate upon temperament,
were rendering the people of old Teutonic blood —
British, Dutch, and German — unwilling to face the
responsibility of large families, and so were giving the
country over to the later and usually inferior immi
grant and his progeny. I am not sure that it might
not be well to cultivate a new sense of social duty in
this matter. Is it Utopian to suggest a policy of
"America for the Araericans" — some effectual
restriction of iraraigration before it is too late, so
as to leave roora for the natural increase of the
Araerican people ? This is an " expansion," a
" taking up of the white man'g burden," which would
command my warmest sympathy. It is to the
interest of the whole world that the America of the
future should be peopled by " white raen " in every
sense of the word.
New England, however, cannot be utterly depopu
lated of its old stocks, for at every turn you come
up against those good old Puritan names which
82

DETROIT
bespeak a longer ancestry than many an English
peer can claim. I find among the signatures to a
petition against the reinstateraent of an elevated
railroad in Boston, such names as Adams, Morse,
Lowell, Eraerson, Bowditch, Lothrop, Storey,
Dabney, Whipple, Ticknor, and Hale. Of the fifty
signatures, only three (or, at the outside five, if we
include two doubtful cases) are of other than English
origin. In contrast to this I raay mention another
list of names which came under ray notice at the
same time — a list of the purchasers at a sale by
auction of seats for a New York first-night. Here
twenty-six names out of forty are obviously of non-
English origin, while several of the remaining
fourteen have a distinctly Hebraic ring.
Though very much smaller than New York,
Chicago, and Philadelphia, Boston is essentially a
great city, with a very animated street life, and
nothing in the least provincial about it. But it is
not in these great capitals, not even in this marvellous
Chicago where I am now writing, that one most
clearly realises the bewildering potentialities of the
United States. It is precisely in the minor, the
provincial cities, which to us in Europe are no more
than naraes — perhaps not so much. For instance,
what does the average EngUshraan know of Detroit?*
* My own visit to Detroit illustrated this vagueness of the
average Englishman. I was anxious to see Mr. James A.
Heme's famous play, Shore Acres, and learned from Mr.
Heme that it would be played by a travelling company at
83

AMERICA TO-DAY
What State is it in ? Is it in the North or the
South, the East or the West ? For my part I
knew in a general way, having been there before,
that Eietroit was situated somewhere between Chicago
and Niagara Falls, but until a few days ago I should
have been puzzled to describe its situation more
precisely. Well, I arrive in this obscure, insignifi
cant place, and find it a city of considerably more
than a quarter of a railUon inhabitants, beautifully
laid out, magnificently paved and Ughted, its broad
and noble avenues lined with handsome commercial
houses and roomy if not always beautiful villas,
trees shading its sidewalks, electric cars swimming
in an endless stream along its bustling thorough
fares, its imposing public library swarming with
readers, its theatres crowded, its parks alive with
bicyclists, an eager activity, whether in business,
culture, or recreation, manifesting itself on every
hand. Or take, again, Buffalo, somewhat larger
than Detroit, but still by no means a city of the first
rank. Everything that I have said of Detroit appUes
to it, with the addition that some of its commercial
buildings are not only palatial in their dimensions,
but original and impressive in their architecture. An
Buffalo on a certain date. I carefully noted the place and day,
but contrived to mix up Buffalo and Detroit in my mind, and
arrived on the appointed day in Detroit — nearly two hundred
and fifty miles from the appointed place ! It was as though,
having arranged to be in Brighton at a certain time, one should
go instead to Scarborough. 84

BUFFALO
afternoon stroll along Woodward Avenue, Detroit,
or Main Street, Buffalo, reassures one as to the
future — the physical future, at any rate — of the
American people. The prevailing type is, if not
definitely Anglo-Saxon, at any rate Teutonic, and
the average of physical developraent is very high,
especially araong the women. It raay have some
bearing upon what I have been sajdng above to note
that, in point of stature and beauty, the Bostonian
woman, as a rule, seeraed to me to fall far short of
her sisters in the other cities I have visited. I have
before ray raind's eye many distinguished and de
lightful exceptions to this rule; but, postponing
gallantry to sociological candour, I state my general
impression for what it is worth.
Here, in Chicago, gallantry and candour go hand
in hand. A legend of the envious East represents
that a Chicago young man travelling in Louisiana
wrote to his sweetheart : " Dear Mamie, — I have
shot an aUigator. When I have shot another I
will send you a pair of slippers." The implication
is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, a
base and baseless calumny. New York itself does
not present a higher average of female beauty
than Chicago, and that is saying a great deal.
But I must not enlarge on this fascinating topic. A
Judgment of Paris is always a delicate business, and
I am in nowise called upon to make the invidious
award. Were I compelled to undertake it, I could
only distribute the apple, and my homage, in equal
85

AMERICA TO-DAY
shares to the goddesses of the East, the South, and
the Middle West.
When I was in Chicago in "JT, it was the metro
polis of the West, without qualification. Now it
is merely the frontier city of the Middle West.
From the standpoint of Omaha and Denver, it
seems to fill the Eastern horizon, and shut out the
further view. Many stories are told to show how
absolutely and instinctively your true Westerner
ignores the Eastern States and cities. Here is
one of the most characteristic. A little girl came
into the smoking-car of a train somewhere in
Kansas or Nebraska, and stood beside her father,
who was in conversation with another man. The
father put his arm round her and said to his com
panion, " She's been a great traveller, this little girl
of mine. She's only ten years old, and she's been
all over the United States."
" You don't say ! " repUed the other ; " all over
the United States ? "
" Yes, sir ; all over the United States," said the
proud father ; and then added, as though the detail
was scarcely worth raentioning, "except east of
Chicago." Chicago, unfortunately, raarks the lirait of my
wanderings ; so I shall return to England without
having seen anything of the United States, except
for a sort of Pisgah-glimpse from the tower of the
Auditorium.

86

LETTER IX
Chicago — Its Splendour and Squalor — Mammoth
Buildings— Wind, Dust, and Smoke — Culture— Chicago's
Self-Criticism — Postcript : Social Service in America. Chicago.
When I was in America twenty-two years ago,
Chicago was the city that interested me least.
Coming straight from San Francisco — which, in the
eyes of a youthful student of Bret Harte, seemed
the fitting metropolis of one of the great realms of
romance — I saw in Chicago the negation of all that
had charmed me on the Pacific slope. It was a flat
and grimy abode of mere commerce, a rectilinear
Glasgow ; and to an Edinburgh man, or rather boy,
no comparison could appear more damaging. How
different is the impression produced by the Chicago
of to-day ! In 1877 the city was extensive enough,
indeed, and handsome to boot, in a coraraonplace,
cast-iron fashion. It was a chequer-board of Queen
Victoria Streets. To-day its area is appalling, its
architecture grandiose. It is the young giant among
the cities of the earth, and it stands but on the
threshold of its destiny. It embraces in its un-
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AMERICA TO-DAY
imaginable ampUtude every extrerae of splendour
and squalor. Walking in Dearborn Street or Adams
Street of a cloudy afternoon, you think yourself in
a frowning and fuliginous city of Dis, piled up
by superhuraan and apparently sinister powers.
Cycling round the boulevards of a sunny morning,
you rejoice in the airy and spacious greenery of the
Garden City. Driving along the Lake Shore to
Lincoln Park in the flush of sunset, you wonder
that the dwellers in this street of palaces should
trouble their heads about Naples or Venice, when
they have before their very windows the innumer
able laughter, the ever-shifting opalescence, of their
fascinating inland sea. Plunging in the electric cars
through the river subway, and emerging in the
West Side, you realise that the slums of Chicago, if
not quite so tightly packed as those of New York
or London, are no whit behind them in the other
essentials of civilised barbarism. Chicago, more
than any other city of my acquaintance, suggests
that antique conception of the underworld which
placed Elysiura and Tartarus not only on the same
plane, but, so to speak, round the corner from each
other. As the elephant (or rather the megatherium) to
the giraffe, so is the colossal business block of
Chicago to the sky-scraper of New York. There is
a proportion and dignity in the mammoth buildings
of Chicago which is lacking in most of those which
form the jagged sky-line of Manhattan Island. For
88

CITIES WITHIN THE CITY
one reason or another — no doubt sorae difference in
the system of land tenure is at the root of the
matter — the Chicago architect has usually a larger
plot of ground to operate on than his New York
colleague, and can consequently give his building
breadth and depth as well as height. Before the
lanky giants of the Eastern metropolis, one has
generally to hold one's sesthetic judgment in abey
ance. They are not precisely ugly, but still less, as
a rule, can they be called beautiful, They are
simply astounding manifestations of huraan energy
and heaven-storraing audacity. They stand outside
the pale of aesthetics, like the Eiffel Tower or the
Forth Bridge. But in Chicago proportion goes
along with mere height, and many of the business
houses are, if not beautiful, at least sesthetically
impressive — for instance, the grim fortallce of
Marshall, Field & Company, the Masonic Temple,
the Woraen's Temperance Temple (a structure with
a touch of real beauty), and such vast cities within
the city as the Great Northern Building and the
Monadnock Block. The last-named edifice alone is
said to have a daily population of 6000. A city
ordinance now liraits the height of buildings to ten
storeys; but even that is a respectable allowance.
Moreover, it is found that where giant constructions
cluster too close together, they (literally) stand in
each other's light, and the middle storeys do not let.
Thus the heaven-storraing era is probably over;
but there is all the more reason to feel assured that
89

AMERICA TO-DAY
the business centre of Chicago will ere long be not
only grandiose but architecturally dignified and
satisfactory. A growing thirst for beauty has come
upon the city, and architects are earnestly studying
how to assuage it. In magnificence of internal
decoration, Chicago can already challenge the
world : for instance, in the white marble vestibule
and corridors of The Rookery, and the noble haU of
the IlUnois Trust Bank.
At the same tirae, no account of the city scenery
of Chicago is coraplete without the admission that
the gorges and canyons of its central district are
exceedingly draughty, smoky, and dusty. Even in
these radiant spring days, it fully acts up to its
1-eputation as the Windy City. This pecuUarity
renders it probably the most convenient place in the
world for the establishraent of a Suicide Club on
the Stevensonian model. With your eyes peppered
with dust, with your ears full of the clatter of the
Elevated Road, and with the prairie breezes play
fully buffeting you and waltzing with you by turns,
as they eddy through the ravines of Madison,
Monroe, or Adams Street, you take your Ufe in
your hand when you attempt the crossing of State
Street, with its endless stream of rattUng waggons
and clanging trolley-cars. New York does not for
a moraent corapare with Chicago in the roar and
bustle and bewilderment of its street life. This
remark will probably be resented in New York, but
it expresses the settled conviction of an impartial
90

CHICAGO SMOKE
pedestrian, who has spent a considerable portion of
his life during the past few weeks in " negotiating "
the crossings of both cities.
On the other hand, I observe no eagerness on
the part of New York to contest the supremacy of
Chicago in the matter of smoke. In this respect
the eastern raetropolis is to the western as Mont
Blanc to Vesuvius. The smoke of Chicago has a
pecuUar and aggressive individuality, due, I imagine,
to the natural clearness of the atmosphere. It does
not seem, like London sraoke, to perraeate and
blend with the air. It does not overhang the streets
in a uniforra canopy, but sweeps across and about
them in gusts and swirls, now dropping and now
Ufting again its griray curtain. You will often see
the vista of a gorge-like street so choked with a
seemitig thundercloud that you feel sure a storm is
just about to burst upon the city, until you look up
at the zenith and find it srailing and serene. Again
and again a sudden swirl of sraoke across the street
(Uke that which swept across Fifth Avenue when
the Windsor Hotel burst into flames) has led rae to
prick up ray ears for a cry of " Fire ! " But Chicago
is not so easily alarraed. It is accustoraed to having
its airs from heaven blurred by these blasts from
heh. I know few spectacles more curious than that
which awaits you when you have shot up in the
express elevator to the top of the Auditorium tower
— on the one hand, the blue and laughing lake, on
theother, the city belching volumes of smoke from
91

AMERICA TO-DAY
its thousand throats, as though a vaster Sheffield or
Wolverhampton had been transported by magic to
the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. What a
wonderful city Chicago will be when the command
raent is honestly enforced which declares, "Thou
shalt consume thine own sraoke ! "
What a wonderful city Chicago wiU be ! That is
the ever-recurring burden of one's cogitations. For
Chicago is awake, and intelligently awake, to her
destinies ; so rauch one perceives even in the reiter
ated complaints that she is asleep. Discontent is
the condition of progress, and Chicago is not in the
slightest danger of relapsing into a condition of inert
self-complacency. Her sons love her, but they
chasten her. They are never tired of urging her on,
sometimes (it must be owned) with raost unfilial
objurgations ; and she, a quite unwearied Titan, is
bracing up her sinews for the great task of the
coraing century. I have given myself a rendezvous
in Chicago for 1925, when air-ships will no doubt
make the transit easy for my septuagenarian frame.
Nowhere in the world, I am sure, does the " to be
continued in our next" interest take hold on one
with such a compulsive grip.
^ Culture is pouring into Chicago as rapidly as pork
or grain, and Chicago is insatiate in asking for more.
In going over the Public Library (a not quite satis
factory building, though with some beautiful details)
I was raost of all impressed by the army of iron-
bound boxes which are perpetually speeding to and
92

CHICAGO'S SELF-CRITICISM
fro between the library itself and no fewer than
fifty-seven distributing stations scattered throughout
the city. " I thought the number was forty-eight,"
said a friend who accompanied me. " So it was last
year," said the librarian. " We have set up nine
more stations during the interval." The Chicago
Library boasts (no doubt justly) that it circulates
more books than any similar institution in the world.
Take, again, the University of Chicago : seven years
ago (or, say, at the outside ten) it had no existence,
and its site was a dismal swamp ; to-day it is a
handsome and populous centre of literary and scien
tific culture. Observe, too, that it is by no means
an oasis in the desert, but is thoroughly in touch
with the civic life around it. For instance, it actively
participates in the admirable work done by the Hull
House Settleraent in South Halsted Street, and in
the vigorous and wide-spreading University Exten
sion movement.
At the present moment Chicago is not a little
resentful of the sharp admonitions addressed to her
by two of her aforesaid loving but exacting children.
One, Professor Charles Zueblin, has been telling her
that " in the arrogance of youth she has failed to
reaUse that instead of being one of the progressive
cities of the world, she has been one of the reckless,
improvident, and shiftless cities." Professor Zueblin
is not content (for example) with her magnificent
girdle of parks and boulevards, but caUs for smaller
parks and breathing spaces in the heart of her most
93

AMERICA TO-DAY
crowded districts. He further maintains that her
great new sewage canal is a gigantically costly
blunder; and indeed one cannot but sympathise
with the citizens of St. Louis in inquiring by what
right Chicago converts the Mississippi into her main
sewer. But if Professor Zueblin chastises Chicago
with whips, Mr. Henry B. Fuller, it would seem,
lashes her with scorpions. Mr. Fuller is one of the
leading noveUsts of the city — for Chicago, be it
known, had a flourishing and characteristic Uterature
of her own long before Mr. Dooley sprang into fame.
The author of The Cliff-Dwellers is alleged to have
said that the Anglo-Saxon race was incapable of
art, and that in this respect Chicago was pre-emi
nently Anglo-Saxon. " Alleged," I say, for reports
of lectures in the Araerican papers are always to be
taken with caution, and are very often as fanciful as
Dr. Johnson's reports of the debates in Parliament.
The reporter is not generally a shorthand writer.
He jots down as much as he conveniently can of the
lecturer's reraarks, and pieces thera out from imagina
tion. Thus, I am not at all sure what Mr. Fuller
really said ; but there is no doubt whatever of the
indignation kindled by his diatribe. Deny her
artistic capacities and sensibilities, and you touch
Chicago in her tenderest point. Moreover, Mr.
Fuller's onslaught encouraged several other like-
minded critics to back him up, so that the city has
been writhing under the scourges of her epigram
matists. I have before me a letter to one of the
94

THE LINCOLN MONUMENT
evening papers, written in a tone of academic sarcasm
which proves that even the supercilious and
" donnish " element is not lacking in Chicago culture.
" I know a number of artists," says the writer,
" who came to Chicago, and after staying here for a
while, went away and achieved much success in
New York, London, and Paris. The appreciation
they received here gave thera the impetus to go
elsewhere, and thus brought them fame and fortune."
Whatever foundation there raay be for these jibes,
they are in theraselves a sufficient evidence that
Chicago is alive to her opportunities and respon
sibihties. She is, in her own vernacular, " raaking
culture hum." Mr. Fuller, I understand, reproached
her with her stockyards — an injustice which even
Mr. Bernard Shaw would scarcely have committed.
Is it the fault of Chicago that the world is carni
vorous ? Was not " Nature red in tooth and claw "
several seons before Chicago was thought of ? I do not
understand that any unnecessary cruelty is practised
in the stockyards ; and apart from that, I fail to see
that systematic slaughter of animals for food is any
more disgusting than sporadic butchery. But of the
stockyards I can speak only from hearsay. I shall
not go to see them. If I have any spare tirae, I
shall rather spend it in a second visit to St. Gaudens's ,
magnificent and magnificently placed statue of
Abraham Lincoln, surely one of the great works of
art of the century, and one of the few entirely worthy
monuments ever erected to a national hero.
95

AMERICA TO-DAY
Postscript. — The above-mentioned Hull House
Settlement in South Halsted Street, under the
direction of Miss Jane Addams, is probably the
most famous institution of its kind in America ; but
it is only one of many. There is no raore encourag
ing feature in American life than the zeal, energy,
and high and liberal intelligence with which social
service of this sort is being carried on in all the
great cities. This is a line of activity on which
England and America are advancing hand in hand,
and however much one may deplore the necessity
for such work, one cannot but see in the common
impulse which prompts and directs it a symptom of
the deep-seated unity of the two peoples. Nothing
I saw in America irapressed rae raore than the
thorough practicality as well as the untiring devo
tion which was apparent in the work carried on by
Miss Addams in Chicago and Miss Lillian D. Wald
in Henry Street, New York. And in both Settle
ments I recognised the same atmosphere of culture,
the same spirit of plain living, hard working, and
high thinking, that characterises the best of our
kindred institutions in England.
A lady connected with the University of Chicago,
who is also a worker at the Hull House Settlement,
told me a touching little story which illustrates at
once the need for such work in Chicago, and the
unexpected response with which it sometimes meets.
She had been talking about the beauties of nature to
a group of women from the slums, and at the end of
96

SOCIAL SERVICE
her address one of her hearers said, " I ain't never
been outside of Chicago, but I know it's true what
the lady says. There's two vacant lots near our
place, an' when the spring comes, the colours of them
— they fair makes you hold your breath. An' then
there's the trees on the Avenoo. An' then there's
all the sky." On another occasion the same lady
met with an " unexpected response " of a different
order. She was showing a boy from the slums some
photographs of Italian pictures, when they came
upon a Virgin and Child. " Ah," said the boy at
once, " that's Jesus an' His Mother : I alius knows
them -when 1 sees 'em." "Yes," said Miss R  ,
" there is a purity and grandeur of expression about
them, isn't there  " " 'Tain't that," interrupted
the boy, " it's the rims round their heads as gives
'em away ! "
Apart frora the Settlements, there are many ener
getically-conducted societies in America for the
social and poUtical enlightenment of the masses. I
have before rae, for instance, a little bundle of most
excellent leaflets issued by the League for Social
Service of New York. They deal with such subjects
as The Duties of American Citizenship, The Value of
a Vote, The Duty of Public Spirit, The Co-operatwe
City, Sec. They include an adrairable abstract in
twenty-four pages oi Laws Concerning the Welfare
of Every Citizen of New York, and the sarae Society
issues similar abstracts of the laws of other States.
They have a large and well-equipped lecture organi-
97 G

AMERICA TO-DAY
sation, and they issue excellent practical Suggestions
for Conferences and Courses of Study. The problem
to be grappled with by this Society and others work
ing on sirailar lines is no doubt one of immense
difficulty. It is nothing less than the education in
citizenship of the most heterogeneous, polyglot, and
in some respects ignorant and degraded population
ever asserabled in a single city since the days of
Imperial Rome. The spread of poUtical enlighten
raent in New York and other cities cannot possibly
be very rapid ; but no effort is being spared to
accelerate it. I soraetiraes wonder whether the
obvious necessity for political education in America
may not, in the long run, prove a marked advantage
to her, as corapared, for instance, with England.
Dissatisfaction, as I have said above, is the condition
of progress. We are apt to assume that every
Briton is born a good citizen ; and in the lethargy
begotten of that assumption, it raay very well
happen that we let the Americans outstrip us in the
march of enlightenment.

