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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Frenchman in America, by Max O'Rell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Frenchman in America
+       Recollections of Men and Things
+
+Author: Max O'Rell
+
+Release Date: May 5, 2010 [EBook #32261]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marius Masi, Chris Curnow and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA.
+
+
+[Illustration: Max O'Rell]
+
+
+
+
+_A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA_
+
+Recollections of Men and Things
+
+
+  BY MAX O'RELL
+
+  AUTHOR OF "JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT," "JOHN BULL, JUNIOR,"
+  "JACQUES BONHOMME," "JOHN BULL AND HIS ISLAND," ETC.
+
+
+  WITH OVER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS
+  BY E. W. KEMBLE
+
+
+           NEW YORK
+  CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
+   104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE
+
+
+
+
+     COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY
+  CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY.
+
+    _All rights reserved._
+
+  THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
+        RAHWAY, N. J.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAPTER.                                                         PAGE.
+
+  I.--Departure--The Atlantic--Demoralization of the "Boarders"--
+        Betting--The Auctioneer--An Inquisitive Yankee,                1
+
+  II.--Arrival of the Pilot--First Look at American Newspapers,       11
+
+  III.--Arrival--The Custom House--Things Look Bad--The
+        Interviewers--First Visits--Things Look Brighter--"O Vanity
+        of Vanities,"                                                 14
+
+  IV.--Impressions of American Hotels,                                25
+
+  V.--My Opening Lecture--Reflections on Audiences I Have Had--The
+        Man who Won't Smile--The One who Laughs too Soon, and Many
+        Others,                                                       37
+
+  VI.--A Connecticut Audience--Merry Meriden--A Hard Pull,            48
+
+  VII--A Tempting Offer--The Thursday Club--Bill Nye--Visit to Young
+        Ladies' Schools--The Players' Club,                           52
+
+  VIII.--The Flourishing of Coats-of-Arms in America--Reflections
+        Thereon--Forefathers Made to Order--The Phonograph at
+        Home--The Wealth of New York--Departure for Buffalo,          60
+
+  IX.--Different Ways of Advertising a Lecture--American
+        Impressarios and Their Methods,                               66
+
+  X.--Buffalo--The Niagara Falls--A Frost--Rochester to the Rescue
+        of Buffalo--Cleveland--I Meet Jonathan--Phantasmagoria,       74
+
+  XI.--A Great Admirer--Notes on Railway Traveling--Is America a
+        Free Nation?--A Pleasant Evening in New York,                 81
+
+  XII.--Notes on American Women--Comparisons--How Men Treat Women
+        and Vice Versa--Scenes and Illustrations,                     90
+
+  XIII.--More about Journalism in America--A Dinner at Delmonico's--
+        My First Appearance in an American Church,                   110
+
+  XIV.--Marcus Aurelius in America--Chairmen I Have Had--American,
+        English, and Scotch Chairmen--One who had Been to
+        Boulogne--Talkative and Silent Chairmen--A Trying Occasion--
+        The Lord is Asked to Allow the Audience to See my Points,    124
+
+  XV.--Reflections on the Typical American,                          137
+
+  XVI.--I am Asked to Express Myself Freely on America--I Meet Mrs.
+        Blank and for the First Time Hear of Mr. Blank--Beacon
+        Street Society--The Boston Clubs,                            149
+
+  XVII.--A Lively Sunday in Boston--Lecture in the Boston Theater--
+        Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes--The Booth-Modjeska Combination,   156
+
+  XVIII--St. Johnsbury--The State of Maine--New England
+        Self-control--Cold Climates and Frigid Audiences--Where is
+        the Audience?--All Drunk!--A Reminiscence of a Scotch
+        Audience on a Saturday Night,                                163
+
+  XIX.--A Lovely Ride to Canada--Quebec, a Corner of Old France
+        Strayed up and Lost in the Snow--The French Canadians--The
+        Parties in Canada--Will the Canadians become Yankees?        172
+
+  XX.--Montreal--The City--Mount Royal--Canadian Sports--Ottawa--
+        The Government--Rideau Hall,                                 182
+
+  XXI.--Toronto--The City--The Ladies--The Sports--Strange
+        Contrasts--The Canadian Schools,                             191
+
+  XXII.--West Canada--Relations between British and Indians--Return
+        to the United States--Difficulties in the Way--Encounter
+        American Custom-House Officer,                               196
+
+  XXIII.--Chicago (First Visit)--The "Neighborhood" of Chicago--The
+        with an History of Chicago--Public Servants--A Very Deaf
+        Man,                                                         203
+
+  XXIV.--St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Sister Cities--Rivalries and
+        Jealousies between Large American Cities--Minnehaha
+        Falls--Wonderful Interviewers--My Hat gets into Trouble
+        Again--Electricity in the Air--Forest Advertisements--
+        Railway Speed in America,                                    214
+
+  XXV.--Detroit--The Town--The Detroit "Free Press"--A Lady
+        Interviewer--The "Unco Guid" in Detroit--Reflections on the
+        Anglo-Saxon "Unco Guid,"                                     222
+
+  XXVI.--Milwaukee--A Well-filled Day--Reflections on the Scotch in
+        America--Chicago Criticisms,                                 236
+
+  XXVII.--The Monotony of Traveling in the States--"Manon Lescaut"
+        in America,                                                  244
+
+  XXVIII.--For the First Time I See an American Paper Abuse Me--
+        Albany to New York--A Lecture at Daly's Theater--Afternoon
+        Audiences,                                                   248
+
+  XXIX.--Wanderings Through New York--Lecture at the Harmonie Club--
+        Visit to the Century Club,                                   255
+
+  XXX.--Visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music--Rev. Dr. Talmage,    257
+
+  XXXI.--Virginia--The Hotels--The South--I will Kill a Railway
+        Conductor before I Leave America--Philadelphia--Impressions
+        of the Old City,                                             263
+
+  XXXII.--My Ideas of the State of Texas--Why I will not Go
+        There--The Story of a Frontier Man,                          274
+
+  XXXIII.--Cincinnati--The Town--The Suburbs--A German City--"Over
+        the Rhine"--What is a Good Patriot?--An Impressive
+        Funeral--A Great Fire--How It Appeared to Me, and How It
+        Appeared to the Newspaper Reporters,                         279
+
+  XXXIV.--A Journey if you Like--Terrible Encounter with an
+        American Interviewer,                                        296
+
+  XXXV.--The University of Indiana--Indianapolis--The Veterans of
+        the Grand Army of the Republic on the Spree--A Marvelous
+        Equilibrist,                                                 306
+
+  XXXVI.--Chicago (Second Visit)--Vassili Verestchagin's
+        Exhibition--The "Angelus"--Wagner and Wagnerites--
+        Wanderings About the Big City--I Sit on the Tribunal,        311
+
+  XXXVII.--Ann Arbor--The University of Michigan--Detroit
+        Again--The French Out of France--Oberlin College, Ohio--
+        Black and White--Are All American Citizens Equal?            322
+
+  XXXVIII.--Mr. and Mrs. Kendal in New York--Joseph Jefferson--
+        Julian Hawthorne--Miss Ada Rehan--"As You Like It" at
+        Daly's Theater,                                              330
+
+  XXXIX.--Washington--The City--Willard's Hotel--The Politicians--
+        General Benjamin Harrison, U. S. President--Washington
+        Society--Baltimore--Philadelphia,                            332
+
+  XL.--Easter Sunday in New York,                                    342
+
+  XLI.--I Mount the Pulpit and Preach on the Sabbath, in the State
+        of Wisconsin--The Audience is Large and Appreciative; but I
+        Probably Fail to Please One of the Congregation,             347
+
+  XLII.--The Origin of American Humor and Its Characteristics--The
+        Sacred and the Profane--The Germans and American Humor--
+        My Corpse Would "Draw," in my Impressario's Opinion,         353
+
+  XLIII.--Good-by to America--Not "Adieu," but "Au Revoir"--On
+        Board the _Teutonic_--Home Again,                            361
+
+
+
+
+A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  DEPARTURE--THE ATLANTIC--DEMORALIZATION OF THE "BOARDERS"--BETTING--THE
+  AUCTIONEER--AN INQUISITIVE YANKEE.
+
+
+     _On board the "Celtic," Christmas Week, 1889._
+
+In the order of things the _Teutonic_ was to have sailed to-day, but the
+date is the 25th of December, and few people elect to eat their
+Christmas dinner on the ocean if they can avoid it; so there are only
+twenty-five saloon passengers, and they have been committed to the brave
+little _Celtic_, while that huge floating palace, the _Teutonic_,
+remains in harbor.
+
+Little _Celtic_! Has it come to this with her and her companions, the
+_Germanic_, the _Britannic_, and the rest that were the wonders and the
+glory of the ship-building craft a few years ago? There is something
+almost sad in seeing these queens of the Atlantic dethroned, and obliged
+to rank below newer and grander ships. It was even pathetic to hear the
+remarks of the sailors, as we passed the _Germanic_ who, in her day, had
+created even more wondering admiration than the two famous armed
+cruisers lately added to the "White Star" fleet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I know nothing more monotonous than a voyage from Liverpool to New York.
+
+Nine times out of ten--not to say ninety-nine times out of a
+hundred--the passage is bad. The Atlantic Ocean has an ugly temper; it
+has forever got its back up. Sulky, angry, and terrible by turns, it
+only takes a few days' rest out of every year, and this always occurs
+when you are not crossing.
+
+And then, the wind is invariably against you. When you go to America, it
+blows from the west; when you come back to Europe, it blows from the
+east. If the captain steers south to avoid icebergs, it is sure to begin
+to blow southerly.
+
+Doctors say that sea-sickness emanates from the brain. I can quite
+believe them. The blood rushes to your head, leaving your extremities
+cold and helpless. All the vital force flies to the brain, and your legs
+refuse to carry you. It is with sea-sickness as it is with wine. When
+people say that a certain wine goes up in the head, it means that it is
+more likely to go down to the feet.
+
+There you are, on board a huge construction that rears and kicks like a
+buck-jumper. She lifts you up bodily, and, after well shaking all your
+members in the air several seconds, lets them down higgledy-piggledy,
+leaving to Providence the business of picking them up and putting them
+together again. That is the kind of thing one has to go through about
+sixty times an hour. And there is no hope for you; nobody dies of it.
+
+[Illustration: "YOUR LEGS REFUSE TO CARRY YOU."]
+
+Under such conditions, the mental state of the boarders may easily be
+imagined. They smoke, they play cards, they pace the deck like bruin
+pacing a cage; or else they read, and forget at the second chapter all
+they have read in the first. A few presumptuous ones try to think, but
+without success. The ladies, the American ones more especially, lie on
+their deck chairs swathed in rugs and shawls like Egyptian mummies in
+their sarcophagi, and there they pass from ten to twelve hours a day
+motionless, hopeless, helpless, speechless. Some few incurables keep to
+their cabins altogether, and only show their wasted faces when it is
+time to debark. Up they come, with cross, stupefied, pallid,
+yellow-green-looking physiognomies, and seeming to say: "Speak to me, if
+you like, but don't expect me to open my eyes or answer you, and above
+all, don't shake me."
+
+Impossible to fraternize.
+
+The crossing now takes about six days and a half. By the time you have
+spent two in getting your sea legs on, and three more in reviewing, and
+being reviewed by your fellow-passengers, you will find yourself at the
+end of your troubles--and your voyage.
+
+No, people do not fraternize on board ship, during such a short passage,
+unless a rumor runs from cabin to cabin that there has been some
+accident to the machinery, or that the boat is in imminent danger. At
+the least scare of this kind, every one looks at his neighbor with eyes
+that are alarmed, but amiable, nay, even amicable. But as soon as one
+can say: "We have come off with a mere scare this time," all the facial
+traits stiffen once more, and nobody knows anybody.
+
+[Illustration: "LIKE EGYPTIAN MUMMIES."]
+
+Universal grief only will bring about universal brotherhood. We must
+wait till the Day of Judgment. When the world is passing away, oh! how
+men will forgive and love one another! What outpourings of good-will and
+affection there will be! How touching, how edifying will be the sight!
+The universal republic will be founded in the twinkling of an eye,
+distinctions of creed and class forgotten. The author will embrace the
+critic and even the publisher, the socialist open his arms to the
+capitalist. The married men will be seen "making it up" with their
+mothers-in-law, begging them to forgive and forget, and admitting that
+they had not been always quite so-so, in fact, as they might have been.
+If the Creator of all is a philosopher, or enjoys humor, how he will be
+amused to see all the various sects of Christians, who have passed their
+lives in running one another down, throw themselves into one another's
+arms. It will be a scene never to be forgotten.
+
+Yes, I repeat it, the voyage from Liverpool to New York is monotonous
+and wearisome in the extreme. It is an interval in one's existence, a
+week more or less lost, decidedly more than less.
+
+One grows gelatinous from head to foot, especially in the upper part of
+one's anatomy.
+
+In order to see to what an extent the brain softens, you only need look
+at the pastimes the poor passengers go in for.
+
+A state of demoralization prevails throughout.
+
+They bet. That is the form the disease takes.
+
+[Illustration: THE AUCTIONEER.]
+
+They bet on anything and everything. They bet that the sun will or will
+not appear next day at eleven precisely, or that rain will fall at noon.
+They bet that the number of miles made by the boat at twelve o'clock
+next day will terminate with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9. Each draws
+one of these numbers and pays his shilling, half-crown, or even
+sovereign. Then these numbers are put up at auction. An improvised
+auctioneer, with the gift of the gab, puts his talent at the service of
+his fellow-passengers. It is really very funny to see him swaying about
+the smoking-room table, and using all his eloquence over each number in
+turn for sale. A good auctioneer will run the bidding so smartly that
+the winner of the pool next day often pockets as much as thirty and
+forty pounds. On the eve of arrival in New York harbor, everybody knows
+that twenty-four pilots are waiting about for the advent of the liner,
+and that each boat carries her number on her sail. Accordingly,
+twenty-four numbers are rolled up and thrown into a cap, and betting
+begins again. He who has drawn the number which happens to be that of
+the pilot who takes the steamer into harbor pockets the pool.
+
+I, who have never bet on anything in my life, even bet with my traveling
+companion, when the rolling of the ship sends our portmanteaus from one
+side of the cabin to the other, that mine will arrive first.
+Intellectual faculties on board are reduced to this ebb.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The nearest approach to a gay note, in this concert of groans and
+grumblings, is struck by some humorous and good-tempered American. He
+will come and ask you the most impossible questions with an ease and
+impudence perfectly inimitable. These catechisings are all the more
+droll because they are done with a _na�vet�_ which completely disarms
+you. The phrase is short, without verb, reduced to its most concise
+expression. The intonation alone marks the interrogation. Here is a
+specimen.
+
+We have on board the _Celtic_ an American who is not a very shrewd
+person, for it has actually taken him five days to discover that English
+is not my native tongue. This morning (December 30) he found it out,
+and, being seated near me in the smoke-room, has just had the following
+bit of conversation with me:
+
+"Foreigner?" said he.
+
+"Foreigner," said I, replying in American.
+
+"German, I guess."
+
+"Guess again."
+
+"French?"
+
+"Pure blood."
+
+[Illustration: "GOING TO AMERICA?"]
+
+"Married?"
+
+"Married."
+
+"Going to America?"
+
+"Yes--evidently."
+
+"Pleasure trip?"
+
+"No."
+
+"On business?"
+
+"On business, yes."
+
+"What's your line?"
+
+"H'm--French goods."
+
+"Ah! what class of goods?"
+
+"_L'article de Paris._"
+
+"The what?"
+
+"The _ar-ti-cle de Pa-ris_."
+
+"Oh! yes, the _arnticle of Pahrriss_."
+
+"Exactly so. Excuse _my_ pronunciation."
+
+This floored him.
+
+"Rather impertinent, your smoke-room neighbor!" you will say.
+
+Undeceive yourself at once upon that point. It is not impertinence,
+still less an intention to offend you, that urges him to put these
+incongruous questions to you. It is the interest he takes in you. The
+American is a good fellow; good fellowship is one of his chief
+characteristic traits. Of that I became perfectly convinced during my
+last visit to the United States.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  ARRIVAL OF THE PILOT--FIRST LOOK AT AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS.
+
+
+     _Saturday, January 4, 1890._
+
+We shall arrive in New York Harbor to-night, but too late to go on
+shore. After sunset, the Custom House officers are not to be disturbed.
+We are about to land in a country where, as I remember, everything is in
+subjection to the paid servant. In the United States, he who is paid
+wages commands.
+
+We make the best of it. After having mercilessly tumbled us about for
+nine days, the wind has graciously calmed down, and our last day is
+going to be a good one, thanks be. There is a pure atmosphere. A clear
+line at the horizon divides space into two immensities, two sheets of
+blue sharply defined.
+
+Faces are smoothing out a bit. People talk, are becoming, in fact, quite
+communicative. One seems to say to another: "Why, after all, you don't
+look half as disagreeable as I thought. If I had only known that, we
+might have seen more of each other, and killed time more quickly."
+
+The pilot boat is in sight. It comes toward us, and sends off in a
+rowing-boat the pilot who will take us into port. The arrival of the
+pilot on board is not an incident. It is an event. Does he not bring the
+New York newspapers? And when you have been ten days at sea, cut off
+from the world, to read the papers of the day before is to come back to
+life again, and once more take up your place in this little planet that
+has been going on its jog-trot way during your temporary suppression.
+
+[Illustration: PILOT WITH PAPERS.]
+
+The first article which meets my eyes, as I open the New York _World_,
+is headed "High time for Mr. Nash to put a stop to it!" This is the
+paragraph:
+
+  Ten days ago, Mrs. Nash brought a boy into existence. Three days
+  afterward she presented her husband with a little girl. Yesterday the
+  lady was safely delivered of a third baby.
+
+"Mrs. Nash takes her time over it" would have been another good heading.
+
+Here we are in America. Old World ways don't obtain here. In Europe,
+Mrs. Nash would have ushered the little trio into this life in one day;
+but in Europe we are out of date, _rococo_, and if one came over to find
+the Americans doing things just as they are done on the other side, one
+might as well stay at home.
+
+I run through the papers.
+
+America, I see, is split into two camps. Two young ladies, Miss Nelly
+Bly and Miss Elizabeth Bisland, have left New York by opposite routes to
+go around the world, the former sent by the New York _World_, the latter
+by the _Cosmopolitan_. Which will be back first? is what all America is
+conjecturing upon. Bets have been made, and the betting is even. I do
+not know Miss Bly, but last time I came over I had the pleasure of
+making Miss Bisland's acquaintance. Naturally, as soon as I get on
+shore, I shall bet on Miss Bisland. You would do the same yourself,
+would you not?
+
+I pass the day reading the papers. All the bits of news, insignificant
+or not, given in the shape of crisp, lively stories, help pass the time.
+They contain little information, but much amusement. The American
+newspaper always reminds me of a shop window with all the goods ticketed
+in a marvelous style, so as to attract and tickle the eye. You cannot
+pass over anything. The leading article is scarcely known across the
+"wet spot"; the paper is a collection of bits of gossip, hearsay, news,
+scandal, the whole served _� la sauce piquante_.
+
+     _Nine o'clock._
+
+We are passing the bar, and going to anchor. New York is sparkling with
+lights, and the Brooklyn Bridge is a thing of beauty. I will enjoy the
+scene for an hour, and then turn in.
+
+We land to-morrow morning at seven.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  ARRIVAL--THE CUSTOM HOUSE--THINGS LOOK BAD--THE INTERVIEWERS--FIRST
+  VISITS--THINGS LOOK BRIGHTER--"O VANITY OF VANITIES."
+
+
+     _New York Harbor; January 5._
+
+At seven o'clock in the morning the Custom House officers came on board.
+One of them at once recognizing me, said, calling me by name, that he
+was glad to see me back, and inquired if I had not brought Madame with
+me this time. It is extraordinary the memory of many of these Americans!
+This one had seen me for a few minutes two years before, and probably
+had had to deal with two or three hundred thousand people since.
+
+All the passengers came to the saloon and made their declarations one
+after another, after which they swore in the usual form that they had
+told the truth, and signed a paper to that effect. This done, many a
+poor pilgrim innocently imagines that he has finished with the Custom
+House, and he renders thanks to Heaven that he is going to set foot on a
+soil where a man's word is not doubted. He reckons without his host. In
+spite of his declaration, sworn and signed, his trunks are opened and
+searched with all the dogged zeal of a policeman who believes he is on
+the track of a criminal, and who will only give up after perfectly
+convincing himself that the trunks do not contain the slightest dutiable
+article. Everything is taken out and examined. If there are any objects
+of apparel that appear like new ones to that scrutinizing eye, look out
+for squalls.
+
+[Illustration: CUSTOM HOUSE OFFICERS.]
+
+I must say that the officer was very kind to me. For that matter, the
+luggage of a man who travels alone, without Madame and her
+_impedimenta_, is soon examined.
+
+Before leaving the ship, I went to shake hands with Captain Parsell,
+that experienced sailor whose bright, interesting conversation, added to
+the tempting delicacies provided by the cook, made many an hour pass
+right cheerily for those who, like myself, had the good fortune to sit
+at his table. I thanked him for all the kind attentions I had received
+at his hands. I should have liked to thank all the employees of the
+"White Star" line company. Their politeness is above all praise; their
+patience perfectly angelical. Ask them twenty times a day the most
+absurd questions, such as, "Will the sea soon calm down?" "Shall we get
+into harbor on Wednesday?" "Do you think we shall be in early enough to
+land in the evening?" and so on. You find them always ready with a kind
+and encouraging answer. "The barometer is going up and the sea is going
+down," or, "We are now doing our nineteen knots an hour." Is it true, or
+not? It satisfies you, at all events. In certain cases it is so sweet to
+be deceived! Better to be left to nurse a beloved illusion than have to
+give it up for a harsh reality that you are powerless against. Every one
+is grateful to those kind sailors and stewards for the little innocent
+fibs that they are willing to load their consciences with, in order that
+they may brighten your path across the ocean a little.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Everett House. Noon._
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN PARSELL, R. M. S. "MAJESTIC."]
+
+My baggage examined, I took a cab to go to the hotel. Three dollars for
+a mile and a half. A mere trifle.
+
+[Illustration: EVERY ONE HAS THE GRIPPE.]
+
+It was pouring with rain. New York on a Sunday is never very gay. To-day
+the city seemed to me horrible: dull, dirty, and dreary. It is not the
+fault of New York altogether. I have the spleen. A horribly stormy
+passage, the stomach upside down, the heart up in the throat, the
+thought that my dear ones are three thousand miles away, all these
+things help to make everything look black. It would have needed a
+radiant sun in one of those pure blue skies that North America is so
+rich in to make life look agreeable and New York passable to-day.
+
+In ten minutes cabby set me down at the Everett House. After having
+signed the register, I went and looked up my manager, whose bureau is on
+the ground floor of the hotel.
+
+The spectacle which awaited me was appalling.
+
+There sat the unhappy Major Pond in his office, his head bowed upon his
+chest, his arms hanging limp, the very picture of despair.
+
+The country is seized with a panic. Everybody has the influenza. Every
+one does not die of it, but every one is having it. The malady is not
+called influenza over here, as it is in Europe. It is called "Grippe."
+No American escapes it. Some have _la grippe_, others have _the grippe_,
+a few, even, have _the la grippe_. Others, again, the lucky ones, think
+they have it. Those who have not had it, or do not think they have it
+yet, are expecting it. The nation is in a complete state of
+demoralization. Theaters are empty, business almost suspended, doctors
+on their backs or run off their legs.
+
+At twelve a telegram is handed to me. It is from my friend, Wilson
+Barrett, who is playing in Philadelphia. "Hearty greetings, dear friend.
+Five grains of quinine and two tablets of antipyrine a day, or you get
+_grippe_." Then came many letters by every post. "Impossible to go and
+welcome you in person. I have _la grippe_. Take every precaution." Such
+is the tenor of them all.
+
+The outlook is not bright. What to do? For a moment I have half a mind
+to call a cab and get on board the first boat bound for Europe.
+
+I go to my room, the windows of which overlook Union Square. The sky is
+somber, the street is black and deserted, the air is suffocatingly
+warm, and a very heavy rain is beating against the windows.
+
+Shade of Columbus, how I wish I were home again!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cheer up, boy, the hand-grasps of your dear New York friends will be
+sweet after the frantic grasping of stair-rails and other ship furniture
+for so many days.
+
+I will have lunch and go and pay calls.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Excuse me if I leave you for a few minutes. The interviewers are waiting
+for me downstairs in Major Pond's office. The interviewers! a gay note
+at last. The hall porter hands me their cards. They are all there:
+representatives of the _Tribune_, the _Times_, the _Sun_, the _Herald_,
+the _World_, the _Star_.
+
+What nonsense Europeans have written on the subject of interviewing in
+America, to be sure! To hear them speak, you would believe that it is
+the greatest nuisance in the world.
+
+A Frenchman writes in the _Figaro_: "I will go to America if my life can
+be insured against that terrific nuisance, interviewing."
+
+An Englishman writes to an English paper, on returning from America:
+"When the reporters called on me, I invariably refused to see them."
+
+Trash! Cant! Hypocrisy! With the exception of a king, or the prime
+minister of one of the great powers, a man is only too glad to be
+interviewed. Don't talk to me about the nuisance, tell the truth, it is
+always such a treat to hear it. I consider that interviewing is a
+compliment, a great compliment paid to the interviewed. In asking a man
+to give you his views, so as to enlighten the public on such and such a
+subject, you acknowledge that he is an important man, which is
+flattering to him; or you take him for one, which is more flattering
+still.
+
+I maintain that American interviewers are extremely courteous and
+obliging, and, as a rule, very faithful reporters of what you say to
+them.
+
+Let me say that I have a lurking doubt in my mind whether those who have
+so much to say against interviewing in America have ever been asked to
+be interviewed at all, or have even ever run such a danger.
+
+I object to interviewing as a sign of decadence in modern journalism;
+but I do not object to being interviewed, I like it; and, to prove it, I
+will go down at once, and be interviewed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Midnight._
+
+The interview with the New York reporters passed off very well. I went
+through the operation like a man.
+
+After lunch, I went to see Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, who had shown me
+a great deal of kindness during my first visit to America. I found in
+him a friend ready to welcome me.
+
+The poet and literary critic is a man of about fifty, rather below
+middle height, with a beautifully chiseled head. In every one of the
+features you can detect the artist, the man of delicate, tender, and
+refined feelings. It was a great pleasure for me to see him again. He
+has finished his "Library of American Literature," a gigantic work of
+erudite criticism and judicious compilation, which he undertook a few
+years ago in collaboration with Miss Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. These
+eleven volumes form a perfect national monument, a complete cyclop�dia
+of American literature, giving extracts from the writings of every
+American who has published anything for the last three hundred years
+(1607-1890).
+
+[Illustration: THE INTERVIEWERS.]
+
+On leaving him, I went to call on Mrs. Anna Bowman Dodd, the author of
+"Cathedral Days," "Glorinda," "The Republic of the Future," and other
+charming books, and one of the brightest conversationalists it has ever
+been my good fortune to meet. After an hour's chat with her, I had
+forgotten all about the _grippe_, and all other more or less imaginary
+miseries.
+
+I returned to the Everett House to dress, and went to the Union League
+Club to dine with General Horace Porter.
+
+The general possesses a rare and most happy combination of brilliant
+flashing Parisian wit and dry, quiet, American humor. This charming
+_causeur_ and _conteur_ tells an anecdote as nobody I know can do; he
+never misses fire. He assured me at table that the copyright bill will
+soon be passed, for, he added, "we have now a pure and pious
+Administration. At the White House they open their oysters with prayer."
+The conversation fell on American society, or, rather, on American
+Societies. The highest and lowest of these can be distinguished by the
+use of _van_. "The blue blood of America put it before their names, as
+_Van Nicken_; political society puts it after, as _Sullivan_."
+
+O VAN-ITAS VAN-ITATUM!
+
+Time passed rapidly in such delightful company.
+
+I finished the evening at the house of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. If
+there had been any cloud of gloom still left hanging about me, it would
+have vanished at the sight of his sunny face. There was a small
+gathering of some thirty people, among them Mr. Edgar Fawcett, whose
+acquaintance I was delighted to make. Conversation went on briskly with
+one and the other, and at half-past eleven I returned to the hotel
+completely cured.
+
+To-morrow morning I leave for Boston at ten o'clock to begin the lecture
+tour in that city, or, to use an Americanism, to "open the show."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a knock at the door.
+
+[Illustration: HALL PORTER.]
+
+It is the hall porter with a letter: an invitation to dine with the
+members of the Clover Club at Philadelphia on Thursday next, the 16th.
+
+I look at my list of engagements and find I am in Pittsburg on that day.
+
+
+I take a telegraph form and pen the following, which I will send to my
+friend, Major M. P. Handy, the president of this lively association:
+
+  Many thanks. Am engaged in Pittsburg on the 16th. Thank God, cannot
+  attend your dinner.
+
+I remember how those "boys" cheeked me two years ago, laughed at me, sat
+on me. That's my telegram to you, dear Cloverites, with my love.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICAN HOTELS.
+
+
+     _Boston, January 6._
+
+Arrived here this afternoon, and resumed acquaintance with American
+hotels.
+
+American hotels are all alike.
+
+Some are worse.
+
+Describe one and you have described them all.
+
+On the ground floor, a large entrance hall strewed with cuspidores for
+the men, and a side entrance provided with a triumphal arch for the
+ladies. On this floor the sexes are separated as at the public baths.
+
+[Illustration: THE SAD-EYED CLERK.]
+
+In the large hall, a counter behind which solemn clerks, whose business
+faces relax not a muscle, are ready with their book to enter your name
+and assign you a number. A small army of colored porters ready to take
+you in charge. Not a salute, not a word, not a smile of welcome. The
+negro takes your bag and makes a sign that your case is settled. You
+follow him. For the time being you lose your personality and become No.
+375, as you would in jail. Don't ask questions; theirs not to answer;
+don't ring the bell to ask for a favor, if you set any value on your
+time. All the rules of the establishment are printed and posted in your
+bedroom; you have to submit to them. No question to ask--you know
+everything. Henceforth you will have to be hungry from 7 to 9 A.M.;
+from 1 to 3 P.M.; from 6 to 8 P.M. The slightest infringement of the
+routine would stop the wheel, so don't ask if you could have a meal at
+four o'clock; you would be taken for a lunatic, or a crank (as they call
+it in America).
+
+Between meals you will be supplied with ice-water _ad libitum_.
+
+No privacy. No coffee-room, no smoking-room. No place where you can go
+and quietly sip a cup of coffee or drink a glass of beer with a cigar.
+You can have a drink at the bar, and then go and sit down in the hall
+among the crowd.
+
+Life in an American hotel is an alternation of the cellular system
+during the night and of the gregarious system during the day, an
+alternation of the penitentiary systems carried out at Philadelphia and
+at Auburn.
+
+It is not in the bedroom, either, that you must seek anything to cheer
+you. The bed is good, but only for the night. The room is perfectly
+nude. Not even "Napoleon's Farewell to his Soldiers at Fontainebleau" as
+in France, or "Strafford walking to the Scaffold" as in England. Not
+that these pictures are particularly cheerful, still they break the
+monotony of the wall paper. Here the only oases in the brown or gray
+desert are cautions.
+
+First of all, a notice that, in a cupboard near the window, you will
+find some twenty yards of coiled rope which, in case of fire, you are to
+fix to a hook outside the window. The rest is guessed. You fix the rope,
+and--you let yourself go. From a sixth, seventh, or eighth story, the
+prospect is lively. Another caution informs you of all that you must not
+do, such as your own washing in the bedroom. Another warns you that if,
+on retiring, you put your boots outside the door, you do so at your own
+risk and peril. Another is posted near the door, close to an electric
+bell. With a little care and practice, you will be able to carry out the
+instructions printed thereon. The only thing wonderful about the
+contrivance is that the servants never make mistakes.
+
+[Illustration: THE HOTEL FIRE ESCAPE.]
+
+
+  Press once         for ice-water.
+    "   twice         "  hall boy.
+    "   three times   " fireman.
+    "   four    "     " chambermaid.
+    "   five    "     " hot water.
+    "   six     "     " ink and writing materials.
+    "   seven   "     " baggage.
+    "   eight   "     " messenger.
+
+In some hotels I have seen the list carried to number twelve.
+
+Another notice tells you what the proprietor's responsibilities are, and
+at what time the meals take place. Now this last notice is the most
+important of all. Woe to you if you forget it! For if you should present
+yourself one minute after the dining-room door is closed, no human
+consideration would get it open for you. Supplications, arguments would
+be of no avail. Not even money.
+
+"What do you mean?" some old-fashioned European will exclaim. "When the
+_table d'h�te_ is over, of course you cannot expect the _menu_ to be
+served to you; but surely you can order a steak or a chop."
+
+No, you cannot, not even an omelette or a piece of cold meat. If you
+arrive at one minute past three (in small towns, at one minute past two)
+you find the dining-room closed, and you must wait till six o'clock to
+see its hospitable doors open again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When you enter the dining-room, you must not believe that you can go
+and sit where you like. The chief waiter assigns you a seat, and you
+must take it. With a superb wave of the hand, he signs to you to follow
+him. He does not even turn round to see if you are behind him, following
+him in all the meanders he describes, amid the sixty, eighty, sometimes
+hundred tables that are in the room. He takes it for granted you are an
+obedient, submissive traveler who knows his duty. Altogether I traveled
+in the United States for about ten months, and I never came across an
+American so daring, so independent, as to actually take any other seat
+than the one assigned to him by that tremendous potentate, the head
+waiter. Occasionally, just to try him, I would sit down in a chair I
+took a fancy to. But he would come and fetch me, and tell me that I
+could not stay there. In Europe, the waiter asks you where you would
+like to sit. In America, you ask him where you may sit. He is a paid
+servant, therefore a master in America. He is in command, not of the
+other waiters, but of the guests. Several times, recognizing friends in
+the dining-room, I asked the man to take me to their tables (I should
+not have dared go by myself), and the permission was granted with a
+patronizing sign of the head. I have constantly seen Americans stop on
+the threshold of the dining-room door, and wait until the chief waiter
+had returned from placing a guest to come and fetch them in their turn.
+I never saw them venture alone, and take an empty seat, without the
+sanction of the waiter.
+
+[Illustration: THE HEAD MAN.]
+
+The guests feel struck with awe in that dining-room, and solemnly bolt
+their food as quickly as they can. You hear less noise in an American
+hotel dining-room containing five hundred people, than you do at a
+French _table d'h�te_ accommodating fifty people, at a German one
+containing a dozen guests, or at a table where two Italians are dining
+_t�te-�-t�te_.
+
+[Illustration: "LOOK LIKE DUSKY PRINCES."]
+
+The head waiter, at large Northern and Western hotels, is a white man.
+In the Southern ones, he is a mulatto or a black; but white or black, he
+is always a magnificent specimen of his race. There is not a ghost of a
+savor of the serving man about him; no whiskers and shaven upper lips
+reminding you of the waiters of the Old World; but always a fine
+mustache, the twirling of which helps to give an air of _nonchalant_
+superiority to its wearer. The mulatto head-waiters in the South really
+look like dusky princes. Many of them are so handsome and carry
+themselves so superbly that you find them very impressive at first and
+would fain apologize to them. You feel as if you wanted to thank them
+for kindly condescending to concern themselves about anything so
+commonplace as your seat at table.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE IS CROWNED WITH A GIGANTIC MASS OF FRIZZLED HAIR."]
+
+In smaller hotels, the waiters are all waitresses. The "waiting" is done
+by damsels entirely--or rather by the guests of the hotel.
+
+If the Southern head waiter looks like a prince, what shall we say of
+the head-waitress in the East, the North, and the West? No term short of
+queenly will describe her stately bearing as she moves about among her
+bevy of reduced duchesses. She is evidently chosen for her appearance.
+She is "divinely tall," as well as "most divinely fair," and, as if to
+add to her importance, she is crowned with a gigantic mass of frizzled
+hair. All the waitresses have this coiffure. It is a livery, as caps are
+in the Old World; but instead of being a badge of servitude it looks,
+and is, alarmingly emancipated--so much so that, before making close
+acquaintance with my dishes, I always examine them with great care. A
+beautiful mass of hair looks lovely on the head of a woman, but _one_ in
+your soup, even if it had strayed from the tresses of your beloved one,
+would make the corners of your mouth go down, and the tip of your nose
+go up.
+
+A regally handsome woman always "goes well in the landscape," as the
+French say, and I have seen specimens of these waitresses so handsome
+and so commanding-looking that, if they cared to come over to Europe and
+play the queens in London pantomimes, I feel sure they would command
+quite exceptional prices, and draw big salaries and crowded houses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The thing which strikes me most disagreeably, in the American hotel
+dining-room, is the sight of the tremendous waste of food that goes on
+at every meal. No European, I suppose, can fail to be struck with this;
+but to a Frenchman it would naturally be most remarkable. In France,
+where, I venture to say, people live as well as anywhere else, if not
+better, there is a horror of anything like waste of good food. It is to
+me, therefore, a repulsive thing to see the wanton manner in which some
+Americans will waste at one meal enough to feed several hungry
+fellow-creatures.
+
+In the large hotels, conducted on the American plan, there are rarely
+fewer than fifty different dishes on the _menu_ at dinner-time. Every
+day, and at every meal, you may see people order three times as much of
+this food as they could under any circumstances eat, and, after picking
+it and spoiling one dish after another, send the bulk away uneaten. I am
+bound to say that this practice is not only to be observed in hotels
+where the charge is so much per day, but in those conducted on the
+European plan, that is, where you pay for every item you order. There I
+notice that people proceed in much the same wasteful fashion. It is
+evidently not a desire to have more than is paid for, but simply a bad
+and ugly habit. I hold that about five hundred hungry people could be
+fed out of the waste that is going on at such large hotels as the Palmer
+House or the Grand Pacific Hotel of Chicago--and I have no doubt that
+such five hundred hungry people could easily be found in Chicago every
+day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think that many Europeans are prevented from going to America by an
+idea that the expense of traveling and living there is very great. This
+is quite a delusion. For my part I find that hotels are as cheap in
+America as in England at any rate, and railway traveling in Pullman cars
+is certainly cheaper than in European first-class carriages, and
+incomparably more comfortable. Put aside in America such hotels as
+Delmonico's, the Brunswick in New York; the Richelieu in Chicago; and in
+England such hotels as the Metrop�le, the Victoria, the Savoy; and take
+the good hotels of the country, such as the Grand Pacific at Chicago;
+the West House at Minneapolis, the Windsor at Montreal, the Cadillac at
+Detroit. I only mention those I remember as the very best. In these
+hotels, you are comfortably lodged and magnificently fed for from three
+to five dollars a day. In no good hotel of England, France, Germany,
+Italy, Switzerland, would you get the same amount of comfort, or even
+luxury, at the same price, and those who require a sitting-room get it
+for a little less than they would have to pay in a European hotel.
+
+The only very dear hotels I have come across in the United States are
+those of Virginia. There I have been charged as much as two dollars a
+day, but never in my life did I pay so dear for what I had, never in my
+life did I see so many dirty rooms or so many messes that were unfit for
+human food.
+
+But I will just say this much for the American refinement of feeling to
+be met with, even in the hotels of Virginia, even in the "lunch" rooms
+in small stations, you are supplied, at the end of each meal, with a
+bowl of water--to rinse your mouth.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  MY OPENING LECTURE--REFLECTIONS ON AUDIENCES I HAVE HAD--THE MAN WHO
+  WON'T SMILE--THE ONE WHO LAUGHS TOO SOON, AND MANY OTHERS.
+
+
+     _Boston, January 7._
+
+Began my second American tour under most favorable auspices last night,
+in the Tremont Temple. The huge hall was crowded with an audience of
+about 2500 people--a most kind, warm, keen, and appreciative audience. I
+was a little afraid of the Bostonians; I had heard so much about their
+power of criticism that I had almost come to the conclusion that it was
+next to impossible to please them. The Boston newspapers this morning
+give full reports of my lecture. All of them are kind and most
+favorable. This is a good start, and I feel hopeful.
+
+The subject of my lecture was "A National Portrait Gallery of the
+Anglo-Saxon Races," in which I delineated the English, the Scotch, and
+the American characters. Strange to say, my Scotch sketches seemed to
+tickle them most. This, however, I can explain to myself. Scotch "wut"
+is more like American humor than any kind of wit I know. There is about
+it the same dryness, the same quaintness, the same preposterousness, the
+same subtlety.
+
+[Illustration: BOSTON.]
+
+My Boston audience also seemed to enjoy my criticisms of America and the
+Americans, which disposes of the absurd belief that the Americans will
+not listen to the criticism of their country. There are Americans and
+Americans, as there is criticism and criticism. If you can speak of
+people's virtues without flattery; if you can speak of their weaknesses
+and failings with kindness and good humor, I believe you can criticise
+to your heart's content without ever fearing to give offense to
+intelligent and fair-minded people. I admire and love the Americans. How
+could they help seeing it through all the little criticisms that I
+indulged in on the platform? On the whole, I was delighted with my
+Boston audience, and, to judge from the reception they gave me, I
+believe I succeeded in pleasing them. I have three more engagements in
+Boston, so I shall have the pleasure of meeting the Bostonians again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have never been able to lecture, whether in England, in Scotland, in
+Ireland or in America, without discovering, somewhere in the hall, after
+speaking for five minutes or so, an old gentleman who will not smile. He
+was there last night, and it is evident that he is going to favor me
+with his presence every night during this second American tour. He
+generally sits near the platform, and not unfrequently on the first row.
+There is a horrible fascination about that man. You cannot get your eyes
+off him. You do your utmost to "fetch him"--you feel it to be your duty
+not to send him home empty-headed; your conscience tells you that he has
+not to please you, but that _you_ are paid to please him, and you
+struggle on. You would like to slip into his pocket the price of his
+seat and have him removed, or throw the water bottle at his face and
+make him show signs of life. As it is, you try to look the other way,
+but you know he is there, and that does not improve matters.
+
+Now this man, who will not smile, very often is not so bad as he looks.
+You imagine that you bore him to death, but you don't. You wonder how it
+is he does not go, but the fact is he actually enjoys himself--inside.
+Or, maybe, he is a professional man himself, and no conjuror has ever
+been known to laugh at another conjuror's tricks. A great American
+humorist relates that, after speaking for an hour and a half without
+succeeding in getting a smile from a certain man in the audience, he
+sent some one to inquire into the state of his mind.
+
+"Excuse me, sir, did you not enjoy the lecture that has been delivered
+to-night?"
+
+"Very much indeed," said the man, "it was a most clever and entertaining
+lecture."
+
+"But you never smiled----"
+
+"Oh, no--I'm a liar myself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sometimes there are other reasons to explain the unsmiling man's
+attitude.
+
+One evening I had lectured in Birmingham. On the first row there sat the
+whole time an old gentleman, with his umbrella standing between his
+legs, his hands crossed on the handle, and his chin resting on his
+hands. Frowning, his mouth gaping, and his eyes perfectly vacant, he
+remained motionless, looking at me, and for an hour and twenty minutes
+seemed to say to me: "My poor fellow, you may do what you like, but you
+won't 'fetch' me to-night, I can tell you." I looked at him, I spoke to
+him, I winked at him, I aimed at him; several times even I paused so as
+to give him ample time to see a point. All was in vain. I had just
+returned, after the lecture, to the secretary's room behind the
+platform, when he entered.
+
+"Oh, that man again!" I cried, pointing to him.
+
+He advanced toward me, took my hand, and said:
+
+"Thank you very much for your excellent lecture, I have enjoyed it very
+much."
+
+"Have you?" said I.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD GENTLEMAN WHO WILL NOT SMILE.]
+
+"Would you be kind enough to give me your autograph?" And he pulled out
+of his pocket a beautiful autograph book.
+
+"Well," I said to the secretary in a whisper, "this old gentleman is
+extremely kind to ask for my autograph, for I am certain he has not
+enjoyed my lecture."
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Why, he never smiled once."
+
+"Oh, poor old gentleman," said the secretary; "he is stone deaf."
+
+Many a lecturer must have met this man.
+
+It would be unwise, when you discover that certain members of the
+audience will not laugh, to give them up at once. As long as you are on
+the platform there is hope.
+
+I was once lecturing in the chief town of a great hunting center in
+England. On the first row sat half a dozen hair-parted-in-the-middle,
+single-eye-glass young swells. They stared at me unmoved, and never
+relaxed a muscle except for yawning. It was most distressing to see how
+the poor fellows looked bored. How I did wish I could do something for
+them! I had spoken for nearly an hour when, by accident, I upset the
+tumbler on my table. The water trickled down the cloth. The young men
+laughed, roared. They were happy and enjoying themselves, and I had
+"fetched" them at last. I have never forgotten this trick, and when I
+see in the audience an apparently hopeless case, I often resort to it,
+generally with success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are other people who do not much enjoy your lecture: your own.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHAPPIES WHO WOULD NOT LAUGH.]
+
+Of course you must forgive your wife. The dear creature knows all your
+lectures by heart; she has heard your jokes hundreds of times. She comes
+to your lectures rather to see how you are going to be received than to
+listen to you. Besides, she feels that for an hour and a half you do not
+belong to her. When she comes with you to the lecture hall, you are both
+ushered into the secretary's room. Two or three minutes before it is
+time to go on the platform, it is suggested to her that it is time she
+should take her seat among the audience. She looks at the secretary and
+recognizes that for an hour and a half her husband is the property of
+this official, who is about to hand him over to the tender mercies of
+the public. As she says, "Oh, yes, I suppose I must go," she almost
+feels like shaking hands with her husband, as Mrs. Baldwin takes leave
+of the Professor before he starts on his aerial trip. But, though she
+may not laugh, her heart is with you, and she is busy watching the
+audience, ever ready to tell them, "Now, don't you think this is a very
+good point? Well, then, if you do, why don't you laugh and cheer?" She
+is part and parcel of yourself. She is not jealous of your success, for
+she is your helpmate, your kind and sound counselor, and I can assure
+you that if an audience should fail to be responsive, it would never
+enter her head to lay the blame on her husband; she would feel the most
+supreme contempt for "that stupid audience that was unable to appreciate
+you." That's all.
+
+But your other own folk! You are no hero to them. To judge the effect of
+anything, you must be placed at a certain distance, and your own folks
+are too near you.
+
+One afternoon I had given a lecture to a large and fashionable audience
+in the South of England. A near relative of mine, who lived in the
+neighborhood, was in the hall. He never smiled. I watched him from the
+beginning to the end. When the lecture was over he came to the little
+room behind the platform to take me to his house. As he entered the room
+I was settling the money matters with my _impresario_. I will let you
+into the secret. There was fifty-two pounds in the house, and my share
+was two-thirds of the gross receipts, that is about thirty-four pounds.
+My relative heard the sum. As we drove along in his dog-cart he nudged
+me and said:
+
+"Did you make thirty-four pounds this afternoon?"
+
+"Oh, did you hear?" I said. "Yes, that was my part of the takings. For a
+small town I am quite satisfied."
+
+"I should think you were!" he replied. "If you had made thirty-four
+shillings you would have been well paid for your work!"
+
+Nothing is more true to life than the want of appreciation the
+successful man encounters from relatives and also from former friends.
+Nothing is more certain than when a man has lived on terms of perfect
+equality and familiarity with a certain set of men, he can never hope to
+be anything but "plain John" to them, though by his personal efforts he
+may have obtained the applause of the public. Did he not rub shoulders
+with them for years in the same walk of life? Why these bravos? What was
+there in him more than in them? Even though they may have gone so far as
+to single him out as a "rather clever fellow," while he was one of
+theirs, still the surprise at the public appreciation is none the less
+keen, his advance toward the front an unforgivable offense, and they are
+immediately seized with a desire to rush out in the highways and
+proclaim that he is only "Jack," and not the "John" that his admirers
+think him. I remember that, in the early years of my life in England,
+when I had not the faintest idea of ever writing a book on John Bull, a
+young English friend of mine did me the honor of appreciating highly all
+my observations on British life and manners, and for years urged me hard
+and often to jot them down to make a book of. One day the book was
+finished and appeared in print. It attracted a good deal of public
+attention, but no one was more surprised than this man, who, from a kind
+friend, was promptly transformed into the most severe and unfriendly of
+my critics, and went about saying that the book and the amount of public
+attention bestowed upon it were both equally ridiculous. He has never
+spoken to me since.
+
+[Illustration: THE MAN WHO LAUGHS.]
+
+A successful man is very often charged with wishing to turn his back on
+his former friends. No accusation is more false. Nothing would please
+him more than to retain the friends of more modest times, but it is they
+who have changed their feelings. They snub him, and this man, who is in
+constant need of moral support and _pick-me-up_, cannot stand it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But let us return to the audience.
+
+The man who won't smile is not the only person who causes you some
+annoyance.
+
+There is the one who laughs too soon; who laughs before you have made
+your points, and who thinks, because you have opened your lecture with a
+joke, that everything you say afterward is a joke. There is another
+rather objectionable person; it is the one who explains your points to
+his neighbor, and makes them laugh aloud just at the moment when you
+require complete silence to fire off one of your best remarks.
+
+There is the old lady who listens to you frowning, and who does not mind
+what you are saying, but is all the time shaking for fear of what you
+are going to say next. She never laughs before she has seen other people
+laugh. Then she thinks she is safe.
+
+All these I am going to have in America again; that is clear. But I am
+now a man of experience. I have lectured in concert rooms, in lecture
+halls, in theaters, in churches, in schools. I have addressed embalmed
+Britons in English health resorts, petrified English mummies at
+hydropathic establishments, and lunatics in private asylums.
+
+I am ready for the fray.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A CONNECTICUT AUDIENCE--MERRY MERIDEN--A HARD PULL.
+
+
+     _From Meriden, January 8._
+
+A Connecticut audience was a new experience to me. Yesterday I had a
+crowded room at the Opera House in Meriden; but if you had been behind
+the scenery, when I made my appearance on the stage, you would not have
+suspected it, for not one of the audience treated me to a little
+applause. I was frozen, and so were they. For a quarter of an hour I
+proceeded very cautiously, feeling the ground, as it were, as I went on.
+By that time, the thaw set in, and they began to smile. I must say that
+they had been very attentive from the beginning, and seemed very
+interested in the lecture. Encouraged by this, I warmed too. It was
+curious to watch that audience. By twos and threes the faces lit up with
+amusement till, by and by, the house wore quite an animated aspect.
+Presently there was a laugh, then two, then laughter more general. All
+the ice was gone. Next, a bold spirit in the stalls ventured some
+applause. At his second outburst he had company. The uphill work was
+nearly over now, and I began to feel better. The infection spread up to
+the circles and the gallery, and at last there came a real good hearty
+round of applause. I had "fetched" them after all. But it was tough
+work. When once I had them in hand, I took good care not to let them go.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I visited several interesting establishments this morning. Merry Meriden
+is famous for its manufactories of electro-plated silverware.
+Unfortunately I am not yet accustomed to the heated rooms of America,
+and I could not stay in the show-rooms more than a few minutes. I should
+have thought the heat was strong enough to melt all the goods on view.
+This town looks like a bee-hive of activity, with its animated streets,
+its electric cars. Dear old Europe! With the exception of a few large
+cities, the cars are still drawn by horses, like in the time of
+Sesostris and Nebuchadnezzar.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On arriving at the station a man took hold of my bag and asked to take
+care of it until the arrival of the train. I do not know whether he
+belonged to the hotel where I spent the night, or to the railroad
+company. Whatever he was, I felt grateful for this wonderful show of
+courtesy.
+
+"I heard you last night at the Opera House," he said to me.
+
+"Why, were you at the lecture?"
+
+"Yes, sir, and I greatly enjoyed it."
+
+"Well, why didn't you laugh sooner?" I said.
+
+"I wanted to very much!"
+
+"Why didn't you?"
+
+[Illustration: "I WAS AT YOUR LECTURE LAST NIGHT."]
+
+"Well, sir, I couldn't very well laugh before the rest."
+
+"Why didn't you give the signal?"
+
+"You see, sir," he said, "we are in Connecticut."
+
+"Is laughter prohibited by the Statute Book in Connecticut?" I remarked.
+
+"No, sir, but if you all laugh at the same time, then----"
+
+"I see, nobody can tell who is the real criminal."
+
+The train arrived. I shook hands with my friend, after offering him half
+a dollar for holding my bag--which he refused--and went on board.
+
+In the parlor car, I met my kind friend Colonel Charles H. Taylor,
+editor of that very successful paper, the Boston _Globe_. We had
+luncheon together in the dining car, and time passed delightfully in his
+company till we reached the Grand Central station, New York, when we
+parted. He was kind enough to make me promise to look him up in Boston
+in a fortnight's time, when I make my second appearance in the City of
+Culture.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  A TEMPTING OFFER--THE THURSDAY CLUB--BILL NYE--VISIT TO YOUNG LADIES'
+  SCHOOLS--THE PLAYERS' CLUB.
+
+
+     _New York, January 9._
+
+On returning here, I found a most curious letter awaiting me. I must
+tell you that in Boston, last Monday, I made the following remarks in my
+lecture:
+
+"The American is, I believe, on the road to the possession of all that
+can contribute to the well-being and success of a nation, but he seems
+to me to have missed the path that leads to real happiness. To live in a
+whirl is not to live well. The little French shopkeeper who locks his
+shop-door from half-past one, so as not to be disturbed while he is
+having his dinner with his wife and family, has come nearer to solving
+the great problem of life, 'How to be happy,' than the American who
+sticks on his door: 'Gone to dinner, shall be back in five minutes.' You
+eat too fast, and I understand why your antidyspeptic pill-makers cover
+your walls, your forests even, with their advertisements."
+
+And I named the firm of pill-makers.
+
+The letter is from them. They offer me $1000 if I will repeat the
+phrase at every lecture I give during my tour in the United States.
+
+[Illustration: WHERE INDIGESTION IS MANUFACTURED.]
+
+You may imagine if I will be careful to abstain in the future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I lectured to-night before the members of the Thursday Club--a small,
+but very select audience, gathered in the drawing-room of one of the
+members. The lecture was followed by a _conversazione_. A very pleasant
+evening.
+
+I left the house at half-past eleven. The night was beautiful. I walked
+to the hotel, along Fifth Avenue to Madison Square, and along Broadway
+to Union Square.
+
+What a contrast to the great thoroughfares of London! Thousands of
+people here returning from the theaters and enjoying their walks,
+instead of being obliged to rush into vehicles to escape the sights
+presented at night by the West End streets of London. Here you can walk
+at night with your wife and daughter, without the least fear of their
+coming into contact with flaunting vice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Excuse a reflection on a subject of a very domestic character. My
+clothes have come from the laundress with the bill.
+
+Now let me give you a sound piece of advice.
+
+When you go to America, bring with you a dozen shirts. No more. When
+these are soiled, buy a new dozen, and so on. You will thus get a supply
+of linen for many years to come, and save your washing bills in America,
+where the price of a shirt is much the same as the cost of washing it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _January 10._
+
+I was glad to see Bill Nye again. He turned up at the Everett House this
+morning. I like to gaze at his clean-shaven face, that is seldom broken
+by a smile, and to hear his long, melancholy drawl. His lank form, and
+his polished dome of thought, as he delights in calling his joke box,
+help to make him so droll on the platform. When his audience begins to
+scream with laughter, he stops, looks at them in astonishment; the
+corners of his mouth drop and an expression of sadness comes over his
+face. The effect is irresistible. They shriek for mercy. But they don't
+get it. He is accompanied by his own manager, who starts with him for
+the north to-night. This manager has no sinecure. I don't think Bill Nye
+has ever been found in a depot ready to catch a train. So the manager
+takes him to the station, puts him in the right car, gets him out of his
+sleeping berth, takes him to the hotel, sees that he is behind the
+platform a few minutes before the time announced for the beginning of
+the lecture, and generally looks after his comfort. Bill is due in Ohio
+to-morrow night, and leaves New York to-night by the Grand Central
+Depot.
+
+"Are you sure it's by the Grand Central?" he said to me.
+
+"Why, of course, corner of Forty-second Street, a five or ten minutes'
+ride from here."
+
+You should have seen the expression on his face, as he drawled away:
+
+"How--shall--I--get--there, I--wonder?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This afternoon I paid a most interesting visit to several girls'
+schools. The pupils were ordered by the head-mistress, in each case, to
+gather in the large room. There they arrived, two by two, to the sound
+of a march played on the piano by one of the under-mistresses. When
+they had all reached their respective places, two chords were struck on
+the instrument, and they all sat down with the precision of the best
+drilled Prussian regiment. Then some sang, others recited little poems,
+or epigrams--mostly at the expense of men. When, two years ago, I
+visited the Normal School for girls in the company of the President of
+the Education Board and Colonel Elliott F. Shepard, it was the
+anniversary of George Eliot's birth. The pupils, one by one, recited a
+few quotations from her works, choosing all she had written against man.
+
+When the singing and the recitations were over, the mistress requested
+me to address a few words to the young ladies. An American is used from
+infancy to deliver a speech on the least provocation. I am not. However,
+I managed to congratulate these young American girls on their charming
+appearance, and to thank them for the pleasure they had afforded me.
+Then two chords were struck on the piano and all stood up; two more
+chords, and all marched off in double file to the sound of another
+march. Not a smile, not a giggle. All these young girls, from sixteen to
+twenty, looked at me with modesty, but complete self-assurance,
+certainly with far more assurance than I dared look at them.
+
+Then the mistress asked me to go to the gymnasium. There the girls
+arrived and, as solemnly as before, went through all kinds of muscular
+exercises. They are never allowed to sit down in the class rooms more
+than two hours at a time. They have to go down to the gymnasium every
+two hours.
+
+I was perfectly amazed to see such discipline. These young girls are the
+true daughters of a great Republic: self-possessed, self-confident,
+dignified, respectful, law-abiding.
+
+I also visited the junior departments of those schools. In one of them,
+eight hundred little girls from five to ten years of age were gathered
+together, and, as in the other departments, sang and recited to me.
+These young children are taught by the girls of the Normal School, under
+the supervision of mistresses. Here teaching is learned by teaching. A
+good method. Doctors are not allowed to practice before they have
+attended patients in hospitals. Why should people be allowed to teach
+before they have attended schools as apprentice teachers?
+
+I had to give a speech to these dear little ones. I wish I had been able
+to give them a kiss instead.
+
+In my little speech I had occasion to remark that I had arrived in
+America only a week before. After I left, it appears that a little girl,
+aged about six, went to her mistress and said to her:
+
+"He's only been here a week! And how beautifully he speaks English
+already!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have been "put up" at the Players' Club by Mr. Edmund Clarence
+Stedman, and dined with him there to-night.
+
+[Illustration: "HOW BEAUTIFULLY HE SPEAKS ENGLISH."]
+
+This club is the snuggest house I know in New York. Only a few months
+old, it possesses treasures such as few clubs a hundred years old
+possess. It was a present from Mr. Edwin Booth, the greatest actor
+America has produced. He bought the house in Twentieth Street, facing
+Gramercy Park, furnished it handsomely and with the greatest taste, and
+filled it with all the artistic treasures that he has collected during
+his life: portraits of celebrated actors, most valuable old engravings,
+photographs with the originals' autographs, china, curios of all sorts,
+stage properties, such as the sword used by Macready in _Macbeth_, and
+hundreds of such beautiful and interesting souvenirs. On the second
+floor is the library, mostly composed of works connected with the drama.
+
+This club is a perfect gem.
+
+When in New York, Mr. Booth occupies a suite of rooms on the second
+floor, which he has reserved for himself; but he has handed over the
+property to the trustees of the club, who, after his death, will become
+the sole proprietors of the house and of all its priceless contents. It
+was a princely gift, worthy of the prince of actors. The members are all
+connected with literature, art, and the drama, and number about one
+hundred.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  THE FLOURISHING OF COATS-OF-ARMS IN AMERICA--REFLECTIONS THEREON--
+  FOREFATHERS MADE TO ORDER--THE PHONOGRAPH AT HOME--THE WEALTH OF NEW
+  YORK--DEPARTURE FOR BUFFALO.
+
+
+     _New York, January 11._
+
+There are in America, as in many other countries of the world, people
+who have coats-of-arms, and whose ancestors had no arms to their coats.
+
+This remark was suggested by the reading of the following paragraph in
+the New York _World_ this morning:
+
+  There is growing in this country the rotten influence of rank, pride
+  of station, contempt for labor, scorn of poverty, worship of caste,
+  such as we verily believe is growing in no country in the world. What
+  are the ideals that fill so large a part of the day and generation?
+  For the boy it is riches; for the girl the marrying of a title. The
+  ideal of this time in America is vast riches and the trappings of
+  rank. It is good that proper scorn should be expressed of such ideals.
+
+American novelists, journalists, and preachers are constantly upbraiding
+and ridiculing their countrywomen for their love of titled foreigners;
+but the society women of the great Republic only love the foreign lords
+all the more; and I have heard some of them openly express their
+contempt of a form of government whose motto is one of the clauses of
+the great Declaration of Independence: "All men are created equal." I
+really believe that if the society women of America had their own way,
+they would set up a monarchy to-morrow, in the hope of seeing an
+aristocracy established as the sequel of it.
+
+[Illustration: A TITLE.]
+
+President Garfield once said that the only real coats-of-arms in America
+were shirt-sleeves. The epigram is good, but not based on truth, as
+every epigram should be. Labor in the States is not honorable for its
+own sake, but only if it brings wealth. President Garfield's epigram
+"fetched" the crowd, no doubt, as any smart democratic or humanitarian
+utterance will anywhere, whether it be emitted from the platform, the
+stage, the pulpit, or the hustings; but if any American philosopher
+heard it, he must have smiled.
+
+A New York friend who called on me this morning, and with whom I had a
+chat on this subject, assured me that there is now such a demand in the
+States for pedigrees, heraldic insignia, mottoes, and coronets, that it
+has created a new industry. He also informed me that almost every
+American city has a college of heraldry, which will provide unbroken
+lines of ancestors, and make to order a new line of forefathers "of the
+most approved pattern, with suitable arms, etc."
+
+Addison's prosperous foundling, who ordered at the second-hand
+picture-dealer's "a complete set of ancestors," is, according to my
+friend, a typical personage to be met with in the States nowadays.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bah! after all, every country has her snobs. Why should America be an
+exception to the rule? When I think of the numberless charming people I
+have met in this country, I may as well leave it to the Europeans who
+have come in contact with American snobs to speak about them, inasmuch
+as the subject is not particularly entertaining.
+
+What amuses me much more here is the effect of democracy on what we
+Europeans would call the lower classes.
+
+A few days ago, in a hotel, I asked a porter if my trunk had arrived
+from the station and had been taken to my room.
+
+"I don't know," he said majestically; "you ask that gentleman."
+
+The gentleman pointed out to me was the negro who looks after the
+luggage in the establishment.
+
+In the papers you may read in the advertisement columns: "Washing wanted
+by a lady at such and such address."
+
+[Illustration: THE NEW YORK CABMAN.]
+
+The cabman will ask, "If you are the _man_ as wants a _gentleman_ to
+drive him to the _deepo_."
+
+During an inquiry concerning the work-house at Cambridge, Mass., a
+witness spoke of the "ladies' cells," as being all that should be
+desired.
+
+Democracy, such is thy handiwork!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I went to the Stock Exchange in Wall Street at one o'clock. I thought
+that Whitechapel, on Saturday night, was beyond competition as a scene
+of rowdyism. I have now altered this opinion. I am still wondering
+whether I was not guyed by my pilot, and whether I was not shown the
+playground of a madhouse, at the time when all the most desperate
+lunatics are let loose.
+
+After lunch I went to Falk's photograph studio to be taken, and read the
+first page of "Jonathan and His Continent," into his phonograph.
+Marvelous, this phonograph! I imagine Mr. Falk has the best collection
+of cylinders in the world. I heard a song by Patti, the piano played by
+Von B�low, speeches, orchestras, and what not! The music is reproduced
+most faithfully. With the voice the instrument is not quite so
+successful. Instead of your own voice, you fancy you hear an imitation
+of it by Punch. All the same, it seems to me to be the wonder of the
+age.
+
+After paying a few calls, and dining quietly at the Everett House, I
+went to the Metropolitan Opera House, and saw "The Barber of Bagdad."
+Cornelius's music is Wagnerian in aim, but I did not carry away with me
+a single bar of all I heard. After all, this is perhaps the aim of
+Wagnerian music.
+
+What a sight is the Metropolitan Opera House, with its boxes full of
+lovely women, arrayed in gorgeous garments, and blazing with diamonds!
+What luxury! What wealth is gathered there!
+
+How interesting it would be to know the exact amount of wealth of which
+New York can boast! In this morning's papers I read that land on Fifth
+Avenue has lately sold for $115 a square foot. In an acre of land there
+are 43,560 square feet, which at $115 a foot would be $5,009,400 an
+acre. Just oblige me by thinking of it!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _January 12._
+
+Went to the Catholic Cathedral at eleven. A mass by Haydn was splendidly
+rendered by full orchestra and admirable chorus. The altar was a blaze
+of candles. The yellow of the lights and the plain mauve of two
+windows, one on each side of the candles, gave a most beautiful
+crocus-bed effect. I enjoyed the service.
+
+In the evening I dined with Mr. Lloyd Bryce, editor of the _North
+American Review_, at the splendid residence of his father-in-law, Mr.
+Cooper, late Mayor of New York. Mrs. Lloyd Bryce is one of the
+handsomest American women I have met, and a most charming and graceful
+hostess. I reluctantly left early so as to prepare for my night journey
+to Buffalo.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  DIFFERENT WAYS OF ADVERTISING A LECTURE--AMERICAN IMPRESARIOS AND
+  THEIR METHODS.
+
+
+     _Buffalo, January 13._
+
+When you intend to give a lecture anywhere, and you wish it to be a
+success, it is a mistake to make a mystery of it.
+
+On arriving here this morning, I found that my coming had been kept
+perfectly secret.
+
+Perhaps my impresario wishes my audience to be very select, and has sent
+only private circulars to the intelligent, well-to-do inhabitants of the
+place--or, I said to myself, perhaps the house is all sold, and he has
+no need of any further advertisements.
+
+I should very much like to know.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sometimes, however, it is a mistake to advertise a lecture too widely.
+You run the risk of getting the wrong people.
+
+A few years ago, in Dundee, a little corner gallery, placed at the end
+of the hall where I was to speak, was thrown open to the public at
+sixpence. I warned the manager that I was no attraction for the sixpenny
+public; but he insisted on having his own way.
+
+The hall was well filled, but not the little gallery, where I counted
+about a dozen people. Two of these, however, did not remain long, and,
+after the lecture, I was told that they had gone to the box-office and
+asked to have their money returned to them. "Why," they said, "it's a
+d---- swindle; it's only a man talking."
+
+The man at the box-office was a Scotchman, and it will easily be
+understood that the two sixpences remained in the hands of the
+management.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I can well remember how startled I was, two years ago, on arriving in an
+American town where I was to lecture, to see the walls covered with
+placards announcing my lecture thus: "He is coming, ah, ha!" And after I
+had arrived, new placards were stuck over the old ones: "He has arrived,
+ah, ha!"
+
+In another American town I was advertised as "the best paying platform
+celebrity in the world." In another, in the following way: "If you would
+grow fat and happy, go and hear Max O'Rell to-night."
+
+One of my Chicago lectures was advertised thus: "Laughter is restful. If
+you desire to feel as though you had a vacation for a week, do not fail
+to attend this lecture."
+
+I was once fortunate enough to deal with a local manager who, before
+sending it to the newspapers, submitted to my approbation the following
+advertisement, of which he was very proud. I don't know whether it was
+his own literary production, or whether he had borrowed it of a showman
+friend. Here it is:
+
+  TWO HOURS OF UNALLOYED FUN AND HAPPINESS
+
+  Will put two inches of solid fat even upon the ribs of the most
+  cadaverous old miser. Everybody shouts peals of laughter as the rays
+  of fun are emitted from this famous son of merry-makers.
+
+
+[Illustration: AS JOHN BULL.]
+
+I threatened to refuse to appear if the advertisement was inserted in
+the papers. This manager later gave his opinion that, as a lecturer, I
+was good, but that as a man, I was a little bit "stuck-up."
+
+When you arrive in an American town to lecture, you find the place
+flooded with your pictures, huge lithographs stuck on the walls, on the
+shop windows, in your very hotel entrance hall. Your own face stares at
+you everywhere, you are recognized by everybody. You have to put up with
+it. If you love privacy, peace, and quiet, don't go to America on a
+lecturing tour. That is what your impresario will tell you.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In each town where you go, you have a local manager to "boss the show";
+as he has to pay you a certain fee, which he guarantees, you cannot find
+fault with him for doing his best to have a large audience. He runs
+risks; you do not. Suppose, for instance, you are engaged, not by a
+society for a fee, but by a manager on sharing terms, say sixty per
+cent. of the gross receipts for you and forty for himself. Suppose his
+local expenses amount to $200; he has to bring $500 into the house
+before there is a cent for himself. You must forgive him if he goes
+about the place beating the big drum. If you do not like it, there is a
+place where you can stay--home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An impresario once asked me if I required a piano, and if I would bring
+my own accompanist. Another wrote to ask the subject of my
+"entertainment."
+
+[Illustration: AS SANDY.]
+
+I wrote back to say that my lecture was generally found entertaining,
+but that I objected to its being called an entertainment. I added that
+the lecture was composed of four character sketches, viz., John Bull,
+Sandy, Pat, and Jonathan.
+
+[Illustration: AS PAT.]
+
+In his answer to this, he inquired whether I should change my dress four
+times during the performance, and whether it would not be a good thing
+to have a little music during the intervals.
+
+Just fancy my appearing on the platform successively dressed as John,
+Sandy, Pat, and Jonathan!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A good impresario is constantly on the look out for anything that may
+draw the attention of the public to his entertainment. Nothing is sacred
+for him. His eyes and ears are always open, all his senses on the alert.
+
+One afternoon I was walking with my impresario over the beautiful
+Clifton Suspension Bridge. I was to lecture at the Victoria Hall,
+Bristol, in the evening. We leaned on the railings, and grew pensive as
+we looked at the scenery and the abyss under us.
+
+My impresario sighed.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" I said to him.
+
+[Illustration: AS JONATHAN.]
+
+"Last year," he replied, "a girl tried to commit suicide and jumped over
+this bridge; but the wind got under her skirt, made a parachute of it,
+and she descended to the bottom of the valley perfectly unhurt."
+
+[Illustration: THE WOULD-BE SUICIDE.]
+
+And he sighed again.
+
+"Well," said I, "why do you sigh?"
+
+"Ah! my dear fellow, if you could do the same this afternoon, there
+would be 'standing room only' in the Victoria Hall to-night."
+
+I left that bridge in no time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  BUFFALO--THE NIAGARA FALLS--A FROST--ROCHESTER TO THE RESCUE OF
+  BUFFALO--CLEVELAND--I MEET JONATHAN--PHANTASMAGORIA.
+
+
+     _Buffalo, January 14._
+
+This town is situated twenty-seven miles from Niagara Falls. The
+Americans say that the Buffalo people can hear the noise of the
+water-fall quite distinctly. I am quite prepared to believe it. However,
+an hour's journey by rail and then a quarter of an hour's sleigh ride
+will take you from Buffalo within sight of this, perhaps the grandest
+piece of scenery in the world. Words cannot describe it. You spend a
+couple of hours visiting every point of view. You are nailed, as it
+were, to the ground, feeling like a pigmy, awestruck in the presence of
+nature at her grandest. The snow was falling thickly, and though it made
+the view less clear, it added to the grandeur of the scene.
+
+I went down by the cable car to a level with the rapids and the place
+where poor Captain Webb was last seen alive; a presumptuous pigmy, he,
+to dare such waters as these. His widow keeps a little bazaar near the
+falls and sells souvenirs to the visitors.
+
+It was most thrilling to stand within touching distance of that great
+torrent of water, called the Niagara Falls, in distinction to the
+Horseshoe Falls, to hear the roar of it as it fell. The idea of force it
+gives one is tremendous. You stand and wonder how many ages it has been
+roaring on, what eyes besides your own have gazed awestruck at its
+mighty rushing, and wonder if the pigmies will ever do what they say
+they will; one day make those columns of water their servants to turn
+wheels at their bidding.
+
+[Illustration: SHOOTING THE RAPIDS.]
+
+We crossed the bridge over to the Canadian side, and there we had the
+whole grand panorama before our eyes.
+
+It appears that it is quite a feasible thing to run the rapids in a
+barrel. Girls have done it, and it may become the fashionable sport for
+American girls in the near future. It has been safely accomplished
+plenty of times by young fellows up for an exciting day's sport.
+
+On the Canadian shore was a pretty villa where Princess Louise stayed
+while she painted the scene. Some of the pretty houses were fringed all
+round the roofs and balconies in the loveliest way, with icicles a yard
+long, and loaded with snow. They looked most beautiful.
+
+On the way back we called at Prospect House, a charming hotel which I
+hope, if ever I go near Buffalo again, I shall put up at for a day or
+two, to see the neighborhood well.
+
+Two years ago I was lucky enough to witness a most curious sight. The
+water was frozen under the falls, and a natural bridge, formed by the
+ice, was being used by venturesome people to cross the Niagara River on.
+This occurs very seldom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have had a fizzle to-night. I almost expected it. In a hall that could
+easily have accommodated fifteen hundred people, I lectured to an
+audience of about three hundred. Fortunately they proved so intelligent,
+warm, and appreciative that I did not feel at all depressed; but my
+impresario did. However, he congratulated me on having been able to do
+justice to the _causerie_, as if I had had a bumper house.
+
+I must own that it is much easier to be a tragedian than a light
+comedian before a $200 house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Cleveland, O., January 15._
+
+The weather is so bad that I shall be unable to see anything of this
+city, which, people tell me, is very beautiful.
+
+On arriving at the Weddell House, I met a New York friend.
+
+"Well," said he, "how are you getting on? Where do you come from?"
+
+"From Buffalo," said I, pulling a long face.
+
+"What is the matter? Don't you like the Buffalo people?"
+
+"Yes; I liked those I saw. I should have liked to extend my love to a
+larger number. I had a fizzle; about three hundred people. Perhaps I
+drew all the brain of Buffalo."
+
+"How many people do you say you had in the hall?" said my friend.
+
+"About three hundred."
+
+"Then you must have drawn a good many people from Rochester, I should
+think," said he quite solemnly.
+
+In reading the Buffalo newspapers this morning, I noticed favorable
+criticisms of my lecture; but while my English was praised, so far as
+the language went, severe comments were passed on my pronunciation. In
+England, where the English language is spoken with a decent
+pronunciation, I never once read a condemnation of my pronunciation of
+the English language.
+
+I will not appear again in Buffalo until I feel much improved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "GOING TO PITTSBURG, I GUESS."]
+
+     _En route to Pittsburg, January 16._
+
+The American railway stations have special waiting rooms for
+ladies--not, as in England, places furnished with looking-glasses, where
+they can go and arrange their bonnets, etc. No, no. Places where they
+can wait for the trains, protected against the contamination of man, and
+where they are spared the sight of that eternal little round piece of
+furniture with which the floors of the whole of the United States are
+dotted.
+
+At Cleveland Station, this morning, I met Jonathan, such as he is
+represented in the comic papers of the world. A man of sixty, with long
+straight white hair falling over his shoulders; no mustache, long
+imperial beard, a razor-blade-shaped nose, small keen eyes, and high
+prominent cheek-bones, the whole smoking the traditional cigar; the
+Anglo-Saxon indianized--Jonathan. If he had had a long swallow-tail coat
+on, a waistcoat ornamented with stars, and trowsers with stripes, he
+might have sat for the cartoons of _Puck_ or _Judge_.
+
+In the car, Jonathan came and sat opposite me. A few minutes after the
+train had started, he said:
+
+"Going to Pittsburg, I guess."
+
+"Yes," I replied.
+
+"To lecture?"
+
+"Oh, you know I lecture?"
+
+"Why, certainly; I heard you in Boston ten days ago."
+
+He offered me a cigar, told me his name--I mean his three names--what he
+did, how much he earned, where he lived, how many children he had; he
+read me a poem of his own composition, invited me to go and see him, and
+entertained me for three hours and a half, telling me the history of his
+life, etc. Indeed, it was Jonathan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the Americans I have met have written a poem (pronounced _pome_).
+Now I am not generalizing. I do not say that all the Americans have
+written a poem, I say _all the Americans I have met_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Pittsburg (same day later)._
+
+I lecture here to-night under the auspices of the Press Club of the
+town. The president of the club came to meet me at the station, in order
+to show me something of the town.
+
+I like Pittsburg very much. From the top of the hill, which you reach in
+a couple of minutes by the cable car, there is a most beautiful sight to
+contemplate: one never to be forgotten.