98

LETTER X
New York in Spring— Central Park— New York not
an Ill-governed City— The United States Post Office—
The Express System— Valedictory. New York.
It is with a curious sensation of home-coraing that
I find myself once more in New York. Spring has
arrived before me. The blue dorae of sky has lost
its crystalline sparkle, and the trees in Madison
Square have put on a filmy veil of green. Going to
a luncheon party in the Riverside region, I determine,
for the sheer pleasure and exhilaration of the thing,
to walk the whole way, up Fifth Avenue and
diagonally across Central Park. What a raagnificent
pleasure ground, vast, various, and seductive ! A
peerless eraerald on the finger of Manhattan ! If I
were not bound by soleran oaths to present rayself
at West-End Avenue at half-past one, I could loaf
all the afternoon by the superb expanse of the
Croton Reservoir, looking out over the giant city of
sunshine, with the white dorae of Columbia College
and the pyramid of Grant's Monument on the
northern horizon, and far to the eastward the low
hills of Long Island. 99

AMERICA TO-DAY
Passing the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I am
reminded, not only that I have never been inside it,
but that in all the cities I have visited I have not
gone to a single show-place, museum, or picture-
gallery, save one remarkable private coUection in
Baltimore. Of course I must also except (a large
exception !) the public libraries of Washington,
Boston, and Chicago, which are, in a very eminent
sense, "show-places." Still, it seems soraewhat
remarkable (does it not ?) that in a country which is
understood in Europe to be monotonous and un
attractive to travellers, I should have spent two
months not only of intellectual interest but of
sesthetic enjoyraent, without once, except in a
chance moraent of idleness, feeling the least
inclination to fall back upon the treasures of
European art which it undoubtedly contains. I
have even ignored the marvels of nature. I passed
within twenty miles of Niagara ; I saw the serried
icefloes sweeping down from Lake Erie to the
cataract ; and I did not go to see thera plunge over.
In the first place, I had been there before; in the
second place, I should have had to sacrifice six hours
of Chicago, where I wanted, not six hours less, but
six weeks more.
Before saying farewell — a fond farewell ! — to New
York, let me supplement my first irapressions with
my last. The most maligned of cities I called it ;
and truly I said well. Here is even the judicious
Mr. J. F. Muirhead of " Baedeker," betrayed by his
100

NEW YORK AGAIN
passion for antithesis into describing New York as
" a lady in ball costurae, with diaraonds in her ears
and her toes out at her boots." This was written,
to be sure, in 1890, and may have been true in its
day ; for it takes an American city rauch less than a
decade to belie a derogatory epigrara. Now, at any
rate. New York has had her shoes mended to some
purpose. She is not the best paved city in the
world, or even in America, but neither is she by
any means the worst; and her splendid system of
electric and elevated railroads renders her more
independent of paving than any European city.
Fifth Avenue is paved to perfection ; Broadway and
Sixth Avenue are not ; but at any rate the streets
are not for ever being hauled up and laid down
again, like some of our leading London thorough
fares. Holborn, for example, may be ideally paved
on paper, but its roadway is subject to such incessant
eruptions of one sort or another that it is in practice
a much raore uncomfortable thoroughfare than any
of the New York aVenues. For the rest, New York
has a copious and excellent water supply, which
London has not ; it has a splendidly efficient fire-
brigade ; it has an admirable telephone system, with
underground wires; and even its electric trolleys
get their motive-power from underneath, whereas in
Philadelphia the overhead wires are, I regret to say,
kilUng the trees which lend the streets their greatest
charm. Altogether, Tararaany or no Tararaany,
New York cannot possibly be described as an ill-

AMERICA TO-DAY
governed city. Its government may be wasteful
and worse ; inefficient it is not. Even the policemen
seem to me maligned. I never found thera rude or
needlessly dictatorial.
In one of the essential conveniences of raodern
life, New York is far behind London ; but the blame
lies, not with the city, but with the United States.
Its postal arrangements are at best erratic, at worst
/ miserable. Letters which would be delivered in
London in three or four hours take in New York
anywhere frora six to sixteen hours. It was a long
tirae before I realised and learned to allow for the
slowness of the postal service. At first I used
raentally to accuse ray correspondents of great
dilatoriness in attending to notes that called for an
iraraediate reply. On one occasion I posted in
Madison Square at 3 p.m. a letter addressed to the
Lyceum Theatre, not a quarter of a mile away,
suggesting an appointraent for the same evening
after the play. The appointment was not kept, for
the letter was not delivered till the following
morning ! To ensure its delivery the same evening,
I ought to have put a special-delivery stamp on it —
price fivepence — in addition to the ordinary two-cent
xstamp. No doubt it is the universal employment of
the telephone in American cities that leads people to
put up with such defective postal arrangements.
But it is not only within city limits that the United
States Post Office functions with a dignified deUbera
tion. The ordinary time that it takes to write (say)
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THE U.S. MAIL
from New York to Chicago, and receive an answer,
might be considerably reduced without any accelera
tion of the train service. It sounds incredible, but
it is, I believe, the case, that the siraple and
erainently time-saving device of a letter-box in the
domestic front-door is practically unknown in America.
I did observe one, in Boston, so sraall that a fair
sized business letter would certainly have stuck in
its throat. One evening I was sitting at dinner in a
fashionable street in New York, close to Central
Park, when I was startled by a distinctly burglarious
noise at the vnndow. My host srailed at ray look of
bewilderment, and explained that it was only the
letter-carrier; and, sure enough, when the servant
came into the roora she picked up three or four
letters from the floor. The postman was somehow
able to reach the front window frora the " stoop,"
open it, and throw in the evening's raail — -a primitive
arrangement, raore suggestive of the English than of
the American Gotham. Even the gura on the
United States postage-staraps is apt to be ineffectual.
When you are staraping letters in hot haste to catch
the European mail, you are as likely as not to find
that the head of President Grant has curled up and
refuses — raost uncharacteristically — to stick to its
post. The conveniences of the express systera, again,
are, in ray judgment, greatly overrated. It is often
slow and always expensive. It seeras to have been
devised by the makers of Saratoga trunks, for it
103

AMERICA TO-DAY
puts a preraium upon huge packages and a tax upon
those of moderate size. I speak feelingly, for I
have just paid eight shillings for the conveyance of
five packages from my room to the wharf, a distance
of about a mile and a half. A London growler
would have taken them and myself to boot for
eighteenpence, three of the packages going outside,
and two, with their owner, inside. It is true that
had I packed all ray belongings in one huge box the
same company would have conveyed thera to the
stearaer for one and eightpence, which is the regular
charge per package. But I could not have taken
this box into my state-room ; I must in any case
have had a cabin trunk ; and for an ocean voyage, a
bundle of rugs is, to say the least of it, advisable.
Thus I could not have escaped paying four and
tenpence for the conveyance of my baggage alone —
rather raore than three times as much as it would
have cost to convey my baggage and myself the
same distance in London. It must not be forgotten,
of course, that the New York Express Company
would, if necessary, have carried the goods much
further for the same charge of forty cents a package.
The lirait of distance I do not know : it is probably
something like twenty miles. But a potential ell
does not reconcile me to paying an exorbitant price
for the actual inch which is all I have any use for.
This raethod of siraplification — fixing the rainimum
payment on the basis of the raaxiraum bulk, weight,
and distance — seeras to me essentially irrational.
104

A GROUP OF GIANTS
In sorae cases, indeed, it cuts against the Express
Corapany. When I first had occasion to move from
one abode to another in New York — a distance of
about a quarter of a raile — I thought with glee, " Now
the famous express system will save me all trouble."
But I found that it would cost two doUars to express
my belongings, whereas even the notoriously extor
tionate New York cabman would convey me and all
ray goods and chattels for half that sum. So the
Express Company's loss was cabby's gain.
" The ship is cheered, the harbour cleared," and
none too merrily are we dropping down by the
Statue of Liberty to Sandy Hook and the Atlantic.
(There is a point, by the way, a little below the
Battery, from which New York looks mountainous
indeed. Its irregularly serrated profile is lost, and
the sky-scrapers fall into position one behind the
other, like an artisticaUy grouped cohort of giants.
" Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise,"
while in the background the glorious curve of the
Brooklyn Bridge seems to span half the horizon. I
could not but think of ValhaUa and the Bridge of
the Gods in the Rheingold. Elevator architecture
necessarily sends one to Scandinavian mythology in
quest of sirailitudes.) It is with acute regret that
I turn ray back upon New York, or, rather, turn my
face to see it receding over the steamer's wake.
Not often in this imperfect world are high anticipa
tions overtopped, as the real America has over-
105

AMERICA TO-DAY
topped my half-reminiscent dream of it. " The
real Araerica " ? That, of course, is an absurd ex
pression. I have had only a superficial glirapse of
one corner of the United States. It is as though
one were to glance at a mere dog-ear on a folio
page, and then profess to have mastered its whole
import. But I intend no such ridiculous profession.
I have seen something of the outward aspect of five
or six great cities; I have looked into one small
facet of American social life ; and I have faithfully
reported what I have seen — ^nothing more. At the
same time my observations, and more especially my
conversations with the scores of "bright" and
amiable men it has been my privilege to meet, have
suggested to me certain thoughts, certain hopes and
apprehensions, respecting the future of America and
the English-speaking world, which I shall try to
formulate elsewhere. For the present, let rae only
sum up my personal experiences in saying that all
the pleasant expectations I brought with me to
Araerica have been realised, all the forebodings dis
appointed. Even the interviewer is far less terrible
than I had been led to iraagine. He always treated
me with courtesy, sometimes with comprehension.
One gentleraan alone (not an Araerican, by the way)
set forth to be mildly humorous at my expense ; and
even he apologised in advance, as it were, by pre
fixing his own portrait to the interview, as who
should say, " Look at me — how can I help it ? "
Again, I had been led rather to fear American
io6

VALEDICTORY
hospitality as being apt to become importunate and
exacting. I found it no less considerate than cordial.
Probably I was too small game to bring the Uon-
hunters upon my trail. The alleged habit of speech-
making and speech-demanding on every possible
occasion I found to be merely mythical. Three
times only was I called upon to " say something,"
and on the first two occasions, being taken un
awares, I said everything I didn't want to say. The
third time, having foreseen the deraand, I had noted
down in advance the heads of an eloquent harangue ;
but when the tirae came I felt the atmosphere un
propitious, and suppressed my rhetoric. The pro
ceedings opened with an iced beverage, called, I
beUeve, a "Mississippi toddy," probably as being
the longest toddy on record, the father of (fire)
waters; and on its down-lapsing current ray elo
quence was swept into the gulf of oblivion. The
raeeting, fortunately, did not know what it had lost,
and its serenity remained unclouded. But it is not
to the Mississippi toddies and other creature com
forts of America that I look back with gratitude and
affection. It is to the spontaneous and unaffected
human kindness that raet rae on every hand ; the
will to please and to be pleased in daily intercourse;
and, in the spiritual sphere, the thirst for knowledge,
for justice, for beauty, for the larger and the purer
light.

107

PART II
REFLECTIONS

NORTH AND SOUTH
I
In Washington, on the 6th of April last, business was
suspended frora raid-day onwards, while President
McKinley and all the high officers of State attended
the pubhc funeral at ArUngton Cemetery of several
hundred soldiers, brought home frora the battlefields
of Cuba. The burial ground on the heights of Arling
ton — the old Virginian horae, by the way, of the Lee
faraily — had hitherto been known as the resting-
place of nurabers of Northern soldiers, killed in the
Civil War. But araong the bodies committed to
earth that afternoon were those of many Southerners,
who had stood and fallen side by side with their
Northern comrades at El Caney and San Juan.
The significance of the event was widely felt and
commented upon. "Henceforth," said one paper,
"the graves at Arlington will constitute a truly
national cemetery"; and the same note was struck
in a thousand other quarters. Poets burst into song
at the thought of their

AMERICA TO-DAY
" Resting together side by side.
Comrades in blue and grey !
" Healed in the tender peace of time.
The wounds that once were red
With hatred and with hostile rage,
While sanguined brothers bled.
" They leaped together at the call
Of country — one in one.
The soldiers of the Northern hills
And of the Southern sun !
" ' Yankee ' and ' Rebel,' side by side,
Beneath one starry fold —
To-day, amid our common tears,
Their funeral bells are tolled."
The artlessness of these verses renders them none
the less significant. They express a popular senti
raent in popular language. But, as here expressed,
it is clearly the sentiraent of the North : how far is
it shared and acknowledged by the South ? Hap
pening to be on the spot, I could not but try to
obtain sorae sort of answer to this question.
Again, as I stood on the terrace of the Capitol that
April afternoon, and looked out across the Potomac
to the old Lee mansion at ArUngton, while all the
flags of Washington drooped at half-mast, a^ very
different piece of verse somehow floated into my
meraory :
" Walt-wide 0' the Widow at Windsor,
For 'alf o' Creation she owns :
We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword and the flame.
And salted it down with our bones.
(Poor beggars ! — it's blue with our bones !) "
112

PRO PATRIA
The association was obvious : how the price of
lead would go up if England brought horae all her
dead " heroes " in hermetically-sealed caskets ! My
thought (so an anti-Imperialist might say) was like
the smile of the hardened freebooter at the araiable
sentiraentaUsra of a corarade who was "yet but
young In deed." But why should Mr. Kipling's
rugged lines have cropped up in my meraory rather
than the sraoother verses of other poets, equally
familiar to me, and equally well fitted to point the
contrast ? — for instance, Mr. Housman'^ :
" It dawns in Asia, tombstones show.
And Shropshire names are read ;
And the Nile spills his overflow
Beside the Severn's dead."
Or Mr. Newbolt's :
" Qui procul hinc — the legend's writ.
The frontier grave is far away ;
Qui ante diem periit,
Sed miles, sed fro patria."
The reason siraply was that during the month I had
spent in America the air had been filled with Kipling,
His name was the first I had heard uttered on
landing — by the conductor of a horse-car. Men of
light and leading, and honourable women not a few,
had vied with each other in quoting his refrains ;
and I had seen the crowded audience at a low music-
hall stirred to enthusiasm by the delivery of a screed
of maudlin verses on his illness. He, the rhapsodist
113 H

AMERICA TO-DAY
of the red coat, was out and away the most popular
poet in the country of the blue, and that at a time
when the blue coat in itself was inimitably popular.
Nor could there be any doubt that his Barrack-room
Ballads were the most popular of his works. Not a
century had passed since the Tommy Atkins of that
day had burnt the Capitol on whose steps I was
standing (a shameful exploit, to which I allude only
to point the contrast); and here was the poet of
Tommy Atkins so idolised by the grandsons of the
men of 1 8 1 2 and i yyS, that I, a Briton and a staunch
admirer of Kipling, had almost corae to resent as an
obsession the ubiquity of his name !
It seemed then, that the rancour of the blue coat
against the red must have dwindled no less signifi
cantly than the rancour of the grey coat against the
blue. Into the reality of this phenoraenon, too, I
made it my husiness to inquire.

II
There can be no doubt that the Spanish War has
done a great deal to bring the North and the South
together. It has not in any sense created in the
South a feeling of loyalty to the Union, but it has
given the younger generation in the South an oppor
tunity of manifesting that loyalty to the Union which
has been steadily growing for twenty years. Down
to 1880, or thereabouts, the wound left by the Civil
114

RECONSTRUCTION
War was still raw, its inflammation envenomed
rather than allayed by the measures of the " recon
struction" period. Since 1880, since the admin
istration of President Hayes, the wound has been
steadily healing, until it has come to seem no longer
a burning sore, but an honourable cicatrice.
Every one admits that the heaviest blow ever
dealt to the South was that which laid Abraham
Lincoln in the dust. He, if any one, could have
averted the mistakes which delayed by fifteen years
the very beginning of the process of reconciliation.
His wise and kindly influence removed, the North
committed what is now recognised as the fatal
blunder of forcing unrestricted negro suffrage on
the South. This raeasure was dictated partly, no
doubt, by honest idealism, partly by much lower
motives. Then the horde of " carpet-baggers "
descended upon the "reconstructed" States, and
there ensued a period of humiliation to the South
which made men look back with longing even to the
sharper agonies of the war. Coloured voters were
brought in droves, by their Northern fuglemen, to
polUng-places which were guarded by United States
troops. Utterly illiterate negroes crowded the
benches of State legislatures. A Northerner and a
staunch Union raan has assured me that in the
Capitol of one of the reconstructed States he has
seen a coloured representative gravely studying a
newspaper which he held upside down. The story
goes that in the legislature of Mississippi a negro
"5

AMERICA TO-DAY
majority, which had opposed a certain bill, was
suddenly brought round to it in a body by a chance
aUusion to its " provisions," which they understood
to mean something to eat ! This anecdote perhaps
lacks evidence ; but there can be no doubt that the
freedraen of 1865 were, as a body, entirely unfitted
to exercise the suffrage thrust upon them. A de
grading and exasperating struggle was the inevit
able result — the whites of the South striving by
intimidation and chicanery to nullify the negro vote,
the professional politicians from the North battling,
with the aid of United States troops, to render it
effectual. Such a state of things was deraorallsing
to both parties, and in process of time the common
sense of the North revolted against it. United
States troops no longer stood round the ballot-
boxes, and the South was suffered, in one way and
another, to throw off the " Dominion of Darkness."
Different States modified their constitutions in
different ways. Many offices which had been elec
tive were raade appointive. The general plan
adopted of late years has been to restrict the suf
frage by raeans of a very simple test of intelligence,
the would-be voter being required to read a para
graph of the State constitution and explain its
meaning. The examiner, if one may put it so, is
the election judge, and he can admit or exclude a
man at his discretion. Thus illiterate whites are
not necessarily deprived of the suffrage. They may
be quite intelligent men and responsible citizens,
T16

"THE FLAIL OF THE NEGRO"
who happened to grow to manhood precisely in the
years when the war and its sequels upset the whole
system of public education in the South. At any
rate (it is argued), the iUiterate white is a totally
different man from the illiterate negro. How far
such modifications of the State constitutions are
consistent with the Constitution of the United
State, is a nice question upon which I shall not
attempt to enter. The arguments used to reconcile
this test of intelUgence with Amendraents XIV. and
XV. of the United States Constitution seem to rae
more ingenious than convincing. But, constitu
tional or not, the compromise is reasonable; and
though people in the South still feel, as one of them
put it to me, that the RepubUcan party "may yet
wield the flail of the negro over them," the flail has
been laid aside long enough to permit the South, in
the raain, to recover its peace of mind and its self-
respect. The negro problem is still difficult enough,
as many tragic evidences prove; but there is no
reason to despair of its ultimate solution.
Meanwhile material prosperity has been returning
to the South; agriculture has revived, and manu
factures have increased. Social intercourse and
intermarriage have done rauch to promote mutual
comprehension between North and South, and to
wipe out rankling animosities. Each party has
made a sincere effort to understand the other's
" case," and the war has come to seem a thing fated
and inevitable, or at any rate not to have been
117

AMERICA TO-DAY
averted save by superhuman wisdom and modera
tion on both sides. With rautual coraprehension,
rautual admiration has gone hand in hand. The
gallantry and tenacity of the South are warmly
appreciated in the North, and it is felt on both sides
that the very quaUties which raade the tussle so
long and terrible are the qualities which ensure the
greatness of the reunited nation. But changes of
sentiment are naturally slow and, from raoraent to
raoment, imperceptible. It needs some outside
stimulus or shock to bring them clearly home to the
minds of men. Such a stimulus was provided by
the conflict with Spain. It did not create a new
sense of soUdarity between the North and the
South, but rather brought prominently to the
surface of the national consciousness a sense of
solidarity that had for years been growing and
strengthening, more or less obscurely and inarticu
lately, on both sides of Mason and Dixon's Une.
It consummated a process of consolidation which
had been going on for something like twenty
years. Furtherraore, the Spanish War deposed the Civil
War frora its position as the last event of great
external picturesqueness in the national history.
However sincere raay be our love of peace, war
reraains irresistibly fascinating to the imagination ;
and the imagination of young America has now a
foreign war instead of a civil war to look back upon.
The smoke of battle, in which the South stood
ii8

VIEWS OF THE VETERANS
shoulder to shoulder with the North, has done more
than many years of peace could do to soften in
retrospect the harsh outUnes of the fratricidal
struggle. At the sarae tirae, there is another side to the case
which ought not to be overlooked. The South is
proud, very proud ; and the older generation, the
generation which fought and agonised through the
terrible years frora '6i to '65, is more than a little
inclined to resent what it regards as the con
descending advances of the North. This feeling is
not confined to those out-of-the-way corners where,
as the saying goes, they have not yet heard that the
war — the Civil War — is over. It is not confined
to the old families, ruined by the war, whom the
tide of returning prosperity has not reached, and
never will reach. It is strong among even the most
active and progressive of the veterans of '65. They
smile a grim sraile in their grizzled beards at the
fuss which has been made over this "picayune
war," as they call it. They, who came crushed, ira-
poverished, heartbroken, out of the duel of the
Titans — they, who know what it really raeans to
sacrifice everything, everything, to a patriotic ideal
— they, to whora their cause seems none the less
sacred because they know it irrevocably lost — how
can they be expected to toss up their caps and help
the party which first vanquished, and then, for
many bitter years, oppressed them, to make political
capital out of what appears, in their eyes, a more or
119

AMERICA TO-DAY
less creditable military picnic ? It is especially the
small scale of the conflict that excites their derision.
" Did you ever hear of the battle of Dinwiddle
Court-House ? " one of them said to me. I con
fessed that I had not. " No," he said, " nor has
any one else heard of the battle of Dinwiddle
Court-House. It was one of the most insignificant
fights in the war. But there were more men killed
in half an hour in that alraost forgotten battle than
in all this mighty war we hear so much about."
"Ah!" he continued, "they think we are vastly
gratified when they ' fraternise ' with us on our
battlefields and decorate the graves of our dead. I
don't know but I prefer the ' waving of the bloody
shirt ' to this flaunting of the olive-branch. They
have their victory ; let them leave us our graves."
An intense loyalty, not only to the political
theories of the South, but to the memory of the men
who died for them — "qui bene pro patria cum
patriaque jacent " — still animates the survivors of
the war. With a confessed but none the less
pathetic illogicality, they feel as though Death had
not gone to work impartially, but had selected for
his prey the noblest and the best. One of these
survivors, in a paper now before me, quotes from
Das Siegesfest the Kne —
" Ja, der Krieg verschlingt die Besten ! "
and then remarks : " Still, when Schiller says —
I20

A TRAGIC EMOTION
' Denn Patroklus liegt begraben,
Und Thersites kommt zuriick,'
his illustration is only half right. The Greek
Thersites did not return to claira a pension."
The dash of bitterness in this reraark must not be
taken too seriously. The fact remains, however, that
among the veterans of the South there prevails a
certain feeling of aloofness from the national jubila
tion over the Spanish War. They " don't take
much stock in it." The feeUng is widespread, I
believe, but not loud-voiced. If I represented it as
surly or undignified, I should misrepresent it grossly.
It is simply the outcome of an ancient and deep-
seated sorrow, not to be salved by phrases or cere
monies — the most tragic emotion, I think, with
which I ever came face to face. But it prevails
almost exclusively among the older generation in
the South, the men who " when they saw the issue
of the war, gave up their faith in God, but not their
faith in the cause." To the young, or even the
middle-aged, it has little meaning. I raet a scholar-
soldier in the South who had given expression to the
sentiment of his race and generation in an essay —
one might almost say an elegy — so chivalrous in
spirit and so fine in literary forra that it moved me
well-nigh to tears. Reading it at a public library, I
found myself so visibly affected by it that my neigh
bour at the desk glanced at me in surprise, and I had
to puU myself sharply together. Yet the writer of
this essay told me that when he gave it to his son to

AMERICA TO-DAY
read, the young man handed it back to him, saying,
"All this is a sealed book to me. I cannot feel
these things as you do."
More iraportant, perhaps, than the sentiraent of the
veterans is the feeling, which has been pretty gener
ally expressed, that the South was slighted in the
actual conduct of the late war — that Southern regi
ments and Southern soldiers (notably General
Fitzhugh Lee) were unduly kept in the background.
Still, there is every reason to believe that the general
effect of the war has been one of conciliation and
consolidation. From the ultra-Southern point of
view, the North seems merely to have seized the
opportunity of making honourable araends for the
" horrors of reconstruction " ; but even those who
take this view admit that the North has seized the
opportunity, and that gladly. As a raatter of fact the
goodwiU of the North, and its desire to let bygones
be bygones, are probably very little influenced by
any such recondite raotive. It is in most cases quite
simple and instinctive. "There are no rebels now,"
said the commandant of the Brooklyn Navy Yard
when he gave orders to delete the fourth word of the
inscription "Taken frora the rebel ra.xa Mississippi"
over a trophy of the Civil War displayed outside his
quarters. Adrairal PhiUps had probably no thought
of " reconstruction " or of " raaking amends " ; he
simply obeyed a spontaneous and general sentiment.
The Southern heroes of the Civil War, moreover,
are freely admitted, and enthusiastically welcomed,
122

THE LOST CAUSE
into the national Pantheon. When the thirty-fourth
anniversary of "Appomattox Day,"which brought the
war to an end, was celebrated in Chicago on April lo
last (Governor Roosevelt being the guest of honour),
the memory of Lee was eulogised along with that of
Grant, and the oration in his honour was received
with equal applause. Finally, it is admitted even by
those who are raost inclined to raake light of the
sentiment elicited by the late war, that all the States
of the Atlantic seaboard are instinctively drawing
together to counterpoise the growing predominance
of the West. This substitution of a new line of
cleavage for the old one raay seera a questionable
matter for rejoicing. But in any great community,
conflicts of interest must always arise. The recog
nition of the problems which await the Republic in
the near future does not imply any doubt of her
ability to arrive at a wise and just solution of them.

Ill
The raost loyal of the Southern veterans, J, have
said, recognise that the cause of the South is irre
vocably lost. By the cause of the South I do not,
of course, mean slavery. There is probably no one
in the South who would advocate the reinstateraent
of that "peculiar institution," even if it could be
effected by the lifting of a finger. " The cause we
fought for and our brothers died for," says Professor
123

AMERICA TO-DAY
GUdersleeve of Baltimore, " was the cause of civil
Uberty, not the cause of human slavery. ... If the
secrets of all hearts could have been revealed, our
eneraies would have been astounded to see how
many thousands and tens of thousands in the
Southern States felt the crushing burden and the
awful responsibility of the institution which we were
supposed to be defending with the raelodramatic
fury of pirate kings."
What was it, then, that the South fought for?
In what sense was its cause the cause of " civil
liberty " ? A brief inquiry into this question may
be found to have more than a merely historic interest
— to have a direct bearing, indeed, upon the problems
of the future, not only for America, but for the
English-speaking world.
Let me state at once the true inwardness of the
matter, as I have been led to see it. The cause of
the South was the cause of small against large
political aggregations ; and the world regards the
defeat of the South as righteous and inevitable,
because instinct tells it that the welfare of humanity
is to be sought in large political aggregations, and
not in sraall. Providence, in a word, is on the side
of the big (social) battalions.
From the point of view of pure logic, of academic
arguraent, the case of the South was enorraously
strong. Consequently, the latter-day apologists of
the Confederacy devote themselves with pathetic
fervour, and often with great ingenuity, to what the
124

THE CONSTITUTIONAL ARGUMENT
impartial outsider cannot but feel to be barren dis
cussions of constitutional law. They point out that
the States — that is, the thirteen original States —
preceded the Federal Union, and voluntarily entered
into it under clearly defined conditions ; that the
Federal Governraent actually derived its powers
frora the consent of the States, and could have none
which they did not confer upon it ; that the raain
tenance of slavery in the Southern States, and the
right to claira the extradition of fugitive slaves,
were forraaUy safeguarded in the Constitution ; that
it was in reliance upon these provisions that the
Southern States consented to enter the Union ; that
the right of secession had been openly and repeatedly
asserted by leading politicians and influential parties
in several Northern States, and was therefore no
novel and treasonable invention of the South ; and,
finally, that the right to enter into a compact implied
the right to recede from it when its provisions were
broken, or obviously on the point of being broken,
by the other party or parties to the agreement. All
this is logically and historically indisputable. The
Southerners were the conservative party, and had
the letter of the Constitution on their side ; the
Northerners were the reformers, the innovators.
Entrenched in the theory of State Sovereignty, the
South denied the right of the North, acting through
the Central Government, to interfere with its
" peculiar institution " ; and even those who de
plored the existence of slavery felt themselves none
125

AMERICA TO-DAY
the less bound to assert and defend the right of
their respective States to manage their own affairs.*
It was a conflict as old as the Revolution — and
even, in its germs, of still older date — between
centripetal and centrifugal forces, between national
and local patriotism. The makers of the Constitu
tion had tried to hold the scales justly, but in their
natural jealousy of a strong central power, they had
allowed the balance to deflect unduly on the side
of local independence. The North, the national
majority, felt, obscurely and reluctantly, that a re
vision of the Constitution in the matter of slavery
was essential to the national welfare.t The South
maintained that the States were antecedent and
superior to the Nation, and said, " If your Nation,
in virtue of its mere raajority vote, insists on en
croaching on State rights which we forraaUy reserved
as a condition of entering the Nation, why then, we
prefer to withdraw from this Nation and set up a
nation of our own, in which the true principles of
the Constitution shall be preserved." Thereupon
the North retorted, " We deny your right to with
draw," and the battle was joined.
The North said, " You have no right to withdraw,"
but it meant, I think, soraething rather different. It
* " Submission to any encroachment," says Professor Gilder-
sleeve, "the least as well as the greatest, on the rights of a State,
means slavery"; this remark occurring early in an article of
twenty-five columns, in which negro slavery is not so much as
mentioned until the twenty-first column.
t See Postscript to this article. 126

STATE SOVEREIGNTY
threw overboard the question of abstract, forraal,
technical right, and fought priraarily, no doubt, for
a huraanitarian ideal, but fundaraentaUy to enforce
its instinct of the highest poUtical expediency. The
right interpretation of a state-paper, however vener
able, would not have been a question worthy of such
terrible arbitrament. Even the emancipation of the
negro, had that been the sole object of the contest,
would have been too dearly paid for in blood and
tears. The question at issue was really this :
What is the ideal political unit ? The largest pos
sible ? or the sraallest convenient ? What mattered
abstract argument as to the right to secede ? Once
grant the power to secede, once suffer the precedent
to be established, and the greatest democracy the
world had ever seen was bound to break up, not only
into two, but ultimately into many petty republics,
wrangling and jangling like those of Spanish
America. To this negation of a great ideal the
North refused its consent. National patriotism had
outgrown local patriotism. It had become to all
intents and purposes a fiction that the Federal
Government derived its powers from the States.
Thirteen of them, indeed, had sanctioned the
Federal Government, but the Federal Government
had sanctioned and admitted to the Union twenty-
one more. In these the sentiment of priority to the
Union could not exist, while State Sovereignty was
a doctrine limited by considerations of expediency,
rather than a patriotic dograa. Immigration, and
127

AMERICA TO-DAY
westward migration from the north-eastern States,
had produced a race of men and women whose
patriotism was divorced, so to speak, from any given
patch of soil, but was wedded to the all-embracing
idea of the United States, with the emphasis on the
epithet. They thought of themselves first of all
as American citizens, and only in the second place
as citizens of this State or of that. This habit or
instinct is still incomprehensible, and almost con
temptible, to the Southerner of the older generation ;
but the Time-Spirit was clearly on its side.
Thus, then, I interpret the fundamental feeUng
which impelled the North to take up arras : " Better
one stout tussle for the idea of Unity than a facile
acquiescence in the idea of Multiplicity, with all its
sequels of instability, distrust, rivalry, and rancour.
Better for our children, if not for us, one great
expenditure of blood and gold than never-ending
threats and ruraours of war, coraraercial conflicts,
political coraplications, frontiers to be safeguarded,
bureaucracies to be financed." Of course I do not
put this forward as a new interpretation of the ques
tion at issue. It is old and it is obvious. But
though the national significance of the struggle has
long been recognised, I am not sure that its inter
national, its world-historic, significance has been
sufficiently dwelt upon. We Europeans have been
apt to think that, because the theatre of conflict was
so distant, we had only a spectacular, or at most an
abstract-humanitarian, interest in it. There could
128

THE NATION-MAKING IDEA
not be a greater mistake. The whole world, I
beUeve, will one day come to hold Vicksburg and
Gettysburg names of larger historic import than
Waterloo or Sedan.

IV

The iconoclast of to-day is full of scorn for
patriotism, which he holds the most retrograde of
emotions. He raay as usefully declaim against friend
ship, comradeship, the love of man for woman or of
mother for child. The lowest savage regards hira
self, and cannot but regard hiraself, as a member of
some sort of political aggregation. This feeUng is
one of the primal instincts of humanity, and as such
one of the permanent data of the problem of the
future. It is folly to denounce or seek to eradicate
it. The wise course is to give it large and noble
instead of petty and parochial concepts to which to
attach itself. Rightly esteemed and rightly directed,
patriotism is not a retrograde emotion, but one of
the indispensable conditions of progress.
" Nothing is," says Hamlet, " but thinking raakes
it so." It is not oceans, straits, rivers, or mountain-
barriers that constitute a Nation, but the idea in the
rainds of the people coraposing it. Now, the largest
poUtical idea that ever entered the raind — not of a
man — not of a governing class — but of a people, is
the idea of the United States of America. The
129 I

AMERICA TO-DAY
" Pax Romana " was a great idea in its day, but it
was imposed from without, and by military raethods,
upon a nuraber of subject peoples, who did not
realise and intelligently co-operate in it, but raerely
submitted to it. It has its modern analogue in the
" Pax Britannica " of India. The idea of the United
States, on the other hand, gives what may be called
psychological unity to one of the largest political
aggregates, both in territory and population, ever
known to history. In the modern world there are
only two political aggregates in any wise comparable
to it : the British Erapire, whereof the idea is not
as yet quite clearly forraulated; and the Russian
Erapire, whereof the idea, in so far as it belongs to
the people at all, is a blind and slavish superstition.
Holy Russia is a formidable idea. Greater Britain is
a picturesque and pregnant idea; but the United
States is a self-conscious, clearly defined and heroi
cally vindicated idea, in whose further vindication
the whole world is concerned.
It is only an experiraent, say some — an experi
ment which, thirty years ago, trerabled on the brink
of disastrous failure, and which raay yet have even
greater perils to encounter. This is true in a sense,
but not the essential truth. Let us substitute for
" experiment " another word which means the same
thing — with a difference. The United States of
America, let us say, is. a rehearsal for the United
States of Europe, nay, of the world. It is the very
difficulties over which the croakers shake their heads
130

AN OBJECT-LESSON
that make the experiment interesting, momentous.
The United States is a veritable microcosm : it pre
sents in little all the elements which go to make up a
world, and which have hitherto kept the world, almost
unintermittently, in a state of battle and bloodshed.
There are wide differences of cliraate and of geo
graphical conditions in the United States, with the
resulting conflict of raaterial interest between diffe
rent regions of the country. There are differences of
race and even of language to be overcorae, extremes
of wealth and poverty to be dealt with. As though
to make sure that no factor in the problera of civili
sation should be omitted, the men of last century
were at pains to saddle their descendants with the
burden of the negro — a race incapable of assimilation
and yet tenacious of life. In brief, a thousand diffi
culties and temptations to dissension beset the giant
Republic : in so far as it overcoraes thera, and carries
on its developraent by peaceful raethods, it presents
a unique and invaluable object-lesson to the world.
The idea of unity, annealed in the furnace of the
Civil War, has as yet been stronger than all the
forces of disintegration ; and there is no reason to
doubt that it will continue to be so. When France
falls out with Gerraany, or Russia with Turkey,
there is nothing save a purely raaterial counting of
the cost to hinder thera from flying at each other's
throats. The abstract huraanitarianisra of a few
individuals is as a feather on the torrent. Such
sentiment as comes into play is all on the side of
131

AMERICA TO-DAY
bloodshed. It takes very little to make a French
man and a German feel that they are in a state of
war by nature, and that peace between them is an
artificial and necessarily unstable condition. But
in America, should two States or two groups of
States fall out, there is a strong, and we may hope
unconquerable, sentiraent of unity to be overcome
before the dissentients even reach the point of
counting the material cost of war. Men feel that
they are in a state of peace by nature, and that war
between thera, instead of being a hereditary and
almost consecrated habit, would be a raonstrous
and alraost unthinkable crime. The National Gov
ernment, as established by the Constitution, is in
fact a permanent court of abitration between the
States ; and the coraraon-sense of all raay be trusted
to " hold a fractious State in awe." " Did not
people say and think the sarae thing in 1859," it
may be asked, " on the eve of the greatest Civil War
in history ? " Possibly ; but that war was precisely
what was needed to ratify the Union, and lift it out
of the experimental stage. " Blut ist ein ganz
besondrer Saft," and it is sometimes necessary that
other pacts than those of hell should be written in
blood, before the world recognises their full validity.
Heaven forbid that the Deed of Union of the United
States should require a second tirae to be retraced
in red !
But it is an illusion, though a salutary one, that
civil war is any more barbarous than international
132

EVERY WAR A CIVIL WAR
war. What the world wants is the realisation that
every war is a civil war, a war between brothers,
justifiable only for the repression of sorae cruelty
raore cruel than war itself, sorae barbarisra raore
barbarous. Towards this realisation the United
States is leading the way, by showing that, under
the conditions of raodern life, an effective sense of
brotherhood, a resolute loyalty to a unifying idea,
may be maintained throughout a practically unlimited
extent of territory.
But, while enumerating the difficulties which the
Republic has to overcome, I have said nothing of
the one great advantage it enjoys — a common, or at
any rate a dominant, language. The diversity of
tongues which prevails in Europe is doubtless one
of the chief hindrances to that " Federation of the
World" of which the poet dreamed. But if the
many tongues of Europe retard its fusion into what
I have called a political aggregate, there exists in
the world a political aggregate larger in extent than
either Europe or the United States, which possesses,
like the United States, the advantage of one domi
nant language. I mean, of course, the British
Empire ; and surely it is, on the face of it, a fact of
good augury for the world that the dominant
language of these two vast aggregations of
democracies should happen to be one and the same.
The hopes — and perhaps, too, some apprehensions —
arising from this unity of speech will form the
subject of another article. 133

AMERICA TO-DAY
Postscript. — My representation of the South as
the conservative and the North as the innovating
party is the only point in this article to which (so
far as I know) serious objection has been made. A
very able and courteous critic — Mr. Norraan Hap
good — writes to me as follows : " I think the
history of the Kansas-Nebraska trouble, in which
the preliminary conflict centred, the speeches of the
time, North and South, the party platforms, all
proved that the North said, ' Slavery shall keep its
rights and have no further extension,' while the
South said, ' It shall go into any newly acquired
territory it chooses.' In i860 the slave interest was
more protected and extended by law than ever
before in the history of the country. It had simply
made a new claim which the North could not allow.
The aboUtionists were few; the Northerners who
said that slavery should not be extended were raany.
... I don't believe there is an Araerican historian
of standing who does not say that the propositions
of the South, on which the North took issue in 186 1,
were these : (i) Slavery shall go into all territory
hereafter acquired ; (2) We will secede if this is not
allowed." It was inevitable that this protest should be raised,
since, in the liraited space at my coramand, I had
imperfectly expressed my meaning. My reply to
Mr. Hapgood puts it, I hope, more clearly. It ran
as follows : " . . . What I was trying to do was
not so much to summarise conscious motives as to
134

SUB-CONSCIOUS MOTIVES
present my own interpretation (right or wrong) of
the sub-conscious, the unconscious forces that were
at work. I go behind the declarations of Northern
statesmen, and what, I have no doubt, was the sin
cere sentiment of the majority in the North, against
interference with slavery in the existing slave States.
I have tried to aUow to this sentiment what weight it
deserves, in saying that the North 'obscurely and re
luctantly felt a revision of the Constitution essential
to the national welfare.' But my view is that whatever
they said, and whatever, on the surface of their minds,
they thought, the people of the North knew, even if
they denied it to theraselves, that chattel slavery was
impossible in the modern world; and furthermore
that the people of the South were justified in that
instinct which told thera that the institution, fatally
menaced, was to be saved only by secession. The
kernel of the matter, to ray thinking, lay in the fugi
tive slave question. The provision of the Constitu
tion for the return of fugitive slaves, though it may
seem a matter of detail, was, I think, in reality the
keystone of the arch. Make it inoperative, and the
institution was doomed. Now many of the Northern
States, by ' personal liberty laws ' and the like, had
long been picking at that keystone. Whatever were
the professions of politicians and people as to non
interference, they shrank from the logical corollary,
which would have been the sincere, whole-hearted
and cheerful carrying out of Article IV., Section 2,
Paragraph 3 of the Constitution. They were even, I
^35

AMERICA TO-DAY
think, logically bound to accept loyally the Dred
Scott decision, which was absolutely constitutional.
To protest against it, to seek to evade it, was to
insist on a revision of the Constitution. But it was
inconceivable that a civilised community, not
bUnded by local Southern prejudice, could loyally
accept the Dred Scott decision, or could cheerfully
assist the Southern slaveholder to capture and carry
off frora their own hearthstones, as it were, his run
away chattel. Therefore, the position and the pro
testations of the North were mutually contradictory.
It was a case of trying to run with the hare and
hunt with the hounds ; and the North was bound to
the hare by fundaraental considerations of humanity
and self-interest, to the hounds only by a compact
accepted at a time when its consequences could not
possibly be foreseen. I do not doubt that the North,
on the surface of its will, sincerely desired to keep
this compact ; but the South, with an instinct which
was really that of self-preservation, looked, as I am
trying to look, beneath the conscious surface to the
unconscious sweep of current. It is not with refer
ence to the struggle for Western expansion that I caU
the South the conservative and constitutional party.
There, as it seems to me, the question was entirely
an open one, the power of Congress over territories
being undefined in the Constitution ; and no doubt
the South, in the course of the struggle, often took
up violent and extravagant positions. My argu
ment is that the attitude of the North, whatever its
136

THE CASE OF THE SOUTH
protestations, virtually threatened the institution of
slavery in the old slave States, and that therefore
the South had virtual, if not forraal, justification for
holding the constitutional compact broken."