+
+On our way to the hotel, my kind friend took me to a fire station, and
+asked the man in command of the place to go through the performance of a
+fire-call for my own edification.
+
+Now, in two words, here is the thing.
+
+You touch the fire bell in your own house. That causes the name of your
+street and the number of your house to appear in the fire station; it
+causes all the doors of the station to open outward. Wait a minute--it
+causes whips which are hanging behind the horses, to lash them and send
+them under harnesses that fall upon them and are self-adjusting; it
+causes the men, who are lying down on the first floor, to slide down an
+incline and fall on the box and steps of the cart. And off they gallop.
+It takes about two minutes to describe it as quickly as possible. It
+only takes fourteen seconds to do it. It is the nearest approach to
+phantasmagoria that I have yet seen in real life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+  A GREAT ADMIRER--NOTES ON RAILWAY TRAVELING--IS AMERICA A FREE
+  NATION?--A PLEASANT EVENING IN NEW YORK.
+
+
+     _In the vestibule train from Pittsburg to New York, January 17._
+
+This morning, before leaving the hotel in Pittsburg, I was approached by
+a young man who, after giving me his card, thanked me most earnestly for
+my lecture of last night. In fact, he nearly embraced me.
+
+"I never enjoyed myself so much in my life," he said.
+
+I grasped his hand.
+
+"I am glad," I replied, "that my humble effort pleased you so much.
+Nothing is more gratifying to a lecturer than to know he has afforded
+pleasure to his audience."
+
+"Yes," he said, "it gave me immense pleasure. You see, I am engaged to
+be married to a girl in town. All her family went to your show, and I
+had the girl at home all to myself. Oh! I had such a good time! Thank
+you so much! Do lecture here again soon."
+
+And, after wishing me a pleasant journey, he left me. I was glad to
+know I left at least one friend and admirer behind me in Pittsburg.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had a charming audience last night, a large and most appreciative one.
+I was introduced by Mr. George H. Welshons, of the Pittsburg _Times_, in
+a neat little speech, humorous and very gracefully worded. After the
+lecture, I was entertained at supper in the rooms of the Press Club, and
+thoroughly enjoyed myself with the members. As I entered the Club, I was
+amused to see two journalists, who had heard me at the lecture discourse
+on chewing, go to a corner of the room, and there get rid of their
+_wads_, before coming to shake hands with me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If you have not journeyed in a vestibule train of the Pennsylvania
+Railroad Company, you do not know what it is to travel in luxurious
+comfort. Dining saloon, drawing room, smoking room, reading room with
+writing tables, supplied with the papers and a library of books, all
+furnished with exquisite taste and luxury. The cookery is good and well
+served.
+
+The day has passed without adventures, but in comfort. We left Pittsburg
+at seven in the morning. At nine we passed Johnstown. The terrible
+calamity that befell that city two years ago was before my mind's eye;
+the town suddenly inundated, the people rushing on the bridge, and there
+caught and burnt alive. America is the country for great disasters.
+Everything here is on a huge scale. Toward noon, the country grew hilly,
+and, for an hour before we reached Harrisburg, it gave me great
+enjoyment, for in America, where there is so much sameness in the
+landscapes, it is a treat to see the mountains of Central Pennsylvania
+breaking the monotony of the huge flat stretch of land.
+
+The employees (I must be careful not to say "servants") of the
+Pennsylvania Railroad are polite and form an agreeable contrast to those
+of the other railway companies. Unhappily, the employees whom you find
+on board the Pullman cars are not in the control of the company.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The train will reach Jersey City for New York at seven to-night. I shall
+dine at my hotel.
+
+About 5.30 it occurred to me to go to the dining-room car and ask for a
+cup of tea. Before entering the car I stopped at the lavatory to wash my
+hands. Some one was using the basin. It was the conductor, the autocrat
+in charge of the dining car, a fat, sleek, chewing, surly, frowning,
+snarling cur.
+
+He turned round.
+
+"What do you want?" said he.
+
+"I should very much like to wash my hands," I timidly ventured.
+
+"You see very well I am using the basin. You go to the next car."
+
+I came to America this time with a large provision of philosophy, and
+quite determined to even enjoy such little scenes as this. So I quietly
+went to the next lavatory, returned to the dining-car, and sat down at
+one of the tables.
+
+"Will you, please, give me a cup of tea?" I said to one of the colored
+waiters.
+
+"I can't do dat, sah," said the negro. "You can have dinnah."
+
+"But I don't want _dinnah_," I replied; "I want a cup of tea."
+
+"Den you must ask dat gem'man if you can have it," said he, pointing to
+the above mentioned "gentleman."
+
+I went to him.
+
+"Excuse me," said I, "are you the nobleman who runs this show?"
+
+He frowned.
+
+"I don't want to dine; I should like to have a cup of tea."
+
+He frowned a little more, and deigned to hear my request to the end.
+
+"Can I?" I repeated.
+
+He spoke not; he brought his eyebrows still lower down, and solemnly
+shook his head.
+
+"Can't I really?" I continued.
+
+At last he spoke.
+
+"You can," quoth he, "for a dollar."
+
+And, taking the bill of fare in his hands, without wasting any more of
+his precious utterances, he pointed out to me:
+
+"Each meal one dollar."
+
+The argument was unanswerable.
+
+I went back to my own car, resumed my seat, and betook myself to
+reflection.
+
+What I cannot, for the life of me, understand is why, in a train which
+has a dining car and a kitchen, a man cannot be served with a cup of
+tea, unless he pays the price of a dinner for it, and this
+notwithstanding the fact of his having paid five dollars extra to enjoy
+the extra luxury of this famous vestibule train.
+
+[Illustration: "WELL, WHAT DO YOU WANT?"]
+
+After all, this is one out of the many illustrations one could give to
+show that whatever Jonathan is, he is not the master in his own house.
+
+The Americans are the most docile people in the world. They are the
+slaves of their servants, whether these are high officials, or the
+"reduced duchesses" of domestic service. They are so submitted to their
+lot that they seem to find it quite natural.
+
+The Americans are lions governed by bull-dogs and asses.
+
+They have given themselves a hundred thousand masters, these folks who
+laugh at monarchies, for example, and scorn the rule of a king, as if it
+were better to be bullied by a crowd than by an individual.
+
+In America, the man who pays does not command the paid. I have already
+said it; I will maintain the truth of the statement that, in America,
+the paid servant rules. Tyranny from above is bad; tyranny from below is
+worse.
+
+Of my many first impressions that have deepened into convictions, this
+is one of the firmest.
+
+When you arrive at an English railway station, all the porters seem to
+say: "Here is a customer, let us treat him well." And it is who shall
+relieve you of your luggage, or answer any questions you may be pleased
+to ask. They are glad to see you.
+
+In America, you may have a dozen parcels, not a hand will move to help
+you with them. So Jonathan is obliged to forego the luxury of hand
+baggage, so convenient for long journeys.
+
+When you arrive at an American station, the officials are all frowning
+and seem to say: "Why the deuce don't you go to Chicago by some other
+line instead of coming here to bother us?"
+
+[Illustration: ENGLISH RAILWAY STATION.]
+
+This subject reminds me of an interesting fact, told me by Mr. Chauncey
+M. Depew on board the _Teutonic_. When tram-cars were first used in the
+States, it was a long time before the drivers and conductors would
+consent to wear any kind of uniform, so great is the horror of anything
+like a badge of paid servitude. Now that they do wear some kind of
+uniform, they spend their time in standing sentry at the door of their
+dignity, and in thinking that, if they were polite, you would take their
+affable manners for servility.
+
+[Illustration: THE RAILWAY PORTER.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Everett House, New York. (Midnight.)_
+
+So many charming houses have opened their hospitable doors to me in New
+York that, when I am in this city, I have soon forgotten the little
+annoyances of a railway journey or the hardships of a lecture tour.
+
+After dining here, I went to spend the evening at the house of Mr.
+Richard Watson Gilder, the poet, and editor of the _Century Magazine_,
+that most successful of all magazines in the world. A circulation of
+nearly 300,000 copies--just think of it! But it need not excite wonder
+in any one who knows this beautiful and artistic periodical, to which
+all the leading _litt�rateurs_ of America lend their pens, and the best
+artists their pencils.
+
+Mrs. Richard Watson Gilder is one of the best and most genial hostesses
+in New York. At her Fridays, one meets the cream of intellectual
+society, the best known names of the American aristocracy of talent.
+
+To-night I met Mr. Frank R. Stockton, the novelist, Mr. Charles Webb,
+the humorist, Mr. Frank Millet, the painter, and his wife, and a galaxy
+of celebrities and beautiful women, all most interesting and delightful
+people to meet. Conversation went on briskly all over the rooms till
+late.
+
+The more I see of the American women, the more confirmed I become in my
+impression that they are typical; more so than the men. They are like no
+other women I know. The brilliancy of their conversation, the animation
+of their features, the absence of affectation in their manners, make
+them unique. There are no women to compare to them in a drawing-room.
+There are none with whom I feel so much at ease. Their beauty,
+physically speaking, is great; but you are still more struck by their
+intellectual beauty, the frankness of their eyes, and the naturalness of
+their bearing.
+
+I returned to the Everett House, musing all the way on the difference
+between the American women and the women of France and England. The
+theme was attractive, and, remembering that to-morrow would be an
+off-day for me, I resolved to spend it in going more fully into this
+fascinating subject with pen and ink.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+  NOTES ON AMERICAN WOMEN--COMPARISONS--HOW MEN TREAT WOMEN AND VICE
+  VERSA--SCENES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+     _New York, January 18._
+
+A man was one day complaining to a friend that he had been married
+twenty years without being able to understand his wife. "You should not
+complain of that," remarked the friend. "I have been married to my wife
+two years only, and I understand her perfectly."
+
+The leaders of thought in France have long ago proclaimed that woman was
+the only problem it was not given to man to solve. They have all tried,
+and they have all failed. They all acknowledge it--but they are trying
+still.
+
+Indeed, the interest that woman inspires in every Frenchman is never
+exhausted. Parodying Terence, he says to himself, "I am a man, and all
+that concerns woman interests me." All the French modern novels are
+studies, analytical, dissecting studies, of woman's heart.
+
+To the Anglo-Saxon mind, this may sometimes appear a trifle puerile, if
+not also ridiculous. But to understand this feeling, one must remember
+how a Frenchman is brought up.
+
+In England, boys and girls meet and play together; in America and
+Canada, they sit side by side on the same benches at school, not only as
+children of tender age, but at College and in the Universities. They get
+accustomed to each other's company; they see nothing strange in being in
+contact with one another, and this naturally tends to reduce the
+interest or curiosity one sex takes in the other. But in France they are
+apart, and the ball-room is the only place where they can meet when they
+have attained the age of twenty!
+
+Strange to reflect that young people of both sexes can meet in
+ball-rooms without exciting their parents' suspicions, and that they
+cannot do so in class-rooms!
+
+When I was a boy at school in France, I can well remember how we boys
+felt on the subject. If we heard that a young girl, say the sister of
+some school-fellow, was with her mother in the common parlor to see her
+brother, why, it created a commotion, a perfect revolution in the whole
+establishment. It was no use trying to keep us in order. We would climb
+on the top of the seats or of the tables to endeavor to see something of
+her, even if it were but the top of her hat, or a bit of her gown across
+the recreation yard at the very end of the building. It was an event.
+Many of us would even immediately get inspired and compose verses
+addressed to the unknown fair visitor. In these poetical effusions we
+would imagine the young girl carried off by some miscreant, and we would
+fly to her rescue, save her, and throw ourselves at her feet to receive
+her hand as our reward. Yes, we would get quite romantic or, in plain
+English, quite silly. We could not imagine that a woman was a reasoning
+being with whom you can talk on the topics of the day, or have an
+ordinary conversation on any ordinary subject. To us a woman was a being
+with whom you can only talk of love, or fall in love, or, maybe, for
+whom you may die of love.
+
+This manner of training young men goes a long way toward explaining the
+position of woman in France as well as her ways. It explains why a
+Frenchman and a Frenchwoman, when they converse together, seldom can
+forget that one is a man and the other a woman. It does not prove that a
+Frenchwoman must necessarily be, and is, affected in her relations with
+men; but it explains why she does not feel, as the American woman does,
+that a man and woman can enjoy a _t�te-�-t�te_ free from all those
+commonplace flatteries, compliments, and platitudes that
+badly-understood gallantry suggests. Many American ladies have made me
+forget, by the easiness of their manner and the charm and naturalness of
+their conversation, that I was speaking with women, and with lovely
+ones, too. This I could never have forgotten in the company of French
+ladies.
+
+On account of this feeling, and perhaps also of the difference which
+exists between the education received by a man and that received by a
+woman in France, the conversation will always be on some light topics,
+literary, artistic, dramatic, social, or other. Indeed, it would be most
+unbecoming for a man to start a very serious subject of conversation
+with a French lady to whom he had just been introduced. He would be
+taken for a pedant or a man of bad breeding.
+
+In America, men and women receive practically the same education, and
+this of course enlarges the circle of conversation between the sexes. I
+shall always remember a beautiful American girl, not more than twenty
+years of age, to whom I was once introduced in New York, as she was
+giving to a lady sitting next to her a most detailed description of the
+latest bonnet invented in Paris, and who, turning toward me, asked me
+point-blank if I had read M. Ernest Renan's "History of the People of
+Israel." I had to confess that I had not yet had time to read it. But
+she had, and she gave me, without the remotest touch of affectation or
+pedantry, a most interesting and learned analysis of that remarkable
+work. I related this incident in "Jonathan and his Continent." On
+reading it, some of my countrymen, critics and others, exclaimed: "We
+imagine the fair American girl had a pair of gold spectacles on."
+
+"No, my dear compatriots, nothing of the sort. No gold spectacles, no
+guy. It was a beautiful girl, dressed with most exquisite taste and
+care, and most charming and womanly."
+
+An American woman, however learned she may be, is a sound politician,
+and she knows that the best thing she can make of herself is a woman,
+and she remains a woman. She will always make herself as attractive as
+she possibly can. Not to please men--I believe she has a great contempt
+for them--but to please herself. If, in a French drawing-room, I were to
+remark to a lady how clever some woman in the room looked, she would
+probably closely examine that woman's dress to find out what I thought
+was wrong about it. It would probably be the same in England, but not
+in America.
+
+A Frenchwoman will seldom be jealous of another woman's cleverness. She
+will far more readily forgive her this qualification than beauty. And in
+this particular point, it is probable that the Frenchwoman resembles all
+the women in the Old World.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of all the ladies I have met, I have no hesitation in declaring that the
+American ones are the least affected. With them, I repeat it, I feel at
+ease as I do with no other women in the world.
+
+With whom but an _Am�ricaine_ would the following little scene have been
+possible?
+
+I was in Boston. It was Friday, and knowing it to be the reception day
+of Mrs. X., an old friend of mine and my wife's, I thought I would call
+upon her early, before the crowd of visitors had begun to arrive. So I
+went to the house about half-past three in the afternoon. Mrs. X.
+received me in the drawing-room, and we were soon talking on the hundred
+and one topics that old friends have on their tongue tips. Presently the
+conversation fell on love and lovers. Mrs. X. drew her chair up a little
+nearer to the fire, put the toes of her little slippers on the fender
+stool, and with a charmingly confidential, but perfectly natural,
+manner, said:
+
+"You are married and love your wife; I am married and love my husband;
+we are both artists, let's have our say out."
+
+And we proceeded to have our say out.
+
+But all at once I noticed that about half an inch of the seam of her
+black silk bodice was unsewn. We men, when we see a lady with something
+awry in her toilette, how often do we long to say to her: "Excuse me,
+madam, but perhaps you don't know that you have a hairpin sticking out
+two inches just behind your ear," or "Pardon me, Miss, I'm a married
+man, there is something wrong there behind, just under your waist belt."
+
+Now I felt for Mrs. X., who was just going to receive a crowd of callers
+with a little rent in one of her bodice seams, and tried to persuade
+myself to be brave and tell her of it. Yet I hesitated. People take
+things so differently. The conversation went on unflagging. At last I
+could not stand it any longer.
+
+"Mrs. X.," said I, all in a breath, "you are married and love your
+husband; I am married and love my wife; we are both artists; there is a
+little bit of seam come unsewn, just there by your arm, run and get it
+sewn up!"
+
+The peals of laughter that I heard going on upstairs, while the damage
+was being repaired, proved to me that there was no resentment to be
+feared, but, on the contrary, that I had earned the gratitude of Mrs. X.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In many respects I have often been struck with the resemblance which
+exists between French and American women. When I took my first walk on
+Broadway, New York, on a fine afternoon some two years and a half ago, I
+can well remember how I exclaimed: "Why, this is Paris, and all these
+ladies are _Parisiennes_!" It struck me as being the same type of face,
+the same animation of features, the same brightness of the eyes, the
+same self-assurance, the same attractive plumpness in women over thirty.
+To my mind, I was having a walk on my own Boulevards (every Parisian
+_owns_ that place). The more I became acquainted with American ladies,
+the more forcibly this resemblance struck me. This was not a mere first
+impression. It has been, and is still, a deep conviction; so much so
+that whenever I returned to New York from a journey of some weeks in the
+heart of the country, I felt as if I was returning home.
+
+After a short time, a still closer resemblance between the women of the
+two countries will strike a Frenchman most forcibly. It is the same
+_finesse_, the same suppleness of mind, the same wonderful adaptability.
+Place a little French milliner in a good drawing-room for an hour, and
+at the end of that time she will behave, talk, and walk like any lady in
+the room. Suppose an American, married below his _status_ in society, is
+elected President of the United States, I believe, at the end of a week,
+this wife of his would do the honors of the White House with the ease
+and grace of a highborn lady.
+
+In England it is just the contrary.
+
+Of course good society is good society everywhere. The ladies of the
+English aristocracy are perfect queens; but the Englishwoman, who was
+not born a lady, will seldom become a lady, and I believe this is why
+_m�salliances_ are more scarce in England than in America, and
+especially in France. I could name many Englishmen at the head of their
+professions, who cannot produce their wives in society because these
+women have not been able to raise themselves to the level of their
+husbands' station in life. The Englishwoman, as a rule, has no faculty
+for fitting herself for a higher position than the one she was born in;
+like a rabbit, she will often taste of the cabbage she fed on. And I am
+bound to add that this is perhaps a quality, and proves the truthfulness
+of her character. She is no actress.
+
+In France, the _m�salliance_, though not relished by parents, is not
+feared so much, because they know the young woman will observe and
+study, and very soon fit herself for her new position.
+
+And while on this subject of _m�salliance_, why not try to destroy an
+absurd prejudice that exists in almost every country on the subject of
+France?
+
+It is, I believe, the firm conviction of foreigners that Frenchmen marry
+for money, that is to say, that all Frenchmen marry for money. As a
+rule, when people discuss foreign social topics, they have a wonderful
+faculty for generalization.
+
+The fact that many Frenchmen do marry for money is not to be denied, and
+the explanation of it is this: We have in France a number of men
+belonging to a class almost unknown in other countries, small
+_bourgeois_ of good breeding and genteel habits, but relatively poor,
+who occupy posts in the different Government offices. Their name is
+legion and their salary something like two thousand francs ($400). These
+men have an appearance to keep up, and, unless a wife brings them enough
+to at least double their income, they cannot marry. These young men are
+often sought after by well-to-do parents for their daughters, because
+they are steady, cultured, gentlemanly, and occupy an honorable
+position, which brings them a pension for their old age. With the wife's
+dowry, the couple can easily get along, and lead a peaceful, uneventful,
+and happy jog-trot life, which is the great aim of the majority of the
+French people.
+
+But, on the other hand, there is no country where you will see so many
+cases of _m�salliance_ as France, and this alone should dispose of the
+belief that Frenchmen marry for money. Indeed, it is a most common thing
+for a young Frenchman of good family to fall in love with a girl of a
+much lower station of life than his own, to court her, at first with
+perhaps only the idea of killing time or of starting a _liaison_, to
+soon discover that the girl is highly respectable, and to finally marry
+her. This is a most common occurrence. French parents frown on this sort
+of thing, and do their best to discourage it, of course; but rather than
+cross their son's love, they give their consent, and trust to that
+adaptability of Frenchwomen, of which I was speaking just now, to raise
+herself to her husband's level and make a wife he will never be ashamed
+of.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Frenchman is the slave of his womankind, but not in the same way as
+the American is. The Frenchman is brought up by his mother, and remains
+under her sway till she dies. When he marries, his wife leads him by the
+nose (an operation which he seems to enjoy), and when, besides, he has a
+daughter, on whom he generally dotes, this lady soon joins the other two
+in ruling this easy-going, good-humored man. As a rule, when you see a
+Frenchman, you behold a man who is kept in order by three generations
+of women: mother, wife, and daughter.
+
+The American will lavish attention and luxury on his wife and daughters,
+but he will save them the trouble of being mixed in his affairs. His
+business is his, his office is private. His womankind is the sun and
+glory of his life, whose company he will hasten to enjoy as soon as he
+can throw away the cares of his business. In France, a wife is a
+partner, a cashier who takes care of the money, even an adviser on stock
+and speculations. In the mercantile class, she is both cashier and
+bookkeeper. Enter a shop in France, Paris included, and behind "Pay
+Here," you will see Madame, smiling all over as she pockets the money
+for the purchase you have made. When I said she is a partner, I might
+safely have said that she is the active partner, and, as a rule, by far
+the shrewder of the two. She brings to bear her native suppleness, her
+fascinating little ways, her persuasive manners, and many a customer
+whom her husband was allowing to go away without a purchase, has been
+brought back by the wife, and induced to part with his cash in the shop.
+Last year I went to Paris, on my way home from Germany, to spend a few
+days visiting the Exposition. One day I entered a shop on the Boulevards
+to buy a white hat. The new-fashioned hats, the only hats which the man
+showed me, were narrow-brimmed, and I declined to buy one. I was just
+going to leave, when the wife, who, from the back parlor, had listened
+to my conversation with her husband, stepped in and said: "But, Adolphe,
+why do you let Monsieur go? Perhaps he does not care to follow the
+fashion. We have a few white broad-brimmed hats left from last year
+that we can let Monsieur have _� bon compte_. They are upstairs, go and
+fetch them." And, sure enough, there was one which fitted and pleased
+me, and I left in that shop a little sum of twenty-five francs, which
+the husband was going to let me take elsewhere, but which the wife
+managed to secure for the firm.
+
+[Illustration: MADAM IS THE CASHIER.]
+
+No one who has lived in France has failed to be struck with the
+intelligence of the women, and there exist few Frenchmen who do not
+readily admit how intellectually inferior they are to their
+countrywomen, chiefly among the middle and lower classes. And this is
+not due to any special training, for the education received by the women
+of that class is of the most limited kind; they are taught to read,
+write, and reckon, and their education is finished. Shrewdness is inborn
+in them, as well as a peculiar talent for getting a hundred cents' worth
+for every dollar they spend. How to make a house look pretty and
+attractive with small outlay; how to make a dress or turn out a bonnet
+with a few knick-knacks; how to make a savory dish out of a small
+remnant of beef, mutton, and veal; all that is a science not to be
+despised when a husband, in receipt of a four or five hundred dollar
+salary, wants to make a good dinner, and see his wife look pretty. No
+doubt the aristocratic inhabitants of Mayfair and Belgravia in London,
+and the plutocracy of New York, may think all this very small, and these
+French people very uninteresting. They can, perhaps, hardly imagine that
+such people may live on such incomes and look decent. But they do live,
+and live very happy lives, too. And I will go so far as to say that
+happiness, real happiness, is chiefly found among people of limited
+income. The husband, who perhaps for a whole year has put quietly by a
+dollar every week, so as to be able to give his dear wife a nice present
+at Christmas, gives her a far more valuable, a far better appreciated
+present, than the millionaire who orders Tiffany to send a diamond
+_rivi�re_ to his wife. That quiet young French couple, whom you see at
+the upper circle of a theater, and who have saved the money to enable
+them to come and hear such and such a play, are happier than the
+occupants of the boxes on the first tier. If you doubt it, take your
+opera glasses, and "look on this picture, and on this."
+
+[Illustration: THE UPPER CIRCLE.]
+
+In observing nations, I have always taken more interest in the
+"million," who differ in every country, than in the "upper ten," who are
+alike all over the world. People who have plenty of money at their
+disposal generally discover the same way of spending it, and adopt the
+same mode of living. People who have only a small income show their
+native instincts in the intelligent use of it. All these differ, and
+these only are worth studying, unless you belong to the staff of a
+"society" paper. (As a Frenchman, I am glad to say we have no "society"
+papers. England and America are the only two countries in the world
+where these official organs of Anglo-Saxon snobbery can be found, and I
+should not be surprised to hear that Australia possessed some of these
+already.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: THE SAD-EYED OCCUPANTS OF THE BOX.]
+
+The source of French happiness is to be found in the thrift of the
+women, from the best middle class to the peasantry. This thrift is also
+the source of French wealth. A nation is really wealthy when the
+fortunes are stable, however small. We have no railway kings, no oil
+kings, no silver kings, but we have no tenement houses, no Unions, no
+Work-houses. Our lower classes do not yet ape the upper class people,
+either in their habits or dress. The wife of a peasant or of a mechanic
+wears a simple snowy cap, and a serge or cotton dress. The wife of a
+shopkeeper does not wear any jewelry because she cannot afford to buy
+real stones, and her taste is too good to allow of her wearing false
+ones. She is not ashamed of her husband's occupation; she does not play
+the fine lady while he is at work. She saves him the expense of a
+cashier or of an extra clerk by helping him in his business. When the
+shutters are up, she enjoys life with him, and is the companion of his
+pleasures as well as of his hardships. Club life is unknown in France,
+except among the upper classes. Man and wife are constantly together,
+and France is a nation of Darbys and Joans. There is, I believe, no
+country where men and women go through life on such equal terms as in
+France.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In England (and here again I speak of the masses only), the man thinks
+himself a much superior being to the woman. It is the same in Germany.
+In America, I should feel inclined to believe that a woman looks down
+upon a man with a certain amount of contempt. She receives at his hands
+attentions of all sorts, but I cannot say, as I have remarked before,
+that I have ever discovered in her the slightest trace of gratitude to
+man.
+
+I have often tried to explain to myself this gentle contempt of American
+ladies for the male sex; for, contrasting it with the lovely devotion of
+Jonathan to his womankind, it is a curious enigma. Have I found the
+solution at last? Does it begin at school? In American schools, boys and
+girls, from the age of five, follow the same path to learning, and sit
+side by side on the same benches. Moreover, the girls prove themselves
+capable of keeping pace with the boys. Is it not possible that those
+girls, as they watched the performances of the boys in the study,
+learned to say, "Is that all?" While the young lords of creation, as
+they have looked on at what "those girls" can do, have been fain to
+exclaim: "Who would have thought it!" And does not this explain the two
+attitudes: the great respect of men for women, and the mild contempt of
+women for men?
+
+Very often, in New York, when I had time to saunter about, I would go up
+Broadway and wait until a car, well crammed with people, came along.
+Then I would jump on board and stand near the door. Whenever a man
+wanted to get out, he would say to me "Please," or "Excuse me," or just
+touch me lightly to warn me that I stood in his way. But the women! Oh,
+the women! why, it was simply lovely. They would just push me away with
+the tips of their fingers, and turn up such disgusted and haughty noses!
+You would have imagined it was a heap of dirty rubbish in their way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Would you have a fair illustration of the respective positions of woman
+in France, in England, and in America?
+
+Go to a hotel, and watch the arrival of couples in the dining-room.
+
+Now don't go to the Louvre, the Grand Hotel, or the Bristol, in Paris.
+Don't go to the Savoy, the Victoria, or the Metropole, in London. Don't
+go to the Brunswick, in New York, because in all these hotels you will
+see that all behave alike. Go elsewhere and, I say, watch.
+
+In France, you will see the couples arrive together, walk abreast toward
+the table assigned to them, very often arm in arm, and smiling at each
+other--though married.
+
+[Illustration: IN FRANCE.]
+
+In England, you will see John Bull leading the way. He does not like to
+be seen eating in public, and thinks it very hard that he should not
+have the dining-room all to himself. So he enters, with his hands in
+his pockets, looking askance at everybody right and left. Then, meek and
+demure, with her eyes cast down, follows Mrs. John Bull.
+
+[Illustration: IN ENGLAND.]
+
+In America, behold the dignified, nay, the majestic entry of Mrs.
+Jonathan, a perfect queen going toward her throne, bestowing a glance on
+her subjects right and left--and Jonathan behind!
+
+[Illustration: IN AMERICA.]
+
+They say in France that Paris is the paradise of women. If so, there is
+a more blissful place than paradise; there is another word to invent to
+give an idea of the social position enjoyed by American ladies.
+
+If I had to be born again, and might choose my sex and my birthplace, I
+would shout at the top of my voice:
+
+"Oh, make me an American woman!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  MORE ABOUT JOURNALISM IN AMERICA--A DINNER AT DELMONICO'S--MY FIRST
+  APPEARANCE IN AN AMERICAN CHURCH.
+
+
+     _New York, Sunday Night, January 19._
+
+Have been spending the whole day in reading the Sunday papers.
+
+I am never tired of reading and studying the American newspapers. The
+whole character of the nation is there: Spirit of enterprise,
+liveliness, childishness, inquisitiveness, deep interest in everything
+that is human, fun and humor, indiscretion, love of gossip, brightness.
+
+Speak of electric light, of phonographs and graphophones, if you like;
+speak of those thousand and one inventions which have come out of the
+American brain; but if you wish to mention the greatest and most
+wonderful achievement of American activity, do not hesitate for a moment
+to give the palm to American journalism; it is simply the _ne plus
+ultra_.
+
+You will find some people, even in America, who condemn its loud tone;
+others who object to its meddling with private life; others, again, who
+have something to say of its contempt for statements which are not in
+perfect accordance with strict truth. I even believe that a French
+writer, whom I do not wish to name, once said that very few statements
+to be found in an American paper were to be relied upon--beyond the
+date. People may say this and may say that about American journalism; I
+confess that I like it, simply because it will supply you with
+twelve--on Sundays with thirty--pages that are readable from the first
+line to the last. Yes, from the first line to the last, including the
+advertisements.
+
+The American journalist may be a man of letters, but, above all, he must
+possess a bright and graphic pen, and his services are not wanted if he
+cannot write a racy article or paragraph out of the most trifling
+incident. He must relate facts, if he can, but if he cannot, so much the
+worse for the facts; he must be entertaining and turn out something that
+is readable.
+
+Suppose, for example, a reporter has to send to his paper the account of
+a police-court proceeding. There is nothing more important to bring to
+the office than the case of a servant girl who has robbed her mistress
+of a pair of diamond earrings. The English reporter will bring to his
+editor something in the following style:
+
+  Mary Jane So-and-So was yesterday charged before the magistrate with
+  stealing a pair of diamond earrings from her mistress. It appears
+  [always _it appears_, that is the formula] that, last Monday, as Mrs.
+  X. went to her room to dress for dinner, she missed a pair of diamond
+  earrings, which she usually kept in a little drawer in her bedroom. On
+  questioning her maid on the subject, she received incoherent answers.
+  Suspicion that the maid was the thief arose in her mind,  and----
+
+A long paragraph in this dry style will be published in the _Times_, or
+any other London morning paper.
+
+Now, the American reporter will be required to bring something a little
+more entertaining if he hopes to be worth his salt on the staff of his
+paper, and he will probably get up an account of the case somewhat in
+the following fashion:
+
+  Mary Jane So-and-so is a pretty little brunette of some twenty
+  summers. On looking in the glass at her dainty little ears, she
+  fancied how lovely a pair of diamond earrings would look in them. So
+  one day she thought she would try on those of her mistress. How lovely
+  she looked! said the looking-glass, and the Mephistopheles that is
+  hidden in the corner of every man or woman's breast suggested that she
+  should keep them. This is how Mary Jane found herself in trouble,
+  etc., etc.
+
+The whole will read like a little story, probably entitled something
+like "Another Gretchen gone wrong through the love of jewels."
+
+The heading has to be thought of no less than the paragraph. Not a line
+is to be dull in a paper sparkling all over with eye-ticklers of all
+sorts. Oh! those delicious headings that would resuscitate the dead, and
+make them sit up in their graves!
+
+A Tennessee paper which I have now under my eyes announces the death of
+a townsman with the following heading:
+
+"At ten o'clock last night Joseph W. Nelson put on his angel plumage."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Racy, catching advertisements supplied to the trade," such is the
+announcement that I see in the same paper. I understand the origin of
+such literary productions as the following, which I cull from a Colorado
+sheet:
+
+  This morning our Saviour summoned away the jeweler William T. Sumner,
+  of our city, from his shop to another and a better world. The
+  undersigned, his widow, will weep upon his tomb, as will also his two
+  daughters, Maud and Emma, the former of whom is married, and the other
+  is open to an offer. The funeral will take place to-morrow. Signed.
+  His disconsolate widow, Mathilda Sumner.
+
+  _P. S._--This bereavement will not interrupt our business, which will
+  be carried on as usual, only our place of business will be removed
+  from Washington Street to No. 17 St. Paul Street, as our grasping
+  landlord has raised our rent.--M. S.
+
+The following advertisement probably emanates from the same firm:
+
+  PERSONAL--HIS LOVE SUDDENLY RETURNED.--Recently they had not been on
+  the best of terms, owing to a little family jar occasioned by the wife
+  insisting on being allowed to renovate his wearing apparel, and which,
+  of course, was done in a bungling manner; in order to prevent the
+  trouble, they agreed to send all their work hereafter to D., the
+  tailor, and now everything is lovely, and peace and happiness again
+  reign in their household.
+
+All this is lively. Never fail to read the advertisements of an American
+paper, or you will not have got out of it all the fun it supplies.
+
+Here are a few from the Cincinnati _Enquirer_, which tell different
+stories:
+
+  1. The young MADAME J. C. ANTONIA, just arrived from Europe, will
+  remain a short time; tells past, present, and future; tells by the
+  letters in hand who the future husband or wife will be; brings back
+  the husband or lover in so many days, and guarantees to settle family
+  troubles; can give good luck and success; ladies call at once; also
+  cures corns and bunions. Hours 10 A. M. and 9 P. M.
+
+"Also cures corns and bunions" is a poem!
+
+  2. The acquaintance desired of lady passing along Twelfth Street at
+  three o'clock Sunday afternoon, by blond gent standing at corner.
+  Address LOU K., 48, _Enquirer_ Office.
+
+  3. Will the three ladies that got on the electric car at the Zoo
+  Sunday afternoon favor three gents that got off at Court and Walnut
+  Streets with their address? Address ELECTRIC CAR, _Enquirer_ Office.
+
+  4. Will two ladies on Clark Street car, that noticed two gents in
+  front of Grand Opera House about seven last evening, please address
+  JANDS, _Enquirer_ Office.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A short time ago a man named Smith was bitten by a rattlesnake and
+treated with whisky at a New York hospital. An English paper would have
+just mentioned the fact, and have the paragraph headed: "A Remarkable
+Cure"; or, "A Man Cured of a Rattlesnake Bite by Whisky"; but a kind
+correspondent sends me the headings of this bit of intelligence in five
+New York papers. They are as follows:
+
+1. "Smith Is All Right!"
+
+2. "Whisky Does It!"
+
+3. "The Snake Routed at all Points!"
+
+4. "The Reptile is Nowhere!"
+
+5. "Drunk for Three Days and Cured."
+
+Let a batch of officials be dismissed. Do not suppose that an American
+editor will accept the news with such a heading as "Dismissal of
+Officials." The reporter will have to bring some label that will fetch
+the attention. "Massacre at the Custom House," or, "So Many Heads in the
+Basket," will do. Now, I maintain that it requires a wonderful
+imagination--something little short of genius, to be able, day after
+day, to hit on a hundred of such headings. But the American journalist
+does it.
+
+[Illustration: SMITH CURED OF RATTLESNAKE BITE.]
+
+An American paper is a collection of short stories. The Sunday edition
+of the New York _World_, the New York _Herald_, the Boston _Herald_, the
+Boston _Globe_, the Chicago _Tribune_, the Chicago _Herald_, and many
+others, is something like ten volumes of miscellaneous literature, and I
+do not know of any achievement to be compared to it.
+
+I cannot do better than compare an American paper to a large store,
+where the goods, the articles, are labeled so as to immediately strike
+the customer.
+
+A few days ago, I heard my friend, Colonel Charles H. Taylor, editor of
+the Boston _Globe_, give an interesting summary of an address on
+journalism which he is to deliver next Saturday before the members of
+the New England Club of Boston. He maintained that the proprietor of a
+newspaper has as much right to make his shop-window attractive to the
+public as any tradesman. If the colonel is of opinion that journalism is
+a trade, and the journalist a mere tradesman, I agree with him. If
+journalism is not to rank among the highest and noblest of professions,
+and is to be nothing more than a commercial enterprise, I agree with
+him.
+
+Now, if we study the evolution of journalism for the last forty or fifty
+years, we shall see that daily journalism, especially in a democracy,
+has become a commercial enterprise, and that journalism, as it was
+understood forty years ago, has become to-day monthly journalism. The
+dailies have now no other object than to give the news--the latest--just
+as a tradesman that would succeed must give you the latest fashion in
+any kind of business. The people of a democracy like America are
+educated in politics. They think for themselves, and care but little for
+the opinions of such and such a journalist on any question of public
+interest. They want news, not literary essays on news. When I hear some
+Americans say that they object to their daily journalism, I answer that
+journalists are like other people who supply the public--they keep the
+article that is wanted.
+
+A free country possesses the government it deserves, and the journalism
+it wants. A people active and busy as the Americans are, want a
+journalism that will keep their interest awake and amuse them; and they
+naturally get it. The average American, for example, cares not a pin for
+what his representatives say or do in Washington; but he likes to be
+acquainted with what is going on in Europe, and that is why the American
+journalist will give him a far more detailed account of what is going on
+in the Palace at Westminster than of what is being said in the Capitol.
+
+In France, journalism is personal. On any great question of the day,
+domestic or foreign, the Frenchman will want to read the opinion of John
+Lemoinne in the _Journal des D�bats_, or the opinion of Edouard Lockroy
+in the _Rappel_, or maybe that of Paul de Cassagnac or Henri Rochefort.