137

THE REPUBLIC AND THE
EMPIRE I
Though one of the main objects which I proposed
to rayself in visiting Araerica was to take note of
American feeling towards England as affected by the
Spanish War, I soon found that, so far as the gather
ing of information by way of question and answer
was concerned, I raight alraost as well have stayed
at horae. A curious diffidence beset rae from the
first. I shrank from recognising that there was any
question as to the good feeling between the two
countries, and still more frora seeming to appeal to
a non-existent or a grudging sense of kinship. It
seemed to me tactless and absurd for an Englishman
to lay any stress on the war as affecting the relations
between the two peoples. What had England done?
Nothing that had cost her a cent or a drop of blood.
The British people had sympathised with the United
States in a war which it felt to be, in the last
analysis, a part of the necessary police-work of the
138

" ANGLO-SAXON "
world ; it had applauded in American soldiers and
sailors the qualities it was accustomed to adraire in
its own fighting raen ; and the British Governraent,
giving ready effect to the instinct of the people, had,
at a critical moraent, secured a fair field for the
United States, and broken up what might have been
an embarrassing, though scarcely a very formidable,
anti-American intrigue on the part of the Continental
Powers. What was there in all this to raake any
merit of? Nothing whatever. It was the simplest
matter in the world — we had merely felt and done
what came natural to us. The really significant fact
was that any one in America should have been sur
prised at our attitude, or should have regarded it as
more friendly than they had every right and reason
to expect. In short, I felt an irrational but I hope
not unnatural disinclination to recognise as matter
for question and remark a state of feeUng which, as
it seemed to me, ought to " go without saying."
Above all was I careful to avoid the word " Anglo-
Saxon." I heard it and read it with satisfaction : I
uttered it, never. It is for the American to claira his
Anglo-Saxon birthright, if he feels so disposed ; it
is not for the Briton to thrust it upon him. To
cheapen it, to send it a-begging, were to do it a
grievous wrong. Besides, the term " Anglo-Saxon "
is inaccurate, and, so to speak, provisional. Rightly
understood, it covers a great idea ; but if one chooses
to take it in a strict ethnological sense, it lends itself
to caricature. The truth is, it has no strict ethno-
139

AMERICA TO-DAY
logical sense — it may rather be called an ethnological
countersense, no less in England than in America.
It represents an historical and political, not an
ethnological, concept. The Anglo-Saxon was already
an infinitely composite personage — Saxon, Scan
dinavian, Gaul, and Kelt — before he set foot in
America; and Araerica raerely proves her deep-
rooted Anglo-Saxonism in accepting and absorbing
all sorts of alien and semi-alien race-elements. But
when we have to go so far behind the face-value of
a word to bring it into consonance with obvious
facts, it is safest to use that word sparingly.
In brief, I did not wear my Anglo-Saxon heart on
my sleeve, or go about inviting expressions of
gratitude to England for having, like Mr. Gilbert's
House of Lords, Done nothing in particular,
And done it very well.
Yet evidences of a new tone of feeling towards
England met me on every hand, both in the news
papers and in conversation. The subject which I
shrank from introducing was frequently introduced
by my American acquaintances. It was evident that
the change of feeling, though far frora universal, was
real and widespread. Araericans who had recently
returned to their native land, after passing some
years abroad, assured rae that they were keenly
conscious of it. Many of my acquaintances were
opposed to the policy which brought about the
140

A CHANGE OF SENTIMENT
Spanish War, and declared the better mutual under
standing between England and America to be its one
good result. Others adopted the view to which
Mr. Kipling had given such far-echoing expression,
and frankly rejoiced in the sympathy with which
England regarded America's determination to " take
up the white man's burden." In the Kipling craze
as a whole, after making all deductions, I could not
but see a symptora of real significance. It was
partly a raere literary fashion, partly a result of
personal and accidental circumstances ; but it also
arose in no small degree from a novel sense of kin
ship with the men, and participation in the ideals,
celebrated by the poet of British Imperialism.
The change, moreover, extended beyond the book-
reading class, wide as that is in Araerica. It was to
be noted even in the untravelled and unlettered
American, the man whose spiritual horizon is
bounded by his Sunday newspaper, the raan in the
street and on the farra. The events of the past
year had taught him — and he rubbed his eyes at
the realisation — that England was not an " effete
monarchy," evilly disposed towards a Republic as
such,* and dully resentful of bygone humiliations
by land and sea, but a brotherly-minded people,
remembering little (perhaps too little) of those " old,
unhappy, far-off things," willing to be as helpful as
the rules of neutrality permitted, and eager to
applaud the achievements of American arms.
* See Postscript to this article.
141

AMERICA TO-DAY
Millions of people who had hitherto felt no touch
of racial sympathy, and had been conscious only of a
vague historic antipathy, learned with surprise that
England was in no sense their natural enemy, but
rather, araong all the nations of Europe, their
natural friend. Anglophobes, no doubt, were still
to be found in plenty ; but they could no longer
reckon on the instant popular response which, a few
years ago, would almost certainly have attended any
movement of hostility towards England. An Ameri
can publicist, who has perhaps unequalled oppor
tunities for keeping his finger on the pulse of
national feeling, said to me, " It is only three or
four years since I heard a Federal judge express an
earnest desire for war with England, as a means of
consolidating the North and South in a great common
enthusiasm. Of course this was pernicious talk at
any tirae," he added ; " but it would then have
found an echo which it certainly would not find to
day." This puts the international situation in a nutshell,
so far as to-day is concerned. But what about to
morrow ?

II
When people spoke to rae of the sudden veering
of popular syrapathy from France and Russia, and
towards England, I could not help asking, now and
again, " When is the reaction coming ? " " There is
142

HALF THE BATTLE
no reaction coming," I was told with some confidence.
For my own part, I hope and believe that a perma
nent advance had been made, and that any reaction
that may set in will be trifling and temporary. But
to ensure this result there is still the raost urgent
need for the exercise of wisdom and raoderation on
both sides. The misunderstandings of raore than a
century are not to be wiped out in two or three
months of popular excitement What we have
arrived at is not a coraplete mutual understanding,
but merely the attitude of mind which may, in course
of time, render such an understanding possible.
That, to be sure, is half the battle ; but the longer
and more tedious half is before us.
The Englishman who visits Araerica for pleasure,
and enjoys the inexhaustible hospitality of New
York, Boston, and Washington, must be careful not
to imagine that he gets really in touch with the senti
ment of the American nation. His circle of ac
quaintance is almost certain to be coraposed raainly
of people whora he, or friends of his, have raet in
Europe, people of raore or less clearly remembered
British descent, who know England well, have many
English friends and possibly relatives, and are con
scious of a distinct sentimental attachment to " the
Old Country." They are almost without exception
people of culture, as well read as he himself in the
English classics, ancient and modern. They show
their Americanism not in that they love English
Uterature less, but that very probably they love
143

AMERICA TO-DAY
French literature more, than he does. Further, they
are an exceedingly polite people, and, sensitive them
selves on points of national honour, they instinctively
keep in the background all topics on which a too free
interchange of opinions might be apt to wound the
susceptibilities of their guest. Thus he loses entirely
his sense of being in a foreign country, because he
raoves among people most of whom have an affec
tion for England almost as deep as his own, while all
are courteous enough to respect his prejudices. This
class is large in actual numbers, no doubt, but in
proportion to the whole American people it is infini
tesimal, and would be a mere featherweight in the scale
at any moment of crisis. Its voice is clearly audible in
literature and even in journalism, but at the poUs it
would be as a whisper to the thunder of Niagara.
The traveller who has " had a good time " in literary,
artistic, university circles in the Eastern cities, has
not felt the pulse of America, but has merely touched
the fringe of the fringe of her garment.
We deceive ourselves if we imagine that there is,
or at any rate that there was until recently, the
slightest sentiraental attachraent to England in the
heart of the American people at large. Among the
" hyphenated Americans," as they are called — Irish-
Americans, German-Araericans, and so forth — it
would be folly to look for any such feeling.* The
* A very distinguished American authority writes to me as
follows with regard to this passage: "I hardly think you lay
enough weight upon the fact that in two or three generations the
144

HYPHENATED AMERICANS
conciUation of America will never be coraplete until
we have achieved the conciliation of Ireland. It is
evident, indeed, frora many syraptoras, that Irish-
American hostility to England is declining, if not in
rancour, at any rate in influence. Still, a popular
New York paper, on St. Patrick's Day, thinks it
worth while to propitiate " The Powerful Race of
Ireland " by a leader under that heading, and to this
effect :
" The Irish race is famous as producing the best fighters and
poets among men, and the most beautiful and most virtuous of
women. " Such a reputation should suffice for any nation.
"And note that Ireland still is and always will be a Nation.
There is no Anglomania in that fair land, no yearning for recip'
rocity for the sake of a few dollars, no drinking of the Queen's
health first. . . .

great bulk of the descendants of the immigrants of non-English
origin become absolutely indistinguishable from other Americans,
and share their feeUngs. This is markedly so with the Scan
dinavians, and most of the Germans of the second, and all the
Germans of the third, generation, who practically all, during
1898, felt toward Germany and England just exactly as other
Americans did. . . . Twice recently I have addressed huge
meetings of eight or ten thousand people, each drawn, as regards
the enormous majority, from exactly that class which you pointed
out as standing between the two extremes. In each case the
men who introduced me dwelt upon the increased good feeling
between the English-speaking peoples, and every complimentary
allusion to England was received with great applause. ' ' At the
same time my correspondent adds: "Your division of the
American sentiment into three classes is exactly right ; also your
sense of the relative importance of these three classes."
145 K

AMERICA TO-DAY
" Noble patriots like John Dillon and Willam O'Brien fight
for them in the House of Commons, and they are good fighters
everywhere, from the glass-covered room in Westminster Abbey (!)
to the prize-ring, where a Sullivan, of pure Irish b ood, forbids
any man to stand three rounds before him.
" The English whipped the Irish at the battle of the Boyne—
true. But the English on that occasion had the good luck to be
led by a Dutchman, and the Irish — sorra the day — had an
English King for a leader.' The English King was running fast
while the Irish were still fighting the Dutchman.
" Wellington, of Irish blood, beat Napoleon ; Sheridan, of Irish
blood, fought here most delightfully.
" Here's to the Irish ! "
This spirited performance no doubt represents
fairly enough the political philosophy of the
thousands coraposing the league-long procession
which filed stolidly up Fifth Avenue on the day of
its appearance.
But even among unhyphenated Americans —
Americans pure and simple — the tendency to regard
England as a hereditary foe, though sensibly
weakened by recent events, reraains very strong.
A good example of this frame of mind and habit of
speech is afforded by the following passage frora
an address delivered by Judge Van Wyck at the
Democratic Club's Jefferson Dinner in New York on
April 13 last. Referring to England, the speaker
said :
" Let us be influenced by the natural as well as the fixed
policy of that nation toward us for a century and a half, rather
than by their profuse expressions of friendship during the Spanish
War. England's policy has been one of sharp rivalry and com-
146

ANGLOPHOBIA
petition with America ; it impelled the Revolution of 1776, fought
for business as well as political independence ; brought on the
war of 1812, waged against the insolent claim of England for the
right to search our ships of commerce while riding the highways
of the ocean ; caused her to contest every inch of our northern
boundary line from ocean to ocean ; made her encourage our
family troubles from i860 to 1865, for which she was compelled
to pay us milhons and admit her wrong ; and actuated her, in
violation of the Monroe doctrine, to attempt an unwarrantable
encroachment on the territory of Venezuela, until ordered by the
American Government to halt.''
Apart from the obvious begging of the question
with reference to Venezuela, there is nothing in this
invective that has not some historical foundation.
It is the studiously hostile turn of the phraseology
that renders the speech significant. Everything —
even the honourable araends made for the Alabama
blunder — is twisted to England's reproach. She is
"compelled " to do this, and "ordered " to do that.
There is here no hint of good feeling, no trace of
international amenity, but sheer undisguised hatred
and desire to make the worst of things. And this
address, be it noted, was the speech of the evening
at a huge and representative gathering of the domi
nant party in New York raunicipal politics.
I need scarcely adduce further evidence of the
fact that Anglophobia is still a power in the land, if
not the power it once was. But active and aggres
sive Anglophobia is, I think, a less important factor
in the situation than the sheer indifference to
England, with a latent bias towards hostility, which
is so widespread in America. To the English
147

AMERICA TO-DAY
observer, this indifference is far more disconcerting
than hatred. The average Briton, one may say with
confidence, is not indifferent towards America. He
raay be very ignorant about it, very much prejudiced
against certain American habits and institutions,
very thoughtless and tactless in expressing his
prejudices ; but the United States is not, to him, a
foreign country like any other, on the same plane
with France, Gerraany, or Russia. But that is pre
cisely what England is to raillions of Araericans — a
foreign country like any other. We see this even
in raany travelling Araericans ; rauch more is it to
be noted in raultitudes who stay at horae. Many
Americans seera curiously indifferent even to the
comfort of being able to speak their own language
in England ; probably because they have less false
shame than the average Englishman in adventuring
among the pitfalls of a foreign tongue. They — this
particular class of travellers, I raean — land in
England without emotion, visit its shrines without
sentiraent, and pass on to France and Italy with no
other feeling than one of relief in escaping from the
London fog. These travellers, however, are but
single spies sent forth by vast battalions who never
cross the ocean. To them England is a raere name,
and the name, raoreover, of their fathers' one enemy
in war, their own chief rival in trade. They have
no points of contact with England, such as almost
every Englishman has with America. We make
use every day of Araerican inventions and American
148

INDIFFERENCE
" notions " : EngUsh inventions and " notions," if
they make their way to America at all, are not
recognised as English. There are few Britishers,
high or low, that have not friends or relatives settled
in America, or have not formed pleasant acquain
tanceships with Araericans on this side. But there
are innumerable famiUes in America who, even if
they be of British descent, have lost all vital recol
lection of the fact ; who (as the tide of eraigration
has not yet turned eastwards) have no friends or
relatives settled in England ; and who, in their
American homes, are far more apt to come in contact
with men of almost every other nationaUty than
with EngUshmen. " But surely English literature,"
it may be said, " brings England home even to
people of this class, and differentiates her from
France or Gerraany." In a measure, doubtless ;
but I think it will be found that the lower strata of
the reading public (not in America alone, of course)
are strangely insensitive to local colour. To people
of culture, the bond of literature is a very strong
one ; but the class of which I am speaking is not
composed of people of culture. They read, it is
true, and often greedily ; but generally, I think,
vrithout knowing or greatly caring whether a book
is EngUsh or American, and at all events with no
such clear perception of the distinctive qualities of
English work as could beget in thera any iraaginative
reaUsation of, or affection for, England. Let us
make no mistake — in the broad mass of the American
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AMERICA TO-DAY
people no such affection exists. They are simply
indifferent to England, with, as I have said, a latent
bias towards hostility.
Thus the scale of Araerican feeling towards
England, while its gradations are of course infinite,
may be divided into three main sections. At one
end of the scale we have the cultured and travelled
classes, especially in the Eastern States, conscious
for the most part of British descent, alive to the
historical relationship between the two countries,
valuing highly their birthright in the treasures of
EngUsh literature, knowing, and (not uncritically)
understanding England and her people, and clinging
to a kinship of which, taking one thing with another,
they have no reason to be ashamed. This class is
intellectually influential, but its direct weight in
politics is small. It is, with shining exceptions, a
" mugwump " class. At the other end of the scale
we have the hyphenated Americans, who have im
ported or inherited European rancours against
England, and those unhyphenated Araericans whose
hatred of England is partly a mere plank in a
political platform, designed to accoramodate her
hyphenated foemen, partly a result of instinctive
and traditional chauvinism, reinforced by a (in every
sense) partial view of Anglo-American history.
Finally, between these two extremes, we have the
great mass of the Araerican people, who neither love
nor hate England, any more than they love or hate
(say) Italy or Japan, but whose indifference would,
150

SCHOOL HISTORIES
until recently, have been much more easily deflected
on the side of hatred than of love. The effect of
the Spanish War has been in some measure to alter
this bias, and to differentiate England, to her
advantage, from the other nations of Europe.

HI

It is commonly alleged that the anti-English viru
lence of the ordinary school history of the United
States is mainly responsible for this bias towards
hostility in the mind of the average Araerican. Mr.
Goldwin Smith, a high authority, has contested this
theory ; and I raust adrait that, after a good deal of
inquiry, I have been unable to find the American
school historians guilty of any very serious injustices
to England. Some quite raodern histories which I
have looked into (yet written before the Spanish
War) seem to me excellently and most impartially
done. The older histories are not well written :
they are apt to be sensational and chauvinistic in
tone, and to encourage a somewhat cheap and blus
terous order of patriotisra ; but that they coraraonly
malign character or raisrepresent events I cannot
discover. They are perhaps a Uttle too much in
clined to make " insolent " the inseparable epithet of
the British soldier ; but there is no reason to doubt
that in many cases it was amply merited. I have
not come across the history in which Mr. G. W.
Steevens discovered the following passages :
^51

AMERICA TO-DAY
" The eyes of the soldiers glared upon the people like hungry
bloodhounds. The captain waved his sword. The red-coats
pointed their guns at the crowd. In a moment the flash of their
muskets lighted up the street, and eleven New England men fell
bleeding upon the snow. . . . Blood was streaming upon the
snow ; and though that purple stain melted away in the next
day's sun, it was never forgotten nor forgiven by the people.
... A battle took place between a large force of Tories and
Indians and a hastily organised force of patriotic Americans.
The Americans were defeated with horrible slaughter, and many
of those who were made prisoners were put to death by fiendish
torture. . . More than six thousand American sailors had
been seized by British warships and pressed into the hated
service of a hated nation."
These passages are certainly not judicial or even
judicious in tone ; but I fancy that the book or books
frora which Mr. Steevens culled them raust be quite
antiquated. In books at present on the educational
raarket I find nothing so lurid. What I do find in
sorae is a failure to distinguish between the king's
share and the British people's share in the policy
which brought about and carried on the Revolu
tionary War. For instance, in Barnes's Primary
History of the United States (undated, but brought
down to the end of the Spanish War) we read :
' ' The English people after a time became jealous of the prosperity
of the colonists, and began to devise plans by which to grasp
for themselves a share of the wealth that was thus rolling in.
. . . Indeed, the English people acted from the first as if the
colonies existed only for the purpose of helping them to make
money." George III. and his Ministers are not so rauch
as raentioned, and the irapression conveyed to the
152

CHAUVINISM
ingenuous student is that the whole English nation
was consciously and deliberately banded together for
purposes of sheer brigandage. The sarae history is
delightfully chauvinistic in its account of the Colonial
Wars. The British officers are all bunglers and
poltroons ; if disasters are averted or victories
won, it is entirely by the courage and conduct of the
colonists :
" When Johnson reached the head of Lake George he met the
French, and a fierce battle was fought. Success seemed at first
to be altogether with the French ; but after a, while Johnson
was slightly wounded, when General Lyman, a brave colonial
officer, took command, and beat the French terribly. .
Abercrombie's defeat was the last of the English disasters.
The colonists now had arms enough, and were allowed to fight
in their own way, and a series of brilliant victories followed.
... By the energy, courage, and patriotism of her colonies,
England had now acquired a splendid empire in the New
World. And while she reaped all the glory of the war and its
fmits, it was the hardy colonists who had, throughout, borne
the brunt of the conflict."
The child who learns his history frora Mr. Barnes
may not hate England, but will certainly despise her.
Text-books ofthis type, however, are already obso
lescent. A committee of the New England History
Teachers' Association published in the Educational
Review for December 1898 a careful survey of no
fewer than nineteen school histories of the United
States, and summed up the results as follows :
" In discussing the causes of the Revolution, text-book writers
have sounded pretty much the whole scale of motives. England
has been pictured, on the one hand, as an arbitrary oppressor,
153

AMERICA TO-DAY
and, on the other, as the helpless victim of political environ
ment. Under the influence of deeper study and a keener sense
of justice, however, the element of bitterness, which so often
entered into the discussion of this subject, has largely disap
peared ; and while the treatment of the Revolution in the text
books still leaves much to be desired, it is now seldom dogmatic
and unsympathetic."
The fact reraains, however, that we have still to
live down our wars with the United States, in which
there was much that was galling to the just pride of
the American people, and much, too, that was
perhaps over-stimulating to their self-esteem. There
is no doubt, on the one hand, that we were inclined
to adopt a supercilious and conteraptuous attitude
towards the "rebel colonists" of 1775, the new-
made nation of 1815 ; no doubt, on the other hand,
that they raade a splendid fight against us, and
taught our superciUousness a salutary lesson. They
feel to this day the hurailiation of having been
despised, and the exultation of having put their
despisers to sharae. These wars, which were, until
1 86 1, alraost the whole railitary history of the
United States, were but episodes in our history, and
one of them a trifling episode. Therefore, while the
average Englishman has not studied thera sufficiently
to realise how rauch he ought to deplore thera, the
average American has been taught to dwell upon
them as the glorious struggles in which his nation
won its spurs. To the juvenile imagination, battles
are always the oases in the desert of history, and
the schoolboy never fails to take sides fiercely and
154

ABSTRACT COMBATIVENESS
uncompromisingly, exaggerating, with the histrionic
instinct of youth, his enthusiasra and his hatreds.
Thus the insolent Britisher became the Turk's-head
or Guy Fawkes, so to speak, of the American boy,
the butt of his bellicose humours ; and a habit of
mind contracted in boyhood is not always to be
eradicated by the sober reflection of manhood, even
in rainds capable of sober reflection. The Civil
War, be it noted, did not depose the insolent
Britisher from his bad eminence in the schoolboy
iraagination. The Confederates were, after all,
Araericans, though raisguided Americans ; and the
fostering, the brooding upon, intestine rancours was
felt by teachers and pupils alike to be impossible.
But there is in the juvenile mind at any given
moment a certain araount of abstract combativeness,
let us call it, which must find an outlet somewhere.
Hatred is a natural function of the human mind,
just as much as love ; and the healthy boy instinc
tively exercises it under the guise of patriotism,
without clearly distinguishing the element of sheer
play and pose in his transports. England's attitude
during the Civil War certainly did nothing to endear
her either to the writers or the readers of school
histories ; and she remained after that struggle, as
she had been before, the one great historical
adversary on whom the abstract combativeness of
young America could expend itself. How strong
this tendency is, or has been, in the American
school, raay be judged from the following anecdote.
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AMERICA TO-DAY
A boy of unmixed English parentage, whose father
and mother had settled in America, was educated at
the public school of his district. On the day when
Mr. Cleveland's Venezuela message was given to
the world, he came home from school radiant, and
shouted to his parents : " Hurrah I We're going to
war with England I We've whipped you twice
before, and we're going to do it again." It is clear
that at this academy Anglomania formed no part of
the curriculum ; and who can doubt that in myriads
of cases these schoolboy animosities subsist
throughout life, either active or dormant and easily
awakened ?
Let us admit without shrinking that the history of
the United States cannot be truthfully written in
such a way as to ingratiate Great Britain with the
youth of America. There have been painful epi
sodes between the two nations, in which England
has, on the whole, acted stupidly, or arrogantly, or
both. Nor can we shift the whole blame upon
George III. or his Ministers. They were responsible
for the actual Revolution; but after the Revolution,
down even to the tirae of the Civil War inclusive,
the English people, though guiltless in the raain of
active hostility to Araerica, cannot be acquitted of
ignorance and indifference. It is not in the least to
be desired that American history should be written
with a pro-English bias, and, as I have said, I do
not find the anti-English bias, even in inferior text
books, so excessive as it is sometimes represented
156

AN ERROR OF OMISSION
to be. The anti-English sentiment of American
schools is, as it seems to me, an inevitable
phenoraenon of juvenile psychology, under the given
conditions ; and it is the alteration in the actual
conditions vn-ought by recent events, rather than any
marked change in the tone of the text-books, that
may, I think, be trusted to soothe the schoolboy's
savage breast. England has now done what she
had never done before : shown herself conspicuously
friendly to the United States ; and another European
country has given occasion for spirit-stirring mani
festations of American prowess. Thus England is
deposed for the time, and we may trust for ever,
frora her position as the one traditional arch
enemy. But though the errors of commission in American
history-books have been exaggerated, I cannot but
think that a common error of omission is worthy of
remark and correction. They begin American
history too late — with the discovery of Araerica —
and they do not awaken, as they might, the just
pride of race in the " unhyphenated " American boy.
Long before Columbus set sail from Palos, American
history was a-making in the shire-moots of Saxon
England, at Hastings, and Runnymead, and Ban
nockburn. In all the mediseval achieveraents of
England, in peace and war — in her cathedrals, her
castles, her universities, in Cressy, Poictiers, and
Agincourt — Americans may without paradox claim
their ancestral part. Why should the sons of the
157

AMERICA TO-DAY
English who emigrated leave to the sons of those
who stayed at horae the undivided credit of having
sent to the right-about the Invincible Armada?
Nay, it is only the very oldest Araerican farailies
that can disclaim all coraplicity in having, as Lord
Auchinleck put it, " garred kings ken that they had
a lith in their necks." Of course I do not mean
that the American schoolboy should be taken in
detail through British history down to the seven
teenth century before, so to speak, he crosses the
Atlantic. But I do suggest that he would be none
the worse American for being encouraged to set a
due value on his rightful share in the achievements
of earlier ancestors than those who fought at
Trenton or sailed with Decatur. Let him realise
his birthright in the glories of Britain, and he will
perhaps come to take a more magnanimous view of
her errors and disasters.

IV

Britain has been too forgetful of the past, America,
perhaps, too raindful ; and in the everyday relations
of life Britain has often been tactless and unsym
pathetic, America suspicious and supersensitive.
There is every prospect, I think, that such errors
will become, in the future, rarer and ever rarer ; and
it behoves us, on our side, to be careful in guarding
against them. We have not hitherto sufficiently
respected America — that is the whole story. We
158

BRITISH SUPERCILIOUSNESS
have taken no pains to know and understand her.
We have too often regarded her with a careless and
superciUous good feeling, which she has not unna
turally mistaken for ill feeling, and repaid in kind.
The events of the past year seem to have brought
the two countries almost physically closer to each
other, and to have made them more real, raore
clearly visible, each to each. America has won the
respectful consideration of even the most thoughtless
and insular among us. She has come home to us,
so to speak, as a vast and vital factor in the problem
of the future. Superciliousness towards her is a raere
anachronism. Many Englishmen, however, are still guilty of a
thoughtless captiousness towards America, which is
none the less galling because it raanifests itself in the
most trifling raatters. A friend of ray own returned
a few years ago from a short tour in the United States,
declaring that he heartily disliked the country, and
would never go back again. Inquiry as to the grounds
of his dissatisfaction elicited no raore definite or
damning charge than that " they " (a collective pro
noun presumed to cover the whole American people)
hung up his trousers instead of folding them — or
vice versd, for I ara heathen enough not to reraeraber
which is the orthodox process. Doubtless he had
other, and possibly weightier, causes of coraplaint ;
but this was the head and front of America's offending.
Another Englishman of education and position, being
asked why he had never crossed the Atlantic, gravely
159

AMERICA TO-DAY
replied that he could not endure to travel in a country
where you had to black your own boots ! Such
instances of ignorance and pettiness may seem
absurdly trivial, but they are quite sufficient to act
as grits in the machinery of social intercourse.
Araericans are very fond of citing as an exaraple of
English raanners the legend of a great lady who, at
an Araerican breakfast, saw her husband declining a
dish which was offered to hira, and called across the
table, " Take some, my dear — it isn't half as nasty
as it looks." Three different people have vouched
to me for the truth of this anecdote, each naming the
heroine, and each giving her a different name. True
or false, it is held in America to be typical; and it
would scarcely be so popular as it is unless people
had suffered a good deal from the tactlessness which
it exemplifies. The same vice, in a more insidious
form, appears in a remark raade to me the other day
by an Englishman of very high intelligence, who had
just returned from a long tour in America, and was,
in the main, far from unsympathetic. "What I felt,"
he said, " was the suburbanisra of everything. It was
all Clapham or Camberwell on a gigantic scale." Some
justice of observation raay possibly have lain behind
this reraark, though I certainly failed to recognise it.
But in the forra of its expression it exemplified that
Ulusion of metropolitanism which is to my mind the
veriest cockneyism in disguise, and which cannot but
strike Americans as either ridiculous or offensive.
Englishmen who, as individuals, wish to promote
1 60

SENSITIVENESS AND CALLOUSNESS
and not impede an international understanding, will
do well to take some little thought to avoid wound
ing, even in trifles, the just and inevitable suscepti
bilities of their American acquaintances. Our own
national self-esteem is cased in oak and triple brass,*
and we are apt to regard American sensitiveness as
a ridiculous foible. It is nothing of the sort : it is
a psychological necessity, deep-rooted in history and
social conditions.
Again, there are certain misunderstandings which
Englishmen, not as individual human beings but as
citizens of the British Empire, ought carefully to
guard against. Let us beware of speaking or
thinking as though friendship for England involved
on the part of America any acceptance of English
political ideas or imitation of English methods. In
especial, let us carefully guard against the idea that
an Anglo-American understanding, however cordial,
implies the adoption of an " expansionist " policy by
the United States, or must necessarily strengthen
the hands of the " expansionist " party. If Araerica
* I do not mean that we are callous to American criticism, or
always take it in good part when it comes home to us. I think
with shame, for example, of the stupid insolence with which
certain English journalists used for years to treat Mr. W. D.
Howells, merely because he had expressed certain literary judg
ments from which they dissented. What I do mean, and believe
to be true, is that we are habituaUy unconscious of American
criticism, while Americans may rather be said to be habitually
over-conscious that the eyes of England and of the world are on
them. The existence of this habit of mind seems to me no
less evident than the fact that it is rapidly correcting itself.
i6i L

AMERICA TO-DAY
chooses to " take up the white raan's burden " in the
Kiplingesque sense, it would ill become England to
object ; but her doing so is by no means a condition
of England's sympathy. It might seera, indeed, that
she had plenty of " white raan's burden " to shoulder
within her own continental boundaries ; but that is
a matter which she is entirely competent to deter
mine for herself.
Most of all must we beware of anything that can
encourage an impression, already too prevalent in
America, that we find the " white raan's burden "
too heavy for us, and are anxious to share it with
the United States. This suspicion is very generally
felt and very openly expressed. Take, for instance,
this paragraph frora an editorial in one of the leading
Chicago papers :
" It would be a strange thing to see Continental Europe take
up arms against Great Britain alone. . . That it is a very
reasonable possibility, however, is generally recognised in
Europe, and it was doubtless a knowledge of this fact that
induced Great Britain to make such unusual exertions to ally
itself with the United States."
Here, again, is another journalistic straw floating
on the streara :
" Referring to the fact that English and American ofiicers had
fallen side by side in Samoa while promoting commercial
interests, Lord [Charles] Beresford expressed the hope that the
two nations would ' always be found working and fighting in
unison.' This might keep us pretty busy, your lordship."
In a rather low-class farce which I saw in a
162

JOHN BULL AND JONATHAN
Chicago theatre, two men wandered through the
action, with the charming irrelevance characteristic
of American popular drama, attired, one as John
Bull, the other as Brother Jonathan. There came a
point in the action where some one had to be kicked
out of the house. " You do it, Jonathan," said John
Bull ; whereupon Jonathan retorted : " I know your
game; you want me to do your fighting for you,
but / donH do it I See ? " These are ridiculous
trifles, no doubt, but they might be indefinitely
multiplied; and they show the set of a certain
current in American feeling. Let us beware of
lending added strength to this current by any ap
pearance of self-interested eagerness in our advances
towards America.
One thing we cannot too clearly realise, and that
is that the true American clings above everything to
his Americanism. The status of an American
citizen is to him the proudest on earth, and that
although he may clearly enough recognise the
abuses of American political life, and the dangers
which the Republic has to encounter. The feeling
(which is not to be confounded with an ignorant
chauvinism, though in some cases it raay take that
form) is the fundamental feeling of the whole nation ;
and no emotion which threatened to encroach upon
it, or compete with it in any way, would have the
least chance of taking a permanent place in the
American mind. The feeling which, as one may
reasonably hope, is now growing up between the
163

AMERICA TO-DAY
two nations must be based on the mutual admission
of absolute independence and equality. The relation
is new to history, and must beget a new eraotion.
Strong as is the bond of mutual interest, it must
have a large idealisra to reinforce it — a sentiment
(shall we say ?) of mutual adrairation — if the Eng
lish-speaking peoples are to play the great part in
the draraa of the future which Destiny seems to be
urging upon them. In order to stand together in
perfect freedom and dignity, it is essential that each
of the brother-nations should be incontestably able
to stand alone. If we want to cement the Anglo-
American understanding, the first thing we have to
do is to cement the British Empire.
There is no raore typical and probably no raore
widely respected Araerican at the present raoraent
than Governor Roosevelt, of New York. Even
those who dissent from his " strenuous " ideal and
his expansionist opinions, admit him to be a model
of political integrity and public spirit. In an article
on "The Monroe Doctrine," pubUshed in 1896,
Mr. Roosevelt wrote as follows :
" No English colony now stands on a footing of genuine
equality with the parent State. As long as the Canadian remains
a colonist, he remains in a position which is distinctly inferior to
that of his cousins, both in England and in the United States.
The Englishman at bottom looks down on the Canadian, as he
does on any one who admits his inferiority, and quite properly
too. The American, on the other hand, with equal propriety,
regards the Canadian with the good-natured condescension
always felt by the freeman for the man who is not free. A
164

A NEW SOLIDARITY
funny instance of the English attitude towards Canada was
shown after Lord Dunraven's inglorious fiasco last September,
when the Canadian yachtsman Rose challenged for the America
Cup. The English journals repudiated him on the express
ground that a Canadian was not an Englishman, and not entitled
to the privileges of an Englishman. In their comments, many
of them showed a dislike for Americans which almost rose to
hatred. The feeling they displayed for Canadians was not one
of dislike. It was one of contempt. "
There are several contestable points in this state
ment, and I quote it, though it is but three years old,
as a historical rather than a contemporary utterance.
At the same tirae it expresses an almost universal
American point of view, and indicates errors to be
corrected, dangers to be avoided. It is absurd, of
course, that the American should look down upon
the Canadian as a " man who is not free " ; but every
shadow of an excuse for such an attitude ought to
be removed, and the citizen of the British Empire
ought to have as clearly defined a status as the
citizen of the American Republic.
Even if such unpleasant incidents should recur as
those to which Mr. Roosevelt alludes, we may trust
with tolerable confidence that he would now find no
" hatred " for Araerica, or " contempt " for Canada,
in the tone of the British Press. The years which
have passed since 1896 have not only created a new
feeling between England and America, but have
drawn the Erapire together. In this respect — in
every respect — much remains to be done. But at
least we can say with assurance that a good begin-
i6s

AMERICA TO-DAY
ning has been made towards that consolidation of
the English-speaking countries on which the well-
being of the world so largely depends.
Postscript. — The notion of inevitable hostility
between a, constitutional Monarchy and a Republic
has been fostered by Araerican writers in whom one
would have expected greater clearness of perception.
We find Lowell, for instance, writing in his well-known
essay On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners :
" I never blamed her (England) for not wishing well
to democracy — how should she ? " The more obvious
question is, How should not one democracy wish
another well ? There may have been at the time
when Lowell wrote, and there may even be to-day,
a handful of royalty-worshippers in England who
regard a Republic as a vulgar, unpicturesque form
of government ; but this is not a political opinion, or
even prejudice, but mere stolid snobbery. Whatever
were England's misdemeanours towards America at
the time of the Civil War, they were not prorapted
by any hatred of democracy.
I find the same misconception insisted on in a
document rauch later than Lowell's essay : a leaflet
by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, contributed to
a Good Citizenship Series specially designed for
the enlightenraent of the more ignorant class of
American voters. The tract is called The Ruler of
America, and sets forth that the Ruler of Araerica is
" the People with a very large P." Now, according
i66

A PREVALENT ILLUSION
to Dr. Hale, we benighted Europeans are absolutely
incapable of grasping this truth. He says : " This
is at bottora the trouble with the diplomatists of
Europe, with prirae rainisters, and with leaders of
"Er Majesty's Hopposition.' . . . Even raen of
intelligence . . . can make nothing of the central
truth of our system. ... In ray house, once, an
English gentleman of great intelligence told me that
he had visited the White House, and was most glad
to pay his respects to ' the Ruler of our Great
Nation.' Poor man ! he thought he would please
me ! But he saw his raistake soon enough. I
stormed out, 'Ruler of Araerica? Who told you
he was the ruler of America ? He never told you so.
He is the First Servant of America.' And I hope
the poor traveller learned his lesson."
It is true that the poor traveller used a pompous
and rather absurd expression ; but if he had had his
wits about him he might have rerainded Dr. Hale
that the President is rauch more effectively the
Ruler of America than the Queen is the Ruler of
England. He rules by the direct mandate of the
People, but he rules none the less. It would
greatly conduce to a just understanding between
America and England if the political instructors
of the American people would correct instead of
confirming the prevalent impression that they have
a monopoly of democracy.