+Every Frenchman is more or less led by the editor of the newspaper which
+he patronizes. But the Frenchman is only a democrat in name and
+aspirations, not in fact. France made the mistake of establishing a
+republic before she made republicans of her sons. A French journalist
+signs his articles, and is a leader of public opinion, so much so that
+every successful journalist in France has been, is now, and ever will
+be, elected a representative of the people.
+
+In America, as in England, the journalist has no personality outside the
+literary classes. Who, among the masses, knows the names of Bennett,
+Dana, Whitelaw Reid, Medill, Childs, in the United States? Who, in
+England, knows the names of Lawson, Mudford, Robinson, and other editors
+of the great dailies? If it had not been for his trial and imprisonment,
+Mr. W. T. Stead himself, though a most brilliant journalist, would
+never have seen his name on anybody's lips.
+
+A leading article in an American or an English newspaper will attract no
+notice at home. It will only be quoted on the European Continent.
+
+It is the monthly and the weekly papers and magazines that now play the
+part of the dailies of bygone days. An article in the _Spectator_ or
+_Saturday Review_, or especially in one of the great monthly magazines,
+will be quoted all over the land, and I believe that this relatively new
+journalism, which is read only by the cultured, has now for ever taken
+the place of the old one.
+
+In a country where everybody reads, men as well as women; in a country
+where nobody takes much interest in politics outside of the State and
+the city in which he lives, the journalist has to turn out every day all
+the news he can gather, and present them to the reader in the most
+readable form. Formerly daily journalism was a branch of literature; now
+it is a news store, and is so not only in America. The English press
+shows signs of the same tendency, and so does the Parisian press. Take
+the London _Pall Mall Gazette_ and _Star_, and the Paris _Figaro_, as
+illustrations of what I advance.
+
+As democracy makes progress in England, journalism will become more and
+more American, although the English reporter will have some trouble in
+succeeding to compete with his American _confr�re_ in humor and
+liveliness.
+
+Under the guidance of political leaders, the newspapers of Continental
+Europe direct public opinion. In a democracy, the newspapers follow
+public opinion and cater to the public taste; they are the servants of
+the people. The American says to his journalists: "I don't care a pin
+for your opinions on such a question. Give me the news and I will
+comment on it myself. Only don't forget that I am an overworked man, and
+that before, or after, my fourteen hours' work, I want to be
+entertained."
+
+So, as I have said elsewhere, the American journalist must be spicy,
+lively, and bright. He must know how, not merely to report, but to
+relate in a racy, catching style, an accident, a trial, a conflagration,
+and be able to make up an article of one or two columns upon the most
+insignificant incident. He must be interesting, readable. His eyes and
+ears must be always open, every one of his five senses on the alert, for
+he must keep ahead in this wild race for news. He must be a good
+conversationalist on most subjects, so as to bring back from his
+interviews with different people a good store of materials. He must be a
+man of courage, to brave rebuffs. He must be a philosopher, to pocket
+abuse cheerfully.
+
+He must be a man of honor, to inspire confidence in the people he has to
+deal with. Personally I can say this of him, that wherever I have begged
+him, for instance, to kindly abstain from mentioning this or that which
+might have been said in conversation with him, I have invariably found
+that he kept his word.
+
+But if the matter is of public interest, he is, before and above all,
+the servant of the public; so, never challenge his spirit of enterprise,
+or he will leave no stone unturned until he has found out your secret
+and exhibited it in public.
+
+I do not think that American journalism needs an apology.
+
+It is the natural outcome of circumstances and the democratic times we
+live in. The Th��tre-Fran�ais is not now, under a Republic, and probably
+never again will be, what it was when it was placed under the patronage
+and supervision of the French Court. Democracy is the form of government
+least of all calculated to foster literature and the fine arts. To that
+purpose, Monarchy, with its Court and its fashionable society, is the
+best. This is no reason to prefer a monarchy to a republic. Liberty,
+like any other luxury, has to be paid for.
+
+Journalism cannot be now what it was when papers were read by people of
+culture. In a democracy, the stage and journalism have to please the
+masses of the people. As the people become better and better educated,
+the stage and journalism will rise with them. What the people want, I
+repeat it, is news, and journals are properly called _news_ papers.
+
+Speaking of American journalism, no man need use apologetic language.
+
+Not when the proprietor of an American paper will not hesitate to spend
+thousands of dollars to provide his readers with the minutest details
+about some great European event.
+
+Not when an American paper will, at its own expense, send Henry M.
+Stanley to Africa in search of Livingstone.
+
+Not so long as the American press is vigilant, and keeps its thousand
+eyes open on the interests of the American people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Midnight._
+
+Dined this evening with Richard Mansfield at Delmonico's. I sat between
+Mr. Charles A. Dana, the first of American journalists, and General
+Horace Porter, and had what my American friends would call "a mighty
+elegant time." The host was delightful, the dinner excellent, the wine
+"extra dry," the speeches quite the reverse. "Speeches" is rather a big
+word for what took place at dessert. Every one supplied an anecdote, a
+story, a reminiscence, and contributed to the general entertainment of
+the guests.
+
+The Americans have too much humor to spoil their dinners with toasts to
+the President, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the army, the
+navy, the militia, the volunteers, and the reserved forces.
+
+I once heard Mr. Chauncey M. Depew referring to the volunteers, at some
+English public dinner, as "men invincible--in peace, and invisible--in
+war." After dinner I remarked to an English peer:
+
+"You have heard to-night the great New York after-dinner speaker; what
+do you think of his speech?"
+
+"Well," he said, "it was witty; but I think his remark about our
+volunteers was not in very good taste."
+
+I remained composed, and did not burst.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Newburgh, N. Y., January 21._
+
+I lectured in Melrose, near Boston, last night, and had the
+satisfaction of pleasing a Massachusetts audience for the second time.
+After the lecture, I had supper with Mr. Nat Goodwin, a very good actor,
+who is now playing in Boston in a new play by Mr. Steele Mackaye. Mr.
+Nat Goodwin told many good stories at supper. He can entertain his
+friends in private as well as he can the public.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To-night I have appeared in a church, in Newburgh. The minister, who
+took the chair, had the good sense to refrain from opening the lecture
+with prayer. There are many who have not the tact necessary to see that
+praying before a humorous lecture is almost as irreverent as praying
+before a glass of grog. It is as an artist, however, that I resent that
+prayer. After the audience have said _Amen_, it takes them a full
+quarter of an hour to realize that the lecture is not a sermon; that
+they are in a church, but not at church; and the whole time their minds
+are in that undecided state, all your points fall flat and miss fire.
+Even without the preliminary prayer, I dislike lecturing in a church.
+The very atmosphere of a church is against the success of a light,
+humorous lecture, and many a point, which would bring down the house in
+a theater, will be received only with smiles in a lecture hall, and in
+respectful silence in a church. An audience is greatly influenced by
+surroundings.
+
+Now, I must say that the interior of an American church, with its lines
+of benches, its galleries, and its platform, does not inspire in one
+such religious feelings as the interior of a European Catholic church.
+In many American towns, the church is let for meetings, concerts,
+exhibitions, bazaars, etc., and so far as you can see, there is nothing
+to distinguish it from an ordinary lecture hall.
+
+Yet it is a church, and both lecturer and audience feel it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  MARCUS AURELIUS IN AMERICA--CHAIRMEN I HAVE HAD--AMERICAN, ENGLISH,
+  AND SCOTCH CHAIRMEN--ONE WHO HAD BEEN TO BOULOGNE--TALKATIVE AND
+  SILENT CHAIRMEN--A TRYING OCCASION--THE LORD IS ASKED TO ALLOW THE
+  AUDIENCE TO SEE MY POINTS.
+
+
+     _New York, January 22._
+
+There are indeed very few Americans who have not either tact or a sense
+of humor. They make the best of chairmen. They know that the audience
+have not come to hear them, and that all that is required of them is to
+introduce the lecturer in very few words, and to give him a good start.
+Who is the lecturer that would not appreciate, nay, love, such a
+chairman as Dr. R. S. MacArthur, who introduced me yesterday to a New
+York audience in the following manner?
+
+"Ladies and Gentlemen," said he, "the story goes that, last summer, a
+party of Americans staying in Rome paid a visit to the famous
+Spith�ver's bookshop in the Piazza di Spagna. Now Spith�ver is the most
+learned of bibliophiles. You must go thither if you need artistic and
+arch�ological works of the profoundest research and erudition. But one
+of the ladies in this tourists' party only wanted the lively travels in
+America of Max O'Rell, and she asked for the book at Spith�ver's. There
+came in a deep guttural voice--an Anglo-German voice--from a spectacled
+clerk behind a desk, to this purport: 'Marcus Aurelius vos neffer in te
+Unided Shtaates!' But, ladies and gentlemen, he is now, and here he is."
+
+With such an introduction, I was immediately in touch with my audience.
+
+What a change after English chairmen!
+
+A few days before lecturing in any English town, under the auspices of a
+Literary Society or Mechanics' Institute, the lecturer generally
+receives from the secretary a letter running somewhat as follow:
+
+
+  DEAR SIR:
+
+  I have much pleasure in informing you that our Mr. Blank, one of our
+  vice-presidents and a well-known resident here, will take the chair at
+  your lecture.
+
+Translated into plain English, this reads:
+
+  My poor fellow, I am much grieved to have to inform you that a
+  chairman will be inflicted upon you on the occasion of your lecture
+  before the members of our Society.
+
+In my few years' lecturing experience, I have come across all sorts and
+conditions of chairmen, but I can recollect very few that "have helped
+me." Now, what is the office, the duty, of a chairman on such occasions?
+He is supposed to introduce the lecturer to the audience. For this he
+needs to be able to make a neat speech. He has to tell the audience who
+the lecturer is, in case they should not know it, which is seldom the
+case. I was once introduced to an audience who knew me, by a chairman
+who, I don't think, had ever heard of me in his life. Before going on
+the platform he asked me whether I had written anything, next whether I
+was an Irishman or a Frenchman, etc.
+
+[Illustration: "MARCUS AURELIUS VOS NEFFER IN TE UNIDED SHTAATES!"]
+
+Sometimes the chairman is nervous; he hems and haws, cannot find the
+words he wants, and only succeeds in fidgeting the audience. Sometimes,
+on the other hand, he is a wit. There is danger again. I was once
+introduced to a New York audience by General Horace Porter. Those of my
+readers who know the delightful general and have heard him deliver one
+of those little gems of speeches in his own inimitable manner, will
+agree with me that certainly there was danger in that; and they will not
+be surprised when I tell them that after his delightfully witty and
+graceful little introduction, I felt as if the best part of the show was
+over.
+
+Sometimes the chair has to be offered to a magnate of the neighborhood,
+though he may be noted for his long, prosy orations--which annoy the
+public; or to a very popular man in the locality who gets all the
+applause--which annoys the lecturer.
+
+"Brevity is the soul of wit," should be the motto of chairmen, and I
+sympathize with a friend of mine who says that chairmen, like little
+boys and girls, should be seen and not heard.
+
+Of those chairmen who can and do speak, the Scotch ones are generally
+good. They have a knack of starting the evening with some droll Scotch
+anecdote, told with that piquant and picturesque accent of theirs, and
+of putting the audience in a good humor. Occasionally they will also
+make _apropos_ and equally droll little speeches at the close. One
+evening, in talking of America, I had mentioned the fact that American
+banquets were very lively, and that I thought the fact of Americans
+being able to keep up such a flow of wit for so many hours, was perhaps
+due to their drinking Apollinaris water instead of stronger things after
+dessert. At the end of the lecture, the chairman rose and said he had
+greatly enjoyed it, but that he must take exception to one statement the
+lecturer had made, for he thought it "fery deeficult to be wutty on
+Apollinaris watter."
+
+Another kind of chairman is the one who kills your finish, and stops all
+the possibility of your being called back for applause, by coming
+forward, the very instant the last words are out of your mouth, to
+inform the audience that the next lecture will be given by Mr.
+So-and-So, or to make a statement of the Society's financial position,
+concluding by appealing to the members to induce their friends to join.
+
+Then there is the chairman who does not know what you are going to talk
+about, but thinks it his duty to give the audience a kind of summary of
+what he imagines the lecture is going to be. He is terrible. But he is
+nothing to the one who, when the lecture is over, will persist in
+summing it up, and explaining your own jokes, especially the ones he has
+not quite seen through. This is the dullest, the saddest chairman yet
+invented.
+
+Some modest chairmen apologize for standing between the lecturer and the
+audience, and declare they cannot speak, but do. Others promise to speak
+a minute only, but don't.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHAIRMAN.]
+
+"What shall I speak about?" said a chairman to me one day, after I had
+been introduced to him in the little back room behind the platform.
+
+"If you will oblige me, sir," I replied, "kindly speak about--one
+minute."
+
+Once I was introduced to the audience as the promoter of good feelings
+between France and England.
+
+"Sometimes," said the chairman, "we see clouds of misunderstanding arise
+between the French--between the English--between the two. The lecturer
+of this evening makes it his business to disperse these clouds--these
+clouds--to--to---- But I will not detain you any longer. His name is
+familiar to all of us. I'm sure he needs no introduction to this
+audience. We all know him. I have much pleasure in introducing to you
+Mr.--Mosshiay--Mr. ----" Then he looked at me in despair.
+
+It was evident he had forgotten my name.
+
+"Max O'Rell is, I believe, what you are driving at," I whispered to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most objectionable chairmen in England are, perhaps, local men
+holding civic honors. Accustomed to deliver themselves of a speech
+whenever and wherever they get a chance, aldermen, town councilors,
+members of local boards, and school boards, never miss an opportunity of
+getting upon a platform to address a good crowd. Not long ago, I was
+introduced to an audience in a large English city by a candidate for
+civic honors. The election of the town council was to take place a
+fortnight afterward, and this gentleman profited by the occasion to air
+all his grievances against the sitting council, and to assure the
+citizens that if they would only elect him, there were bright days in
+store for them and their city. This was the gist of the matter. The
+speech lasted twenty minutes.
+
+[Illustration: "HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE YOUR NAME?"]
+
+Once the chair was taken by an alderman in a Lancashire city, and the
+hall was crowded. "What a fine house!" I remarked to the chairman as we
+sat down on the platform.
+
+"Very fine indeed," he said; "everybody in the town knew I was going to
+take the chair."
+
+I was sorry I had spoken.
+
+More than once, when announced to deliver a lecture on France and the
+French, I have been introduced by a chairman who, having spent his
+holidays in that country once or twice, opened the evening's proceedings
+by himself delivering a lecture on France. I have felt very tempted to
+imitate a _confr�re_, and say to the audience: "Ladies and Gentlemen, as
+one lecture on France is enough for an evening, perhaps you would rather
+I spoke about something else now." The _confr�re_ I have just mentioned
+was to deliver a lecture on Charles Dickens one evening. The chairman
+knew something of Charles Dickens and, for quite a quarter of an hour,
+spoke on the great English novelist, giving anecdotes, extracts of his
+writings, etc. When the lecturer rose, he said: "Ladies and Gentlemen,
+two lectures on Charles Dickens are perhaps more than you expected to
+hear to-night. You have just heard a lecture on Charles Dickens. I am
+now going to give you one on Charles Kingsley."
+
+Sometimes I get a little amusement, however (as in the country town of
+X.), out of the usual proceedings of the society before whose members I
+am engaged to appear. At X., the audience being assembled and the time
+up, I was told to go on the platform alone and, being there, to
+immediately sit down. So I went on, and sat down. Some one in the room
+then rose and proposed that Mr. N. should take the chair. Mr. N., it
+appeared, had been to Boulogne (_to B'long_), and was particularly
+fitted to introduce a Frenchman. In a speech of about five minutes
+duration, all Mr. N.'s qualifications for the post of chairman that
+evening were duly set forth. Then some one else rose and seconded the
+proposition, re-enumerating most of these qualifications. Mr. N. then
+marched up the hall, ascended the platform, and proceeded to return
+thanks for the kind manner in which he had been proposed for the chair
+and for the enthusiasm (a few friends had applauded) with which the
+audience had sanctioned the choice. He said it was true that he had been
+in France, and that he greatly admired the country and the people, and
+he was glad to have this opportunity to say so before a Frenchman. Then
+he related some of his traveling impressions in France. A few people
+coughed, two or three more bold stamped their feet, but he took no heed
+and, for ten minutes, he gave the audience the benefit of the
+information he had gathered in Boulogne. These preliminaries over, I
+gave my lecture, after which Mr. N. called upon a member of the audience
+to propose a vote of thanks to the lecturer "for the most amusing and
+interesting discourse, etc."
+
+Now a paid lecturer wants his check when his work is over, and although
+a vote of thanks, when it is spontaneous, is a compliment which he
+greatly appreciates, he is more likely to feel awkwardness than pleasure
+when it is a mere red-tape formality. The vote of thanks, on this
+particular occasion, was proposed in due form. Then it was seconded by
+some one who repeated two or three of my points and spoiled them. By
+this time I began to enter into the fun of the thing, and, after having
+returned thanks for the vote of thanks and sat down, I stepped forward
+again, filled with a mild resolve to have the last word:
+
+"Ladies and Gentlemen," I said, "I have now much pleasure in proposing
+that a hearty vote of thanks be given Mr. N. for the able manner in
+which he has filled the chair. I am proud to have been introduced to you
+by an Englishman who knows my country so well." I went again through the
+list of Mr. N.'s qualifications, not forgetting the trip to Boulogne and
+the impressions it had left on him. Somebody rose and seconded this. Mr.
+N. delivered a speech to thank the audience once more, and then those
+who had survived went home.
+
+Some Nonconformist societies will engage a light or humorous lecturer,
+put him in their chapel, and open his mouth with prayer. Prayer is good,
+but I would as soon think of saying grace before dancing as of beginning
+my lecture with a prayer. This kind of experience has been mine several
+times. A truly trying experience it was, on the first occasion, to be
+accompanied to the platform by the minister, who, motioning me to sit
+down, advanced to the front, lowered his head, and said in solemn
+accents: "Let us pray." After I got started, it took me fully ten
+minutes to make the people realize that they were not at church. This
+experience I have had in America as well as in England. Another
+experience in this line was still worse, for the prayer was supplemented
+by the singing of a hymn of ten or twelve verses. You may easily imagine
+that my first remark fell dead flat.
+
+I have been introduced to audiences as Mossoo, Meshoe, and Mounzeer
+O'Reel, and other British adaptations of our word _Monsieur_, and found
+it very difficult to bear with equanimity a chairman who maltreated a
+name which I had taken some care to keep correctly spelt before the
+public. Yet this man is charming when compared with the one who, in the
+midst of his introductory remarks, turns to you, and in a stage whisper
+perfectly audible all over the hall, asks: "How do you pronounce your
+name?"
+
+Passing over chairman chatty and chairman terse, chairman eloquent and
+chairman the reverse, I feel decidedly most kindly toward the silent
+chairman. He is very rare, but he does exist and, when met with, is
+exceedingly precious. Why he exists, in some English Institutes, I have
+always been at a loss to imagine. Whether he comes on to see that the
+lecturer does not run off before his time is up, or with the water
+bottle, which is the only portable thing on the platform generally;
+whether he is a successor to some venerable deaf and dumb founder of his
+Society; or whether he goes on with the lecturer to give a lesson in
+modesty to the public, as who should say: "I could speak an if I would,
+but I forbear." Be his _raison d'�tre_ what it may, we all love him. To
+the nervous novice he is a kind of quiet support, to the old stager he
+is as a picture unto the eye and as music unto the ear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here I pause. I want to collect my thoughts. Does my memory serve me? Am
+I dreaming, or worse still, am I on the point of inventing? No, I could
+not invent such a story, it is beyond my power.
+
+I was once lecturing to the students of a religious college in America.
+Before I began, a professor stepped forward, and offered a prayer, in
+which he asked the Lord to allow the audience to see my points.
+
+Now, I duly feel the weight of responsibility attaching to such a
+statement, and in justice to myself I can do no less than give the
+reader the petition just as it fell on my astonished ears:
+
+"Lord, Thou knowest that we work hard for Thee, and that recreation is
+necessary in order that we may work with renewed vigor. We have to-night
+with us a gentleman from France [excuse my recording a compliment too
+flattering], whose criticisms are witty and refined, _but subtle_, and
+we pray Thee to so prepare our minds that we may thoroughly understand
+and enjoy them."
+
+"_But subtle!_"
+
+I am still wondering whether my lectures are so subtle as to need
+praying over, or whether that audience was so dull that they needed
+praying for.
+
+Whichever it was, the prayer was heard, for the audience proved warm,
+keen, and thoroughly appreciative.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+REFLECTIONS ON THE TYPICAL AMERICAN.
+
+
+     _New York, January 23._
+
+I was asked to-day by the editor of the _North American Review_ to write
+an article on the typical American.
+
+The typical American!
+
+In the eyes of my beloved compatriots, the typical American is a man
+with hair falling over his shoulders, wearing a sombrero, a red shirt,
+leather leggings, a pair of revolvers in his belt, spending his life on
+horseback, and able to shoot a fly off the tip of your nose without for
+a moment endangering your olfactory organ; and, since Buffalo Bill has
+been exhibiting his Indians and cowboys to the Parisians, this
+impression has become a deep conviction.
+
+I shall never forget the astonishment I caused to my mother when I first
+broke the news to her that I wanted to go to America. My mother had
+practically never left a lovely little provincial town of France. Her
+face expressed perfect bewilderment.
+
+"You don't mean to say you want to go to America?" she said. "What for?"
+
+"I am invited to give lectures there."
+
+"Lectures? in what language?"
+
+"Well, mother, I will try my best in English."
+
+"Do they speak English out there?"
+
+"H'm--pretty well, I think."
+
+We did not go any further on the subject that time. Probably the good
+mother thought of the time when the Californian gold-fields attracted
+all the scum of Europe, and, no doubt, she thought that it was strange
+for a man who had a decent position in Europe, to go and "seek fortune"
+in America.
+
+Later on, however, after returning to England, I wrote to her that I had
+made up my mind to go.
+
+Her answer was full of gentle reproaches, and of sorrow at seeing that
+she had lost all her influence over her son. She signed herself "always
+your loving mother," and indulged in a postscript. Madame de S�vign�
+said that the gist of a woman's letter was to be found in the
+postscript.
+
+My mother's was this:
+
+"P.S.--I shall not tell any one in the town that you have gone to
+America."
+
+This explains why I still dare show my face in my little native town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The typical American!
+
+First of all, does he exist? I do not think so. As I have said
+elsewhere, there are Americans in plenty, but _the_ American has not
+made his appearance yet. The type existed a hundred years ago in New
+England. He is there still; but he is not now a national type, he is
+only a local one.
+
+[Illustration: THE TYPICAL AMERICAN.]
+
+I was talking one day with two eminent Americans on the subject of the
+typical American, real or imaginary. One of them was of opinion that he
+was a taciturn being; the other, on the contrary, maintained that he was
+talkative. How is a foreigner to dare decide, where two eminent natives
+find it impossible to agree?
+
+In speaking of the typical American, let us understand each other. All
+the civilized nations of the earth are alike in one respect; they are
+all composed of two kinds of men, those that are gentlemen, and those
+that are not. America is no exception to this rule. Fifth Avenue does
+not differ from Belgravia and Mayfair. A gentleman is everywhere a
+gentleman. As a type, he belongs to no particular country, he is
+universal.
+
+When the writer of some "society" paper, English or American, reproaches
+a sociologist for writing about the masses instead of the classes,
+suggesting that "he probably never frequented the best society of the
+nation he describes," that writer writes himself down an ass.
+
+In the matters of feeling, conduct, taste, culture, I have never
+discovered the least difference between a gentleman from America and a
+gentleman from France, England, Russia, or any other country of
+Europe--including Germany. So, if we want to find a typical American, it
+is not in good society that we must search for him, but among the mass
+of the population.
+
+Well, it is just here that our search will break down. We shall come
+across all sorts and conditions of Americans, but not one that is really
+typical.
+
+[Illustration: THE AMERICAN OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.]
+
+A little while ago, the _Century Magazine_ published specimens of
+composite photography. First, there was the portrait of one person, then
+that of this same face with another superposed, then another containing
+three faces blended, and so on up to eight or nine. On the last page the
+result was shown. I can only compare the typical American to the last of
+those. This appears to me the process of evolution through which the
+American type is now going. What it will be when this process of
+evolution is over, no one, I imagine, can tell. The evolution will be
+complete when immigration shall have ceased, and all the different types
+have been well mixed and assimilated. While the process of assimilation
+is still going on, the result is suspended, and the type is incomplete.
+
+But, meanwhile, are there not certain characteristic traits to be found
+throughout almost all America? That is a question much easier to answer.
+
+Is it necessary to repeat that I put aside good society and confine
+myself merely to the people?
+
+Nations are like individuals: when they are young, they have the
+qualities and the defects of children. The characteristic trait of
+childhood is curiosity. It is also that of the American. I have never
+been in Australia, but I should expect to find this trait in the
+Australian.
+
+Look at American journalism. What does it live on? Scandal and gossip.
+Let a writer, an artist, or any one else become popular in the States,
+and the papers will immediately tell the public at what time he rises
+and what he takes for breakfast. When any one of the least importance
+arrives in America, he is quickly beset by a band of reporters who ask
+him a host of preposterous questions and examine him minutely from head
+to foot, in order to tell the public next day whether he wears laced,
+buttoned, or elastic boots, enlighten them as to the cut of his coat and
+the color of his trowsers, and let them know if he parts his hair in the
+middle or not.
+
+[Illustration: CURIOSITY IN AUSTRALIA.]
+
+Every time I went into a new town to lecture I was interviewed, and the
+next day, besides an account of the lecture, there was invariably a
+paragraph somewhat in this style:
+
+  The lecturer is a man of about forty, whose cranium is getting visible
+  through his hair. He wears a double eye-glass, with which he plays
+  while talking to his audience. His handkerchief was black-bordered. He
+  wore the regulation patent leather shoes, and his shirt front was
+  fastened with a single stud. He spoke without effort or pretension,
+  and often with his hands in his pockets, etc.
+
+A few days ago, on reading the morning papers in a town where I had
+lectured the night before, I found, in one of them, about twenty lines
+consecrated to my lecture, and half a column to my hat.
+
+I must tell you that this hat was brown, and all the hats in America are
+black. If you wear anything that is not exactly like what Americans
+wear, you are gazed at as if you were a curious animal. The Americans
+are as great _badauds_ as the Parisians. In London, you may go down
+Regent Street or Piccadilly got up as a Swiss admiral, a Polish general,
+or even a Highlander, and nobody will take the trouble to look at you.
+But, in America, you have only to put on a brown hat or a pair of light
+trowsers, and you will become the object of a curiosity which will not
+fail very promptly to bore you, if you are fond of tranquility, and like
+to go about unremarked.
+
+I was so fond of that poor brown hat, too! It was an incomparably
+obliging hat. It took any shape, and adapted itself to any
+circumstances. It even went into my pocket on occasions. I had bought it
+at Lincoln & Bennett's, if you please. But I had to give it up. To my
+great regret, I saw that it was imperative: its popularity bid fair to
+make me jealous. Twenty lines about me, and half a column about that
+hat! It was time to come to some determination. It was not to be put up
+with any longer. So I took it up tenderly, smoothed it with care, and
+laid it in a neat box which was then posted to the chief editor of the
+paper with the following note:
+
+
+  DEAR SIR:
+
+  I see by your estimable paper that my hat has attracted a good deal of
+  public attention during its short sojourn in your city. I am even
+  tempted to think that it has attracted more of it than my lecture. I
+  send you the interesting headgear, and beg you will accept it as a
+  souvenir of my visit, and with my respectful compliments.
+
+A citizen of the Great Republic knows how to take a joke. The worthy
+editor inserted my letter in the next number of his paper, and informed
+his readers that my hat fitted him to a nicety, and that he was going to
+have it dyed and wear it. He further said, "Max O'Rell evidently thinks
+the song, 'Where did you get that hat?' was specially written to annoy
+him," and went on to the effect that "Max O'Rell is not the only man who
+does not care to tell where he got his hat."
+
+Do not run away with the idea that such nonsense as this has no interest
+for the American public. It has.
+
+American reporters have asked me, with the most serious face in the
+world, whether I worked in the morning, afternoon, or evening, and what
+color paper I used (_sic_). One actually asked me whether it was true
+that M. Jules Claretie used white paper to write his novels on, and blue
+paper for his newspaper articles. Not having the honor of a personal
+acquaintance with the director of the Com�die-Fran�aise, I had to
+confess my inability to gratify my amiable interlocutor.
+
+Look at the advertisements in the newspapers. There you have the
+bootmaker, the hatter, the traveling quack, publishing their portraits
+at the head of their advertisements. Why are those portraits there, if
+it be not to satisfy the curiosity of customers?
+
+The mass of personalities, each more trumpery than the other, those
+details of people's private life, and all the gossip daily served up in
+the newspapers, are they not proof enough that curiosity is a
+characteristic trait of the American?
+
+This curiosity, which often shows itself in the most impossible
+questions, gives immense amusement to Europeans. Unhappily, it amuses
+them at the expense of well-bred Americans--people who are as innocent
+of it as the members of the stiffest aristocracy in the world could be.
+The English, especially, persist in not distinguishing Americans who are
+gentlemen from Americans who are not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And even that easy-going American _bourgeois_, with his childish but
+good-humored nature, they often fail to do justice to. They too often
+look at his curiosity as impertinence and ill-breeding, and will not
+admit that, in nine cases out of ten, the freedom he uses with you is
+but a show of good feeling, an act of good-fellowship.
+
+Take, for instance, the following little story:
+
+An American is seated in a railway carriage, and opposite him is a lady
+in deep mourning, and looking a picture of sadness; a veritable _mater
+dolorosa_.
+
+"Lost a father?" begins the worthy fellow.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"A mother, maybe?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Ah! a child then?"
+
+"No, sir; I have lost my husband."
+
+"Your husband! Ah! Left you comfortable?"
+
+The lady, rather offended, retires to the other end of the car, and cuts
+short the conversation.
+
+"Rather stuck up, this woman," remarks the good Yankee to his neighbor.
+
+The intention was good, if the way of showing it was not. He had but
+wanted to show the poor lady the interest he took in her.
+
+After having seen you two or three times, the American will suppress
+"Mr." and address you by your name without any handle to it. Do not say
+that this is ill placed familiarity; it is meant as an act of
+good-fellowship, and should be received by you as such.
+
+If you are stiff, proud, and stuck-up, for goodness' sake, never go to
+America; you will never get on there. On the contrary, take over a stock
+of simple, affable manners and a good temper, and you will be treated as
+a friend everywhere, f�ted, and well looked after.
+
+In fact, try to deserve a certificate of good-fellowship, such as the
+Clover Club, of Philadelphia, awards to those who can sit at its
+hospitable table without taking affront at the little railleries leveled
+at them by the members of that lively association. With people of
+refinement who have humor, you can indulge in a joke at their expense.
+So says La Bruy�re. Every visitor to America, who wants to bring back a
+pleasant recollection of his stay there, should lay this to heart.
+
+Such are the impressions that I formed of the American during my first
+trip to his country, and the more I think over the matter, the more sure
+I am that they were correct. Curiosity is his chief little failing, and
+good-fellowship his most prominent quality. This is the theme I will
+develop and send to the Editor of the _North American Review_. I will
+profit by having a couple of days to spend in New York to install myself
+in a cosy corner of that cosiest of clubs, the "Players," and there
+write it.
+
+It seems that, in the same number of this magazine, the same subject is
+to be treated by Mr. Andrew Lang. He has never seen Jonathan at home,
+and it will be interesting to see what impressions he has formed of him
+abroad. In the hands of such a graceful writer, the "typical American"
+is sure to be treated in a pleasant and interesting manner.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  I AM ASKED TO EXPRESS MYSELF FREELY ON AMERICA--I MEET MRS. BLANK AND
+  FOR THE FIRST TIME HEAR OF MR. BLANK--BEACON STREET SOCIETY--THE
+  BOSTON CLUBS.
+
+
+     _Boston, January 25._
+
+It amuses me to notice how the Americans to whom I have the pleasure of
+being introduced, refrain from asking me what I think of America. But
+they invariably inquire if the impressions of my first visit are
+confirmed.
+
+This afternoon, at an "At Home," I met a lady from New York, who asked
+me a most extraordinary question.
+
+"I have read 'Jonathan and His Continent,'" she said to me. "I suppose
+that is a book of impressions written for publication. But now, tell me
+_en confidence_, what do you think of us?"
+
+"Is there anything in that book," I replied, "which can make you suppose
+that it is not the faithful expression of what the author thinks of
+America and the Americans?"
+
+"Well," she said, "it is so complimentary, taken altogether, that I must
+confess I had a lurking suspicion of your having purposely flattered us
+and indulged our national weakness for hearing ourselves praised, so as
+to make sure of a warm reception for your book."
+
+"No doubt," I replied, "by writing a flattering book on any country, you
+would greatly increase your chance of a large sale in that country; but,
+on the other hand, you may write an abusive book on any country and
+score a great success among that nation's neighbors. For my part, I have
+always gone my own quiet way, philosophizing rather than opinionating,
+and when I write, it is not with the aim of pleasing any particular
+public. I note down what I see, say what I think, and people may read me
+or not, just as they please. But I think I may boast, however, that my
+pen is never bitter, and I do not care to criticise unless I feel a
+certain amount of sympathy with the subject of my criticism. If I felt
+that I could only honestly say hard things of people, I would always
+abstain altogether."
+
+"Now," said my fair questioner, "how is it that you have so little to
+say about our Fifth Avenue folks? Is it because you have seen very
+little of them, or is it because you could only have said hard things of
+them?"
+
+"On the contrary," I replied; "I saw a good deal of them, but what I saw
+showed me that to describe them would be only to describe polite
+society, as it exists in London and elsewhere. Society gossip is not in
+my line; boudoir and club smoking-room scandal has no charm for me.
+Fifth Avenue resembles too much Mayfair and Belgravia to make criticism
+of it worth attempting."
+
+I knew this answer would have the effect of putting me into the lady's
+good graces at once, and I was not disappointed. She accorded to me her
+sweetest smile, as I bowed to her to go and be introduced to another
+lady by the mistress of the house.
+
+[Illustration: FIFTH AVENUE FOLK.]
+
+The next lady was a Bostonian. I had to explain to her why I had not
+spoken of Beacon Street people, using the same argument as in the case
+of Fifth Avenue society, and with the same success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the same "At Home," I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Blank, whom I
+had met many times in London and Paris.
+
+She is one of the crowd of pretty and clever women whom America sends to
+brighten up European society, and who reappear in London and Paris with
+the regularity of the swallows. You meet them everywhere, and conclude
+that they must be married, since they are styled Mrs. and not Miss. But
+whether they are wives, widows, or _divorc�es_, you rarely think of
+inquiring, and you may enjoy their friendship for years without knowing
+whether they have a living lord or not.
+
+[Illustration: A TELEPHONE AND TICKER.]
+
+Mrs. Blank, as I say, is a most fascinating specimen of America's
+daughters, and to-day I find that Mr. Blank is also very much alive, but
+that the companions of his joys and sorrows are the telephone and the
+ticker; in fact it is thanks to his devotion to these that the wife of
+his bosom is able to adorn European society during every recurring
+season.
+
+American women have such love for freedom and are so cool-headed that
+their visits to Europe could not arouse suspicion even in the most
+malicious. But, nevertheless, I am glad to have heard of Mr. Blank,
+because it is comfortable to have one's mind at rest on these subjects.
+Up to now, whenever I had been asked, as sometimes happened, though
+seldom: "Who is Mr. Blank, and where is he?" I had always answered:
+"Last puzzle out!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lunched to-day in the beautiful Algonquin Club, as the guest of Colonel
+Charles H. Taylor, and met the editors of the other Boston papers, among
+whom was John Boyle O'Reilly,[1] the lovely poet, and the delightful
+man. The general conversation turned on two subjects most interesting to
+me, viz., American journalism, and American politics. All these
+gentlemen seemed to agree that the American people take an interest in
+local politics only, but not in imperial politics, and this explains why
+the papers of the smaller towns give detailed accounts of what is going
+on in the houses of legislature of both city and State, but do not
+concern themselves about what is going on in Washington. I had come to
+that conclusion myself, seeing that the great papers of New York,
+Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago devoted columns to the sayings and doings
+of the political world in London and Paris, and seldom a paragraph to
+the sittings of Congress in Washington.
+
+In the morning, before lunch, I had called on Mr. John Holmes, the
+editor of the Boston _Herald_, and there met a talented lady who writes
+under the _nom de plume_ of "Max Eliot," and with whom I had a
+delightful half-hour's chat.
+
+I have had to-day the pleasure of meeting the editors of all the Boston
+newspapers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening, I dined with the members of the New England Club, who
+meet every month to listen, at dessert, to some interesting debate or
+lecture. The wine is supplied by bets. You bet, for instance, that the
+sun will shine on the following Friday at half-past two. If you lose,
+you are one of those who will have to supply one, two, or three bottles
+of champagne at the next dinner, and so on. This evening the lecture, or
+rather the short address, was given by Colonel Charles H. Taylor on the
+history of American journalism. I was particularly interested to hear
+the history of the foundation of the New York _Herald_, by James Gordon
+Bennett, and that of the New York _World_, by Mr. Pulitzer, a Hungarian
+emigrant, who, some years ago, arrived in the States, unable to speak
+English, became jack-of-all-trades, then a reporter on a German paper,
+proprietor of a Western paper, and then bought the _World_, which is now
+one of the best paying concerns in the whole of the United States. This
+man, who, to maintain himself, not in health, but just alive, is obliged
+to be constantly traveling, directs the paper by telegraph from
+Australia, from Japan, from London, or wherever he happens to be. It is
+nothing short of marvelous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I finished the evening in the St. Botolph Club, and I may say that I
+have to-day spent one of the most delightful days of my life, with those
+charming and highly cultured Bostonians, who, a New York witty friend of
+mine declares, "are educated beyond their intellects."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNORE:
+
+  [1] J. B. O'Reilly died in 1890.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  A LIVELY SUNDAY IN BOSTON--LECTURE IN THE BOSTON THEATER--DR. OLIVER
+  WENDELL HOLMES--THE BOOTH-MODJESKA COMBINATION.
+
+
+     _Boston, January 26._
+
+"Max Eliot" devotes a charming and most flattering article to me in this
+morning's _Herald_, embodying the conversation we had together yesterday
+in the Boston _Herald's_ office. Many thanks, Max.
+
+A reception was given to me this afternoon by Citizen George Francis
+Train, and I met many artists, journalists, and a galaxy of charming
+women.