167

AMERICAN LITERATURE
Great Britain and the United States are sister
Commonwealths, enjoying the advantages and ex
posed to the dangers of sisterhood. The dangers
are as real, though we trust not as great, as the
advantages. Family quarrels are apt to be the
bitterest ; a chance word will seem unkind and un
bearable from a near kinsraan, which, coraing from a
stranger, would carry no sting at all. As Lowell
very truly said, " The comraon blood, and still more
the common language, are fatal instruments of mis
apprehension." But behind this statement there lies
a far deeper though still obvious truth. We mis
understand because we understand ; and it would be
an extravagance of pessimism to doubt that, in the
long run, understanding will carry the day. Light
may dazzle here and bewilder there ; but, after all, it
is Ught and not darkness. We English and Ameri
cans hold a talisman that makes us at home over
half, and more than half, the world ; and we are not
going to rob it of its virtue by renouncing our
ties, and wantonly declaring ourselves aliens to each
other. i68

UNITY OF SPEECH
Our unity of speech is such a comraonplace that
we scarcely notice it. But, rightly regarded, it is a
thing to be rejoiced in with a great joy, and not with
out a certain sense of danger happily escaped. He
would have been a bold raan who should confidently
have prophesied at the Revolution that Araerican
and English would reraain the sarae tongue, and that
at the end of the nineteenth century there would
not be the slightest perceptible cleavage, or threat of
ultimate divergence. No doubt there were forces
obviously tending to preserve the linguistic unity of
the two nations. There was the English Bible for
one thing, and there was the whole body of English
literature. The Americans, it raight have been said,
could scarcely be so foolish as deliberately to re
nounce their spiritual birthright, or let it drift little
by little away frora them. But, on the other hand,
virulent and inveterate political eranity, had it arisen,
might quite conceivably have led the Araericans to
make it a point of honour to differentiate their speech
from ours, as many Norwegians are at this raoment
making it a point of honour to differentiate their
language frora the Danish, which was until of late
years the generally accepted medium of literary ex
pression. In the evolution of their literature, the
Americans raight purposely have rejected our classical
tradition, raaking their effort rather to depart from
than to adhere to it. Again, an observer in 1776
could not have foreseen the practical annihilation,
by steam and electricity, of that barrier which then
169

AMERICA TO-DAY
appeared so formidable — the Atlantic Ocean. He
raight have foreseen the immense influx of men of
every race and tongue into the unpeopled West ; but
he could scarcely have anticipated with confidence
the ready absorption of all these alien elements (save
one 1) into the dominant Anglo-Saxon polity. It was
quite on the cards that a new American language
might have developed from a fusion of all the diverse
tongues of all the scattered races of the earth.
Nothing of the sort, as we know, has happened.
The instinct of kinship from the first kept political
enmity in check ; the Atlantic has been practically
wiped out; and English has easily absorbed, in
America, all the other idioms which have been
brought into contact, rather than competition, with
it. The result is that the English language occupies
a unique position among the tongues of the earth.
It is unique in two dimensions — in altitude and in
expanse. It soars to the highest heights of huraan
utterance, and it covers an unequalled area of the
earth's surface. Undoubtedly it is the most precious
heirloom of our race, and as such we must reverence
and guard it. Nor must we islanders talk as though
we held it in fee-simple, and allowed our trans
atlantic kinsfolk merely a conditional usufruct of it.
Their property in it is as complete and indefeasible
as our own ; and we should rejoice to accept their
aid in the conservation and renovation (equally
indispensable processes) of this superb and priceless
heritage. 170

AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE
English critics of the beginning of the century so
convincingly set forth the reasons why America,
absorbed in the conquest of nature and in material
progress, could not produce anything great in the
way of literature, that their arguments remain
embedded in many minds even to this day, when
events have conclusively falsified them. It is a
commonplace with some people that America has
not developed a great American literature. If this
merely means that, in casting off her allegiance to
George III., America did not cast off her allegiance
to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison,
Swift, Pope, the reproach, if it be one, must be
accepted. If it be a humiliation to American authors
to own the traditions and standards established by
these men, and thereby to enrol theraselves in their
immortal fellowship, why, then it raust be owned that
they have deliberately incurred that humiliation.
One American of vivid originality tried to escape it,
and with what result ? Simply that Whitman holds
a place of his own, soraewhat like that of Blake one
might say, in the literature of the English language,
and has produced at least as much effect in England
as in America. If, on the other hand, it be implied
that Araerican literature feebly iraltates English
Uterature, and fails to present an original and
adequate interpretation of Araerican life, no re
proach could well be more flagrantly unjust. It is
not only the abstract merit of American literature,
though that is very high, but precisely the Araeri-
171

AMERICA TO-DAY
canism of it, that gives it its value in the eyes of all
thinking Englishraen. Only one American author of
the first rank could possibly, at a superficial glance,
appear — not so rauch English as — European, cosmo
politan. I mean, of course, Edgar Allen Poe, who
has left perhaps a deeper impress upon literature
outside the English-speaking countries than any
other imaginative writer of the century, with the
exception of Byron. Poe was a born idealist, a
creature of pure intelligence. Whether in poetry
or fiction, he was always solving problems ; and it is
hard to be distinctively national in an exercise of
pure intelligence. We do not look for local colour
in, for example, the agreeable essays of Euclid.
But Poe's intelligence was, at bottom, of a character
istically American type. He was the Edison of
romance.* As for the other great writers of
America, what can be raore patent than their
Americanism ? Speaking only, for the present, of
those who have joined the raajority, I would name
two who seem to me to stand with Poe in the very
front rank of original genius. They are Emerson,
that starlike spirit, dwelling in a serener etfi6r4han
* I went to see Poe's grave in Baltimore, marked by a mean
and ugly monument, little more than a mere tombstone. It is
surely time that a worthy memorial should be raised, at his
burial-place or elsewhere, to this unique genius. England and
the English-speaking world would gladly contribute. For a
masterly criticism and vindication of Poe, let me refer the
reader to Mr. John M. Robertson's New Essays towards a
Critical Method. London and New York : J. Lane. 1897.
172

EMERSON AND HAWTHORNE
ours, which, though we raay never attain, it is yet a
refreshment to look up to ; and Hawthorne, not
perhaps the greatest romancer in the English tongue,
but certainly the purest artist in that sphere of
fiction. Now, it is a mere truisra to say that each of
these men was, in his way, a typical product of New
England, inconceivable as the offspring of any other
soil in the world. Emerson, it has been said, not
without truth, was the first of the American humour
ists, carrying into metaphysics that gift of realistic
vision and inspired hyperbole which has somehow
been grafted upon the Anglo-Saxon character by the
conditions of Araerican life. As for Hawthorne,
though he has felt and reproduced the physical
charm of Rorae more subtly than any other artist,
his genius drew at once its strength and its delicacy
from his Puritan ancestry and environment. To
realise how intimately he smacks of the soil, we have
but to think of that marvellous scene in The Blithe-
dale Romance, the search for Zenobia's body. From
what does it derive its peculiar quality, its haunting
savour ? Simply from the presence of Silas Foster,
that delightful incarnation of the New England
yeoman. " If I thought anything had happened to
Zenobia, I should feel kind o' sorrowful," said the
grim Silas ; and there never was a speech more
dramatically true, or, in its context, raore bitterly
pathetic. Even while EngUsh critics were proving that there
could be no such thing as an Araerican Uterature,
173

AMERICA TO-DAY
Washington Ip/ing and Fenimorej^oger were laying
its foundations on a thoroughly American basis.
Irving was none the less American for loving the
picturesque traditions of his English ancestry;
Cooper, a gallant and fertile genius, did his country
and our language an inestimable service by adding a
whole group of specifically American figures to the
deathless aristocracy of the realms of roraance.
Then, in the generation which has just passed away,
we have such raen as Thoreau, racy of his native
soil ; Longfellow, in his day and way the chief inter
preter of America to England ; Whittier, so intensely
local that, as Professor Matthews puts it, "he wrote
for New England rather than for the whole of the
United States " ; Lowell, courtly, cultured, cosmo
politan, and yet the creator of Hosea Biglow ;
Holmes, as American in his humour as Lamb was
English, who justly ranks with Lamb and Goldsmith
among the personally best-beloved writers of the
English tongue. Prescott, in the sphere of history,
paralleled the achievement of Cooper in fiction, by
giving literary form to the romance of the New
World ; while Motley was inspired (too ardently
perhaps) by the spirit of free America in writing the
great epic of religious and political freedom in Europe.
Finally, it raust not be forgotten that in UncleJTom's
Cabin, a tragically American production, Mrs. Beecher
Stowe added to the literature of the English language
the most potent, the raost dynamic, pamphlet ever
hurled into the arena of national life.
174

THE NEW NATIONALISM
Of aU that living Araericans are doing for the
literature of our common tongue it is as yet impos
sible to speak adequately. Since 1870 a new spirit
of nationalism has entered into American literature,
which has not yet been thoroughly studied in
America or appreciated in England. So far from
having no national literature, America has now,
perhaps, the raost intimately national body of fiction
in the modern world. Before the Civil War there
was practically no deliberate and systematic study
of local and racial idiosyncrasies. Hosea Biglow
was a mask, not a character, and Parson Wilbur
was a literary device. Even Hawthorne thought
priraarily of the element of imagination in his
romances — the universal, not the local, element. His
leading characters are psychological creations, with
nothing specifically Araerican about thera ; his local
colour and local character-studj'^, though admirable,
are incidental, or at any rate stand on a secondary
plane. In the .South there was no literature at all,
local or otherwise, with the one startling exception of
Uncle Tonis Cabin.* But since 1870, and raainly,
indeed, within the past twenty years, a raarvellous
change has come over the scene. Not only the
national but the local self-consciousness of America
has sprung to literary life, until at the present day
there is scarcely a corner of the country, scarcely an
* For the reasons of this barrenness, see an essay on Two
Studies in the South in Professor Brander Matthews's Aspects of
Fiction. New York : Harper. 1896.
175

AMERICA TO-DAY
aspect of social life, that has not found its special,
and, as a rule, very able interpreter through the
mediura of fiction. Pursuing technical raethods
partly borrowed frora abroad (from France rather
than from England), American writers have under
taken what one is tempted to call a sociological
ordnance-survey of the Republic from Maine to
Arizona, frora Florida to Oregon. There is scarcely
a human being in the United States, from the New
port society belle to the " greaser " of New Mexico,
that has not his or her more or less faithful counter
part in fiction. No European country, so far as I
know, has achieved anything like such comprehensive
self-realisation. Comprehensive, I say — not neces
sarily profound. Perhaps France in Balzac, perhaps
Russia in Turgueneff and Tolstoi, found raore search
ing interpretation than Araerica has found even in
her host of novelists. But never, surely, was there
a body of fiction that touched life at so raany points,
to mirror if not to probe it. And in many cases to
probe it as well.
It would take a volume to criticise these writers
in any detail. I can attempt no more than a bald
and imperfect enumeration. Miss Mary Wilkins's
studies of New England life are well known and
appreciated in England, but the talent of Miss Sarah
Orne Jevgitt- is not sufficiently recognised. In her
Country of the Pointed Firs, for example, there are
whole chapters that rise to a classical perfection of
workraanship. The novelists of the Eastern cities,
176

LOCAL FICTION
with Mr. Howells, a master craftsman, at their head,
are of course numberless. For studies in the local
colour of New York nothing could be better than
Mr. Brander Matthews's Vignettes of Manhattan, and
other stories. Mr. Paul Leicester_Ford's Honor
able Peter Stirling, though antiquated in style, gives
a remarkable picture of political life in New York.
The Bowery Boy is cleverly represented, so far as
dialect at any rate is concerned, by Mr. E. W. Towns-
end in his Chimmie Fadden. Even the Jewish
and the Italian quarters of New York have their
portraitists in fiction. Life in Washington has been
frequently and ably depicted ; for instance, in
Mrs," -Burnett's Through one Administration. Of
the many interpreters of the South I need mention
only three : Mr. Cable, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page,
and Mr. Chandler Harris. Miss Murfree (" Charles
Egbert Craddock") has made the Mountains of
Tennessee her special province. Chicago has seve
ral noveUsts of her own : for example, Mr. Henry
Fuller, author of The Cliff Dwellers, Mr.^Will
Payne, and that close student of Chicago slang,
Mr. George Ade, the author of Artie. The Middle
West counts such novelists as Miss " Octave Thanet"
and Mr. Hamlin_£iaxlandj whose Main Travelled
Roads contains some very remarkable work. The
Far West is best represented, perhaps, in the lively
and graphic sketches of Mr. Owen Wister; while
California has novelists of talent in Miss Gertrude
Atherton, and Mr. Frank Norris. At least two
177 M

AMERICA TO-DAY
Araericans living abroad have raade noteworthy
contributions to this sociological survey of their
native land : the late Mr. Harold Frederic, who has
dealt mainly with country life in New York State,
and Miss Elizabeth Robins, whose picture, in The
Open Question, of a Southern family impoverished
by the war, is exceedingly vivid and bears all the
raarks of the utraost fidelity. Nor raust I omit to
mention that the stage has borne a modest but not
insignificant part in this raovement of national self-
portraiture. Mr. Augustus Thoraas's Alabama is a
delightful picture of Southern life, while Mr. James
A. Heme's Shore Acres takes a distinct place in the
literature of New England, his Griffith Davenport*
in the literature of Virginia.
There must, of course, be raany gaps in this
sumraary enumeration. It is very probable that
many novelists of distinction have altogether
escaped my notice ; and I have made no attempt to
include in my list the writers of short magazine
stories, many of thera artists of high accoraplishment.
One omission, however, I must at once repair.
" Mark Twain's" contributions to the work of self-
realisation have been in the main retrospective, but
nevertheless of the first importance. He is the
" sacred poet " of the Mississippi. If any work of
incontestable genius, and plainly predestined to
iraraortality, has been issued in the English language
during the past quarter of a century, it is that
* Founded on a novel by Miss Helen H. Gardener.
178

" MARK TWAIN "
brilliant romance of the Great Rivers, The Adven
tures of Huckleberry Finn.
Intensely American though he be, "Mark Twain"
is one of the greatest living raasters of the English
language. To some Englishmen this may seem a
paradox ; but it is high time we should disabuse
ourselves of the prejudice that residence on the
European side of the Atlantic confers upon us an
exclusive right to deterraine what is good English,
and to write it correctly and vigorously. We are
apt in England to class as an " Americanisra " every
unfarailiar, or too farailiar, locution which we do not
happen to like. As a raatter of fact, there is a
pretty lively interchange between the two countries
of slipshod and vulgar "journalese"; and as the
picturesque reporter is a greater power in America
than he is with us, we perhaps import more than we
export of this particular coraraodity. But there can
be no rational doubt, I think, that the English
language has gained, and is gaining, enorraously by
its expansion over the Araerican continent. The
prime function of a language, after all, is to interpret
the " form and pressure " of Ufe — the experience,
knowledge, thought, emotion, and aspiration of the
race which employs it. This being so, the more
tap-roots a language sends down into the soil of life,
and the more varied the strata of human experience
from which it draws its nourishment, whether of
vocabulary or idiom, the more perfect will be its
potentialities as a medium of expression. We must
179

AMERICA TO-DAY
be careful, it is true, to keep the organism healthy,
to guard against disintegration of tissue ; but to that
duty American writers are quite as keenly alive as
we. It is not a source of weakness but of power
and vitality to the English language that it should
embrace a greater variety of dialects than any other
civilised tongue. A new language, says the proverb,
is a new sense ; but a multiplicity of dialects raeans,
for the possessors of the raain language, an enlarge
ment of the pleasures of the linguistic sense without
the fatigue of learning a totally new grararaar and
vocabulary. So long as there is a potent literary
tradition keeping the core of the language one and
indivisible, vernacular variations can only tend, in
virtue of the survival of the fittest, to proraote the
abundance, suppleness, and nicety of adaptation of
the language as a literary instrument. The English
language is no mere historic raonuraent, like West
rainster Abby, to be religiously preserved as a reUc
of the past, and reverenced as the burial-place of a
bygone breed of giants. It is a living organism,
ceaselessly busied, like any other organism, in the
processes of assimilation and excretion. It has
before it, we may fairly hope, a future still greater
than its glorious past. And the greatness of that
future will largely depend on the harmonious inter
play of spiritual forces throughout the American
Republic and the British Empire.

1 80

THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE

I

Nothing short of an imperative sense of duty could
tempt me to set forth on that most perilous emprise,
a discussion of the Araerican language. The path is
beset with man-traps and spring-guns. Not all the
serious causes of dissension between England and
America have begotten half the bad blood that has
been engendered by trurapery questions of vocabu
lary, grammar, and pronunciation. I cannot hope
to escape giving offence, probably on both sides ;
but if I can induce one or two people on either side
to think twice before they scoff once, I shall not
have written in vain.
In the way of scoffing, we English have doubtless
(and inevitably) been the worst offenders. We
have habitually used " Americanism " as a term of
reproach, implying, if not saying in so many words,
that Araerica was the great source of pollution, and
of nothing but pollution, to the otherwise limpid
current of our speech. Dean Alford wrote offen-
?8i

AMERICA TO-DAY
sively to this effect ; Archbishop Trench, on the
other hand, discussed the relations between the
English of America and the EngUsh of England with
courtesy and good sense. (See English Past and
Present, ninth edition, pp. 63, 215.) He protested
against certain transatlantic neologisms, including
in his list that excellent old word " to berate," and
a word so useful and so eminently consonant with
the spirit of the language as " to belittle " ; but,
whether wise or unwise, his protest was at least
civil. Other writers, both in books and periodicals,
have been apt to take their tone from the Dean
rather than from the Archbishop. It may even be
said that the instinct of the majority of Englishmen,
which finds heedless expression in the newspapers
and common talk, is to regard Americanisms as
necessarily vulgar, and (conversely) vulgarisms as
probably American. If challenged and brought to
book, they can generally realise the narrowness and
injustice of this way of thinking ; yet they relapse
into it next moraent. It is tirae we should be on
our guard against so insidious a habit. Its reduc
tion to absurdity raay be found (alackaday !) in Fors
Clavtgera for June i, 1874. With shame and sorrow
I transcribe the passage, for the tirae has not yet
corae for it to be forgotten. If it were raerely the
aberration of an individual, however distinguished,
it were better kept out of sight, out of mind ; but it
is, I repeat, the reckless exaggeration of a not
altogether uncommon habit of thought :

" OUR COMMON SPEECH "
" England taught the Americans all they have of speech or
thought, hitherto. What thoughts they have not learned from
England are foolish thoughts ; what words they have not learned
from England, unseemly words ; the vile among them not being
able even to be humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking
birds." Can we wonder that Americans have retorted with
some asperity upon criticisras in which any approach
to such insolent insularism is even reraotely or in
advertently implied ?
The Araerican retort, however, has not always
been judicious or dignified. It has too often con
sisted in the raere pitting of one linguistic prejudice
against another. It is very easy to prove that there
are bad speakers and bad writers in both countries,
and the atterapt to determine which country has the
more numerous and the greater sinners is exceed
ingly unprofitable. The " You're another " style of
arguraent has been far too prevalent. Here we have
Mr. Gilbert M. Tucker, for instance, in a book
entitled Our Common Speech (1895) iraplying, if
he does not absolutely assert (p. 173), that a "bold
ness of innovation " in raatters linguistic, araounting
to "absolute licentiousness," is more characteristic
of England than of America. The suggestion leaves
my British withers entirely unwrung, for I approve
of bold innovation in language, trusting to the ira-
perraanence of the unfit to counteract the effects of
licentiousness. If I could believe that we British
were the bolder innovators, I should adrait it without
blenching; but observation and probability seem to
183

AMERICA TO-DAY
me to point with one accord in the opposite direction.
New words are begotten by new conditions of life ;
and as American life is far raore fertile of new con
ditions than ours, the tendency towards neologism
cannot but be stronger in Araerica than in England.
Araerica has enorraously enriched the language, not
only with new words, but (since the Araerican raind
is, on the whole, quicker and wittier than the English)
with apt and lurainous colloquial metaphors ; and I
know not why Mr. Tucker should disclaim the credit.
He next sets forth to show how recent English
writers are corrupting the language ; and, in doing
so, he falls into sorae curious errors. Dickens was
boldly innovating when he made Silas Wegg say,
" Mr. Boffin, I never bargain " — " haggle," it would
seera, is the proper word. But if Mr. Tucker will
look into the matter, he will find it extremely
probable that this was the original sense of the word
" bargain," and quite certain that it was a very early
sense ; for instance —
So worthless peasants bargain for their wives.
As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse.
I Henry VI., V. v. 53.
And, in any case, is it possible to set up such a
distinction between "bargaining" and "haggling"
as to be worth an international wrangle ? " Starved"
for frozen is to Mr. Tucker an innovation ; it was
used both by Shakespeare and Milton. " Assist "
in the sense of to " be present at " is an " absurd "
184

ANTIQUE " INNOVATIONS "
innovation ; it was used by Gibbon and by Prescott,
a "tolerably good authority," says Mr. Tucker him
self, " in the use of Enghsh." Miss Yonge is taken
to task for saying, " Theodora flung away and was
rushing off"; but Milton says, "And crop-fuU out
of doors he flings." Charles Reade " is guilty of
such phrases as ' Wardlaw whipped before hira,'
' Ransorae whipped before it ' " ; but the Princess in
Lov^s Labour's Lost is guilty of saying, " Whip to
our tents, as roes run o'er the land," and the word
occurs in the same sense in Ben Jonson and Steele,
to search no further. The simple fact is that
Mr. Tucker has not happened to note the intransitive
sense of " to fling ' and " to whip," which has been
current in the best authors for centuries. He is
very severe on the English habit of " inserting utterly
superfluous words," instancing from Lord Beacons
field, " He was by way of intimating that he was
engaged on a great work," and, from a magazine,
" She was by way q/" painting the shrimp girl." Now,
this is not an elegant expression, and for my part I
should be at some pains to avoid it ; but it has a
perfectly distinct meaning, and is not a mere redun
dancy. If Mr. Tucker supposes that " She was by
way of painting the shrimp girl " means exactly the
same as "She was painting the shrimp girl," he
misses one of the fine shades of the English language.
Similarly, his remark on the " peculiar misuse of the
affix ever, as in saying ' 'Whatever are you doing ? ' "
stands in need of reconsideration. It is wrong,
185

AMERICA TO-DAY
certainly, to treat ever as an affix, and to mistake
the first two words of ' What ever are you doing ? ' "
for the one word " whatever " ; but to suppose the
" ever " meaningless and inert is to overlook a
clearly marked and very useful gradation of emphasis.
"What are you doing ? " expresses simple curiosity;
" What ever are you doing ? " expresses surprise ;
"What the devil are you doing?" expresses anger
— we need not run farther up the scale. Nor is this
use of " ever " an innovation, licentious or otherwise.
" Ever " has for centuries been employed as an
intensive particle after the interrogative pronouns
and adverbs how, who, what, where, why. For
instance, in The World of Wonders (1607), "I
shall desire him to consider how ever it was possible
to get an answer from these priests."
One of the most reraarkable paragraphs in Mr.
Tucker's book is that in which he proves "the
greater permanence and steadiness of our Ameri
can speech as corapared with that of the mother
country " by going through Halliwell's Dictionary of
Archaisms and Provincialisms and picking out "j^
words -which Halliwell regards as obsolete, but
which in Araerica are all alive and kicking. (The
vulgarisra is raine, not Mr. Tucker's.) Now as a
raatter of fact not one of these words is really obsolete
in England, and raost of them are in everyday
use ; for instance, adze, affectation, agape, to age,
air (appearance), appellant, apple-pie order, baker's
dozen, bamboozle, bay window, between whiles,
186

MODERN " ARCHAISMS "
bicker, blanch, to brain, burly, catcall, clodhopper,
clutch, coddle, copious, cosy, counterfeit money,
crazy (dilapidated), crone, crook, croon, cross-
grained, cross-patch, cross purposes, cuddle, to
cuff, cleft, din, earnest raoney, egg on, greenhorn,
jack-of-all-trades, loophole, settled, ornate, to quail,
ragamuffin, riff-raff, rigmarole, scant, seedy, out of
sorts, stale, tardy, trash. How Halliwell ever carae
to class these words as archaic I cannot imagine ;
but I submit that any one who sets forth to write
about the English of England ought to have sufficient
acquaintance vrith the language to check and reject
Halliwell's amazing classification. Does Mr. Tucker
so despise British English as never to read an
English book ? How else is one to account for his
imagining for a moment that clodhopper, clutch,
copious, cosy, cross-grained, greenhorn, and rigmarole
are obsolete in England ?
Far be it from me to assert that Mr. Tucker makes
no good points in his catalogue of English solecisms.
I merely hint that this game of pot and kettle is
neither dignified nor profitable ; that purisra is alraost
always over-hasty, and apt to ignore both the history
and the psychology of language ; and, finally, that
nothing is gained by introducing acerbity (though I
have adraitted the frequent provocation) into a dis
cussion which a little exercise of teraper should
render no less agreeable than instructive to both
parties. "The speech of the lower orders of our
people," says Mr. Tucker, "... differs from what
187

AMERICA TO-DAY
all admit to be standard correctness in a much smaUer
degree* than we have every reason to believe to be
the case in England, our enemies themselves being
judges." Now I protest I am not Mr. Tucker's
enemy, and I know of no reason why he should be
raine. I cannot share the withering contempt with
which he regards the extension of the term " traffic "
frora barter to movement to and fro, as in a street or
on a railway ; but if he prefers another word (he
does not suggest one, by the way) for the traffic on
Broadway or on the New York Central, I shall not
esteera hira one whit the less.f Even when he tells
me that " bumper " is the English term for the
Araerican " buffer " (on a railway carriage) I do not
feel ray blood boil. A very slight elevation of the
eyebrows expresses all the eraotion of which I am
conscious. So long as he does not insist on my
saying a " bumper state " when I raean a " buffer
state," I see no reason whatever for any rupture of
that sympathy which ought to subsist between two
* " What great city of this country," Mr. Tucker inquires,
" has developed, or is likely to develop, any peculiar class of
errors at all comparable in importance to those of the Cockney
speech of London ? " The answer is pat : New York and Chicago
— unless Mr. Townsend's Chimmie Fadden and Mr. Ade's Artie
are sheer linguistic libels.
t It must be very painful to Mr. Tucker to find Shakespeare
talking of the " two hours' traffic of our stage." He was a har
dened offender, was Shakespeare, against Mr. Tucker's ideal of
one single, inelastic, cast-iron signification for every word in the
language. i88

PRONUNCIATION
men who take a common interest and pride in the
subject of his treatise — Our Common Speech.

II

It is not to be expected that an extremely English
intonation should ever be agreeable to Americans, or
an extremely American intonation to Englishmen.
We ourselves laugh at a " haw-haw " intonation in
EngUsh; why, then, should we forbid Americans to do
so ? If " an accent like a banjo " is recognised as
undesirable in America (and assuredly it is), there is
no reason why we in England should pretend to
admire it. But a vulgar or affected intonation is
clearly distinguishable, and ought to be clearly
distinguished, from a national habit in the pronun
ciation of a given letter, or accentuation of a
particular word, or class of words. For instance,
take the pronounciation of the indefinite article. The
American habitually says "a man " (a as in "garae") ;
the EngUshraan, unless he wants to be emphatic, says,
" a man." * Neither is right, neither wrong ; it is
purely a matter of habit ; and to consider either habit
* "Surely, on Mr. Archer's own showing," writes Mr. A. B.
Walkley, " the Englishman has the advantage here, for ' when he
wants to be emphatic ' he can be, whereas the American cannot. "
This is a misapprehension on Mr. Walkley's part. The American
a can be spoken with or vnthout emphasis, just as the speaker
pleases. It is because we are accustomed always to associate
this particular sonority with emphasis that even when it is spoken
without emphasis, we imagine it to be emphatic.
189

AMERICA TO-DAY
ridiculous is merely to exhibit that childishness or
provincialism of mind which is moved to laughter by
whatever is unfamiliar. Again, when I first read the
works of the sagacious Mr. Dooley, I thought it a
curiously far-fetched idea on the part of that philo
sopher to talk of Adrairal Dewey as his " Cousin
George," and assert that "Dewey" and "Dooley"
were practically the same narae. I had not then
noticed that the Araerican pronunciation of "Dewey"
is " Dooey," and that the Uquid "yoo" is very
seldom heard in Araerica. In the course of the five
rainutes I spent in the Suprerae Court at Washington,
I heard the Chief Justice of the United States make
this one remark : " That, sir, is not constitootional."
To our ears this " oo " has an old-fashioned ring,
like that of the "ee" in "obleeged"; but to caU it
wrong is absurd, and to find it ridiculous is provincial.
Very possibly it can be proved that had Shakespeare
used the word at all, he would have said " constitoo
tional " ; but that would make the " oo " neither
better nor worse in my eyes. There always have
been, and always will be, changing fashions in
pronunciation ; and the Americans have as good a
right to their fashion as we to ours. Fifty years
hence, perhaps, our grandsons will be saying
" constitootional, " and theirs " constityootional."
I confess that, in point of abstract sonority, I
prefer the "yoo " to the dry " oo " ; but that, again,
is a pure matter of taste. If Americans choose
to say, 190

ACCENTUATION " From morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dooey eve,
A summer's day,"
I am perfectly willing that they should do so, reserv
ing always my own right to say "dyooey." It
would not at all surprise rae to learn that Milton said
" dooey " ; but neither would it lead me to alter the
pronunciation which, as one of the present generation
of Englishmen, I have learnt to prefer.
It is said that when Mr. Daly's company returned
to New York, after a long visit to England, they
pronounced " lieutenant " according to the English
fashion, "leftenant," but were called to order by an
outburst of protest. Though, for my own part, I say
"leftenant," I heartily sympathise with the pro
testers. " Leftenant," though a corruption of respec
table antiquity, is a corruption none the less, and
since it has died out in America, it would be mere
snobbery to reintroduce it.
So, too, with questions of accentuation. We say
" prim'arily " and " tem'porarily " ; raost (or at any
rate many) Araericans say " priraar'ily " and
" temporar'ily." Here there is no question of right
or wrong, refinement or vulgarity. The one accen
tuation is as good as the other. It may be argued,
indeed, that our accentuation throws into relief the
root, the idea, the soul of the word, not the mere
grammatical suffix, the "limbs and outward
flourishes " ; but on the other hand, it raay be con
tended with equal truth that the American accentu-
191

AMERICA TO-DAY
ation has the Latin precedent in its favour. Neither
advantage is conclusive ; neither, indeed, is, strictly
speaking, relevant ; for Englishmen do not make a
principle of accentuating the root rather than the
prefix or suffix, else we should say " inund'ation,"
" reson'ant," " admir'able " ; and the Americans do
not make a principle of foUowing the Latin
emphasis, else they would say " orat'or " and
" gratui'tous," and the recognised pronunciation of
" theatre " would be " theayter." It is argued that
there is a general tendency among educated English
men to throw the accent as far back as possible ;
that, for instance, the educated speaker says
" in'teresting," the uneducated, "interest'ing." True ;
but until this tendency can be proved to possess
some inherent advantage, there is not a shadow of
reason why Americans should be reproached or
ridiculed for obeying their own tendency rather than
ours. The English tendency is a matter of com
paratively recent fashion. " Con'template," said
Sarauel Rogers, " is bad enough, but bal'cony makes
me sick." Both forras have maintained themselves
up to the present ; but will they for long ? I think
one may already trace a reaction against the uni
versal throwing backward of the accent. I myself
say " per'emptory " and " ex'emplary " ; but it
would take very little encourageraent to make me
say " pererap'tory " and " exemp'lary," which seem
to me much more expressive words. There is
surely no doubt that, in accenting a prefix rather
192

COLLOQUIAL SLOVENLINESS
than the root of the word, we lose a certain amount
of force. " Con'template," for instance, is not
nearly so strong a word as " conterap'late." We
says an "il'lustrated" book or the "Il'lustrated
London News," because we do not require any par
ticular force in the epithet ; but when the sense
demands a word with colour and emotion in it, we
say the " illus'trious " statesman, the " illus'trious "
poet, throwing into relief the essential element in
the word, the " lustre." What a paltry word would
"tri'umphant" be in comparison with " triura'phant " !
But the larger our list of examples, the raore
capricious does our accentuation seem, the more
evidently subject to mere accidents of fashion.
There is scarcely a trace of consistent or rational
principle in the matter. To make a raerit of one
practice, and find in the other a subject for con
temptuous criticism, is simply childish.
Mere slovenliness of pronunciation is a totally
different matter. For instance, the use of " most "
for "alraost" is distinctly, if not a vulgarism, at
least a colloquialism. It may be of ancient origin ;
it may have crossed in the Mayflower for aught I
know; but the overwhelming preponderance of
ancient and modern usage is certainly in favour of
prefixing the " al," and there is a clear advantage in
having a special word for this special idea. If
American writers tried to make " most " supplant
" almost " in the literary language, we should have
a right to remonstrate ; the two forms would fight it
193 N

AMERICA TO-DAY
out, and the fittest would survive. But as a raatter
of fact I am not aware that any one has attempted
to introduce "most," in this sense, into literature.
It is perfectly recognised as a colloquialism, and as
such it keeps its place. Again, such pronunciations
as " raebbe " for " maybe " and " I'd ruther " or " I
druther " for " I'd rather " are obvious slovenli
nesses. No American would defend them as being
correct, any more than an Englishman would defend
" I dunno " for " I don't know " or " atome " for " at
home." If an actor, for instance, were to say,
" I druther be a dog and bay the moon
Than such a Roman,"
Araerican and English critics alike could not but
protest against the solecisra ; for in poetry absolute
precision of utterance is clearly indispensable. But
in everyday speech a certain araount of colloquialism
is inevitable. Let him whose own enunciation is
cheraically free from localism or slovenliness cast
the first stone even at " mebbe " and " ruther."
A curious American colloquialism, of which I cer
tainly cannot see the advantage, is the substitution
of " yep " or " yup " for " yes," and of " nope " for
" no." No doubt we have in England the coster's
" yuss " ; but one hears even educated Americans
now and then using " yep," or some other corrup
tion of "yes," scarcely to be indicated by the
ordinary alphabetical symbols. It seems to me a
pity. 194

" SOMEWHERES "
Much more respectable in point of antiquity is the
habit which obtains to some extent, even among
educated Araericans, of saying " somewheres " and
" a long ways." Here the " s " is an old case-
ending, an adverbial genitive. " He goes out
nights," too, on which Mr. Andrew Lang is so
severe, is a form as old as the language and older.
I turn to Dr. Leon Kellner's Historical English
Syntax (p. 119) and find that the Gothic for "at
night" was "nahts,"and that the form (with its
correlative " days ") runs through old Norse, old
Saxon, old English, and middle English : for instance,
" dages endi nahtes " {Heliand), " daeges and nihtes '
(Beowulf^, " daeies and nihtes " (Layaraon), all
meaning " by day and by night." In all, or almost
all, words ending in " ward," the genitive inflexion,
according to raodern English practice, can either be
retained or dropped at will. It is a raere pedantry
to declare " toward " better English than " towards,"
"upward" than "upwards." Thus we see that
here again there is neither logical principle nor con
sistent practice to be invoked. At the sarae time,
as " somewheres " has become irremediably a vul
garism in England, it would, I think, be a graceful
concession on the part of educated Americans to
drop the " s." After all, " soraewhere " does not jar
in America, and " soraewheres " very distinctly jars
in England.
An insidious laxity of pronunciation (rather than
of grammar), which is taking great hold in America,
195

AMERICA TO-DAY
is the total omission of the " had " or " have " in
such phrases as " you'd better," " we've got to."
Mr. Howells's Willis Campbell, a witty and culti
vated Bostonian, says, in The Albany Dep6t, " I
guess we better get out of here " ; Mr. Ade's Artie,
a Chicago clerk, says, " I got a boost in my pay,"
raeaning " I have got " : the locution is very common
indeed. It is no raore defensible than " swelp me "
for " so help rae." It arises from sheer laziness,
unwillingness to face the infinitesimal difficulty of
pronouncing " d " and " b " together. As a collo
quialism it is all very well ; but I regard it with a
certain alarra, for where all trace of a word dis
appears, people are apt to forget the logical and
grammatical necessity for it. Though contracted to
its last letter, a word still asserts its existence ; but
when even the last letter has vanished its state is
parlous indeed.
An Anglicism much ridiculed in America is " dif
ferent to." As a Scotchman I dislike it, and would
neither use nor defend it. At the sarae tirae I cannot
but hint to Araerican critics that the use ofa particular
preposition in a particular context is largely a matter
of convention ; that when we learn a new language
we have simply to get up by rote the conventions
that obtain in this regard, reason being little or no
guide to us ; and that within the same language the
conventions are always changing. You may easily
nonplus even a good gramraarian by asking him sud
denly, " What preposition should you use in such-
ig6

AMERICAN PURISM
and-such a context ? " just as you may puzzle a man
by asking him to spell a word which, if he wrote it
without thinking about it, would present no difficulty
to him. Some very good American writers always
say, " at the North " and " at the South," where an
Englishman would certainly say " in." " At," to my
mind, suggests a very narrow point of space. I
should say "at" a village, but "in" a city — "at
Concord," but " in Boston." I recognise, however,
that this is a mere raatter of convention, and do not
dream of condemning " at the North " as an error.
In the same way I would claim tolerance, though
certainly not approval, for " different to."
As a general rule, I think, educated Araericans are
more apt to err on the side of purism than of laxity.
I have before rae, for exaraple, a long list of
rules and warnings for Araerican writers, issued by
the New York Press, raany of which are very much
to the point, while others seem to me captious and
pedantic. For instance, a woman is not to " marry "
a man; she is "married to" him; "the clergyman
or magistrate marries both." The grararaatical suitor,
then, when the awful raoraent arrives, raust not say
to the blushing fair, " Will you marry rae ? " but
"WiU you be raarried to rae?" Again, you not
only must not split infinitives, but you must not
separate an auxiliary from its verb ; you must say
"probably will be," not "will probably be." This
is EngUsh by the card indeed.
I will not waste space upon discussing the different
197

AMERICA TO-DAY
fashions of spelling in England and America. The
rage excited in otherwise rational human beings by
the dropping of the " u " in " favor," or the final
" me " in " program," is one of the strangest of
psychological phenomena. The baselessness of the
reasonings used to bolster up the British clinging to
superfluous letters is very ably shown in Professor
Matthews's Americanisms and Briticisms. Let me
only put in a plea for the retention of such ab
normal spellings as serve to distinguish two words
of the same sound. For instance, it seems to me
useful that we should write " story " for a tale and
" storey " for a floor, and in the plural " stories" and
" storeys." Ill
Passing now from questions of pronunciation and
grammar to questions of vocabulary, I can only
express ray sense of the deep indebtedness of the
English language, both literary and colloquial, to
Araerica for the old words she has kept alive and
the new words and phrases she has invented. It is
a sheer pedantry — nay, a raisconception of the laws
which govern language as a living organism — to
despise pithy and apt colloquialisms, and even slang.
In order to remain healthy and vigorous, a literary
language must be rooted in the soil of a copious
vernacular, from which it can extract and assimilate,
by a cheraistry peculiar to itself, whatever nourish-
198

VOCABULARY
raent it requires. It must keep in touch with life in
the broadest acceptation of the word ; and life at
certain levels, obeying a psychological law which
raust simply be accepted as one of the conditions of
the problem, will always express itself in dialect,
provincialism, slang.
America doubles and trebles the number of points
at which the English language coraes in touch with
nature and life, and is therefore a great source of
strength and vitality. The literary language, to be
sure, rejects a great deal raore than it absorbs ; and
even in the vernacular, words and expressions are
always dying out and being replaced by others
which are somehow better adapted to the changing
conditions. But though an expression has not, in
the long run, proved itself fitted to survive, it does
not follow that it has not done good service in its
time. Certain it is that the common speech of the
Anglo-Saxon race throughout the world is exceed
ingly supple, well nourished, and rich in forcible and
graphic idioms ; and a great part of this wealth it
owes to America. Let the purists who sneer at
" Americanisms " think for one moment how much
poorer the English language would be to-day if
North America had become a French or Spanish
instead of an English continent.
I am far from advocating a breaking down of the
barrier between literary and vernacular speech. It
should be a porous, a permeable bulwark, allowing
of free filtration ; but it should be none the less
199

AMERICA TO-DAY
distinct and clearly recognised. Nor do I recom
mend an indiscriminate hospitaUty to all the lin
guistic inspirations of the American fancy. All I
say is that neologisms should be judged on their
merits, and not rejected with contumely for no better
reason than that they are new and (presuraably)
American. Take, for instance, the word " scien
tist." It was originally suggested by Whewell in
1840; but it first carae into comraon use in America,
and was received in England at the point of the
bayonet. Huxley and other " scientists " disowned
it, and only a few years ago the Daily News de
nounced it as " an ignoble Americanism," a " cheap
and vulgar product of transatlantic slang." But
" scientist " is undoubtedly holding its own, and will
soon be as generally accepted as "retrograde,"
"reciprocal," " spurious," and " strenuous," against
which Ben Jonson, in his day, so — strenuously
protested. It holds its own because it is felt to be
a necessity. No one who is in the habit of writing
will pretend that it is always possible to fall back
upon the cumbrous phrase " man of science."* On
the other hand, the purist objection to "scientist " —
* Mr. Andrew Lang says : "Plenty of other words are formed
on the same analogy : the Greeks, in the verb ' to Medize,' set the
example. But we happen to have no use for ' scientist.' " It is
not quite clear whether Mr. Lang employs " have no use " in the
American sense, expressing sheer dislike, or in the literal and
English sense. In the latter case I can only say that he has been
fortunate in never coming across conjunctures in which " man of
science" came in awkwardly and inelegantly.
200