+
+The Citizen is pronounced to be the greatest crank on earth. I found him
+decidedly eccentric, but entertaining, witty, and a first-rate
+_raconteur_. He shakes hands with you in the Chinese fashion--he shakes
+his own. He has taken a solemn oath that his body shall never come in
+contact with the body of any one.
+
+A charming programme of music and recitations was gone through.
+
+The invitation cards issued for the occasion speak for themselves.
+
+[Illustration: THE CITIZEN SHAKES HANDS.]
+
+
+  CITIZEN
+       GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN'S
+             RECEPTION
+                        To
+                          CITOYEN MAX O'RELL.
+
+  P.S.--"Demons" have checkmated "Psychos"! Invitations canceled! "Hub"
+  Boycotts Sunday Receptions! Boston half century behind New York and
+  Europe's Elite Society. (Ancient Athens still Ancient!) Regrets and
+  Regards! Good-by, Tremont! (The Proprietors not to blame.)
+
+  _Vide_ some of his "Apothegmic Works"! (Reviewed in Pulitzer's New
+  York _World_ and Cosmos Press!)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  John Bull et Son Ile! Les Filles de John Bull! Les Chers Voisins!
+  L'Ami Macdonald! John Bull, Junior! Jonathan et Son Continent!
+  L'Eloquence Fran�aise! etc.
+
+     YOU ARE INVITED TO MEET
+
+  this distinguished French Traveler, Author, and Lecturer (From the
+  land of Lafayette, Rochambeau, and De Grasse),
+
+     AT MY SIXTH "POP-CORN RECEPTION"!
+
+  SUNDAY, JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH, From 2 to 7 P. M.
+               (Tremont House!)
+
+  _Private Banquet Hall!_      _Fifty "Notables"!_
+
+  Talent from Dozen Operas and Theaters! All Stars! No Airs! No "Wall
+  Flowers"! No Amens! No Selahs! But "MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB OF GOOD
+  FELLOWSHIP"! No Boredom! No Formality! (Dress as you like!) No
+  Programme! (Pianos! Cellos! Guitars! Mandolins! Banjos! Violins!
+  Harmonicas! Zithers!) Opera, Theater and Press Represented!
+
+  Succeeding Receptions: To Steele Mackaye! Nat Goodwin! Count Zubof
+  (St. Petersburg)! Prima Donna Clementina De Vere (Italy)! Albany Press
+  Club! (Duly announced printed invitations!)
+
+     GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN,
+           Tremont House for Winter!
+
+  Psychic Press thanks for friendly notices of Sunday Musicales!
+
+It will be seen from the "P. S." that the reception could not be held at
+the Tremont House; but the plucky Citizen did not allow himself to be
+beaten, and the reception took place at the house of a friend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening I lectured in the Boston Theater to a beautiful audience.
+
+If there is a horrible fascination about "the man who won't smile," as I
+mentioned in a foregoing chapter, there is a lovely fascination about
+the lady who seems to enjoy your lecture thoroughly. You watch the
+effects of your remarks on her face, and her bright, intellectual eyes
+keep you in good form the whole evening; in fact, you give the lecture
+to her. I perhaps never felt the influence of that face more powerfully
+than to-night. I had spoken for a few minutes, when Madame Modjeska,
+accompanied by her husband, arrived and took a seat on the first row of
+the orchestra stalls. To be able to entertain the great _trag�dienne_
+became my sole aim, and as soon as I perceived that I was successful, I
+felt perfectly proud and happy. I lectured to her the whole evening. Her
+laughter and applause encouraged me, her beautiful, intellectual face
+cheered me up, and I was able to introduce a little more acting and
+by-play than usual.
+
+I had had the pleasure of making Madame Modjeska's acquaintance two
+years ago, during my first visit to the United States, and it was a
+great pleasure to be able to renew it after the lecture.
+
+I will go and see her _Ophelia_ to-morrow night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _January 27._
+
+Spent the whole morning wandering about Boston, and visiting a few
+interesting places. Beacon Street, the public gardens, and Commonwealth
+Avenue are among the finest thoroughfares I know. What enormous wealth
+is contained in those miles of huge mansions!
+
+The more I see Boston, the more it strikes me as a great English city.
+It has a character of its own, as no other American city has, excepting
+perhaps Washington and Philadelphia. The solidity of the buildings, the
+parks, the quietness of the women's dresses, the absence of the twang in
+most of the voices, all remind you of England.
+
+After lunch I called on Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The "Autocrat of the
+Breakfast Table" is now over eighty, but he is as young as ever, and
+will die with a kind smile on his face and a merry twinkle in his eyes.
+I know no more delightful talker than this delightful man. You may say
+of him that every time he talks he says something. When he asked me what
+it was I had found most interesting in America, I wished I could have
+answered: "Why, my dear doctor, to see and to hear such a man as you, to
+be sure!" But the doctor is so simple, so unaffected, that I felt an
+answer of that kind, though perfectly sincere, would not have been one
+calculated to please him. The articles "Over the Tea Cups," which he
+writes every month for the _Atlantic Monthly_, and which will soon
+appear in book form, are as bright, witty, humorous, and philosophic as
+anything he ever wrote. Long may he live to delight his native land!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening I went to see Mr. Edwin Booth and Madame Modjeska in
+"Hamlet." By far the two greatest tragedians of America in Shakespeare's
+greatest tragedy. I expected great things. I had seen Mounet-Sully in
+the part, Henry Irving, Wilson Barrett; and I remembered the witty
+French _quatrain_, published on the occasion of Mounet-Sully attempting
+the part:
+
+  Sans Fechter ni Rivi�re
+  Le cas �tait hasardeux;
+  Jamais, non jamais sur terre,
+  On n'a fait d'Hamlet sans eux.
+
+I had seen Mr. Booth three times before. As _Brutus_, I thought he was
+excellent. As _Richelieu_ he was certainly magnificent; as _Iago_
+ideally superb.
+
+His _Hamlet_ was a revelation to me. After seeing the raving _Hamlet_ of
+Mounet-Sully, the somber _Hamlet_ of Irving, and the dreamy _Hamlet_ of
+Wilson Barrett, I saw this evening _Hamlet_ the philosopher, the
+rhetorician.
+
+Mr. Booth is too old to play _Hamlet_ as he does, that is to say,
+without any attempt at making-up. He puts on a black wig, and that is
+all, absolutely all. It is, however, a most remarkable, subtle piece of
+acting in his hands.
+
+Madame Modjeska was beautiful as _Ophelia_. No _trag�dienne_ that I have
+ever seen weeps more naturally. In all sad situations she makes the
+chords of one's heart vibrate, and that without any trick or artifice,
+but simply by the modulations of her singularly sympathetic voice and
+such like natural means.
+
+It is very seldom that you can see in America, outside of New York, more
+than one very good actor or actress playing together. So you may imagine
+the success of such a combination as Booth-Modjeska.
+
+Every night the theater is packed from floor to ceiling, although the
+prices of admission are doubled.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  ST. JOHNSBURY--THE STATE OF MAINE--NEW ENGLAND SELF-CONTROL--COLD
+  CLIMATES AND FRIGID AUDIENCES--WHERE IS THE AUDIENCE?--ALL DRUNK!--A
+  REMINISCENCE OF A SCOTCH AUDIENCE ON A SATURDAY NIGHT.
+
+
+     _St. Johnsbury (Vt.), January 28._
+
+ST. Johnsbury is a charming little town perched on the top of a
+mountain, from which a lovely scene of hills and woods can be enjoyed.
+The whole country is covered with snow, and as I looked at it in the
+evening by the electric light, the effect was very beautiful. The town
+has only six thousand inhabitants, eleven hundred of whom came to hear
+my lecture to-night. Which is the European town of six thousand
+inhabitants that would supply an audience of eleven hundred people to a
+literary _causerie_?
+
+St. Johnsbury has a dozen churches, a public library of 15,000 volumes,
+with a reading-room beautifully fitted with desks and perfectly adapted
+for study. A museum, a Young Men's Christian Association, with
+gymnasium, school-rooms, reading-rooms, play-rooms, and a lecture hall
+capable of accommodating over 1000 people. Who, after that, would
+consider himself an exile if he had to live in St. Johnsbury? There is
+more intellectual life in it than in any French town outside of Paris
+and about a dozen more large cities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Portsea, January 30._
+
+I have been in the State of Maine for two days; a strange State to be
+in, let me tell you.
+
+After addressing the Connecticut audience in Meriden a few days ago, I
+thought I had had the experience of the most frigid audience that could
+possibly be gathered together. Last Tuesday night, at Portsea, I was
+undeceived.
+
+Half-way between St. Johnsbury and Portsea, the day before yesterday, I
+was told that the train would be very late, and would not arrive at
+Portsea before half-past eight. My lecture in that city was to begin at
+eight. The only thing to do was to send a telegram to the manager of the
+lecture. At the next station I sent the following:
+
+"Train late. If possible, keep audience waiting half an hour. Will dress
+on board."
+
+I dressed in the state-room of the parlor-car. At forty minutes past
+eight the train arrived at Portsea. I immediately jumped into a cab and
+drove to the City Hall, where the lecture was to take place. The
+building was lighted, but, as I ascended the stairs, there was not a
+person to be seen or a sound to be heard. "The place is deserted," I
+thought; "and if anybody came to hear me, they have all gone."
+
+I opened the door of the private room behind the platform and there
+found the manager, who expressed his delight to see me. I excused
+myself, and was going to enter into a detailed explanation when he
+interrupted:
+
+[Illustration: I TIP-TOED OUT.]
+
+"Oh, that's all right."
+
+"What do you mean?" said I. "Have you got an audience there, on the
+other side of that door?"
+
+"Why, we have got fifteen hundred people."
+
+"There?" said I, pointing to the door.
+
+"Yes, on the other side of that door."
+
+"But I can't hear a sound."
+
+"I guess you can't. But that's all right; they are there."
+
+"I suppose," I said, "I had better apologize to them for keeping them
+waiting three-quarters of an hour."
+
+"Well, just as you please," said the manager. "I wouldn't."
+
+"Wouldn't you?"
+
+"No; I guess they would have waited another half-hour without showing
+any sign of impatience."
+
+I opened the door trembling. My desk was far, far away. My manager was
+right; the audience was there. I stepped on the platform, shut the door
+after me, making as little noise as I could, and, walking on tiptoe so
+as to wake up as few people as possible, proceeded toward the table. Not
+one person applauded. A few people looked up unconcernedly, as if to
+say, "I guess that's the show." The rest seemed asleep, although their
+eyes were open.
+
+Arrived at the desk, I faced the audience, and ventured a little joke,
+which fell dead flat.
+
+I began to realize the treat that was in store for me that night.
+
+I tried another little joke, and--missed fire.
+
+"Never mind, old fellow," I said to myself; "it's two hundred and fifty
+dollars; go ahead."
+
+And I went on.
+
+I saw a few people smile, but not one laughed, although I noticed that a
+good many were holding their handkerchiefs over their mouths, probably
+to stifle any attempt at such a frivolous thing as laughter. The eyes of
+the audience, which I always watch, showed signs of interest, and nobody
+left the hall until the conclusion of the lecture. When I had finished,
+I made a small bow, when certainly fifty people applauded. I imagined
+they were glad it was all over.
+
+"Well," I said to the manager, when I had returned to the little back
+room, "I suppose we must call this a failure."
+
+"A failure!" said he; "it's nothing of the sort. Why, I have never seen
+them so enthusiastic in my life!"
+
+I went to the hotel, and tried to forget the audience I had just had by
+recalling to my mind a joyous evening in Scotland. This happened about a
+year ago, in a mining town in the neighborhood of Glasgow, where I had
+been invited to lecture, on a Saturday night, to the members of a
+popular--very popular--Institute.
+
+[Illustration: I AM ESCORTED TO THE HALL.]
+
+I arrived at the station from Glasgow at half-past seven, and there
+found the secretary and the treasurer of the Institute, who had been
+kind enough to come and meet me. We shook hands. They gave me a few
+words of welcome. I thought my friends looked a little bit queer. They
+proposed that we should walk to the lecture hall. The secretary took my
+right arm, the treasurer took my left, and, abreast, the three of us
+proceeded toward the hall. They did not take me to that place; _I_ took
+them, holding them fast all the way--the treasurer especially.
+
+We arrived in good time, although we stopped once for light refreshment.
+At eight punctually, I entered the hall, preceded by the president, and
+followed by the members of the committee. The president introduced me in
+a most queer, incoherent speech. I rose, and was vociferously cheered.
+When silence was restored, I said in a calm, almost solemn manner:
+"Ladies and Gentlemen." This was the signal for more cheering and
+whistling. In France whistling means hissing, and I began to feel
+uneasy, but soon I bore in mind that whistling, in the North of Great
+Britain, was used to express the highest pitch of enthusiasm.
+
+So I went on.
+
+The audience laughed at everything I said, and even before I said it. I
+had never addressed such keen people. They seemed so anxious to laugh
+and cheer in the right place that they laughed and cheered all the
+time--so much so that in an hour and twenty minutes, I had only got
+through half my lecture, which I had to bring to a speedy conclusion.
+
+The president rose and proposed a vote of thanks in another most queer
+speech, which was a new occasion for cheering.
+
+When we had retired in the committee room, I said to the secretary:
+"What's the matter with the president? Is he quite right?" I added,
+touching my forehead.
+
+"Oh!" said the secretary, striking his chest as proudly as possible, "he
+is drunk--and so am I."
+
+[Illustration: "HE'S DRUNK, AND SO AM I."]
+
+The explanation of the whole strange evening dawned upon me. Of course
+they were drunk, and so was the audience.
+
+That night, I believe I was the only sober person on the premises.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yesterday, I had an interesting chat with a native of the State of Maine
+on the subject of my lecture at Portsea.
+
+"You are perfectly wrong," he said to me, "in supposing that your
+lecture was not appreciated. I was present, and I can assure you that
+the attentive silence in which they listened to you from beginning to
+end is the proof that they appreciated you. You would also be wrong in
+supposing that they do not appreciate humor. On the contrary, they are
+very keen of it, and I believe that the old New Englander was the father
+of American humor, through the solemn manner in which he told comic
+things, and the comic manner in which he told the most serious ones.
+Yes, they are keen of humor, and their apparent want of appreciation is
+only due to reserve, to self-control."
+
+And, as an illustration of it, my friend told me the following anecdote
+which, I have no doubt, a good many Americans have heard before:
+
+Mark Twain had lectured to a Maine audience without raising a single
+laugh in his listeners, when, at the close, he was thanked by a
+gentleman who came to him in the green-room, to tell him how hugely
+every one had enjoyed his amusing stories. When the lecturer expressed
+his surprise at this announcement, as the audience had not laughed, the
+gentleman added:
+
+"Yes, we never were so amused in our lives, and if you had gone on five
+minutes more, upon my word I don't think we could have held out any
+longer."
+
+Such is New England self-control.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  A LOVELY RIDE TO CANADA--QUEBEC, A CORNER OF OLD FRANCE STRAYED UP AND
+  LOST IN THE SNOW--THE FRENCH CANADIANS--THE PARTIES IN CANADA--WILL
+  THE CANADIANS BECOME YANKEES?
+
+
+     _Montreal, February 1._
+
+The ride from the State of Maine to Montreal is very picturesque, even
+in the winter. It offers you four or five hours of Alpine scenery
+through the American Switzerland. The White Mountains, commanded by
+Mount Washington, are, for a distance of about forty miles, as wild and
+imposing as anything the real Switzerland can supply the tourist.
+Gorges, precipices, torrents, nothing is wanting.
+
+Nearly the whole time we journeyed across pine forests, coming, now and
+then, across saw mills, and little towns looking like bee-hives of
+activity. Now there was an opening, and frozen rivers, covered with
+snow, formed, with the fields, a huge uniform mass of dazzling
+whiteness. The effect, under a pure blue sky and in a perfectly clear
+atmosphere, was very beautiful. Now the country became hilly again. On
+the slopes, right down to the bottom of the valley, we saw Berlin Falls,
+bathing its feet in the river. The yellow houses with their red roofs
+and gables, rest the eyes from that long stretch of blue and white. How
+beautiful this town and its surroundings must be in the fall, when Dame
+Nature in America puts on her cloak of gold and scarlet! All the country
+on the line we traveled is engaged in the lumber trade.
+
+For once I had an amiable conductor in the parlor car; even more than
+amiable--quite friendly and familiar. He put his arms on my shoulders
+and got quite patronizing. I did not mind that a bit. I hate anonymous
+landscapes, and he explained and named everything to me. My innocence of
+American things in general touched him. He was a great treat after those
+"ill-licked bears" that you so often come across in the American cars.
+He went further than that: he kindly recommended me to the Canadian
+custom-house officers, when we arrived at the frontier, and the
+examination of my trunk and valise did not last half a minute.
+
+[Illustration: THE AMIABLE CONDUCTOR.]
+
+Altogether, the long journey passed rapidly and agreeably. We were only
+two people in the parlor car, and my traveling companion proved a very
+pleasant man. First, I did not care for the look of him. He had a new
+silk hat on, a multicolored satin cravat with a huge diamond pin fixed
+in it; a waistcoat covered with silk embroidery work, green, blue, and
+pink; a coat with silk facings, patent-leather boots. Altogether, he was
+rather dressed for a garden party (in more than doubtful taste) than for
+a fifteen hours' railway journey. But in America the cars are so
+luxurious and kept so warm that traveling dresses are not known in the
+country. Ulsters, cloaks, rugs, garments made of tweed and rough
+materials, all these things are unnecessary and therefore unknown. I
+soon found out, however, that this quaintly got-up man was interesting
+to speak to. He knew every bit of the country we passed, and, being
+easily drawn out, he poured into my ears information that was as rapid
+as it was valuable. He was well read and had been to Europe several
+times. He spoke of France with great enthusiasm, which enrolled my
+sympathy, and he had enjoyed my lecture, which, you may imagine, secured
+for his intelligence and his good taste my boundless admiration. When we
+arrived at Montreal, we were a pair of friends.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I begin my Canadian tour here on Monday and then shall go West. I was in
+Quebec two years ago; but the dear old place is not on my list this
+time. No words could express my regret. I shall never forget my feelings
+on landing under the great cliff on which stands the citadel, and on
+driving, bumped along in a sleigh over the half-thawed snow, in the
+street that lies under the fortress, and on through the other quaint
+winding steep streets, and again under the majestic archways to the
+upper town, where I was set down at the door of the Florence, a quiet,
+delightful little hotel that the visitor to Quebec should not fail to
+stop at, if he like home comforts and care to enjoy magnificent scenery
+from his window. It seemed as though I was in France, in my dear old
+Brittany. It looked like St. Malo strayed up here and lost in the snow.
+The illusion became complete when I saw the gray houses, heard the
+people talk with the Breton intonation, and saw over the shops Langlois,
+Maillard, Clouet, and all the names familiar to my childhood. But why
+say "illusion"? It was a fact: I was in France. These folks have given
+their faith to England, but, as the Canadian poet says, they have kept
+their hearts for France. Not only their hearts, but their manners and
+their language. Oh, there was such pleasure in it all! The lovely
+weather, the beautiful scenery, the kind welcome given to me, the
+delight of seeing these children of Old France, more than three thousand
+miles from home, happy and thriving--a feast for the eyes, a feast for
+the heart. And the drive to Montmorency Falls in the sleigh, gliding
+smoothly along on the hard snow! And the sleighs laden with wood for the
+Quebec folks, the carmen stimulating their horses with a _hue l�_ or
+_hue donc_! And the return to the Florence, where a good dinner served
+in a private room awaited us! And that polite, quiet, attentive French
+girl who waited on us, the antipodes of the young Yankee lady who makes
+you sorry that breakfasting and dining are necessary, in some American
+hotels, and whose waiting is like taking sand and vinegar with your
+food!
+
+The mere spanking along through the cold, brisk air, when you are well
+muffled in furs is exhilarating, especially when the sun is shining in
+a cloudless blue sky. The beautiful scenery at Quebec was, besides, a
+feast for eyes tired with the monotonous flatness of America. The old
+city is on a perfect mountain, and as we came bumping down its side in
+our sleigh over the roads which were there in a perfect state of
+sherbet, there was a lovely picture spread out in front of us. In the
+distance the bluest mountains I ever saw (to paint them one must use
+pure cobalt); away to the right the frozen St. Lawrence and the Isle of
+Orl�ans, all snow-covered, of course, but yet distinguishable from the
+farm lands of Jacques Bonhomme, whose cosy, clean cottages we soon began
+to pass. The long, ribbon-like strips of farm were indicated by the tops
+of the fences peeping through the snow, and told us of French thrift and
+prosperity.
+
+[Illustration: "THAT QUIET, ATTENTIVE FRENCH GIRL."]
+
+Yes, it was all delightful. When I left Quebec I felt as much regret as
+I do every time that I leave my little native town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have been told that the works of Voltaire are prohibited in Quebec,
+not so much because they are irreligious as because they were written by
+a man who, after the loss of Quebec to the French Crown, exclaimed: "Let
+us not be concerned about the loss of a few acres of snow." The memory
+of Voltaire is execrated, and for having made a flattering reference to
+him on the platform in Montreal two years ago, I was near being
+"boycotted" by the French population.
+
+The French Canadians take very little interest in politics--I mean in
+outside politics. They are steady, industrious, saving, peaceful, and so
+long as the English leave them alone, in the safe enjoyment of their
+belongings, they will not give them cause for any anxiety. Among the
+French Canadians there is no desire for annexation to the United States.
+Indeed, during the War of Independence, Canada was saved to the English
+Crown by the French Canadians, not because the latter loved the English,
+but because they hated the Yankees. When Lafayette took it for granted
+that the French Canadians would rally round his flag, he made a great
+mistake; they would have, if compelled to fight, used their bullets
+against the Americans. If they had their own way, the French in Canada
+would set up a little country of their own under the rule of the
+Catholic Church, a little corner of France two hundred years old.
+
+The education of the lower classes is at a very low stage; thirty per
+cent. of the children of school age in Quebec do not attend school. The
+English dare not introduce gratuitous and compulsory education. They
+have an understanding with the Catholic Church, which insists upon
+exercising entire control over public education. The Quebec schools are
+little more than branches of the confessional box. The English shut
+their eyes, for part of the understanding with the Church is that the
+latter will keep loyalty to the English Crown alive among her submissive
+flock.
+
+The tyranny exercised by the Catholic Church may easily be imagined from
+the following newspaper extract:
+
+  A well-to-do butcher of Montreal attended the Catholic Church at Ile
+  Perrault last Sunday. He was suffering at the time with acute cramps,
+  and when that part of the service arrived during which the
+  congregation kneel, he found himself unable to do more than assume a
+  reclining devotional position, with one knee on the floor. His action
+  was noticed, and the church-warden, in concert with others, had him
+  brought before the court charged with an act of irreverence, and he
+  was fined $8 and costs.
+
+Such a judgment does not only expose the tyranny of the Catholic Church,
+but the complicity of the English, who uphold Romanism in the Province
+of Quebec as they uphold Buddhism in India, so as not to endanger the
+security of their possessions.
+
+The French Canadians are multiplying so rapidly that in a very few years
+the Province of Quebec will be as French as the town of Quebec itself.
+Every day they push their advance from east to west. They generally
+marry very young. When a lad is seen in the company of a girl, he is
+asked by the priest if he is courting that girl. In which case he is
+bidden to go straightway to the altar, and these young couples rear
+families of twelve and fifteen children, none of whom leave the country.
+The English have to make room for them.
+
+[Illustration: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PRIEST.]
+
+The average attendance in Catholic churches on Sundays in Montreal is
+111,483; in the sixty churches that belong to the different Protestant
+denominations, the average attendance is 34,428. The former number has
+been steadily increasing, the latter steadily decreasing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What is the future reserved to French Canada, and indeed to the whole
+Dominion?
+
+There are only two political parties, Liberals and Conservatives, but I
+find the population divided into four camps: Those in favor of Canada,
+an independent nation; those in favor of the political union of Canada
+and the United States; those in favor of Canada going into Imperial
+Federation, and those in favor of Canada remaining an English colony, or
+in other words, in favor of the actual state of things.
+
+Of course the French Canadians are dead against going into Imperial
+Federation, which would simply crush them, and Canadian "society" is in
+favor of remaining English. The other Canadians seem pretty equally
+divided.
+
+It must be said that the annexation idea has been making rapid progress
+of late years, among prominent men as well as among the people. The
+Americans will never fire one shot to have the idea realized. If ever
+the union becomes an accomplished fact, it will become so with the
+assent of all parties. The task will be made easy through Canada and the
+United States having the same legislature. The local and provincial
+governments are the same in the Canadian towns and provinces as they are
+in the American towns and States--a House of Representatives, a Senate,
+and a Governor, with this difference, this great difference, to the
+present advantage of Canada: whereas every four years the Americans
+elect a new master, who appoints a ministry responsible to himself
+alone, the Canadians have a ministry responsible to their parliament,
+that is, to themselves. The representation of the American people at
+Washington is democratic, but the government is autocratic. In Canada,
+both legislature and executive are democratic, as in England, that
+greatest and truest of all democracies.
+
+The change in Canada would have to be made on the American plan.
+
+With the exception of Quebec and parts of Montreal, Canada is built like
+America; the country has the same aspect, the currency is the same.
+Suppress the Governor-General in Ottawa, who is there to remind Canada
+that she is a dependency of the English Crown, strew the country with
+more cuspidores, and you have part of Jonathan's big farm.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+  MONTREAL--THE CITY--MOUNT ROYAL--CANADIAN SPORTS--OTTAWA--THE
+  GOVERNMENT--RIDEAU HALL.
+
+
+     _Montreal, February 2._
+
+Montreal is a large and well-built city, containing many buildings of
+importance, mostly churches, of which about thirty are Roman Catholic,
+and over sixty are devoted to Protestant worship, in all its branches
+and variations, from the Anglican church to the Salvation Army.
+
+I arrived at a station situated on a level with the St. Lawrence River.
+From it, we mounted in an omnibus up, up, up, through narrow streets
+full of shops with Breton or Norman names over them, as in Quebec; on
+through broader ones, where the shops grew larger and the names became
+more frequently English; on, on, till I thought Montreal had no end,
+and, at last alighted on a great square, and found myself at the door of
+the Windsor Hotel, an enormous and fine construction, which has proved
+the most comfortable, and, in every respect the best hotel I have yet
+stopped at on the great American continent. It is about a quarter of a
+mile from my bedroom to the dining-hall, which could, I believe,
+accommodate nearly a thousand guests.
+
+My first visit was to an afternoon "At Home," given by the St. George's
+Club, who have a club-house high up on Mount Royal. It was a ladies'
+day, and there was music, dancing, etc. We went in a sleigh up the very
+steep hill, much to my astonishment. I should have thought the thing
+practically impossible. On our way we passed a toboggan slide down the
+side of Mount Royal. It took my breath away to think of coming down it
+at the rate of over a mile a minute. The view from the club-house was
+splendid, taking in a great sweep of snow-covered country, the city and
+the frozen St. Lawrence. There are daily races on the river, and last
+year they ran tram-cars on it.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD GENTLEMAN AND THE TOBOGGAN SLIDE.]
+
+It was odd to hear the phrase, "after the flood." When I came to inquire
+into it, I learned that when the St. Lawrence ice breaks up, the lower
+city is flooded, and this is yearly spoken of as "the flood."
+
+I drove back from the club with my manager and two English gentlemen,
+who are here on a visit. As we passed the toboggan slide, my manager
+told me of an old gentleman over sixty, who delights in those breathless
+passages down the side of Mount Royal. One may see him out there "at
+it," as early as ten in the morning. Plenty of people, however, try one
+ride and never ask for another. One gentleman my manager told me of,
+after having tried it, expressed pretty well the feelings of many
+others. He said, "I wouldn't do it again for two thousand dollars, but I
+wouldn't have missed it for three." I asked one of the two Englishmen
+who accompanied us, whether he had had a try. He was a quiet, solemn,
+middle-aged Englishman. "Well," he said, "yes, I have. It had to be
+done, and I did it."
+
+[Illustration: A SNOWSHOER.]
+
+Last night I was most interested in watching the members of the Snowshoe
+Club start from the Windsor, on a kind of a picnic over the country.
+Their costumes were very picturesque; a short tunic of woolen material
+fastened round the waist by a belt, a sort of woolen nightcap, with
+tassel falling on the shoulder, thick woolen stockings, and
+knickerbockers.
+
+In Russia and the northern parts of the United States, the people say:
+"It's too cold to go out." In Canada, they say: "It's very cold, let's
+all go out." Only rain keeps them indoors. In the coldest weather, with
+a temperature of many degrees below zero, you have great difficulty in
+finding a closed carriage. All, or nearly all, are open sleighs. The
+driver wraps you up in furs, and as you go, gliding on the snow, your
+face is whipped by the cold air, you feel glowing all over with warmth,
+and altogether the sensation is delightful.
+
+This morning, Joseph Howarth, the talented American actor, breakfasted
+with me and a few friends. Last night, I went to see him play in Steele
+Mackaye's "Paul Kauvar." Canada has no actors worth mentioning, and the
+people here depend on American artists for all their entertainments. It
+is wonderful how the feeling of independence engenders and develops the
+activity of the mind in a country. Art and literature want a home of
+their own, and do not flourish in other people's houses. Canada has
+produced nothing in literature: the only two poets she can boast are
+French, Louis Fr�chette and Octave Cr�mazie. It is not because Canada
+has no time for brain productions. America is just as busy as she is,
+felling forests and reclaiming the land; but free America, only a
+hundred years old as a nation, possesses already a list of historians,
+novelists, poets, and essayists, that would do honor to any nation in
+the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _February 4._
+
+I had capital houses in the Queen's Hall last night and to-night.
+
+The Canadian audiences are more demonstrative than the American ones,
+and certainly quite as keen and appreciative. When you arrive on the
+platform they are glad to see you, and they let you know it; a fact
+which in America, in New England especially, you have to find out for
+yourself.
+
+Montreal possesses a very wealthy and fashionable community, and what
+strikes me most, coming as I do from the United States, is the stylish
+simplicity of the women. I am told that Canadian women in their tastes
+and ways have always been far more English than American, and that the
+fashions have grown more and more simple since Princess Louise gave the
+example of always dressing quietly when occupying Rideau Hall in Ottawa.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Ottawa, February 5._
+
+One of the finest sights I have yet seen in this country was from the
+bridge on my way from the station to the Russell this morning. On the
+right the waterfalls, on the left, on the top of a high and almost
+perpendicular rock, the Houses of Parliament, a grand pile of buildings
+in gray stone, standing out clear against a cloudless, intense blue sky.
+The Russell is one of those huge babylonian hotels so common on the
+American continent, where unfortunately the cookery is not on a level
+with the architectural pretensions; but most of the leading Canadian
+politicians are boarding here while Parliament is sitting, and I am
+interested to see them.
+
+After visiting the beautiful library and other parts of the government
+buildings, I had the good luck to hear, in the House of Representatives,
+a debate between Mr. Chapleau, a minister and one of the leaders of the
+Conservatives now in office, and Mr. Laurier, one of the chiefs of the
+Opposition. Both gentlemen are French. It was a fight between a tribune
+and a scholar; between a short, thickset, long-maned lion, and a tall,
+slender, delicate fox.
+
+[Illustration: "THE RADIANT, LOVELY CANADIENNE."]
+
+After lunch, I went to Rideau Hall, the residence of the
+Governor-General, Lord Stanley of Preston. The executive mansion stands
+in a pretty park well wooded with firs, a mile out of the town. His
+Excellency was out, but his aid-de-camp, to whom I had a letter of
+introduction, most kindly showed me over the place. Nothing can be more
+simple and unpretentious than the interior of Rideau Hall. It is
+furnished like any comfortable little provincial hotel patronized by the
+gentry of the neighborhood. The panels of the drawing-room were painted
+by Princess Louise, when she occupied the house with the Marquis of
+Lorne some eight or ten years ago. This is the only touch of luxury
+about the place. In the time of Lord Dufferin, a ball-room and a tennis
+court were added to the building, and these are among the many souvenirs
+of his popular rule. As a diplomatist, as a viceroy, and as an
+ambassador, history will one day record that this noble son of Erin
+never made a mistake.
+
+In the evening, I lectured in the Opera House to a large audience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Kingston, February 6._
+
+This morning, at the Russell, I was called at the telephone. It was His
+Excellency, who was asking me to lunch at Rideau Hall. I felt sorry to
+be obliged to leave Ottawa, and thus forego so tempting an invitation.
+
+Kingston is a pretty little town on the border of Lake Ontario,
+possessing a university, a penitentiary, and a lunatic asylum, in
+neither of which I made my appearance to-night. But as soon as I had
+started speaking on the platform of the Town Hall, I began to think the
+doors of the lunatic asylum had been carelessly left open that night,
+for close under the window behind the platform, there began a noise
+which was like Bedlam let loose. Bedlam with trumpets and other
+instruments of torture. It was impossible to go on with the lecture, so
+I stopped. On inquiry, the unearthly din was found to proceed from a
+detachment of the Salvation Army outside the building. After some
+parleying, they consented to move on and storm some other citadel.
+
+But it was a stormy evening, and peace was not yet.
+
+[Illustration: A SALVATIONIST.]
+
+As soon as I had fairly restarted, a person in the audience began to
+show signs of disapproval, and twice or thrice he gave vent to his
+disapproval rather loudly.
+
+I was not surprised to learn, at the close of the evening, that this
+individual had come in with a free pass. He had been admitted on the
+strength of his being announced to give a "show" of some sort himself a
+week later in the hall.
+
+If a man is inattentive or creates a disturbance at any performance, you
+may take it for granted that his ticket was given to him. He never paid
+for it.
+
+To-morrow I go to Toronto, where I am to give two lectures. I had not
+time to see that city properly on my last visit to Canada, and all my
+friends prophesy that I shall have a good time.
+
+So does the advance booking, I understand.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+  TORONTO--THE CITY--THE LADIES--THE SPORTS--STRANGE CONTRASTS--THE
+  CANADIAN SCHOOLS.
+
+
+     _Toronto, February 9._
+
+Have passed three very pleasant days in this city, and had two beautiful
+audiences in the Pavilion.
+
+Toronto is a thoroughly American city in appearance, but only in
+appearance, for I find the inhabitants British in heart, in tastes, and
+habits. When I say that it is an American city, I mean to say that
+Toronto is a large area, covered with blocks of parallelograms and dirty
+streets, overspread with tangles of telegraph and telephone wires. The
+hotels are perfectly American in every respect.
+
+The suburbs are exceedingly pretty. Here once more are fine villas
+standing in large gardens, a sight rarely seen near an American city. It
+reminds me of England. I admire many buildings, the University[2]
+especially.
+
+English-looking, too, are the rosy faces of the Toronto ladies whom I
+passed in my drive. How charming they are with the peach-like bloom that
+their outdoor exercise gives them!
+
+I should like to be able to describe, as it deserves, the sight of
+these Canadian women in their sleighs, as the horses fly along with
+bells merrily jingling, the coachman in his curly black dogskin and huge
+busby on his head. Furs float over the back of the sleigh, and, in it,
+muffled up to the chin in sumptuous skins and also capped in furs, sits
+the radiant, lovely Canadienne, the milk and roses of her complexion
+enhanced by the proximity of the dark furs. As they skim past over the
+white snow, under a glorious sunlit blue sky, I can call to mind no
+prettier sight, no more beautiful picture, to be seen on this huge
+continent, so far as I have got yet.
+
+One cannot help being struck, on coming here from the United States, at
+the number of lady pedestrians in the streets. They are not merely
+shopping, I am assured, nor going straight from one point to another of
+the town, but taking their constitutional walks in true English fashion.
+My impresario took me in the afternoon to a club for ladies and
+gentlemen, and there I had the, to me, novel sight of a game of hockey.
+On a large frozen pond there was a party of young people engaged in this
+graceful and invigorating game, and not far off was a group of little
+girls and boys imitating their elders very sensibly and, as it seemed to
+me, successfully. The clear, healthy complexion of the Canadian women is
+easy to account for, when one sees how deep-rooted, even after
+transplantation, is the good British love of exercise in the open air.
+
+Last evening I was taken to a ball, and was able to see more of the
+Canadian ladies than is possible in furs, and on further acquaintance I
+found them as delightful in manners as in appearance; English in their
+coloring and in their simplicity of dress, American in their natural
+bearing and in their frankness of speech.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: A HOCKEY PLAYER.]
+
+Churches, churches, everywhere. In my drive this afternoon, I counted
+twenty-eight in a quarter of an hour. They are of all denominations,
+Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, etc., etc. The
+Canadians must be still more religious--I mean still more
+church-going--than the English.
+
+From seven in the evening on Saturday, all the taverns are closed, and
+remain closed throughout Sunday. In England the Bible has to compete
+with the gin bottle, but here the Bible has all its own way on Sundays.
+Neither tram-car, omnibus, cab, nor hired carriage of any description is
+to be seen abroad. Scotland itself is outdone completely; the land of
+John Knox has to take a back seat.
+
+The walls of this city of churches and chapels are at the present moment
+covered with huge coarse posters announcing in loud colors the arrival
+of a company of performing women. Of these posters, one represents
+Cleopatra in a bark drawn through the water by nude female slaves.
+Another shows a cavalcade of women dressed in little more than a
+fig-leaf. Yet another represents the booking-office of the theater
+stormed by a crowd of _blas�_-looking, single eye-glassed old _beaux_,
+grinning with pleasure in anticipation of the show within. Another
+poster displays the charms of the proprietress of the undertaking. You
+must not, however, imagine any harm of the performers whose attractions
+are so liberally placarded. They are taken to their cars in the depot
+immediately after the performance and locked up; there is an
+announcement to that effect. These placards are merely eye-ticklers. But
+this mixture of churches, strict sabbatarianism, and posters of this
+kind, is part of the eternal history of the Anglo-Saxon race--violent
+contrast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aschool inspector has kindly shown me several schools in the town.
+
+The children of rich and poor alike are educated together in the public
+schools, from which they get promoted to the high schools. All these
+schools are free. Boys and girls sit on the same benches and receive the
+same education, as in the United States. This enables the women in the
+New World to compete with men for all the posts that we Europeans
+consider the monopoly of man; it also enables them to enjoy all the
+intellectual pleasures of life. If it does not prevent them, as it has
+yet to be proved that it does, from being good wives and mothers, the
+educational system of the New World is much superior to the European
+one. It is essentially democratic. Europe will have to adopt it.
+
+Society in the Old World will not stand long on its present basis. There
+will always be rich and poor, but every child that is born will require
+to be given a chance, and, according as he avails himself of it or not,
+will be successful or a failure. But give him a chance, and the greatest
+and most real grievance of mankind in the present day will be removed.
+
+Every child that is born in America, whether in the United States or in
+Canada, has that chance.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+  [2] Destroyed by fire three days after I left Toronto.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+  WEST CANADA--RELATIONS BETWEEN BRITISH AND INDIANS--RETURN TO THE
+  UNITED STATES--DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY--ENCOUNTER WITH AN AMERICAN
+  CUSTOM-HOUSE OFFICER.
+
+
+     _In the train from Canada to Chicago, February 15._
+
+Lectured in Bowmanville, Ont., on the 12th, in Brantford on the 13th,
+and in Sarnia on the 14th, and am now on my way to Chicago, to go from
+there to Wisconsin and Minnesota.
+
+From Brantford I drove to the Indian Reservation, a few miles from the
+town. This visit explained to me why the English are so successful with
+their colonies: they have inborn in them the instinct of diplomacy and
+government.
+
+Whereas the Americans often swindle, starve, and shoot the Indians, the
+English keep them in comfort. England makes paupers and lazy drunkards
+of them, and they quietly and gradually disappear. She supplies them
+with bread, food, Bibles, and fire-water, and they become so lazy that
+they will not even take the trouble to sow the land of their
+reservations. Having a dinner supplied to them, they give up hunting,
+riding, and all their native sports, and become enervated. They go to
+school and die of attacks of civilization. England gives them money to
+celebrate their national f�tes and rejoicings, and the good Indians
+shout at the top of their voices, _God save the Queen!_ that is--_God
+save our pensions!_
+
+[Illustration: THE BRITISH INDIAN.]
+
+England, or Great Britain, or again, if you prefer, Greater Britain,
+goes further than that. In Brantford, in the middle of a large square,
+you can see the statue of the Indian chief Brant, erected to his memory
+by public subscriptions collected among the British Canadians.
+
+Here lies the secret of John Bull's success as a colonizer. To erect a
+statue to an Indian chief is a stroke of genius.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What has struck me as most American in Canada is, perhaps, journalism.
+
+Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec possess excellent newspapers, and
+every little town can boast one or two journals.
+
+The tone of these papers is thoroughly American in its liveliness--I had
+almost said, in its loudness. All are readable and most cleverly edited.
+Each paragraph is preceded by a neat and attractive heading. As in the
+American papers, the editorials, or leading articles, are of secondary
+importance. The main portion of the publication is devoted to news,
+interviews, stories, gossip, jokes, anecdotes, etc.
+
+The Montreal papers are read by everybody in the Province of Quebec, and
+the Toronto papers in the Province of Ontario, so that the newspapers
+published in small towns are content with giving all the news of the
+locality. Each of these has a "society" column. Nothing is more amusing
+than to read of the society doings in these little towns. "Miss Brown is
+visiting Miss Smith." "Miss Smith had tea with Miss Robinson yesterday."
+When Miss Brown, or Miss Smith, or Miss Robinson has given a party, the
+names of all the guests are inserted as well as what they had for
+dinner, or for supper, as the case may be. So I take it for granted that
+when anybody gives a party, a ball, a dinner, a reporter receives an
+invitation to describe the party in the next issue of the paper.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At nine o'clock this evening, I left Sarnia, on the frontier of Canada,
+to cross the river and pass into the United States. The train left the
+town, and, on arriving on the bank of the River St. Clair, was divided
+into two sections which were run on board the ferry-boat and made the
+crossing side by side. The passage across the river occupied about
+twenty minutes. On arriving at the other bank, at Port Huron, in the
+State of Michigan, the train left the boat in the same fashion as it had
+gone on board, the two parts were coupled together, and the journey on
+_terra firma_ was smoothly resumed.
+
+There is something fascinating about crossing a river at night, and I
+had promised myself some agreeable moments on board the ferry-boat, from
+which I should be able to see Port Huron lit up with twinkling lights. I
+was also curious to watch the train boarding the boat. But, alas, I had
+reckoned without my host. Instead of star-gazing and _r�verie_, there
+was in store for me a "bad quarter of an hour."
+
+No sooner had the train boarded the ferry-boat than there came to the
+door of the parlor car a surly-looking, ill-mannered creature, who
+roughly bade me come to the baggage van, in the other section of the
+train, and open my trunks for him to inspect.
+
+As soon as I had complied, he went down on his knees among my baggage,
+and it was plain to see that he meant business.
+
+The first thing he took out was a suit of clothes, which he threw on the
+dirty floor of the van.
+
+"Have these been worn?" he said.
+
+"They have," I replied.
+
+Then he took out a blue jacket which I used to cross the Atlantic.
+
+[Illustration: "HAVE YOU WORN THIS?"]
+
+"Have you worn this?"
+
+"Yes, for the last two years."
+
+"Is that all?" he said, with a low sardonic grin.
+
+My trunk was the only one he had to examine, as I was the only passenger
+in the parlor car; and I saw that he meant to annoy me, which, I
+imagined, he could do with perfect impunity.
+
+The best thing, in fact, the only thing to do was to take the
+misadventure good-humoredly.
+
+He took out my linen and examined it in detail.
+
+"Have these shirts all been worn?"
+
+"Well, I guess they have. But how is it that you, an official of the
+government, seem to ignore the law of your own country? Don't you know
+that if all these articles are for my own private use, they are not
+dutiable, whether new or not?"
+
+The man did not answer.
+
+He took out more linen, which he put on the floor, and spreading open a
+pair of unmentionables, he asked again:
+
+"Have you worn this? It looks quite new."
+
+I nodded affirmatively.
+
+He then took out a pair of socks.
+
+"Have you worn these?"
+
+"I don't know," I said. "Have a sniff at them."
+
+He continued his examination, and was about to throw my evening suit on
+the floor. I had up to now been _almost_ amused at the proceedings, but
+I felt my good-humor was going, and the lion began to wag its tail. I
+took the man by the arm, and looking at him sternly, I said:
+
+"Now, you put this carefully on the top of some other clothes."
+
+He looked at me and complied.
+
+By this time all the contents of my large trunk were spread on the
+floor.
+
+He got up on his feet and said:
+
+"Have I looked everywhere?"
+
+"No," I said, "you haven't. Do you know how the famous Regent diamond,
+worn by the last kings of France on their crowns, was smuggled into
+French territory?"
+
+[Illustration: THE CONTENTS.]
+
+The creature looked at me with an air of impudence.
+
+"No, I don't," he replied.
+
+I explained to him, and added:
+
+"You have not looked _there_."
+
+The lion, that lies dormant at the bottom of the quietest man, was
+fairly roused in me, and on the least provocation, I would have given
+this man a first-class hiding.
+
+He went away, wondering whether I had insulted him or not, and left me
+in the van to repack my trunk as best I could, an operation which, I
+understand, it was his duty to perform himself.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+  CHICAGO (FIRST VISIT)--THE "NEIGHBORHOOD" OF CHICAGO--THE HISTORY OF
+  CHICAGO--PUBLIC SERVANTS--A VERY DEAF MAN.
+
+
+     _Chicago, February 17._
+
+Oh! a lecturing tour in America!
+
+I am here on my way to St. Paul and Minneapolis.
+
+Just before leaving New York, I saw in a comic paper that Bismarck must
+really now be considered as a great man, because, since his departure
+from office, there had been no rumor of his having applied to Major Pond
+to get up a lecturing tour for him in the United States.
+
+It was not news to me that there are plenty of people in America who
+laugh at the European author's trick of going to the American platform
+as soon as he has made a little name for himself in his own country. The
+laugh finds an echo in England, especially from some journalists who
+have never been asked to go, and from a few men who, having done one
+tour, think it wise not to repeat the experience. For my part, when I
+consider that Emerson, Holmes, Mark Twain, have been lecturers, that
+Dickens, Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Sala, Stanley, Archdeacon Farrar,
+and many more, all have made their bow to American audiences, I fail to
+discover anything very derogatory in the proceeding.
+
+[Illustration: A PIG SQUEALING.]
+
+Besides, I feel bound to say that there is nothing in a lecturing tour
+in America, even in a highly successful one, that can excite the envy of
+the most jealous "failure" in the world. Such work is about the hardest
+that a man, used to the comforts of this life, can undertake. Actors, at
+all events, stop a week, sometimes a fortnight, in the cities they
+visit; but a lecturer is on the road every day, happy when he has not to
+start at night.
+
+No words can picture the monotony of journeys through an immense
+continent, the sameness of which strikes you as almost unbearable.
+Everything is made on one pattern. All the towns are alike. To be in a
+railroad car for ten or twelve hours day after day can hardly be called
+luxury, or even comfort. To have one's poor brain matter thus shaken in
+the cranium is terrible, especially when the cranium is not quite full.
+Constant traveling softens the brain, liquefies it, churns it,
+evaporates it, and it runs out of you through all the cracks of your
+head. I own that traveling is comfortable in America, even luxurious;
+but the best fare becomes monotonous and unpalatable when the dose is
+repeated every day.
+
+To-morrow night I lecture in Minneapolis. The next night I am in
+Detroit. Distance about seven hundred miles.
+
+"Can I manage it?" said I to my impresario, when he showed me my route.
+
+"Why, certn'ly," he replied; "if you catch a train after your lecture, I
+guess you will arrive in time for your lecture in Detroit the next day."
+
+These remarks, in America, are made without a smile.
+
+On arriving at Chicago this morning, I found awaiting me at the Grand
+Pacific Hotel, a letter from my impresario. Here is the purport of it:
+
+  I know you have with you a trunk and a small portmanteau. I would
+  advise you to leave your trunk at the Grand Pacific, and to take with
+  you only the portmanteau, while you are in the neighborhood of
+  Chicago. You will thus save trouble, expense, etc.
+
+On looking at my route, I found that the "neighborhood of Chicago"
+included St. Paul, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland,
+Cincinnati, Indianapolis: something like a little two-thousand-mile tour
+"in the neighborhood of Chicago," to be done in about one week.
+
+When I confided my troubles to my American friends, I got little
+sympathy from them.
+
+"That's quite right," they would say; "we call the neighborhood of a
+city any place which, by starting after dinner, you can reach at about
+breakfast time the next day. You dine, you go on board the car, you
+have a smoke, you go to bed, you sleep, you wake up, you dress--and
+there you are. Do you see?"
+
+After all you may be of this opinion, if you do not reckon sleeping
+time. But I do reckon it, when I have to spend the night in a closed
+box, six feet long, and three feet wide, and about two feet high, and
+especially when the operation has to be repeated three or four times a
+week.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And the long weary days that are not spent in traveling, how can they be
+passed, even tolerably, in an American city, where the lonely lecturer
+knows nobody, and where there is absolutely nothing to be seen beyond
+the hotels and the dry-goods stores? Worse still: he sometimes has the
+good luck to make the acquaintance of some charming people: but he has
+hardly had time to fix their features in his memory, when he has to go,
+probably never to see them again.
+
+The lecturer speaks for an hour and a half on the platform every
+evening, the rest of his time is exclusively devoted to keeping silence.
+Poor fellow! how grateful he is to the hotel clerk who sometimes--alas,
+very seldom--will chat with him for a few minutes. As a rule the hotel
+clerk is a mute, who assigns a room to you, or hands you the letters
+waiting for you in the box corresponding to your number. His mouth is
+closed. He may have seen you for half a minute only; he will remember
+you. Even in a hotel accommodating over a thousand guests, he will know
+you, he will know the number of your room, but he won't speak. He is not
+the only American that won't speak. Every man in America who is
+attending to some duty of other, has his mouth closed. I have tried the
+railroad conductor, and found him mute. I have had a shot at the porter
+in the Pullman car, and found him mute. I have endeavored to draw out
+the janitors of the halls where I was to speak in the evening, and I
+have failed. Even the negroes won't speak. You would imagine that
+speaking was prohibited by the statute-book. When my lecture was over, I
+returned to the hotel, and like a culprit crept to bed.
+
+[Illustration: THE SLEEPING CAR.]
+
+[Illustration: THE JANITOR.]
+
+How I do love New York! It is not that it possesses a single building
+that I really care for; it is because it contains scores and scores of
+delightful people, brilliant, affable, hospitable, warm-hearted friends,
+who were kind enough to welcome me when I returned from a tour, and in
+whose company I could break up the cobwebs that had had time to form in
+the corners of my mouth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The history of Chicago can be written in a few lines. So can the history
+of the whole of America.
+
+In about 1830 a man called Benjamin Harris, with his family, moved to
+Chicago, or Fort Dearborn, as it was then called. Not more than half a
+dozen whites, all of whom were Indian traders, had preceded them. In
+1832 they had a child, the first white female born in Chicago--now
+married, called Mrs. S. A. Holmes, and the mother of fourteen children.
+In 1871 Chicago had over 100,000 inhabitants, and was burned to the
+ground. To-day Chicago has over 1,200,000 inhabitants, and in ten years'
+time will have two millions.
+
+The activity in Chicago is perfectly amazing. And I don't mean
+commercial activity only. Compare the following statistics: In the great
+reading rooms of the British Museum, there was an average of 620 readers
+daily during the year 1888. In the reading-room of the Chicago Public
+Library, there was an average of 1569 each day in the same year.
+Considering that the population of London is nearly five times that of
+Chicago, it shows that the reading public is ten times more numerous in
+Chicago than in London.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is a never failing source of amusement to watch the ways of public
+servants in this country.
+
+I went to pay a visit to a public museum this afternoon.
+
+In Europe, the keepers, that is to say, the servants of the public, have
+cautions posted in the museums, in which "the public are requested not
+to touch." In France, they are "begged," which is perhaps a more
+suitable expression, as the museums, after all, belong to the public.
+
+In America, the notice is "Hands off!" This is short and to the point.
+The servants of the public allow you to enter the museums, charge you
+twenty-five cents, and warn you to behave well. "Hands off" struck me as
+rather off-handed.
+
+[Illustration: THE "BRUSH-UP."]
+
+I really admire the independence of all the servants in this country.
+You may give them a tip, you will not run the risk of making them
+servile or even polite.
+
+The railway conductor says "ticket!" The word _please_ does not belong
+to his vocabulary any more than the words "thank you." He says "ticket"
+and frowns. You show it to him. He looks at it suspiciously, and gives
+it back to you with a haughty air that seems to say: "I hope you will
+behave properly while you are in my car."
+
+The tip in America is not _de rigueur_ as in Europe. The cabman charges
+you so much, and expects nothing more. He would lose his dignity by
+accepting a tip (many run the risk). He will often ask you for more than
+you owe him; but this is the act of a sharp man of business, not the act
+of a servant. In doing so, he does not derogate from his character.
+
+The negro is the only servant who smiles in America, the only one who is
+sometimes polite and attentive, and the only one who speaks English with
+a pleasant accent.
+
+The negro porter in the sleeping cars has seldom failed to thank me for
+the twenty-five or fifty cent piece I always give him after he has
+brushed--or rather, swept--my clothes with his little broom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few minutes ago, as I was packing my valise for a journey to St. Paul
+and Minneapolis to-night, the porter brought in a card. The name was
+unknown to me; but the porter having said that it was the card of a
+gentleman who was most anxious to speak to me, I said, "Very well, bring
+him here."
+
+The gentleman entered the room, saluted me, shook hands, and said:
+
+"I hope I am not intruding."
+
+"Well," said I, "I must ask you not to detain me long, because I am off
+in a few minutes."
+
+"I understand, sir, that some time ago you were engaged in teaching the
+French language in one of the great public schools of England."
+
+"I was, sir," I replied.
+
+"Well, I have a son whom I wish to speak French properly, and I have
+come to ask for your views on the subject. In other words, will you be
+good enough to tell me what are the best methods for teaching this
+language? Only excuse me, I am very deaf."
+
+[Illustration: LEFT.]
+
+He pulled out of his back pocket two yards of gutta-percha tube, and,
+applying one end to his ear and placing the other against my mouth, he
+said, "Go ahead."
+
+"Really?" I shouted through the tube. "Now please shut your eyes;
+nothing is better for increasing the power of hearing."
+
+The man shut his eyes and turned his head sideways, so as to have the
+listening ear in front of me. I took my valise and ran to the elevator
+as fast as I could.
+
+That man may still be waiting for aught I know and care.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before leaving the hotel, I made the acquaintance of Mr. George Kennan,
+the Russian traveler. His articles on Russia and Siberia, published in
+the _Century Magazine_, attracted a great deal of public attention, and
+people everywhere throng to hear him relate his terrible experiences on
+the platform. He has two hundred lectures to give this season. He struck
+me as a most remarkable man--simple, unaffected in his manner, with
+unflinching resolution written on his face; a man in earnest, you can
+see. I am delighted to find that I shall have the pleasure of meeting
+him again in New York in the middle of April. He looks tired. He, too,
+is lecturing in the "neighborhood of Chicago," and is off now to the
+night train for Cincinnati.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+  ST. PAUL AND MINNEAPOLIS, THE SISTER CITIES--RIVALRIES AND JEALOUSIES
+  BETWEEN LARGE AMERICAN CITIES--MINNEHAHA FALLS--WONDERFUL
+  INTERVIEWERS--MY HAT GETS INTO TROUBLE AGAIN--ELECTRICITY IN THE
+  AIR--FOREST ADVERTISEMENTS--RAILWAY SPEED IN AMERICA.
+
+
+     _St. Paul, Minn., February 20._
+
+Arrived at St. Paul the day before yesterday to pay a professional visit
+to the two great sister cities of the north of America.
+
+Sister cities! Yes, they are near enough to shake hands and kiss each
+other, but I am afraid they avail themselves of their proximity to
+scratch each other's faces.
+
+If you open Bouillet's famous Dictionary of History and Geography
+(edition 1880), you will find in it neither St. Paul nor Minneapolis. I
+was told yesterday that in 1834 there was one white inhabitant in
+Minneapolis. To-day the two cities have about 200,000 inhabitants each.
+Where is the dictionary of geography that can keep pace with such
+wonderful phantasmagoric growth? The two cities are separated by a
+distance of about nine miles, but they are every day growing up toward
+each other, and to-morrow they will practically have become one.
+
+Nothing is more amusing than the jealousies which exist between the
+different large cities of the United States, and when these rival places
+are close to each other, the feeling of jealousy is so intensified as to
+become highly entertaining.
+
+St. Paul charges Minneapolis with copying into the census names from
+tombstones, and it is affirmed that young men living in either one of
+the cities will marry girls belonging to the other so as to decrease its
+population by one. The story goes that once a preacher having announced,
+in a Minneapolis church, that he had taken the text of his sermon from
+St. Paul, the congregation walked out _en masse_.
+
+New York despises Philadelphia, and pokes fun at Boston. On the other
+hand, Boston hates Chicago, and _vice versa_. St. Louis has only
+contempt for Chicago, and both cities laugh heartily at Detroit and
+Milwaukee. San Francisco and Denver are left alone in their prosperity.
+They are so far away from the east and north of America, that the
+feeling they inspire is only one of indifference.
+
+"Philadelphia is a city of homes, not of lodging-houses," once said a
+Philadelphian to a New Yorker; "and it spreads over a far greater area
+than New York, with less than half the inhabitants." "Ah," replied the
+New Yorker, "that's because it has been so much sat upon."
+
+"You are a city of commerce," said a Bostonian to a New York wit;
+"Boston is a city of culture." "Yes," replied the New Yorker. "You
+spell culture with a big C, and God with a small g."
+
+Of course St. Paul and Minneapolis accuse each other of counting their
+respective citizens twice over. All that is diverting in the highest
+degree. This feeling does not exist only between the rival cities of the
+New World, it exists in the Old. Ask a Glasgow man what he thinks of
+Edinburgh, and an Edinburgh man what he thinks of Glasgow!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On account of the intense cold (nearly thirty degrees below zero), I
+have not been able to see much either of St. Paul or of Minneapolis, and
+I am unable to please or vex either of these cities by pointing out
+their beauties and defects. Both are large and substantially built, with
+large churches, schools, banks, stores, and all the temples that modern
+Christians erect to Jehovah and Mammon. I may say that the Ryan Hotel at
+St. Paul and the West House at Minneapolis are among the very best
+hotels I have come across in America, the latter especially. When I have
+added that, the day before yesterday, I had an immense audience in the
+People's Church at St. Paul, and that to-night I have had a crowded
+house at the Grand Opera House in Minneapolis, it is hardly necessary
+for me to say that I shall have enjoyed myself in the two great towns,
+and that I shall carry away with me a delightful recollection of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon after arriving in Minneapolis yesterday, I went to see the
+Minnehaha Falls, immortalized by Longfellow. The motor line gave me an
+idea of rapid transit. I returned to the West House for lunch and spent
+the afternoon writing. Many interviewers called.
+
+[Illustration: "WHAT YEARLY INCOME DOES YOUR BOOKS AND LECTURES BRING
+IN?"]
+
+The first who came sat down in my room and point-blank asked me my views
+on contagious diseases. Seeing that I was not disposed to talk on the
+subject, he asked me to discourse on republics and the prospects of
+General Boulanger. In fact, anything for copy.
+
+The second one, after asking me where I came from and where I was going,
+inquired whether I had exhausted the Anglo-Saxons and whether I should
+write on other nations. After I had satisfied him, he asked me what
+yearly income my books and lectures brought in.
+
+Another wanted to know why I had not brought my wife with me, how many
+children I had, how old they were, and other details as wonderfully
+interesting to the public. By and by I saw he was jotting down a
+description of my appearance, and the different clothes I had on! "I
+will unpack this trunk," I said, "and spread all its contents on the
+floor. Perhaps you would be glad to have a look at my things." He
+smiled: "Don't trouble any more," he said; "I am very much obliged to
+you for your courtesy."
+
+This morning, on opening the papers, I see that my hat is getting into
+trouble again. I thought that, after getting rid of my brown hat and
+sending it to the editor in the town where it had created such a
+sensation, peace was secured. Not a bit. In the Minneapolis _Journal_ I
+read the following:
+
+  The attractive personality of the man [allow me to record this for the
+  sake of what follows], heightened by his n�glig� sack coat and vest,
+  with a background of yellowish plaid trowsers, occasional glimpses of
+  which were revealed from beneath the folds of a heavy ulster, which
+  swept the floor [I was sitting of course] and was trimmed with fur
+  collar and cuffs. And then that hat! On the table, carelessly thrown
+  amid a pile of correspondence, was his nondescript headgear. One of
+  those half-sombreros affected by the wild Western cowboy when on dress
+  parade, an impossible combination of dark-blue and bottle-green.
+
+Fancy treating in this off-handed way a $7.50 soft black felt hat bought
+of the best hatter in New York! No, nothing is sacred for those
+interviewers. Dark-blue and bottle-green! Why, did that man imagine that
+I wore my hat inside out so as to show the silk lining?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The air here is perfectly wonderful, dry and full of electricity. If
+your fingers come into contact with anything metallic, like the
+hot-water pipes, the chandeliers, the stopper of your washing basin,
+they draw a spark, sharp and vivid. One of the reporters who called
+here, and to whom I mentioned the fact, was able to light my gas with
+his finger, by merely obtaining an electric spark on the top of the
+burner. When he said he could thus light the gas, I thought he was
+joking.
+
+I had observed this phenomenon before. In Ottawa, for instance.
+
+Whether this air makes you live too quickly, I do not know; but it is
+most bracing and healthy. I have never felt so well and hearty in my
+life as in these cold, dry climates.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was all the more flattered to have such a large and fashionable
+audience at the Grand Opera House to-night, that my _causerie_ was not
+given under the auspices of any society, or as one of any course of
+lectures.
+
+I lecture in Detroit the day after to-morrow. I shall have to leave
+Minneapolis to-morrow morning at six o'clock for Chicago, which I shall
+reach at ten in the evening. Then I shall have to run to the Michigan
+Central Station to catch the night train to Detroit at eleven.
+Altogether, twenty-three hours of railway traveling--745 miles.
+
+And still in "the neighborhood of Chicago!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: AN ADVERTISEMENT.]
+
+     _In the train to Chicago, February 21._
+
+Have just passed a wonderful advertisement. Here, in the midst of a
+forest, I have seen a huge wide board nailed on two trees, parallel to
+the railway line. On it was written, round a daub supposed to represent
+one of the loveliest English ladies: "If you would be as lovely as the
+beautiful Lady de Gray, use Gray perfumes."
+
+_Soyez donc belle_, to be used as an advertisement in the forests of
+Minnesota!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "I RETURNED THANKS."]
+
+My lectures have never been criticised in more kind, flattering, and
+eulogistic terms than in the St. Paul and the Minneapolis papers, which
+I am reading on my way to Chicago. I find newspaper reading a great
+source of amusement in the trains. First of all because these papers
+always are light reading, and also because reading is a possibility in a
+well lighted carriage going only at a moderate speed. Eating is
+comfortable, and even writing is possible _en route_. With the exception
+of a few trains, such as are run from New York to Boston, Chicago, and
+half a dozen other important cities, railway traveling is slower in
+America than in England and France; but I have never found fault with
+the speed of an American train. On the contrary, I have always felt
+grateful to the driver for running slowly. And every time that the car
+reached the other side of some of the many rotten wooden bridges on
+which the train had to pass, I returned thanks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+  DETROIT--THE TOWN--THE DETROIT "FREE PRESS"--A LADY INTERVIEWER--THE
+  "UNCO GUID" IN DETROIT--REFLECTIONS ON THE ANGLO-SAXON "UNCO GUID."
+
+
+     _Detroit, February 22._
+
+Am delighted with Detroit. It possesses beautiful streets, avenues, and
+walks, and a fine square in the middle of which stands a remarkably fine
+monument. I am also grateful to this city for breaking the monotony of
+the eternal parallelograms with which the whole of the United States are
+built. My national vanity almost suggests to me that this town owes its
+gracefulness to its French origin. There are still, I am told, about
+25,000 French people settled in Detroit.
+
+I have had to-night, in the Church of Our Father, a crowded and most
+brilliant audience, whose keenness, intelligence, and kindness were very
+flattering.
+
+I was interviewed, both by a lady and a gentleman, for the Detroit _Free
+Press_, that most witty of American newspapers. The charming young lady
+interviewer came to talk on social topics, I remarked that she was armed
+with a copy of "Jonathan and his Continent," and I came to the
+conclusion that she would probably ask for a few explanations about that
+book. I was not mistaken. She took exception, she informed me, to many
+statements concerning the American girl in the book. I made a point to
+prove to her that all was right, and all was truth, and I think I
+persuaded her to abandon the prosecution.
+
+[Illustration: THE LADY INTERVIEWER.]
+
+To tell the truth, now the real truth, mind you, I am rather tired of
+hearing about the American girl. The more I see of her the more I am
+getting convinced that she is--like the other girls in the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A friend, who came to have a chat with me after this lecture, has told
+me that the influential people of the city are signing a petition to the
+custodians of the museum calling upon them to drape all the nude
+statues, and intimating their intention of boycotting the institution,
+if the Venuses and Apollos are not forthwith provided with tuckers and
+togas.
+
+It is a well-known fact in the history of the world, that young
+communities have no taste for fine art--they have no time to cultivate
+it. If I had gone to Oklahoma, I should not have expected to find any
+art feeling at all; but that in a city like Detroit, where there is such
+evidence of intellectual life and high culture among the inhabitants, a
+party should be found numerous and strong enough to issue such a heathen
+dictate as this seems scarcely credible. I am inclined to think it must
+be a joke. That the "unco guid" should flourish under the gloomy sky of
+Great Britain I understand, but under the bright blue sky of America, in
+that bracing atmosphere, I cannot.
+
+It is most curious that there should be people who, when confronted
+with some glorious masterpiece of sculpture, should not see the poetry,
+the beauty of the human form divine. This is beyond me, and beyond any
+educated Frenchman.
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAPED STATUES.]
+
+Does the "unco guid" exist in America, then? I should have thought that
+these people, of the earth earthy, were not found out of England and
+Scotland.
+
+When I was in America two years ago, I heard that an English author of
+some repute, talking one day with Mr. Richard Watson Gilder about the
+Venus of Milo, had remarked that, as he looked at her beautiful form, he
+longed to put his arms around her and kiss her. Mr. Gilder, who, as a
+poet, as an artist, has felt only respect mingled with his admiration of
+the matchless divinity, replied: "I hope she would have grown a pair of
+arms for the occasion, so as to have slapped your face."
+
+It is not so much the thing that offends the "unco guid"; it is the
+name, the reflection, the idea. Unhealthy-minded himself, he dreads a
+taint where there is none, and imagines in others a corruption which
+exists only in himself.
+
+Yet the One, whom he would fain call Master, but whose teachings he is
+slow in following, said: "Woe be to them by whom offense cometh." But
+the "unco guid" is a Christian failure, a _parvenu_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _parvenu_ is a person who makes strenuous efforts to persuade other
+people that he is entitled to the position he occupies.
+
+There are _parvenus_ in religion, as there are _parvenus_ in the
+aristocracy, in society, in literature, in the fine arts, etc.
+
+The worst type of the French _parvenu_ is the one whose father was a
+worthy, hard-working man called _Dubois_ or _Dumont_, and who, at his
+father's death, dubs himself _du Bois_ or _du Mont_, becomes a
+clericalist and the stanchest monarchist, and runs down the great
+Revolution which made one of his grand-parents a man. M. _du Bois_ or
+_du Mont_ outdoes the genuine nobleman, who needs make no noise to
+attract attention to a name which everybody knows, and which, in spite
+of what may be said on the subject, often recalls the memory of some
+glorious event in the past.
+
+[Illustration: THE PARVENU.]
+
+The worst type of Anglo-Saxon _parvenu_ is probably the "unco guid," or
+religious _parvenu_.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon "unco guid" is seldom to be found among Roman Catholics;
+that is, among the followers of the most ancient Christian religion. He
+is to be found among the followers of the newest forms of
+"Christianity." This is quite natural. He has to try to eclipse his
+fellow-Christians by his piety, in order to show that the new religion
+to which he belongs was a necessary invention.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon "unco guid" is easily recognized. He is dark (all bigots
+and fanatics are). He is dressed in black, shiny broadcloth raiment. A
+wide-brimmed felt hat covers his head. He walks with light, short,
+jaunty steps, his head a little inclined on one side. He never carries a
+stick, which might give a rather fast appearance to his turn-out. He
+invariably carries an umbrella, even in the brightest weather, as being
+more respectable--and this umbrella he never rolls, for he would avoid
+looking in the distance as if he had a stick. He casts right and left
+little grimaces that are so many forced smiles of self-satisfaction.
+"Try to be as good as I am," he seems to say to all who happen to look
+at him, "and you will be as happy." And he "smiles, and smiles, and
+smiles."
+
+He has a small soul, a small heart, and a small brain.
+
+As a rule, he is a well-to-do person. It pays better to have a narrow
+mind than to have broad sympathies.
+
+He drinks tea, but prefers cocoa, as being a more virtuous beverage.
+
+He is perfectly destitute of humor, and is the most inartistic creature
+in the world. Everything suggests to him either profanity or indecency.
+The "Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character," by Dean Ramsay,
+would strike him as profane, and if placed in the Mus�e du Louvre,
+before the Venus of Milo, he would see nothing but a woman who has next
+to no clothes on.
+
+His distorted mind makes him take everything in ill part. His hands get
+pricked on every thorn that he comes across on the road, and he misses
+all the roses.
+
+If I were not a Christian, the following story, which is not as often
+told as it should be, would have converted me long ago:
+
+  Jesus arrived one evening at the gates of a certain city, and he sent
+  his disciples forward to prepare supper, while he himself, intent on
+  doing good, walked through the streets into the marketplace. And he
+  saw at the corner of the market some people gathered together, looking
+  at an object on the ground; and he drew near to see what it might be.
+  It was a dead dog, with a halter round his neck, by which he appeared
+  to have been dragged through the dirt; and a viler, a more abject, a
+  more unclean thing, never met the eyes of man. And those who stood by
+  looked on with abhorrence. "Faugh!" said one, stopping his nose, "it
+  pollutes the air." "How long," said another, "shall this foul beast
+  offend our sight?" "Look at his torn hide," said a third; "one could
+  not even cut a shoe out of it!" "And his ears," said a fourth, "all
+  draggled and bleeding!" "No doubt," said a fifth, "he has been hanged
+  for thieving!" And Jesus heard them, and looking down compassionately
+  on the dead creature, he said: "Pearls are not equal to the whiteness
+  of his teeth!"
+
+If I understand the Gospel, the gist of its teachings is contained in
+the foregoing little story. Love and forgiveness: finding something to
+pity and admire even in a dead dog. Such is the religion of Christ.
+
+The "Christianity" of the "unco guid" is as like this religion as are
+the teachings of the Old Testament.
+
+Something to condemn, the discovery of wickedness in the most innocent,
+and often elevating, recreations, such is the favorite occupation of the
+Anglo-Saxon "unco guid." Music is licentious, laughter wicked, dancing
+immoral, statuary almost criminal, and, by and by, the "Society for the
+Suggestion of Indecency," which is placed under his immediate patronage
+and supervision, will find fault with our going out in the streets, on
+the plea that under our garments we carry our nudity.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon "unco guid" is the successor of the Pharisee. In reading
+Christ's description of the latter, you are immediately struck with the
+likeness. The modern "unco guid" "loves to pray standing in the churches
+and chapels and in the corners of the streets, that he may be seen of
+men." "He uses vain repetitions, for he thinks that he shall be heard
+for his much speaking." "When he fasts, he is of sad countenance; for he
+disfigures his face, that he may appear unto men to fast." There is not
+one feature of the portrait that does not fit in exactly.
+
+The Jewish "unco guid" crucified Christ. The Anglo-Saxon one would
+crucify Him again if He should return to earth and interfere with the
+prosperous business firms that make use of His name.
+
+The "unco guid's" Christianity consists in extolling his virtues and
+ignoring other people's. He spends his time in "pulling motes out of
+people's eyes," but cannot see clearly to do it, "owing to the beams
+that are in his own." He overwhelms you, he crushes you, with his
+virtue, and one of the greatest treats is to catch him tripping, a
+chance which you may occasionally have, especially when you meet him on
+the Continent of Europe.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon "unco guid" calls himself a Christian, but the precepts
+of the Gospel are the very opposite of those he practices. The gentle,
+merciful, forgiving, Man-God of the Gospel has not for him the charms
+and attractions of the Jehovah who commanded the cowardly, ungrateful,
+and bloodthirsty people of his choice to treat their women as slaves,
+and to exterminate their enemies, sparing neither old men, women, nor
+children. This cruel, revengeful, implacable deity is far more to the
+Anglo-Saxon "unco guid's" liking than the Saviour who bade His disciples
+love their enemies and put up their swords in the presence of his
+persecutors. The "unco guid" is not a Christian, he is a Jew in all but
+name. And I will say this much for him, that the Commandments given on
+Mount Sinai are much easier to follow than the Sermon on the Mount. It
+is easier not to commit murder than to hold out your right cheek after
+your left one has been slapped. It is easier not to steal than to run
+after the man who has robbed us, in order to offer him what he has not
+taken. It is easier to honor our parents than to love our enemies.
+
+The teachings of the Gospel are trying to human nature. There is no
+religion more difficult to follow; and this is why, in spite of its
+beautiful, but too lofty, precepts, there is no religion in the world
+that can boast so many hypocrites--so many followers who pretend that
+they follow their religion, but who do not, and very probably cannot.
+
+Being unable to love man, as he is bidden in the Gospel, the "unco guid"
+loves God, as he is bidden in the Old Testament. He loves God in the
+abstract. He tells Him so in endless prayers and litanies.
+
+For him Christianity consists in discussing theological questions,
+whether a minister shall preach with or without a white surplice on, and
+in singing hymns more or less out of tune.
+
+As if God could be loved to the exclusion of man! You love God, after
+all, as you love anybody else, not by professions of love, but by deeds.
+
+When he prays, the "unco guid" buries his face in his hands or in his
+hat. He screws up his face, and the more fervent the prayer is (or the
+more people are looking at him), the more grimaces he makes. Heinrich
+Heine, on coming out of an English church, said that "a blaspheming
+Frenchman must be a more pleasing object in the sight of God than many a
+praying Englishman." He had, no doubt, been looking at the "unco guid."
+
+If you do not hold the same religious views as he does, you are a wicked
+man, an atheist. He alone has the truth. Being engaged in a discussion
+with an "unco guid" one day, I told him that if God had given me hands
+to handle, surely He had given me a little brain to think. "You are
+right," he quickly interrupted; "but, with the hands that God gave you
+you can commit a good action, and you can also commit murder."
+Therefore, because I did not think as he did, I was the criminal, for,
+of course, he was the righteous man. For all those who, like myself,
+believe in a future life, there is, I believe, a great treat in store:
+the sight of the face he will make, when his place is assigned to him in
+the next world. _Qui mourra, verra._
+
+Anglo-Saxon land is governed by the "unco guid." Good society cordially
+despises him; the aristocracy of Anglo-Saxon intelligence--philosophers,
+scientists, men of letters, artists--simply loathe him; but all have to
+bow to his rule, and submit their works to his most incompetent
+criticism, and all are afraid of him.
+
+[Illustration: THE POOR MAN'S SABBATH.]
+
+In a moment of wounded national pride, Sydney Smith once exclaimed:
+"What a pity it is we have no amusements in England except vice and
+religion!" The same exclamation might be uttered to-day, and the cause
+laid at the Anglo-Saxon "unco guid's" door. It is he who is responsible
+for the degradation of the British lower classes, by refusing to enable
+them to elevate their minds on Sundays at the sight of the masterpieces
+of art which are contained in the museums, or at the sound of the
+symphonies of Beethoven and Mozart, which might be given to the people
+at reduced prices on that day. The poor people must choose between vice
+and religion, and as the wretches know they are not wanted in the
+churches, they go to the taverns.
+
+It is this same "unco guid" who is responsible for the state of the
+streets in the large cities of Great Britain by refusing to allow vice
+to be regulated. If you were to add the amount of immorality to be found
+in the streets of Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and the other capitals of
+Europe, no fair-minded Englishman "who knows" would contradict me, if I
+said that the total thus obtained would be much below the amount
+supplied by London alone; but the "unco guid" stays at home of an
+evening, advises you to do the same, and ignoring, or pretending to
+ignore, what is going on round his own house, he prays for the
+conversion--of the French.