"SCIENTIST" AND "TRANSPIRE"
that it is a Latin word with a Greek termination,
and that it implies the existence of a non-existent
verb — raay be urged with equal force against such
harmless necessary words as deist, aurist, dentist,
florist, jurist, oculist, somnambulist, ventriloquist,
and — purist. Much more valid objection might be
made to the word " scientific," which is not hybrid
indeed, but is, if strictly examined, illogical and even
nonsensical. The fact is that three-fourths of the
English language would crumble away before a
purist analysis, and we should be left without words
to express the commonest and most necessary
ideas. Contrast with the case of " scientist " a vulgarisra
such as the use of " transpire " in the sense of
" happen." I do not quote it as an Americanism ;
it is probably of EngUsh origin ; it occurs, I regret
to note, in Dickens. I select it merely as an
example of a demonstrably vicious locution which
ought indubitably to be banished from the language.
It has its origin in sheer blundering. Some one, at
some time, has come upon the phrase " such-and-
such a thing has transpired" — that is, leaked out,
become known — and, ignorantly mistaking its mean
ing, has noted and employed the word as a finer-
sounding synonym for " occurred " or " happened."
The blunder has been passed on from one penny-a-
liner to another, until at last it has crept into the
pages of writers, on both sides of the Atlantic, who
ought to know better. If it served any purpose,

AMERICA TO-DAY
expressed any shade of meaning, it might be
tolerated ; but being at once a useless pedantry and
an obvious blunder, it deserves no quarter.
My point, then, is that " scientist " ought to live
on its raerits, " transpire " to die on its deraerits.
With regard to every neologisra we ought first to
inquire, " Does it fill a gap ? Does it serve a pur
pose ? " And if that question be answered in the
affirmative, we may next consider whether it is formed
on a reasonably good analogy and in consonance
with the general spirit of the language. " Truthful,"
for example, is said to be an Americanism, and at
one tirae gave offence on that account. It is not
only a vast improvement on the stilted " veracious,"
but one of the prettiest and raost thoroughly English
words in the dictionary.
The above-quoted writer in the New York Press is
a purist in vocabulary, no less than in grararaar. He
will not allow Us to be " unwell," we raust always
be " ill " ; an inhuraan imperative. Why should we
sacrifice this clear and useful gradation : unwell,
very unwell, ill, very ill ? On " sick " he does not
deliver judgment. The American use of the word is
ancient and respectable, but the English limitation of
its meaning seems to me convenient, seeing we have
the general terras "unwell" and "ill" ready to
hand. Again, the New York Press authority follows
Freeman in wishing to eject the word "ovation"
from the language ; surely a ridiculous literalism.
It is true we do not sacrifice a sheep at a modern

"RETIRE" AND "COMMENCE"
" ovation," but neither (for example) do we judge by
the flight of birds when we declare the circumstances
to be " auspicious " for such and such an under
taking. Again, we are never to " retire " for the
night, but always to " go to bed." If, as is commonly
aUeged, Americans say " retire " because they con
sider it indelicate to go to bed, the feeling and the
expression are alike foolish. But I do not believe that
either is at all comraon in Araerica. On the other
hand, one raay retire for the night without going
to bed. In the case of ladies especially, the interval
between retiring and going to bed is reputed to be
far frora inconsiderable. If, then, one really means
" retired for the night " and does not definitely mean
"went to bed," I see no crime in employing the ex
pression that conveys one's exact raeaning. Finally
the New York Press vrill not let us use the word
" commence " ; we must always " begin." This is
an excellent example of unreflecting or half-reflect
ing purism. "Comraence " is a very old word ; it is
used by the best writers ; it is easily pronounceable
and not in the least grandiloquent ; indeed it has
precisely the length and cadence of its corapetitor.
But somebody or other one day observed that it was
Latin, whereas " begin " was Saxon ; and since then
there has been a systematic attempt, in several
quarters, to hound the innocent and useful synonym
out of the language. Whence coraes this rage for
impoverishing our tongue I The more synonyms we
possess the better. Wherefore (by the way) I for
203

AMERICA TO-DAY
my part should not be too rigorous in excluding a
forcible Araericanism merely because it happens to
duplicate some word or expression already current
in England. The rich language is that which pos
sesses not only the necessaries of life but also an
abundance of superfluities.

IV

Let rae note a few of the Araericanisras, good,
bad, and indifferent, which specially struck rae,
whether in talk or in books, during ray recent visit
to the United States. I call them Americanisms
without inquiring into their history. Some of them
may be of English origin ; but for practical purposes
an Americanism may be taken to raean an expres
sion comraonly used in Araerica and not coramonly
used in England.
I had not been three hours on American soil
before I heard a charming young lady remark,
" Oh, it was bully I " I gathered that this expression
is considered admissible, in the conversation of
grown-up people, only in and about New York. I
often heard it there, and never anywhere else. A
very distinguished officer, who served as a volunteer
in Cuba, was asked to state his impressions of war.
"War," he said, "is a terrible thing. You can't
exaggerate its horrors. When you sit in your
tent the night before the battle, and think of home
and your wife and children, you feel pretty sick
204

PICTURESQUE METAPHOR
and downhearted. But," he added, " next day,
when you're in it, oh, it is bully ! "
The general use of picturesque metaphor is of
course a striking feature in American conversation.
Many of these expressions have taken firm root in
England, such as " to have no use for " a man, or
" to take no stock in " a theory. But fresh inven
tions crop up on every hand in America. For
instance, where an English theatrical manager would
say, " We must get this play well talked about and
paragraphed in advance," an American raanager puts
the whole thing rauch raore briefly and forcibly in
the phrase, " We don't want this piece to come in on
rubbers." Metaphor apart, many Americans have a
gift of fantastic extravagance of phrase which often
produces an irresistible effect. A gentleman in
high political office had one day to receive a deputa
tion with whose objects he had no sympathy. He
listened for some time to the spokesman of the
party, and then, at a pause, broke in with the reraark :
"Gentleraen, you need proceed no further. I ara
not an entirely dishevelled jackass ! " One would
give something for a snapshot photograph of the
faces of that deputation.
Small differences of expression (other than those
with which every one is farailiar — such as " eleva
tor," "baggage," "depot," &c.) — strike one in daily
Ufe. The American for " To let " is " For rent " ;
a " thing one would wish to have expressed other
wise " is, more briefly, " a bad break " ; instead of
205

AMERICA TO-DAY
" He married money " an American will say " He
married rich " ; but this, I take it, is a vulgarism —
as, indeed, is the English expression. I find that in
the modern American novel, setting forth the sayings
and doings of more or less educated people, there
are apt to be, on an average, about half a dozen
words and phrases at which the English reader
stumbles for a moment. Mr. Howells, a master of
English, may be taken as a faithful reporter of the
colloquial speech of Boston and New York. In one
of his comediettas, he raakes Willis Carapbell say,
" Let rae turn out my sister's cup " (pour her a cup
of tea). Mrs. Roberts, in another of these delight
ful little pieces, says, " I'll smash off a note," where
an Enghsh Mrs. Roberts would say "dash off";
and where an English Mrs. Roberts would ring the
bell, her American namesake "touches the annun
ciator." It is comraonly beUeved in England that
there is no such thing as a " servant " in America,
but only "hired girls" and "helps." This is
certainly not so in New York. I once "rang
up " a friend's house by telephone, and, on asking
who was speaking to me, received the answer,
in a ferainine voice, " I'm one of Mr. So-and-so's
servants." The heroine of The Story of a Play says to her
husband, " Are you still thinking of our scrap of this
morning? " " Scrap," in the sense of " quarrel," is
one of the few exceedingly common American ex
pressions which have as yet taken little hold in
206

SLANG
England.* Admiral Dewey, for instance, is adraired
as a " scrapper," or, as we should phrase it, a fight
ing Admiral. Mr. Henry FuUer, of Chicago, in his
powerful novel, The Cave Dwellers, uses a still
less elegant synonym for " scrap " — he talks of a
" connubial spat." In the sarae book I note the
phrases : " He teetered back and forth on his toes,"
" He was a stocky young raan," " One of his brief
noonings," "That's right, Claudia — score the profes
sion." " Score," as used in Araerica, does not raean
"score off," but rather, I take it, "attack and leave
your mark upon." It is very comraon in this sense.
For instance, I note araong the headlines of a New
York paper, " Mr. So-and-so scores Yellow Journal
ism." Talking of Yellow Journalism, by the way,
the expressions " a beat " and " a scoop " for what
we in England call an " exclusive " item of news,
were unknown to me until I went to America. I was
a little bewildered, too, when I was told of a family
which " lived on air-tights." Their diet consisted of
canned (or, as we should say, tinned) provisions.
The most popular slang expression of the day is
"to rubberneck," or, more concisely, "to rubber."
Its primary raeaning is to crane the neck in curiosity,
to pry round the corner, as it were.f But it has
* Mr. Walkley reports that he has heard a Cockney policeman,
speaking of a street row, say, " There's been a little scrappin'."
t "About a dozen ringers followed us into the church and stood
around rubberin'. " "Gettin' next to the new kinds o' saddles
and rubber-neckin' to read the names on the tyres." — Artie. A
writer in the New York Sun says : " I first heard the term ' rubber-
207

AMERICA TO-DAY
numerous and surprising extensions of meaning. It
appears to be one of the laws of slang that when a
phrase strikes the popular fancy, it is pressed into
service on every possible or impossible occasion.
Another favourite expression is " That cuts no ice
with rae." * I was unable to ascertain either its
origin or its precise signification. On the other hand,
a piece of slang which supplies a "felt want," and
will one day, I believe, pass into the literary language,
is "the limit" in the sense of " le comble." A
theatrical poster, widely displayed in New York while
I was there, bore this alluring inscription :
"THE LIMIT AT LAST!
•THE MORMON SENATOR AND THE MERMAID.'
JAGS OF JOY FOR JADED JOHNNIES."
A "jag," be it known, means priraarily a load, secon
darily a " load " or " package " of alcohol.
Collectors of slang will find many priceless gems
in two recent books which I commend to their notice :
Chimmie Fadden, by Mr. E. W. Townsend, and
Artie, by Mr. George Ade. Chimmie Fadden gives
us the dialect of the New York Bowery Boy, or
"tough," in which the raost notable feature is the
substitution either of " d " or " t " for " th." Is this,
necks ' in Arizona, about four years ago, applied to the throngs of
onlookers in the gambling-houses, who strove to get a better view
of the games in progress by stretching or bending their necks."
* " We didn't break into sassiety notes, but that cuts no ice in
our set." — Artie. 208

CHIMMIE AND ARTIE
I wonder, a spontaneous corruption, or is it due to
German and Yiddish influence ? When Chimmie
wants to express his admiration for a young lady, he
says : " Well, say, she's a torrowbred, an' dat goes."
When the young lady's father comes to thank him
for championing her, this is how Chiraraie describes
the visit : " Den he gives rae a song an' dance about
me being a brave young man for tumping de mug
what insulted his daughter." " Mug," the Bowery
term for " fellow " or " raan," in Chicago finds its
equivalent in "guy." Mr. Ade's Artie is a Chicago
clerk, and his dialect is of the raost delectable. In
comparison with him, Mr. Dooley is a well of English
undefiled. Here again we find traces of the influence
of polyglot immigration. " Kopecks " for " money "
evidently comes from the Russian Jew ; " girlerino,"
as a terra of endearraent, frora the " Dago " of the
sunny south; and "spiel," raeaning practically any
thing you please, from the Fatherland. When Artie
goes to a wedding, he records that " there was a long
spiel by the high guy in the pulpit." After describ
ing the embarrassments of a country cousin in the
city, Artie proceeds, "Down at the farm, he was the
wise guy and I was the soft mark." " Mark " in the
sense of " butt " or " gull " is one of the commonest
of slang words. When Artie has cut out all rivals in
the good graces of his Mamie, he puts it thus,
"There ain't nobody else in the one-two-sevens.
They ain't even in the ' also rans.' " When they
have a lovers' quarrel he remarks, " Well, I s'pose
209 o

AMERICA TO-DAY
the other boy's fiUin' all my dates." When he is
asked whether Mamie cycles, he replies, " Does she ?
She's a scorchalorura I " When he disapproves of
another young gentleraan, this is how " he puts him
next " to the fact, as he himself would say —
" You're nothin' but a two-spot. You're the smallest thing in
the deck. . . . Chee-e-ese it ! You can't do nothin' like that to me
and then come around afterwards and jolly me. Not in a million !
I tell you you're a two-spot, and if you come into the same
part o' the town with me I'll change your face. There's only one
way to get back at you people. ... If he don't keep off o' my
route, there'll be people walkin' slow behind him one o' these
days. . . . But this same two-spot's got a sister that can have
my seat in the car any time she comes in."
I plead guilty to an unholy relish for Chimmie's
and Artie's racy metaphors from the music-hall, the
poker-table, and the "grip-car."* But it is to be
noted that both these profound students of slang,
Mr. Townsend and Mr. Ade, like the creator of the
delightful Dooley, express themselves in pure and
excellent English the raoraent they drop the mask of
their personage. This is very characteristic. Many
educated Americans take great deUght, and even
pride, in keeping abreast of the daily developraents
of slang and patter ; but this study does not in the
* Extract from a letter to the Chicago Evening Post : " I do not
at all subscribe to the sneering remark of a talented author of my
acquaintance, to the effect that there were not enough cultured
people in Chicago to fill a grip-car. I asked him if he meant a
grip-car and a trailer, and he said, ' No ; just one car." And I
told him right there that I could not agree with him."
2IO

MR. LANG ON AMERICANISMS
least impair their sense for, or their comraand of,
good English. The idea that the English language
is degenerating in America is an absolutely ground
less illusion. Take them all round, the newspapers of
the leading American cities, in their editorial columns
at any rate, are at least as well written as the news
papers of London ; and in raagazines and books the
average level of literary accomplishraent is certainly
very high. There are bad and vulgar writers on both
sides of the Atlantic ; but until the beams are re
moved from our own eyes, we may safely trust the
Americans to attend to the motes in theirs.
Postscript. — When this paper originally appeared,
it formed the text for an editorial article in the
Daily News, in which Mr. Andrew Lang's sign manual
was not to be mistaken. Mr. Lang brought my
somewhat desultory discussion very neatly to a point.
He adraitted that we habitually use " Araericanism "
as a term of reproach ; " but," he asked, " who is
reproached ? Not the American (who may do as
he pleases) but the English writer, who, in serious
work, introduces, needlessly, an American phrase
into our literature. We say ' needlessly ' when our
language already possesses a consecrated equivalent
for the word or idiom."
In the first place, one has to reraark that many Eng
Ush critics are far from accepting Mr. Lang's principle
that " the American may do as he pleases, of course."
Mr. Lang himself scarcely acts up to it in this very
211

AMERICA TO-DAY
article. And, for my part, I think the principle a
false one. I think the English language has been
entrusted to the care of all of us, English no less
than Americans, Araericans no less than English ;
and if I find an American writer debasing it in an
essential point, as opposed to a point of mere local
predilection, I assert my right to remonstrate with
him, just as I admit his right, under similar circum
stances, to remonstrate with me.
It is not here, however, that I join issue with
Mr. Lang : it is on his theory that an English writer
necessarily does wrong who unnecessarily employs
an Americanism. This is a question of great practi
cal moraent, and I am glad that Mr. Lang has
stated it in this definite form. My view is perhaps
sufficiently indicated above, but I take the oppor
tunity of re-asserting it with all deliberation. I
believe that, as a matter both of literary and of
social policy, we ought to encourage the free in
filtration of graphic and racy Araericanisras into our
vernacular, and of vigorous and useful Araericanisras
(even if not absolutely necessary) into our literary
language. Where is the harm in duplicating terms,
if only the duplicates be in themselves good terms ?
For instance, take the word "fall." Mr. Brander
Matthews writes : " An American with a sense of the
poetic cannot but prefer to the imported word
' auturan ' the native and raore logical word ' fall,'
which the British have strangely suffered to drop into
disuse." Well, " auturan " was a sufficiently early
212

"AUTUMN" AND "FALL"
importation. " Our ancestors," wrote Lowell (quoted
by Mr. Matthews in the same article), " unhappily
could bring over no English better than Shake
speare's " ; and in Shakespeare's (and Chaucer's)
English they brought over "autumn." The word
has inherent beauty as well as splendid poetical
associations. I doubt whether even Shakespeare
could have made out of " fall " so beautiful a line
as " The teeming autumn, big with rich increase."
I doubt whether Keats, had he written an Ode to the
Fall, would have produced quite such a miraculous
poem as that which begins
" Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."
Still, Mr. Matthews is quite right in saying that
" fall " has a poetic value, a suggestion, an atmo
sphere of its own. I wonder, with him, why we
dropped it, and I see no smallest reason why we
should not recover it. The British literary patriot
ism which makes a point of never saying " fall "
seems to me just as mistaken as the American
literary patriotism (if such there be) that makes a
merit of never saying " autumn." By insisting on
such localisms (for the exclusive preference for either
term is nothing more) we might, in process of time,
bring about a serious fissure in the language. Of
course there is no reason why Mr. Lang should
force himself to use a word that is uncongenial to
him; but if "faU" is congenial to me, I think I
213

AMERICA TO-DAY
ought to be allowed to use it "without fear and
without reproach."
Take, now, a coUoquiaUsm. How formal and
colourless is the English phrase "I have enjoyed
myself " beside the American " I have had a good
time " I Each has its uses, no doubt. I am far
from suggesting that the one should drive out the
other. It is precisely the advantage of our linguistic
position that it so enorraously enlarges the stock of
semi-synonyms at our disposal. To reject a forcible
Americanism raerely because we could, at a pinch,
get on without it, is — Mr. Lang will understand the
forcible Scotticism — to " sin our raercies."
Mr. Lang is under a certain illusion, I think, in
his belief that in hardening our hearts against
Americanisms we should raise no barrier between
ourselves and the classical authors of America. He
says : " Let us remark that they [Araericanisras] do
not occur in Hawthorne, Poe, LoweU, Longfellow,
Prescott, and Eraerson, except when these writers
are consciously reproducing conversations in dialect."
He made the same reraark on a previous occasion ;
when his opponent (see the Academy, March 30,
189s) opened a volurae of Hawthorne and a volume
of Emerson, and in five minutes found in Hawthorne
" He had naraed his two children, one for Her
Majesty and one for Prince Albert," and in Eraerson
" Nature tells every secret once. Yes ; but in man
she tells it all the time," The latter phrase is one
which Mr. Lang explicitly puts under his ban. He
214

MR. LANG AND THE " AUTOCRAT "
is an ingenious and admirable translator : I wish he
would translate Emerson's sentence from American
into English, without loss of brevity, directness, and
simple Saxon strength. For my part, I can think of
nothing better than " In man she is always telling
it," which strikes rae as a feeble makeshift. "All
the time," I suggest, is precisely one of the phrases
we should accept with gratitude — if, indeed, it be not
already naturalised.
Mr. Lang is pecuUarly unfortunate in caUing
Oliver Wendell Holmes to witness against his
particular and pet aversion " I belong here " or
" That does not belong there." Writing of " need
less Araericanisras," he says, " The use of ' belong'
as a new auxiliary verb [an odd classification, by
the way] is an example of what we mean. Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes was a stern opponent of
such neologisms." I turn to the Oxford Dictionary,
and the one quotation I find under " belong " in
this sense, is — " ' You belong with the last set, and
got accidentally shuffled with the others.' — O. W.
Holmes, ' Elsie Venner.^ " But this, Mr. Lang raay
say, is in dialogue. Yes, but not in dialect. I am
very much raistaken if the locution does not occur
elsewhere in Holmes. If Mr. Lang, in a leisure
hour, were to undertake a search for it, he might
incidentally find cause to modify his view as to the
sternness of the Autocrat's anti-Americanisra.
Let me not be thought to underrate the services
which, by sound precept and invaluable example,
215

AMERICA TO-DAY
Mr. Lang has rendered to all of us who use the
English tongue. Conservatism and liberalism are
as inevitable, nay, indispensable, in the world of
words as in the world of deeds ; and I trust Mr
Lang will not set down my liberalism as anarchism.
He and I, in this little discussion, are simply playing
our allotted parts. I believe (and Mr. Lang would
probably admit with a shrug) that the forces of the
future are on my side. May I recall to him that
charming anecdote of Thackeray and Viscount
Monck, when they were rival candidates for the
representation of Oxford in Parliament ? They met
in the street one day, and exchanged a few words.
On parting, Thackeray shook hands with his
opponent and said, " Good-bye ; and may the best
man win ! " "I hope not," replied Viscount Monck,
with a bow. A hundred years hence, if some
English-speaker of the future should chance to dis
inter this book from the recesses of the British
Museum or the Library of Congress, and should read
these final paragraphs, I doubt not he will say — for
the immortal soul of the language even anarchism
cannot affect — " the race is not always to the swift ,
nor the battle to the strong."

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