+
+The "unco guid" thinks that his own future safety is assured, so he
+prays for his neighbors'. He reminds one of certain Scots, who inhabit
+two small islands on the west coast of Scotland. Their piety is really
+most touching. Every Sunday in their churches, they commend to God's
+care "the puir inhabitants of the two adjacent islands of Britain and
+Ireland."
+
+A few weeks ago, there appeared in a Liverpool paper a letter, signed "A
+Lover of Reverence," in which this anonymous person complained of a
+certain lecturer, who had indulged in profane remarks. "I was not
+present myself," he or she said, "but have heard of what took place,"
+etc. You see, this person was not present, but as a good "Christian," he
+hastened to judge. However, this is nothing. In the letter, I read:
+"Fortunately, there are in Liverpool, a few Christians, like myself,
+always on the watch, and ever looking after our Maker's honor."
+
+Fortunate Liverpool! What a proud position for the Almighty, to be
+placed in Liverpool under the protection of the "Lover of Reverence!"
+
+Probably this "unco guid" and myself would not agree on the definition
+of the word _profanity_, for, if I had written and published such a
+letter, I would consider myself guilty, not only of profanity, but of
+blasphemy.
+
+If the "unco guid" is the best product of Christianity, Christianity
+must be pronounced a ghastly failure, and I should feel inclined to
+exclaim, with the late Dean Milman, "If all this is Christianity, it is
+high time we should try something else--say the religion of Christ, for
+instance."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+  MILWAUKEE--A WELL-FILLED DAY--REFLECTIONS ON THE SCOTCH IN
+  AMERICA--CHICAGO CRITICISMS.
+
+
+     _Milwaukee, February 25._
+
+Arrived here from Detroit yesterday. Milwaukee is a city of over two
+hundred thousand inhabitants, a very large proportion of whom are
+Germans, who have come here to settle down, and wish good luck to the
+_Vaterland_, at the respectful distance of five thousand miles.
+
+At the station I was met by Mr. John L. Mitchell, the railway king, and
+by a compatriot of mine, M. A. de Guerville, a young enthusiast who has
+made up his mind to check the German invasion of Milwaukee, and has
+succeeded in starting a French society, composed of the leading
+inhabitants of the city. On arriving, I found a heavy but delightful
+programme to go through during the day: a lunch to be given me by the
+ladies at Milwaukee College at one o'clock; a reception by the French
+Club at Mrs. John L. Mitchell's house at four; a dinner at six; my
+lecture at eight, and a reception and a supper by the Press Club at
+half-past ten; the rest of the evening to be spent as circumstances
+would allow or suggest. I was to be the guest of Mr. Mitchell at his
+magnificent house in town.
+
+[Illustration: A CITIZEN OF MILWAUKEE.]
+
+"Good," I said, "let us begin."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Went through the whole programme. The reception by the French Club, in
+the beautiful Moorish-looking rooms of Mrs. John L. Mitchell's superb
+mansion, was a great success. I was amazed to meet so many
+French-speaking people, and much amused to see my young compatriot go
+from one group to another, to satisfy himself that all the members of
+the club were speaking French; for I must tell you that, among the
+statutes of the club, there is one that imposes a fine of ten cents on
+any member caught in the act of speaking English at the gatherings of
+the association.
+
+The lecture was a great success. The New Plymouth Church[3] was packed,
+and the audience extremely warm and appreciative. The supper offered to
+me by the Press Club proved most enjoyable. And yet, that was not all.
+At one o'clock the Press Club repaired to a perfect German _Brauerei_,
+where we spent an hour in Bavaria, drinking excellent Bavarian beer
+while chatting, telling stories, etc.
+
+I will omit to mention at what time we returned home, so as not to tell
+tales about my kind host.
+
+In spite of the late hours we kept last night, breakfast was punctually
+served at eight this morning. First course, porridge. Thanks to the
+kind, thoroughly Scotch hospitality of Mr. John L. Mitchell and his
+charming family, thanks to the many friends and sympathizers I met
+here, I shall carry away a most pleasant recollection of this large and
+beautiful city. I shall leave Milwaukee with much regret. Indeed, the
+worst feature of a thick lecturing tour is to feel, almost every day,
+that you leave behind friends whom you may never see again.
+
+I lecture at the Central Music Hall, Chicago, this evening; but Chicago
+is reached from here in two hours and a half, and I will go as late in
+the day as I can.
+
+No more beds for me now, until I reach Albany, in three days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The railway king in Wisconsin is a Scotchman. I was not surprised to
+hear it. The iron king in Pennsylvania is a Scotchman, Mr. Andrew
+Carnegie. The oil king of Ohio is a Scotchman, Mr. Alexander Macdonald.
+The silver king of California is a Scotchman, Mr. Mackay. The
+dry-goods-store king of New York--he is dead now--was a Scotchman, Mr.
+Stewart. It is just the same in Canada, just the same in Australia, and
+all over the English-speaking world. The Scotch are successful
+everywhere, and the new countries offer them fields for their industry,
+their perseverance, and their shrewdness. There you see them landowners,
+directors of companies, at the head of all the great enterprises. In the
+lower stations of life, thanks to their frugality and saving habits, you
+find them thriving everywhere. You go to the manufactory, you are told
+that the foremen are Scotch.
+
+I have, perhaps, a better illustration still.
+
+[Illustration: TALES OF OLD SCOTLAND.]
+
+If you travel in Canada, either by the Grand Trunk or the Canadian
+Pacific, you will meet in the last parlor car, near the stove, a man
+whose duty consists in seeing that, all along the line, the workmen are
+at their posts, digging, repairing, etc. These workmen are all day
+exposed to the Canadian temperature, and often have to work knee-deep in
+the snow. Well, you will find that the man with small, keen eyes, who
+is able to do his work in the railroad car, warming himself comfortably
+by the stove, is invariably a Scotchman. There is only one berth with a
+stove in the whole business; it is he who has got it. Many times I have
+had a chat with that Scotchman on the subject of old Scotland. Many
+times I have sat with him in the little smoking-room of the parlor car,
+listening to the history of his life, or, maybe, a few good Scotch
+anecdotes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _In the train from Chicago to Cleveland_, _February 26_.
+
+I arrived in Chicago at five o'clock in the afternoon yesterday, dined,
+dressed, and lectured at the Music Hall under the auspices of the Drexel
+free Kindergarten. There was a large audience, and all passed off very
+well. After the lecture, I went to the Grand Pacific Hotel, changed
+clothes, and went on board the sleeping car bound for Cleveland, O.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The criticisms of my lecture in this morning's Chicago papers are
+lively.
+
+The _Herald_ calls me:
+
+  A dapper little Frenchman. Five feet eleven in height, and two hundred
+  pounds in weight!
+
+The _Times_ says:
+
+  That splendid trinity of the American peerage, the colonel, the judge,
+  and the professor, turned out in full force at Central Music Hall last
+  night. The lecturer is a magician who serves up your many little
+  defects, peculiar to the auditors' own country, on a silver salver, so
+  artistically garnished that one forgets the sarcasm in admiration of
+  the sauce.
+
+[Illustration: A CELEBRATED EXECUTIONER.]
+
+The _Tribune_ is quite as complimentary and quite as lively:
+
+  His satire is as keen as the blade of the celebrated executioner who
+  could cut a man's head off, and the unlucky person not know it until a
+  pinch of snuff would cause a sneeze, and the decapitated head would,
+  much to its surprise, find itself rolling over in the dust.
+
+And after a good breakfast at Toledo station, I enjoyed an hour poring
+over the Chicago papers.
+
+I lecture in Cleveland to-night, and am still in "the neighborhood of
+Chicago."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+  [3] Very strange, that church with its stalls, galleries, and
+    boxes--a perfect theater. From the platform it was interesting to
+    watch the immense throng, packing the place from floor to ceiling, in
+    front, on the sides, behind, everywhere.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+THE MONOTONY OF TRAVELING IN THE STATES--"MANON LESCAUT" IN AMERICA.
+
+
+     _In the train from Cleveland to Albany, February 27._
+
+Am getting tired and ill. I am not bed-ridden, but am fairly well rid of
+a bed. I have lately spent as many nights in railway cars as in hotel
+beds.
+
+Am on my way to Albany, just outside "the neighborhood of Chicago." I
+lecture in that place to-night, and shall get to New York to-morrow.
+
+I am suffering from the monotony of life. My greatest objection to
+America (indeed I do not believe I have any other) is the sameness of
+everything. I understand the Americans who run away to Europe every year
+to see an old church, a wall covered with moss and ivy, some good
+old-fashioned peasantry not dressed like the rest of the world.
+
+What strikes a European most, in his rambles through America, is the
+absence of the picturesque. The country is monotonous, and eternally the
+same. Burned-up fields, stumps of trees, forests, wooden houses all
+built on the same pattern. All the stations you pass are alike. All the
+towns are alike. To say that an American town is ten times larger than
+another simply means that it has ten times more blocks of houses. All
+the streets are alike, with the same telegraph poles, the same "Indian"
+as a sign for tobacconists, the same red, white, and blue pole as a sign
+for barbers. All the hotels are the same, all the _menus_ are the same,
+all the plates and dishes the same--why, all the ink-stands are the
+same. All the people are dressed in the same way. When you meet an
+American with all his beard, you want to shake his hands and thank him
+for not shaving it, as ninety-nine out of every hundred Americans do. Of
+course I have not seen California, the Rocky Mountains, and many other
+parts of America where the scenery is very beautiful; but I think my
+remarks can apply to those States most likely to be visited by a
+lecturer, that is, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin,
+Minnesota, and others, during the winter months, after the Indian
+summer, and before the renewal of verdure in May.
+
+[Illustration: "THE SAME 'INDIAN.'"]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After breakfast, that indefatigable man of business, that intolerable
+bore, who incessantly bangs the doors and brings his stock-in-trade to
+the cars, came and whispered in my ears:
+
+"New book--just out--a forbidden book!"
+
+"A forbidden book! What is that?" I inquired.
+
+He showed it to me. It was "Manon Lescaut."
+
+[Illustration: "NEW BOOK JUST OUT--A FORBIDDEN BOOK!"]
+
+Is it possible? That literary and artistic _chef-d'oeuvre_, which has
+been the original type of "Paul et Virginie" and "Atala"; that touching
+drama, which the prince of critics, Jules Janin, declared would be
+sufficient to save contemporary literature from complete oblivion,
+dragged in the mire, clothed in a dirty coarse English garb! and
+advertised as a forbidden book! Three generations of French people have
+wept over the pathetic story. Here it is now, stripped of its unique
+style and literary beauty, sold to the American public as an improper
+book--a libel by translation on a genius. British authors have
+complained for years that their books were stolen in America. They have
+suffered in pockets, it is true, but their reputation has spread through
+an immense continent. What is their complaint compared to that of the
+French authors who have the misfortune to see their works translated
+into American? It is not only their pockets that suffer, but their
+reputation. The poor French author is at the mercy of incapable and
+malicious translators hired at starvation wages by the American pirate
+publisher. He is liable to a species of defamation ten times worse than
+robbery.
+
+And as I looked at that copy of "Manon Lescaut," I almost felt grateful
+that Prevost was dead.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+  FOR THE FIRST TIME I SEE AN AMERICAN PAPER ABUSE ME--ALBANY TO NEW
+  YORK--A LECTURE AT DALY'S THEATER--AFTERNOON AUDIENCES.
+
+
+     _New York, February 23._
+
+The American press has always been very good to me. Fairness one has a
+right to expect, but kindness is an extra that is not always thrown in,
+and therefore the uniform amiability of the American press toward me
+could not fail to strike me most agreeably.
+
+Up to yesterday I had not seen a single unkind notice or article, but in
+the Albany _Express_ of yesterday morning I read:
+
+  This evening the people of Albany are asked to listen to a lecture by
+  Max O'Rell, who was in this country two years ago, and was treated
+  with distinguished courtesy. When he went home he published a book
+  filled with deliberate misstatements and willful exaggerations of the
+  traits of the American people.
+
+This paper "has reason," as the French say. My book contained one
+misstatement, at all events, and that was that "all Americans have a
+great sense of humor." You may say that the French are a witty people,
+but that does not mean that France contains no fools. It is rather
+painful to have to explain such things, but I do so for the benefit of
+that editor and with apologies to the general reader.
+
+In spite of this diverting little "par," I had an immense audience last
+night in Harmanus Bleecker Hall, a new and magnificent construction in
+Albany, excellent, no doubt, for music, but hardly adapted for lecturing
+in, on account of its long and narrow shape.
+
+[Illustration: RIP VAN WINKLE.]
+
+I should have liked to stay longer in Albany, which struck me as being a
+remarkably beautiful place, but having to lecture in New York this
+afternoon, I took the vestibule train early this morning for New York.
+This journey is exceedingly picturesque along the Hudson River,
+traveling as you do between two ranges of wooded hills, dotted over with
+beautiful habitations, and now and then passing a little town bathing
+its feet in the water. In the distance one gets good views of the
+Catskill Mountains, immortalized by Washington Irving in "Rip Van
+Winkle."
+
+On boarding the train, the first thing I did was to read the news of
+yesterday. Imagine my amusement, on opening the Albany _Express_ to read
+the following extract from the report of my lecture:
+
+  He has an agreeable but not a strong voice. This was the only point
+  that could be criticised in his lecture, which consisted of many
+  clever sketches of the humorous side of the character of different
+  Anglo-Saxon nations. His humor is keen. He evidently is a great
+  admirer of America and Americans, only bringing into ridicule some of
+  their most conspicuously objectionable traits.... His lecture was
+  entertaining, clever, witty and thoroughly enjoyable.
+
+The most amusing part of all this is that the American sketches which I
+introduced into my lecture last night, and which seemed to have struck
+the Albany _Express_ so agreeably, were all extracts from the book
+"filled with deliberate misstatements and willful exaggerations of the
+traits of the American people." Well, after all, there is humor,
+unconscious humor, in the Albany _Express_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Arrived at the Grand Central Station in New York at noon, I gave up my
+check to a transfer man, but learned to my chagrin that the vestibule
+train from Albany had carried no baggage, and that my things would only
+arrive by the next train at about three o'clock. Pleasant news for a
+man who was due to address an audience at three!
+
+[Illustration: "A LITTLE BIT STIFF."]
+
+There was only one way out of the difficulty. Off I went post-haste to a
+ready-made tailor's, who sold me a complete fit-out from head to foot. I
+did not examine the cut and fit of each garment very minutely, but went
+off satisfied that I was presenting a neat and respectable appearance.
+Before going on the stage, however, I discovered that the sleeves of the
+new coat, though perfectly smooth and well-behaved so long as the arms
+inside them were bent at the elbow, developed a remarkable cross-twist
+as soon as I let my arms hang straight down.
+
+By means of holding it firm with the middle finger, I managed to keep
+the recalcitrant sleeve in position, and the affair passed off very
+well. Only my friends remarked, after the lecture, that they thought I
+looked a little bit stiff, especially when making my bow to the
+audience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My lecture at Daly's Theater this afternoon was given under the auspices
+of the Bethlehem Day Nursery, and I am thankful to think that this most
+interesting association is a little richer to-day than it was yesterday.
+For an afternoon audience it was remarkably warm and responsive.
+
+I have many times lectured to afternoon audiences, but have not, as a
+rule, enjoyed it. Afternoon "shows" are a mistake. Do not ask me why;
+but think of those you have ever been to, and see if you have a lively
+recollection of them. There is a time for everything. Fancy playing the
+guitar under your lady love's window by daylight, for instance!
+
+Afternoon audiences are kid-gloved ones. There is but a sprinkling of
+men, and so the applause, when it comes, is a feeble affair, more
+chilling almost than silence. In some fashionable towns it is bad form
+to applaud at all in the afternoon. I have a vivid recollection of the
+effect produced one afternoon in Cheltenham by the vigorous applause of
+a sympathizing friend of mine, sitting in the reserved seats. How all
+the other reserved seats craned their necks in credulous astonishment to
+get a view of this innovator, this outer barbarian! He was new to the
+wondrous ways of the _Chillitonians_. In the same audience was a lady,
+Irish and very charming, as I found out on later acquaintance, who
+showed her appreciation from time to time by clapping the tips of her
+fingers together noiselessly, while her glance said: "I should very much
+like to applaud, but you know I can't do it; we are in Cheltenham, and
+such a thing is bad form, especially in the afternoon."
+
+[Illustration: THE GOUTY MAN.]
+
+Afternoon audiences in the southern health resorts of England are
+probably the least inspiriting and inspiring of all. There are the sick,
+the lame, the halt. Some of them are very interesting people, but a
+large proportion appear to be suffering more from the boredom of life
+than any other complaint, and look as if it would do them good to
+follow out the well-known advice, "Live on sixpence a day, and earn it."
+It is hard work entertaining people who have done everything, seen
+everything, tasted everything, been everywhere--people whose sole aim is
+to kill time. A fair sprinkling are gouty. They spend most of their
+waking hours in a bath-chair. As a listener, the gouty man is sometimes
+decidedly funny. He gives signs of life from time to time by a vigorous
+slap on his thigh and a vicious looking kick. Before I began to know
+him, I used to wonder whether it was my discourse producing some effect
+upon him.
+
+I am not afraid of meeting these people in America. Few people are bored
+here, all are happy to live, and all work and are busy. American men die
+of brain fever, but seldom of the gout. If an American saw that he must
+spend his life wheeled in a bath-chair, he would reflect that rivers are
+numerous in America, and he would go and take a plunge into one of them.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+  WANDERINGS THROUGH NEW YORK--LECTURE AT THE HARMONIE CLUB--VISIT TO
+  THE CENTURY CLUB.
+
+
+     _New York, March 1._
+
+The more I see New York, the more I like it.
+
+After lunch I had a drive through Central Park and Riverside Park, along
+the Hudson, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I returned to the Everett House
+through Fifth Avenue. I have never seen Central Park in summer, but I
+can realize how beautiful it must be when the trees are clothed. To have
+such a park in the heart of the city is perfectly marvelous. It is true
+that, with the exception of the superb Catholic Cathedral, Fifth Avenue
+has no monument worth mentioning, but the succession of stately mansions
+is a pleasant picture to the eye. What a pity this cathedral cannot
+stand in a square in front of some long thoroughfare, it would have a
+splendid effect. I know this was out of the question. Built as New York
+is, the cathedral could only take the place of a block. It simply
+represents so many numbers between Fiftieth and Fifty-first streets on
+Fifth Avenue.
+
+In the Park I saw statues of Shakespeare, Walter Scott, and Robert
+Burns. I should have liked to see those of Longfellow, Nathaniel
+Hawthorne, and many other celebrities of the land. Washington, Franklin,
+and Lincoln are practically the only Americans whose statues you see all
+over the country. They play here the part that Wellington and Nelson
+play in England. After all, the "bosses" and the local politicians who
+run the towns probably never heard of Longfellow, Bryant, Poe, etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At four o'clock, Mr. Thomas Nast, the celebrated caricaturist, called. I
+was delighted to make his acquaintance, and found him a most charming
+man.
+
+I dined with General Horace Porter and a few other friends at the Union
+League Club. The witty general was in his best vein.
+
+At eight o'clock I lectured at the Harmonie Club, and had a large and
+most appreciative audience, composed of the pick of the Israelite
+community in New York.
+
+After the lecture I attended one of the "Saturdays" at the Century Club,
+and met Mr. Kendal, who, with his talented wife, is having a triumphant
+progress through the United States.
+
+There is no gathering in the world where you can see so many beautiful,
+intelligent faces as at the Century Club. There you see gathered
+together the cleverest men of a nation whose chief characteristic is
+cleverness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+VISIT TO THE BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC--REV. DR. TALMAGE.
+
+
+     _New York, March 2._
+
+Went to hear Dr. T. de Witt Talmage this morning at the Academy of
+Music, Brooklyn.
+
+What an actor America has lost by Dr. Talmage choosing the pulpit in
+preference to the stage!
+
+The Academy of Music was crowded. Standing-room only. For an
+old-fashioned European, to see a theater, with its boxes, stalls,
+galleries, open for divine service was a strange sight; but we had not
+gone very far into the service before it became plain to me that there
+was nothing divine about it. The crowd had come there, not to worship
+God, but to hear Mr. Talmage.
+
+At the door the programme was distributed. It consisted of six hymns to
+be interluded with prayers by the doctor. Between the fifth and sixth,
+he delivered the lecture, or the sermon, if you insist on the name, and
+during the sixth there was the collection, that hinge on which the whole
+service turns in Protestant places of worship.
+
+I took a seat and awaited with the rest the entrance of Dr. Talmage.
+There was subdued conversation going on all around, just as there would
+be at a theater or concert: in fact, throughout the whole of the
+proceedings, there was no sign of a silent lifting up of the spirit in
+worship. Not a person in that strange congregation, went on his or her
+knees to pray. Most of them put one hand in front of the face, and this
+was as near as they got that morning to an attitude of devotion. Except
+for this, and the fact that they did not applaud, there was absolutely
+no difference between them and any other theater audience I ever saw.
+
+[Illustration: THE LEADER OF THE CHOIR.]
+
+The monotonous hymns were accompanied by a _cornet-�-piston_, which lent
+a certain amount of life to them, but very little religious harmony.
+That cornet was the key-note of the whole performance. The hymns,
+composed, I believe, for Dr. Talmage's flock, are not of high literary
+value. "General" Booth would probably hesitate to include such in the
+_r�pertoire_ of the Salvation Army. Judge of them for yourself. Here
+are three illustrations culled from the programme:
+
+      Sing, O sing, ye heirs of glory!
+      Shout your triumphs as you go:
+      Zion's gates will open for you,
+      You shall find an entrance through.
+
+    'Tis the promise of God, full salvation to give
+    Unto him who on Jesus, his Son, will believe.
+
+  Though the pathway be lonely, and dangerous too, (_sic_)
+  Surely Jesus is able to carry me thro'.
+
+This is poetry such as you find inside Christmas crackers.
+
+Another hymn began:
+
+  One more day's work for Jesus,
+  One less of life for me!
+
+I could not help thinking that there would be good employment for a
+prophet of God, with a stout whip, in the congregations of the so-called
+faithful of to-day. I have heard them by hundreds shouting at the top of
+their voices:
+
+  O Paradise, O Paradise!
+    'Tis weary waiting here;
+  I long to be where Jesus is,
+    To feel, to see him near.
+  O Paradise, O Paradise!
+    I greatly long to see
+  The special place my dearest Lord,
+    In love, prepares for me!
+
+Knowing something of those people outside the church doors, I have often
+thought what an edifying sight it would be if the Lord deigned to listen
+and take a few of them at their word. If the fearless Christ were here
+on earth again, what crowds of cheats and humbugs he would drive out of
+the Temple! And foremost, I fancy, would go the people who, instead of
+thanking their Maker who allows the blessed sun to shine, the birds to
+sing, and the flowers to grow for them here, howl and whine lies about
+longing for the joy of moving on to the better world, to the "special
+place" that is prepared for them. If there be a better world, it will be
+too good for hypocrites.
+
+After hymn the fifth, Dr. Talmage takes the floor. The audience settled
+in their seats in evident anticipation of a good time, and it was soon
+clear to me that the discourse was not to be dull at any rate. But I
+waited in vain for a great thought, a lofty idea, or refined language.
+There came none. Nothing but commonplaces given out with tricks of voice
+and the gestures of a consummate actor. The modulations of the voice
+have been studied with care, no single platform trick was missing.
+
+The doctor comes on the stage, which is about forty feet wide. He begins
+slowly. The flow of language is great, and he is never at a loss for a
+word. Motionless, in his lowest tones, he puts a question to us. Nobody
+replies, of course. Thereupon he paces wildly up and down the whole
+length of the stage. Then, bringing up in full view of his auditors, he
+stares at them, crosses his arms, gives a double and tremendous stamp on
+the boards, and in a terrific voice he repeats the question, and answers
+it. The desired effect is produced: he never misses fire.
+
+Being an old stager of several years' standing myself, I admire him
+professionally. Nobody is edified, nobody is regenerated, nobody is
+improved, but all are entertained. It is not a divine service, but it is
+a clever performance, and the Americans never fail to patronize a clever
+performance. All styles go down with them. They will give a hearing to
+everybody but the bore, especially on Sundays, when other forms of
+entertainment are out of the running.
+
+[Illustration: THE DESIRED EFFECT.]
+
+It is not only the Brooklyn public that are treated to the discourses of
+Dr. Talmage, but the whole of America. He syndicates his sermons, and
+they are published in Monday's newspapers in all quarters of America. I
+have also seen them reproduced in the Australian papers.
+
+The delivery of these orations by Dr. Talmage is so superior to the
+matter they are made of, that to read them is slow indeed compared to
+hearing them.
+
+At the back of the programme was a flaring advertisement of Dr.
+Talmage's paper, called:
+
+  CHRISTIAN HERALD AND SIGNS OF OUR TIMES.
+
+  A live, undenominational, illustrated Christian paper, with a weekly
+  circulation of fifty thousand copies, and rapidly increasing. Every
+  State of the Union, every Province of Canada, and every country in the
+  world is represented on its enormous subscription list. Address your
+  subscription to Mr. N., treasurer, etc.
+
+"Signs of our times," indeed!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+  VIRGINIA--THE HOTELS--THE SOUTH--I WILL KILL A RAILWAY CONDUCTOR
+  BEFORE I LEAVE AMERICA--PHILADELPHIA--IMPRESSIONS OF THE OLD CITY.
+
+
+     _Petersburg, Va., March 3._
+
+Left New York last night and arrived here at noon. No change in the
+scenery. The same burnt-up fields, the same placards all over the land.
+The roofs of houses, the trees in the forests, the fences in the fields,
+all announce to the world the magic properties of castor oil, aperients,
+and liver pills.
+
+[Illustration: MY SUPPER.]
+
+A little village inn in the bottom of old Brittany is a palace of
+comfort compared to the best hotel of a Virginia town. I feel wretched.
+My bedroom is so dirty that I shall not dare to undress to-night. I have
+just had lunch: a piece of tough dried-up beef, custard pie, and a glass
+of filthy water, the whole served by an old negro on an old, ragged,
+dirty table-cloth.
+
+Petersburg, which awakes so many souvenirs of the War of Secession, is a
+pretty town scattered with beautiful villas. It strikes one as a
+provincial town. To me, coming from the busy North, it looks asleep. The
+South has not yet recovered from its disasters of thirty years ago. That
+is what struck me most, when, two years ago, I went through Virginia,
+Carolina, and Georgia.
+
+Now and then American eccentricity reveals itself. I have just seen a
+church built on the model of a Greek temple, and surmounted with a
+pointed spire lately added. Just imagine to yourself Julius C�sar with
+his toga and buskin on, and having a chimney-top hat on his head.
+
+The streets seemed deserted, dead.
+
+To my surprise, the Opera House was crowded to-night. The audience was
+fashionable and appreciative, but very cool, almost as cool as in
+Connecticut and Maine.
+
+Heaven be praised! a gentleman invited me to have supper at a club after
+the lecture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 4._
+
+I am sore all over. I spent the night on the bed, outside, in my day
+clothes, and am bruised all over. I have pains in my gums too. Oh, that
+piece of beef yesterday! I am off to Philadelphia. My bill at the hotel
+amounts to $1.50. Never did I pay so much through the nose for what I
+had through the mouth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+     _Philadelphia, March 4._
+
+Before I return to Europe I will kill a railway conductor.
+
+[Illustration: "IMAGINE JULIUS C�SAR WITH A BIG HAT."]
+
+From Petersburg to Richmond I was the only occupant of the parlor car.
+It was bitterly cold. The conductor of the train came in the smoke-room,
+and took a seat. I suppose it was his right, although I doubt it, for he
+was not the conductor attached to the parlor car. He opened the window.
+The cold, icy air fell on my legs, or (to use a more proper expression,
+as I am writing in Philadelphia) on my lower limbs. I said nothing, but
+rose and closed the window. The fellow frowned, rose, and opened the
+window again.
+
+"Excuse me," I said; "I thought that perhaps you had come here to look
+after my comfort. If you have not I will look after it myself." And I
+rose and closed the window.
+
+"I want the window open," said the conductor, and he prepared to re-open
+it, giving me a mute, impudent scowl.
+
+I was fairly roused. Nature has gifted me with a biceps and a grip of
+remarkable power. I seized the man by the collar of his coat.
+
+"As true as I am alive," I exclaimed, "if you open this window, I will
+pitch you out of it." And I prepared for war. The cur sneaked away and
+made an exit compared to which a whipped hound's would be majestic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am at the Bellevue, a delightful hotel. My friend Wilson Barrett is
+here, and I have come to spend the day with him. He is playing every
+night to crowded houses, and after each performance he has to make a
+speech. This is his third visit to Philadelphia. During the first visit,
+he tells me that the audience wanted a speech after each act.
+
+It is always interesting to compare notes with a friend who has been
+over the same ground as yourself. So I was eager to hear Mr. Wilson
+Barrett's impressions of his long tour in the States.
+
+Several points we both agreed perfectly upon at once; the charming
+geniality and good-fellowship of the best Americans, the brilliancy and
+naturalness of the ladies, the wonderful intelligence and activity of
+the people, and the wearing monotony of life on the road.
+
+[Illustration: THE WHIPPED CONDUCTOR.]
+
+After the scene in the train, I was interested, too, to find that the
+train conductors--those mute, magnificent monarchs of the railroad--had
+awakened in Mr. Barrett much the same feeling as in myself. We Europeans
+are used to a form of obedience or, at least, deference from our paid
+servants, and the arrogant attitude of the American wage-earner first
+amazes, and then enrages us--when we have not enough humor, or
+good-humor, to get some amusement out it. It is so novel to be
+tyrannized over by people whom you pay to attend to your comfort! The
+American keeps his temper under the process, for he is the best-humored
+fellow in the world. Besides, a small squabble is no more in his line
+than a small anything else. It is not worth his while. The Westerner may
+pull out a pistol and shoot you if you annoy him, but neither he nor the
+Eastern man will wrangle for mastery.
+
+[Illustration: A BOSS.]
+
+If such was not the case, do you believe for a moment that the Americans
+would submit to the rule of the "Rings," the "Leaders," and the
+"Bosses"?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I like Philadelphia, with its magnificent park, its beautiful houses
+that look like homes. It is not brand new, like the rest of America.
+
+My friend, Mr. J. M. Stoddart, editor of _Lippincott's Magazine_, has
+kindly chaperoned me all the day.
+
+I visited in detail the State House, Independence Square. These words
+evoke sentiments of patriotism in the hearts of the Americans. Here was
+the bell that "proclaimed liberty throughout the Colonies" so loudly
+that it split. It was on the 8th of July, 1776, that the bell was rung,
+as the public reading of the Declaration of Independence took place in
+the State House on that day, and there were great rejoicings. John
+Adams, writing to Samuel Chase on the 9th of July, said: "The bell rang
+all day, and almost all night."
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD LIBERTY BELL.]
+
+It is recorded by one writer that, on the 4th of July, when the motion
+to adopt the declaration passed the majority of the Assembly, although
+not signed by all the delegates, the old bell-ringer awaited anxiously,
+with trembling hope, the signing. He kept saying: "They'll never do it,
+they'll never do it!" but his eyes expanded, and his grasp grew firm
+when the voice of a blue-eyed youth reached his ears in shouts of
+triumph as he flew up the stairs of the tower, shouting: "Ring, grandpa,
+ring; they've signed!"
+
+What a day this old "Liberty Bell" reminds you of!
+
+There, in the Independence Hall, the delegates were gathered. Benjamin
+Harrison, the ancestor of the present occupier of the White House,
+seized John Hancock, upon whose head a price was set, in his arms, and
+placing him in the presidential chair, said: "We will show Mother
+Britain how little we care for her, by making our president a
+Massachusetts man, whom she has excluded from pardon by public
+proclamation," and, says Mr. Chauncey M. Depew in one of his beautiful
+orations, when they were signing the Declaration, and the slender
+Elbridge Gerry uttered the grim pleasantry, "We must hang together, or
+surely we will hang separately," the portly Harrison responded with more
+daring humor, "It will be all over with me in a moment, but you will be
+kicking in the air half an hour after I am gone."
+
+[Illustration: THE INKSTAND.]
+
+The National Museum is the auxiliary chamber to Independence Hall, and
+there you find many most interesting relics of Colonial and
+Revolutionary days: the silver inkstand used in signing the famous
+Declaration; Hancock's chair; the little table upon which the document
+was signed, and hundreds of souvenirs piously preserved by generations
+of grateful Americans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is said that Philadelphia has produced only two successful men, Mr.
+Wanamaker, the great dry-goods-store man, now a member of President
+Benjamin Harrison's Cabinet, and Mr. George W. Childs, proprietor of the
+Philadelphia _Public Ledger_, one of the most important and successful
+newspapers in the United States.
+
+I went to Mr. Wanamaker's dry-goods-store, an establishment strongly
+reminding you of the Paris _Bon March�_, or Mr. Whiteley's warehouses in
+London.
+
+By far the most interesting visit was that which I paid to Mr. George W.
+Childs in his study at the _Public Ledger's_ offices. It would require a
+whole volume to describe in detail all the treasures that Mr. Childs has
+accumulated: curios of all kinds, rare books, manuscripts and
+autographs, portraits, china, relics from the celebrities of the world,
+etc. Mr. Childs, like the Prussians during their unwelcome visit to
+France in 1870, has a strong _penchant_ for clocks. Indeed his
+collection is the most remarkable in existence. His study is a beautiful
+_sanctum sanctorum_; it is also a museum that not only the richest lover
+of art would be proud to possess, but that any nation would be too glad
+to acquire, if it could be acquired; but Mr. Childs is a very wealthy
+man, and he means to keep it, and, I understand, to hand it over to his
+successor in the ownership of the _Public Ledger_.
+
+Mr. George W. Childs is a man of about fifty years of age, short and
+plump, with a most kind and amiable face. His munificence and
+philanthropy are well known and, as I understand his character, I
+believe he would not think much of my gratitude to him for the kindness
+he showed me if I dwelt on them in these pages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thanks to my kind friends, every minute has been occupied visiting some
+interesting place, or meeting some interesting people. I shall lecture
+here next month, and shall look forward to the pleasure of being in
+Philadelphia again.
+
+[Illustration: WHEN IRELAND IS FREE.]
+
+At the Union League Club I met Mr. Rufus E. Shapley, who kindly gave me
+a copy of his clever and witty political satire, "Solid for Mulhooly,"
+illustrated by Mr. Thomas Nast. I should advise any one who would
+understand how Jonathan is ruled municipally, to peruse this little
+book. It gives the history of Pat's rise from the Irish cabin in
+Connaught to the City Hall of the large American cities.
+
+"When one man," says Mr. Shapley, "owns and dominates four wards or
+counties, he becomes a leader. Half a dozen such leaders combined
+constitute what is called a Ring. When one leader is powerful enough to
+bring three or four such leaders under his yoke, he becomes a Boss; and
+a Boss wields a power almost as absolute, while it lasts, as that of the
+Czar of Russia or the King of Zululand."
+
+Extracts from this book would not do it justice. It should be read in
+its entirety. I read it with all the more pleasure that, in "Jonathan
+and His Continent," I ventured to say: "The English are always wondering
+why Americans all seem to be in favor of Home Rule, and ready to back up
+the cause with their dollars. Why? I will tell you. Because they are in
+hopes that, when the Irish recover the possession of Ireland, they will
+all go home."
+
+A foreigner who criticises a nation is happy to see his opinions shared
+by the natives.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+  MY IDEAS OF THE STATE OF TEXAS--WHY I WILL NOT GO THERE--THE STORY OF
+  A FRONTIER MAN.
+
+
+     _New York, March 5._
+
+Have had cold audiences in Maine and Connecticut; and indifferent ones
+in several cities, while I have been warmly received in many others. It
+seems that, if I went to Texas, I might get it hot.
+
+I have received to-day a Texas paper containing a short editorial marked
+at the four corners in blue pencil. Impossible not to see it. The
+editorial abuses me from the first line to the last. When there appears
+in a paper an article, or even only a short paragraph, abusing you, you
+never run the risk of not seeing it. There always is, somewhere, a kind
+friend who will post it to you. He thinks you may be getting a little
+conceited, and he forwards the article to you, that you may use it as
+wholesome physic. It does him good, and does you no harm.
+
+The article in question begins by charging me with having turned America
+and the Americans into ridicule, goes on wondering that the Americans
+can receive me so well everywhere, and, after pitching into me right and
+left, winds up by warning me that, if I should go to Texas, I might for
+a change meet with a hot reception.
+
+A shot, perhaps.
+
+A shot in Texas! No, no, no.
+
+I won't go to Texas. I should strongly object to being shot anywhere,
+but especially in Texas, where the event would attract so little public
+attention.
+
+[Illustration: "A SHOT IN TEXAS."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet, I should have liked to go to Texas, for was it not from that State
+that, after the publication of "Jonathan and His Continent," I received
+the two following letters, which I have kept among my treasures?
+
+
+  DEAR SIR:
+
+  I have read your book on America and greatly enjoyed it. Please to
+  send me your autograph. I enclose a ten-cent piece. The postage will
+  cost you five cents. Don't trouble about the change.
+
+
+  MY DEAR SIR:
+
+  I have an album containing the photographs of many well-known people
+  from Europe as well as from America. I should much like to add yours
+  to the number. If you will send it to me, I will send you mine and
+  that of my wife in return.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And I also imagine that there must be in Texas a delightful
+primitiveness of manners and good-fellowship.
+
+A friend once related to me the following reminiscence:
+
+  I arrived one evening in a little Texas town, and asked for a bedroom
+  at the hotel.
+
+  There was no bedroom to be had, but only a bed in a double-bedded
+  room.
+
+  "Will that suit you?" said the clerk.
+
+  "Well, I don't know," I said hesitatingly. "Who is the other?"
+
+  "Oh, that's all right," said the clerk, "you may set your mind at rest
+  on that subject."
+
+  "Very well," I replied, "I will take that bed."
+
+  At about ten o'clock, as I was preparing to go to bed, my bedroom
+  companion entered. It was a frontier man in full uniform: Buffalo Bill
+  hat, leather leggings, a belt accommodating a couple of revolvers--no
+  baggage of any kind.
+
+  I did not like it.
+
+  "Hallo, stranger," said the man, "how are you?"
+
+  "I'm pretty well," I replied, without meaning a word of it.
+
+  The frontier man undressed, that is to say, took off his boots, placed
+  the two revolvers under his pillows and lay down.
+
+  I liked it less and less.
+
+  By and by, we both went to sleep. In the morning we woke up at the
+  same time. He rose, dressed--that is to say, put on his boots, and
+  wished me good-morning.
+
+[Illustration: MY ROOM-MATE.]
+
+  The hall porter came with letters for my companion, but none for me. I
+  thought I should like to let that man know I had no money with me. So
+  I said to him:
+
+  "I am very much disappointed. I expected some money from New York, and
+  it has not come."
+
+  "I hope it will come," he replied.
+
+  I did not like that hope.
+
+  In the evening, we met again. He undressed--you know, went to sleep,
+  rose early in the morning, dressed--you know.
+
+  The porter came again with letters for him and none for me.
+
+  "Well, your money has not come," he said.
+
+  "I see it has not. I'm afraid I'm going to be in a fix what to do."
+
+  "I'm going away this morning."
+
+  "Are you?" I said. "I'm sorry to part with you."
+
+  The frontier man took a little piece of paper and wrote something on
+  it.
+
+  "Take this, my friend," he said; "it may be useful to you."
+
+  It was a check for a hundred dollars.
+
+  I could have gone down on my knees, as I refused the check and asked
+  that man's pardon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I lectured in Brooklyn to-night, and am off to the West to-morrow
+morning.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+  CINCINNATI--THE TOWN--THE SUBURBS--A GERMAN CITY--"OVER THE
+  RHINE"--WHAT IS A GOOD PATRIOT?--AN IMPRESSIVE FUNERAL--A GREAT
+  FIRE--HOW IT APPEARED TO ME, AND HOW IT APPEARED TO THE NEWSPAPER
+  REPORTERS.
+
+
+     _Cincinnati, March 7._
+
+My arrival in Cincinnati this morning was anything but triumphal.
+
+On leaving the car, I gave my check to a cab-driver, who soon came to
+inform me that my valise was broken. It was a leather one, and on being
+thrown from the baggage-van on the platform, it burst open, and all my
+things were scattered about. In England or in France, half a dozen
+porters would have immediately come to the rescue, but here the porter
+is practically unknown. Three or four men belonging to the company
+gathered round, but, neither out of complaisance nor in the hope of
+gain, did any of them offer his services. They looked on, laughed, and
+enjoyed the scene. I daresay the betting was brisk as to whether I
+should succeed in putting my things together or not. Thanks to a leather
+strap I had in my bag, I managed to bind the portmanteau and have it
+placed on the cab that drove to the Burnet House.
+
+Immediately after registering my name, I went to buy an American trunk,
+that is to say, an iron-bound trunk, to place my things in safety. I
+have been told that trunk makers give a commission to the railway and
+transfer baggagemen who, having broken trunks, recommend their owners to
+go to such and such a place to buy new ones. This goes a long way toward
+explaining the way in which baggage is treated in America.
+
+[Illustration: MY BROKEN VALISE.]
+
+On arriving in the dining-room, I was surprised to see the glasses of
+all the guests filled with lemonade. "Why," thought I, "here is actually
+an hotel which is not like all the other hotels." The lemonade turned
+out to be water from the Ohio River. I could not help feeling grateful
+for a change; any change, even that of the color of water. Anybody who
+has traveled a great deal in America will appreciate the remark.
+
+Cincinnati is built at the bottom of a funnel from which rise hundreds
+of chimneys vomiting fire and smoke. From the neighboring heights, the
+city looks like a huge furnace, and so it is, a furnace of industry and
+activity. It reminded me of Glasgow.
+
+If the city itself is anything but attractive, the residential parts are
+perfectly lovely. I have seen nothing in America that surpasses Burnet
+Wood, situated on the bordering heights of the town, scattered with
+beautiful villas, and itself a mixture of a wilderness and a lovely
+park. A kind friend drove me for three hours through the entire
+neighborhood, giving me, in American fashion, the history of the owner
+of each residence we passed. Here was the house of Mr. A., or rather Mr.
+A. B. C, every American having three names. He came to the city twenty
+years ago without a dollar. Five years later he had five millions. He
+speculated and lost all, went to Chicago and made millions, which he
+afterward lost. Now again he has several millions, and so on. This is
+common enough in America. By and by, we passed the most beautiful of all
+the villas of Burnet Wood--the house of the Oil King, Mr. Alexander
+Macdonald, one of those wonderfully successful men, such as Scotland
+alone can boast all the world over. America has been a great field for
+the display of Scotch intelligence and industry.
+
+After visiting the pretty museum at Eden Park, a museum organized in
+1880 in consequence of Mr. Charles W. West's offer to give $150,000 for
+that purpose, and already in possession of very good works of art and
+many valuable treasures, we returned to the city and stopped at the
+Public Library. Over 200,000 volumes, representing all the branches of
+science and literature, are there, as well as a collection of all the
+newspapers of the world, placed in chronological order on the shelves
+and neatly bound. I believe that this collection of newspapers and that
+of Washington are the two best known. In the public reading-room,
+hundreds of people are running over the newspapers from Europe and all
+the principal cities of the United States. My best thanks are due to Mr.
+Whelpley, the librarian, for his kindness in conducting me all over this
+interesting place. Upstairs I was shown the room where the members of
+the Council of Education hold their sittings. The room was all
+topsy-turvey. Twenty-six desks and twenty-six chairs was about all the
+furniture of the room. In a corner, piled up together, were the
+cuspidores. I counted. Twenty-six. Right.
+
+After thanking my kind pilot, I returned to the Burnet House to read the
+evening papers. I read that the next day I was to breakfast with Mr. A.,
+lunch with Mr. B., and dine with Mr. C. The _menu_ was not published. I
+take it for granted that this piece of intelligence is quite interesting
+to the readers of Cincinnati.
+
+My evening being free, I looked at the column of amusements. The first
+did not tempt me, it was this:
+
+      THE KING OF THE SWAMPS.
+
+   _The Only and the Original._
+
+           ENGLISH JACK.
+  THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE FROG MAN.
+
+  He makes a frog pond of his stomach by eating living frogs. An
+  appetite created by life in the swamps. He is so fond of this sort of
+  food that he takes the pretty creatures by the hind legs, and before
+  they can say their prayers they are inside out of the cold.
+
+[Illustration: "THE KING OF THE SWAMPS."]
+
+The next advertisement was that of a variety show, that most stupid form
+of entertainment so popular in America; the next was the announcement of
+pugilists, and another one that of a "most sensational drama, in which
+'one of the most emotional actresses' in America" was to appear,
+supported by "one of the most powerful casts ever gathered together in
+the world."
+
+The superlatives, in American advertisements, have long ceased to have
+the slightest effect upon me.
+
+The advertisement of another "show" ran thus: I beg to reproduce it in
+its entirety; indeed it would be a sacrilege to meddle with it.
+
+  TO THE PUBLIC.
+
+  _My Friends and Former Patrons_: I have now been before the public for
+  the past seventeen years, and am perhaps too well known to require
+  further evidence of my character and integrity than my past life and
+  record will show. Fifteen years ago I inaugurated the system of
+  dispensing presents to the public, believing that a fair share of my
+  profits could thus honestly be returned to my patrons. At the outset,
+  and ever since, it has been my aim to deal honestly toward the
+  multitude who have given me patronage. Since that time many imitators
+  have undertaken to beguile the public, with but varying success. Many
+  unprincipled rascals have also appeared upon the scene, men without
+  talent, but far-reaching talons, who by specious promises have sought
+  to swindle all whom they could inveigle. This class of scoundrels do
+  not hesitate to make promises that they cannot and never intend to
+  fulfill, and should be frowned down by all honest men. They deceive
+  the public, leave a bad impression, and thus injure legitimate
+  exhibitions. Every promise I make will be faithfully fulfilled, as
+  experience has clearly proven that dealing uprightly with the public
+  brings its sure reward. All who visit my beautiful entertainment may
+  rely upon the same fair dealing which has been my life-long policy,
+  and which has always honored me with crowded houses.
+
+    NEW UNIQUE PASTIMES.      NEW HARMLESS MIRTH.
+    NEW COSTLY WONDERS.       NEW FAMOUS ARTISTS.
+    NEW PLEASANT STUDIES.     NEW INNOCENT FUN.
+    NEW POPULAR MUSIC.        NEW KNOWLEDGE.
+
+     _Special Notice._
+
+  Ladies and Children are especially Invited to Attend this
+  Entertainment. We Guarantee it to be Chaste, Pure, and as Wholesome
+  and Innocent as it is Amusing and Laughable.
+
+Finally I decided on going to see a German tragedy. I did not understand
+it, but the acting seemed to me good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: A GERMAN TRAGEDY.]
+
+Like Milwaukee, Cincinnati possesses a very strong German element.
+Indeed a whole part of the city is entirely inhabited by a German
+population, and situated on one side of the water. When you cross the
+bridge in its direction, you are going "over the Rhine," to use the
+local expression. "To go over the Rhine" of an evening means to go to
+one of the many German _Brauerei_, and have sausages and Bavarian beer
+for supper.
+
+The town is a very prosperous one. The Germans in America are liked for
+their steadiness and industry. An American friend even told me that the
+Germans were perhaps the best patriots the United States could boast of.
+
+Patriots! The word sounded strangely to my ears. I may be prejudiced,
+but I call a good patriot a man who loves his own mother country. You
+may like the land of your adoption, but you love the land of your birth.
+Good patriots! I call a good brother a man who loves his sister, not
+other people's sisters.
+
+The Germans apply for their naturalization papers the day after they
+have landed. I should admire their patriotism much more if they waited a
+little longer before they changed their own mother for a step-mother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 8._
+
+I witnessed a most impressive ceremony this morning, the funeral of the
+American Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Berlin, whose body was
+brought from Germany to his native place a few days ago. No soldiers
+ordered to accompany the _cort�ge,_ no uniforms, but thousands of people
+voluntarily doing honor to the remains of a talented and respected
+fellow-citizen and townsman: a truly republican ceremony in its
+simplicity and earnestness.
+
+The coffin was taken to the Music Hall, a new and beautiful building
+capable of accommodating thousands of people, and placed on the platform
+amid evergreens and the Stars and Stripes. In a few minutes, the hall,
+decorated with taste but with appropriate simplicity, was packed from
+floor to ceiling. Some notables and friends of the late Minister sat on
+the platform around the coffin, and the mayor, in the name of the
+inhabitants of the city, delivered a speech, a eulogistic funeral
+oration, on the deceased diplomatist. All parties were represented in
+the hall, Republicans and Democrats alike had come. America admits no
+party feeling, no recollection of political differences, to intrude upon
+the homage she gratefully renders to the memory of her illustrious dead.
+
+The mayor's speech, listened to by the crowd in respectful silence, was
+much like all the speeches delivered on such occasions, including the
+indispensable sentence that "he knew he could safely affirm that the
+deceased had never made any enemies." When I hear a man spoken of, after
+his death, as never having made any enemies, as a Christian I admire
+him, but I also come to the conclusion that he must have been a very
+insignificant member of the community. But the phrase, I should
+remember, is a mere piece of flattery to the dead, in a country where
+death puts a stop to all enmity, political enmity especially. The same
+would be done in England, and almost everywhere. Not in France, however,
+where the dead continue to have implacable enemies for many years after
+they have left the lists.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The afternoon was pleasantly spent visiting the town hall and the
+remarkable china manufactories, which turn out very pretty, quaint, and
+artistic pottery. The evening brought to the Od�on a fashionable and
+most cultivated audience. I am invited to pay a return visit to this
+city. I shall look forward to the pleasure of lecturing here again in
+April.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 9._
+
+Spent a most agreeable Sunday in the hospitable house of M. Fredin, the
+French consular agent, and his amiable and talented wife. M. Fredin was
+kind enough to call yesterday at the Burnet House.
+
+As a rule, I never call on the representatives of France in my travels
+abroad. If I traveled as a tourist, I would; but traveling as a
+lecturer, I should be afraid lest the object of my visits might be
+misconstrued, and taken as a gentle hint to patronize me.
+
+One day I had a good laugh with a French consul, in an English town
+where I came to lecture. On arriving at the hall I found a letter from
+this diplomatic compatriot, in which he expressed his surprise that I
+had not apprised him of my arrival. The next morning, before leaving the
+town, I called on him. He welcomed me most gracefully.
+
+"Why did you not let me, your consul, know that you were coming?" he
+said to me.
+
+"Well, Monsieur le Consul," I replied, "suppose I wrote to you:
+'Monsieur le Consul, I shall arrive at N. on Friday,' and suppose, now,
+just suppose, that you answered me, 'Sir, I am glad to hear you will
+arrive here on Friday, but what on earth is that to me?'"
+
+He saw the point at once. A Frenchman always does.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 10._
+
+I like this land of conjuring. This morning I took the street car to go
+on the Burnet Hills. At the foot of the hill the car--horses, and
+all--enters a little house. The house climbs the hill vertically by
+means of cables. Arrived at the top of the mountain, the car comes out
+of the little house and goes on its way, just as if absolutely nothing
+had happened. To return to town, I went down the hill in the same
+fashion. But if the cable should break, you will exclaim, where would
+you be? Ah, there you are! It does not break. It did once, so now they
+see that it does not again.
+
+[Illustration: A VARIETY ACTOR.]
+
+In the evening there was nothing to see except variety shows and
+wrestlers. There was a variety show which tempted me, the Hermann's
+Vaudevilles. I saw on the list of attractions the name of my friend and
+compatriot, F. Trewey, the famous shadowgraphist, and I concluded that
+if the other artistes were as good in their lines as he is in his, it
+would be well worth seeing. The show was very good of its kind, and
+Trewey was admirable; but the audience were not refined, and it was not
+his most subtle and artistic tricks that they applauded most, but the
+broader and more striking ones. After the show he and I went "over the
+Rhine." You know what it means.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 11, 9 a. m._
+
+For a long time I had wished to see the wonderful American fire brigades
+at work. The wish has now been satisfied.
+
+At half-past one this morning I was roused in my bed by the galloping of
+horses and the shouts of people in the street. Huge tongues of fire were
+licking my window, and the heat in the room was intense. Indeed, all
+around me seemed to be in a blaze, and I took it for granted that the
+Burnet House was on fire. I rose and dressed quickly, put together the
+few valuables that were in my possession, and prepared to make for the
+street. I soon saw, however, that it was a block of houses opposite that
+was on fire, or rather the corner house of that block.
+
+The guests of the hotel were in the corridors ready for any emergency.
+Had there been any wind in our direction, the hotel was doomed. The
+night was calm and wet. As soon as we became aware that no lives were
+lost or in danger in the burning building, and that it would only be a
+question of insurance money to be paid by some companies, we betook
+ourselves to admire the magnificent sight. For it was a magnificent
+sight, this whole large building, the prey of flames coming in torrents
+out of every window, the dogged perseverance of the firemen streaming
+floods of water over the roof and through the windows, the salvage
+corps men penetrating through the flames into the building in the hope
+of receiving the next day a commission on all the goods and valuables
+saved. A fierce battle it was between a brute element and man. By three
+o'clock the element was conquered, but only the four walls of the
+building remained, which proved to me that, with all their wonderful
+promptitude and gallantry, all firemen can do when flames have got firm
+hold on a building is to save the adjoining property.
+
+[Illustration: A FIRE YARN.]
+
+I listened to the different groups of people in the hotel. Some gave
+advice as to how the firemen should set about their work, or criticised.
+Others related the big fires they had witnessed, a few indulging in the
+recital of the exploits they performed thereat. There are a good many
+Gascons among the Americans. At four o'clock all danger was over, and we
+all retired.
+
+[Illustration: AS WE SAW IT.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: AS THE REPORTERS SAW IT.]
+
+I was longing to read the descriptions of the fire in this morning's
+papers. I have now read them and am not at all disappointed. On the
+contrary, they are beyond my most sanguine expectations. Wonderful;
+simply perfectly wonderful! I am now trying to persuade myself that I
+really saw all that the reporters saw, and that I really ran great
+danger last night. For, "at every turn," it appears, "the noble hotel
+seemed as if it must become the prey of the fierce element, and could
+only be saved by a miracle." Columns and columns of details most
+graphically given, sensational, blood-curdling. But all that is nothing.
+You should read about the panic, and the scenes of wild confusion in the
+Burnet House, when all the good folks, who had all dressed and were
+looking quietly at the fire from the windows, are described as a crowd
+of people in despair: women disheveled, in their night-dresses, running
+wild, and throwing themselves in the arms of men to seek protection, and
+all shrieking and panic-stricken. Such a scene of confusion and terror
+you can hardly imagine. Wonderful!
+
+[Illustration: THE FIREMAN.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+A JOURNEY IF YOU LIKE--TERRIBLE ENCOUNTER WITH AN AMERICAN INTERVIEWER.
+
+
+     _In the train to Brushville, March 11._
+
+Left Cincinnati this morning at ten o'clock and shall not arrive at
+Brushville before seven o'clock to-night. I am beginning to learn how to
+speak American. As I asked for my ticket this morning at the railroad
+office, the clerk said to me:
+
+"C. H. D. or C. C. C. St. L. and St. P.?"
+
+"C. H. D.," I replied, with perfect assurance.
+
+I happened to hit on the right line for Brushville.
+
+By this time I know pretty well all those combinations of the alphabet
+by which the different railroad lines of America are designated.
+
+No hope of comfort or of a dinner to-day. I shall have to change trains
+three times, but none of them, I am grieved to hear, have parlor cars or
+dining cars. There is something democratic about uniform cars for all
+alike. I am a democrat myself, yet I have a weakness for the parlor
+cars--and the dining cars.
+
+At noon we stopped five minutes at a place which, two years ago, counted
+six wooden huts. To-day it has more than 5000 inhabitants, the electric
+light in the streets, a public library, two hotels, four churches, two
+banks, a public school, a high school, cuspidores, toothpicks, and all
+the signs of American civilization.
+
+I changed trains at one o'clock at Castle Green Junction. No hotel in
+the place. I inquired where food could be obtained. A little wooden hut,
+on the other side of the depot, bearing the inscription "Lunch Room,"
+was pointed out to me. _Lunch_ in America has not the meaning that it
+has in England, as I often experienced to my despair. The English are
+solid people. In England _lunch_ means something. In America, it does
+not. However, as there was no _Beware_ written outside, I entered the
+place. Several people were eating pies, fruit pies, pies with crust
+under, and crust over: sealed mysteries.
+
+[Illustration: "PEACH POY AND APPLE POY."]
+
+"I want something to eat," I said to a man behind the counter, who was
+in possession of only one eye, and hailed from Old Oireland.
+
+"What 'd ye loike?" replied he, winking with the eye that was not there.
+
+"Well, what have you got?"
+
+"Peach poy, apricot poy, apple poy, and mince poy."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"And, shure, what more do you want?"
+
+I have always suspected something mysterious about mince pies. At home,
+I eat mince pies. I also trust my friends' cooks. Outside, I pass. I
+think that mince pies and sausages should be made at home.
+
+"I like a little variety," I said to the Irishman, "give me a small
+slice of apple pie, one of apricot pie, and another of peach pie."
+
+The Irishman stared at me.
+
+"What's the matter with the mince poy?" he seemed to say.
+
+I could see from his eye that he resented the insult offered to his
+mince pies.
+
+I ate my pies and returned on the platform. I was told that the train
+was two hours behind time, and I should be too late to catch the last
+Brushville train at the next change.
+
+I walked and smoked.
+
+The three pies began to get acquainted with each other.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Brushville, March 12._
+
+Oh, those pies!
+
+At the last change yesterday, I arrived too late. The last Brushville
+train was gone.
+
+The pies were there.
+
+A fortune I would have given for a dinner and a bed, which now seemed
+more problematic than ever.
+
+I went to the station-master.
+
+"Can I have a special train to take me to Brushville to-night?"
+
+"A hundred dollars."
+
+"How much for a locomotive alone?"
+
+"Sixty dollars."
+
+"Have you a freight train going to Brushville?"
+
+"What will you do with it?"
+
+"Board it."
+
+"Board it! I can't stop the train."
+
+"I'll take my chance."
+
+"Your life is insured?"
+
+"Yes; for a great deal more than it is worth."
+
+"Very well," he said, "I'll let you do it for five dollars."
+
+[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO BRUSHVILLE.]
+
+And he looked as if he was going to enjoy the fun. The freight train
+arrived, slackened speed, and I boarded, with my portmanteau and my
+umbrella, a car loaded with timber. I placed my handbag on the
+timber--you know, the one I had when traveling in "the neighborhood of
+Chicago"--sat on it, opened my umbrella, and waved a "tata" to the
+station-master.
+
+It was raining fast, and I had a journey of some thirty miles to make at
+the rate of about twelve miles an hour.
+
+Oh, those pies! They now seemed to have resolved to fight it out.
+_Sacrebleu! De bleu! de bleu!_
+
+A few miles from Brushville I had to get out, or rather, get down, and
+take a ticket for Brushville on board a local train.
+
+Benumbed with cold, wet through, and famished, I arrived here at ten
+o'clock last night. The peach pie, the apple pie, and the apricot pie
+had settled their differences and become on friendly and accommodating
+terms.
+
+I was able, on arriving at the hotel, to enjoy some light refreshments,
+which I only obtained, at that time of night, thanks to the manager,
+whom I had the pleasure of knowing personally.
+
+At eleven o'clock I went to bed, or, to use a more proper expression for
+my Philadelphia readers, I retired.
+
+I had been "retiring" for about half an hour, when I heard a knock at
+the door.
+
+"Who's there?" I grumbled from under the bedclothes.
+
+"A representative of the Brushville _Express_."
+
+"Oh," said I, "I am very sorry--but I'm asleep."
+
+"Please let me in; I won't detain you very long."
+
+"I guess you won't. Now, please do not insist. I am tired, upset, ill,
+and I want rest. Come to-morrow morning."
+
+"No, I can't do that," answered the voice behind the door; "my paper
+appears in the morning, and I want to put in something about you."
+
+"Now, do go away," I pleaded, "there's a good fellow."
+
+"I must see you," insisted the voice.
+
+"You go!" I cried, "you go----" without mentioning any place.
+
+For a couple of minutes there was silence, and I thought the interviewer
+was gone. The illusion was sweet, but short. There was another knock,
+followed by a "I really must see you to-night." Seeing that there would
+be no peace until I had let the reporter in, I unbolted the door, and
+jumped back into my--you know.
+
+[Illustration: THE INTERVIEWER.]
+
+It was pitch dark.
+
+The door opened; and I heard the interviewer's steps in the room. By and
+by, the sound of a pocket being searched was distinct. It was his own. A
+match was pulled out and struck; the premises examined and
+reconnoitered.
+
+A chandelier with three lights hung in the middle of the room. The
+reporter, speechless and solemn, lighted one burner, then two, then
+three, chose the most comfortable seat, and installed himself in it,
+looking at me with an air of triumph.
+
+I was sitting up, wild and desheveled, in my "retiring" clothes.
+
+"_Que voulez-vous?_" I wanted to yell, my state of drowsiness allowing
+me to think only in French.
+
+Instead of translating this query by "What do you want?" as I should
+have done, if I had been in the complete enjoyment of my intellectual
+faculties, I shouted to him:
+
+"What will you have?"
+
+"Oh, thanks, I'm not particular," he calmly replied. "I'll have a little
+whisky and soda--rye whisky, please."
+
+My face must have been a study as I rang for whisky and soda.
+
+The mixture was brought--for two.
+
+"I suppose you have no objection to my smoking?" coolly said the man in
+the room.
+
+"Not at all," I remarked; "this is perfectly lovely; I enjoy it all."
+
+He pulled out his pocket-book and his pencil, crossed his legs, and
+having drawn a long whiff from his cigar, he said:
+
+"I see that you have no lecture to deliver in Brushville; may I ask you
+what you have come here for?"
+
+"Now," said I, "what the deuce is that to you? If this is the kind of
+questions you have to ask me, you go----"
+
+He pocketed the rebuff, and went on undisturbed:
+
+"How are you struck with Brushville?"
+
+"I am struck," said I, "with the cheek of some of the inhabitants. I
+have driven to this hotel from the depot in a closed carriage, and I
+have seen nothing of your city."
+
+The man wrote down something.
+
+"I lecture to-morrow night," I continued, "before the students of the
+State University, and I have come here for rest."
+
+He took this down.
+
+"All this, you see, is very uninteresting; so, good-night."
+
+And I disappeared.
+
+The interviewer rose and came to my side.
+
+"Really, now that I am here, you may as well let me have a chat with
+you."
+
+"You wretch!" I exclaimed. "Don't you see that I am dying for sleep? Is
+there nothing sacred for you? Have you lost all sense of charity? Have
+you no mother? Don't you believe in future punishment? Are you a man or
+a demon?"
+
+"Tell me some anecdotes, some of your reminiscences of the road," said
+the man, with a sardonic grin.
+
+I made no reply. The imperturbable reporter resumed his seat and smoked.
+
+"Are you gone?" I sighed, from under the blankets.
+
+The answer came in the following words:
+
+"I understand, sir, that when you were a young man----"
+
+"When I was WHAT?" I shouted, sitting up once more.
+
+"I understand, sir, that when you were _quite_ a young man," repeated
+the interviewer, with the sentence improved, "you were an officer in
+the French army."
+
+"I was," I murmured, in the same position.
+
+"I also understand you fought during the Franco-Prussian war."
+
+"I did," I said, resuming a horizontal position.
+
+"May I ask you to give me some reminiscences of the Franco-Prussian
+war--just enough to fill about a column?"
+
+I rose and again sat up.
+
+"Free citizen of the great American Republic," said I, "beware, beware!
+There will be blood shed in this room to-night."
+
+And I seized my pillow.
+
+"You are not meaty," exclaimed the reporter.
+
+"May I inquire what the meaning of this strange expression is?" I said,
+frowning; "I don't speak American fluently."
+
+"It means," he replied, "that there is very little to be got out of
+you."
+
+"Are you going?" I said, smiling.
+
+"Well, I guess I am."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+I bolted the door, turned out the gas, and "re-retired."
+
+"Poor fellow," I thought; "perhaps he relied on me to supply him with
+material for a column. I might have chatted with him. After all, these
+reporters have invariably been kind to me. I might as well have obliged
+him. What is he going to do?"
+
+And I dreamed that he was dismissed.
+
+I ought to have known better.
+
+This morning I opened the Brushville _Express_, and, to my stupefaction,
+saw a column about me. My impressions of Brushville, that I had no
+opportunity of looking at, were there. Nay, more. I would blush to
+record here the exploits I performed during the Franco-Prussian war, as
+related by my interviewer, especially those which took place at the
+battle of Gravelotte, where, unfortunately, I was not present. The whole
+thing was well written. The reference to my military services began
+thus: "Last night a hero of the great Franco-Prussian war slept under
+the hospitable roof of Morrison Hotel, in this city."
+
+"Slept!" This was adding insult to injury.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This morning I had the visit of two more reporters.
+
+"What do you think of Brushville?" they said; and, seeing that I would
+not answer the question, they volunteered information on Brushville, and
+talked loud on the subject. I have no doubt that the afternoon papers
+will publish my impressions of Brushville.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+  THE UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA--INDIANAPOLIS--THE VETERANS OF THE GRAND
+  ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC ON THE SPREE--A MARVELOUS EQUILIBRIST.
+
+
+     _Bloomington, Ind., March 13._
+
+Lectured yesterday before the students of the University of Indiana, and
+visited the different buildings this morning. The university is situated
+on a hill in the midst of a wood, about half a mile from the little town
+of Bloomington.
+
+In a few days I shall be at Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan, the
+largest in America, I am told. I will wait till then to jot down my
+impressions of university life in this country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I read in the papers: "Prince Saunders, colored, was hanged here
+(Plaquemine, Fla.) yesterday. He declared he had made his peace with
+God, and his sins had been forgiven. Saunders murdered Rhody Walker, his
+sweetheart, last December, a few hours after he had witnessed the
+execution of Carter Wilkinson."
+
+If Saunders has made his peace with God, I hope his executioners have
+made theirs with God and man. What an indictment against man! What an
+argument against capital punishment! Here is a man committing a murder
+on returning from witnessing an execution. And there are men still to be
+found who declare that capital punishment deters men from committing
+murder!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: VETERANS.]
+
+     _Indianapolis, March 14._
+
+Arrived here yesterday afternoon. Met James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier
+poet. Mr. Riley is a man of about thirty, a genuine poet, full of pathos
+and humor, and a great reciter. No one, I imagine, could give his poetry
+as he does himself. He is a born actor, who holds you in suspense, and
+makes you cry or laugh just as he pleases. I remember, when two years
+ago Mr. Augustin Daly gave a farewell supper to Mr. Henry Irving and
+Miss Ellen Terry at Delmonico's, Mr. Riley recited one of his poems at
+table. He gave most of us a big lump in our throats, and Miss Terry had
+tears rolling down her cheeks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: A GREAT BALANCING FEAT.]
+
+The veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic are having a great field
+day in Indianapolis. They have come here to attend meetings and ask for
+pensions, so as to reduce that unmanageable surplus. Indianapolis is
+full, and the management of Denison House does not know which way to
+turn. All these veterans have large, broad-brimmed soft hats and are
+covered all over with badges and ribbons. Their wives and daughters,
+members of some patriotic association, have come with them. It is a huge
+picnic. The entrance hall is crowded all day. The spittoons have been
+replaced by tubs for the occasion. Chewing is in favor all over America,
+but the State of Indiana beats, in that way, everything I have seen
+before.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "IN EUROPE SWAGGERING LITTLE BOYS SMOKE."]
+
+Went to see Clara Morris in Adolphe Belot's "Article 47," at the Opera
+House, last night. Clara Morris is a powerful actress, but, like most
+actors and actresses who go "starring" through America, badly supported.
+I watched the audience with great interest. Nineteen mouths out of
+twenty were chewing--the men tobacco, the women gum impregnated with
+peppermint. All the jaws were going like those of so many ruminants
+grazing in a field. From the box I occupied the sight was most amusing.
+
+On returning to Denison House from the theater, I went to have a smoke
+in a quiet corner of the hall, far from the crowd. By and by two men,
+most smartly dressed, with diamond pins in their cravats, and flowers
+embroidered on their waistcoats, came and sat opposite me. I thought
+they had chosen the place to have a quiet chat together. Not so. One
+pushed a cuspidore with his foot and brought it between the two chairs.
+There, for half an hour, without saying one word to each other, they
+chewed, hawked, and spat--and had a good time before going to bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Trewey is nowhere as an equilibrist, compared to a gallant veteran who
+breakfasted at my table, this morning. Among the different courses
+brought to him were two boiled eggs, almost raw, poured into a tumbler
+according to the American fashion. Without spilling a drop, he managed
+to eat those eggs with the end of his knife. It was marvelous. I have
+never seen the like of it, even in Germany, where the knife trick is
+practiced from the tenderest age.
+
+In Europe, swaggering little boys smoke; here they chew and spit, and
+look at you, as if to say: "See what a big man I am!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+  CHICAGO (SECOND VISIT)--VASSILI VERESCHAGIN'S EXHIBITION--THE
+  "ANGELUS"--WAGNER AND WAGNERITES--WANDERINGS ABOUT THE BIG CITY--I SIT
+  ON THE TRIBUNAL.
+
+
+     _Chicago, March 15._
+
+Arrived here this morning and put up at the Grand Pacific Hotel. My
+lecture to-night at the Central Music Hall is advertised as a
+_causerie_. My local manager informs me that many people have inquired
+at the box-office what the meaning of that French word is. As he does
+not know himself, he could not enlighten them, but he thinks that
+curiosity will draw a good crowd to-night.
+
+This puts me in mind of a little incident which took place about a year
+ago. I was to make my appearance before an afternoon audience in the
+fashionable town of Eastbourne. Not wishing to convey the idea of a
+serious and prosy discourse, I advised my manager to call the
+entertainment "_A causerie_." The room was full and the affair passed
+off very well. But an old lady, who was a well-known patroness of such
+entertainments, did not put in an appearance. On being asked the next
+day why she was not present, she replied: "Well, to tell you the truth,
+when I saw that they had given the entertainment a French name, I was
+afraid it might be something not quite fit for me to hear." Dear soul!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 16._
+
+My manager's predictions were realized last night. I had a large
+audience, one of the keenest and the most responsive and appreciative I
+have ever had. I was introduced by Judge Elliott Anthony, of the
+Superior Court, in a short, witty, and graceful little speech. He spoke
+of Lafayette and of the debt of gratitude America owes to France for the
+help she received at her hands during the War of Independence. Before
+taking leave of me, Judge Anthony kindly invited me to pay a visit to
+the Superior Court next Wednesday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 17._
+
+Dined yesterday with Mr. James W. Scott, proprietor of the Chicago
+_Herald_, one of the most flourishing newspapers in the United States,
+and in the evening went to see Richard Mansfield in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
+Hyde." The play is a repulsive one, but the double impersonation gives
+the great actor a magnificent opportunity for the display of his
+histrionic powers. The house was crowded, though it was Sunday. The pick
+of Chicago society was not there, of course. Some years ago, I was told,
+a Sunday audience was mainly composed of men. To-day the women go as
+freely as the men. The "horrible" always has a great fascination for the
+masses, and Mansfield held his popular audience in a state of breathless
+suspense. There was a great deal of disappointment written on the faces
+when the light was turned down on the appearance of "Mr. Hyde," with his
+horribly distorted features. A woman, sitting in a box next to the one I
+occupied, exclaimed, as "Hyde" came to explain his terrible secret to
+the doctor, in the fourth act, "What a shame, they are turning down the
+light again!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "DEAR SOUL!"]
+
+     _March 18._
+
+Spent yesterday in recreation intellectual--and otherwise. I like to see
+everything, and I have no objection to entering a dime museum. I went to
+one yesterday morning, and saw a bearded lady, a calf with two heads, a
+gorilla (stuffed), a girl with no arms, and other freaks of nature. The
+bearded lady had very, very masculine features, but _honi soit qui mal y
+pense_. I could not help thinking of one of General Horace Porter's good
+stories. A school-master asks a little boy what his father is.
+
+"Please, sir, papa told me not to tell."
+
+"Oh, never mind, it's all right with me."
+
+"Please, sir, he is the bearded lady at the dime museum."
+
+From the museum I went to the free library in the City Hall. Dime
+museums and free libraries--such is America. The attendance at the free
+libraries increases rapidly every day, and the till at the dime museums
+diminishes with proportionate rapidity.
+
+[Illustration: "THE BEARDED LADY."]
+
+After lunch I paid a visit to the exhibition of Vassili Vereschagin's
+pictures. What on earth could possess the talented Russian artist, whose
+coloring is so lovely, to expend his labor on such subjects! Pictures
+like those, which show the horrors of a campaign in all their
+hideousness, may serve a good purpose in creating  a detestation of war
+in all who see them. Nothing short of such a motive in the artist could
+excuse the portrayal of such infamies. These pictures are so many
+nightmares which will certainly haunt my eyes and brain for days and
+nights to come. Battle scenes portrayed with a realism that is
+revolting, because, alas, only too true. The execution of nihilists in a
+dim, dreary, snow-covered waste. An execution of sepoys, the doomed
+rebels tied to the mouths of cannon about to be fired off. Scenes of
+torture, illustrative of the extent to which human suffering can be
+carried, give you cold shudders in every fiber of your body. One horrid
+canvas shows a deserted battlefield, the snow-covered ground littered
+with corpses that ravens are tearing and fighting for. But, perhaps
+worst of all, is a picture of a field, where, in the snow, lie the human
+remains of a company of Russian soldiers who have been surprised and
+slain by Turks. Among the bodies, outraged by horrible and nameless
+mutilations, walks a priest, swinging a censer. One seems to be pursued
+by, and impregnated with, a smell of cadaverous putrefaction. This
+collection of pictures is installed in a place which has been used for
+stabling horses in, and is reeking with stable odors and the carbolic
+acid that has been employed to neutralize them. Your sense of smell is
+in full sympathy with your horrified sense of sight: both are revolted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, behind the three large rooms devoted to the Russian artist's works
+was a small one, in which hung a single picture. You little guess that
+that picture was no other than Jean Francois Millet's "Angelus."
+Millet's dear little "Angelus," that hymn of resignation and peace,
+alongside of all this roar and carnage of battle! The exhibitor thought,
+perhaps, that a sedative might be needed after the strong dose of
+Vassili Vereschagin, but I imagine that no one who went into that little
+room after the others was in a mood to listen to Millet's message.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 19._
+
+Yesterday morning I went to see the Richmond Libby Prison, a four-story,
+huge brick building which has been removed here from Richmond, over a
+distance of more than a thousand miles, across the mountains of
+Pennsylvania. This is, perhaps, as the circular says, an unparalleled
+feat in the history of the world. The prison has been converted into a
+museum, illustrating the Civil War and African Slavery in America. The
+visit proved very interesting. In the afternoon I had a drive through
+the beautiful parks of the city.
+
+In the evening I went to see "Tannh�user" at the Auditorium. Outside,
+the building looks more like a penitentiary than a place of amusement--a
+huge pile of masonry, built of great, rough, black-looking blocks of
+stone. Inside, it is magnificent. I do not know anything to compare with
+it for comfort, grandeur, and beauty. It can hold seven thousand people.
+The decorations are white and gold. The lighting is done by means of arc
+electric lights in the enormously lofty roof--lights which can be
+lowered at will. Mr. Peck kindly took me to see the inner workings of
+the stage. I should say "stages," for there are three. The hydraulic
+machinery for raising and lowering them cost $200,000.
+
+Madame Lehmann sang grandly. I imagine that she is the finest lady
+exponent of Wagner's music alive. She not only sings the parts, but
+looks them. Built on grand lines and crowned with masses of blond hair,
+she seems, when she gives forth those volumes of clear tones, a Norse
+goddess strayed into the nineteenth century.
+
+M. Gounod describes Wagner as an astounding prodigy, an aberration of
+genius, a dreamer haunted by the colossal. For years I had listened to
+Wagner's music, and, like most of my compatriots, brought up on the
+tuneful airs of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, Auber, etc., I
+entirely failed to appreciate the music of the future. All I could say
+in its favor was some variation of the sentiment once expressed by Mr.
+Edgar W. Nye ("Bill Nye") who, after giving the subject his mature
+consideration, said he came to the conclusion that Wagner's music was
+not so bad as it sounded. But I own that since I went to Bayreuth and
+heard and saw the operas as there given, I began not only to see that
+they are beautiful, but why they are beautiful.
+
+Wagnerian opera is a poetical and musical idealization of speech.
+
+The fault that I, like many others, have fallen into, was that of
+listening to the voices instead of listening to the orchestra. The fact
+is, the voices could almost be dispensed with altogether. The orchestra
+gives you the beautiful poem in music, and the personages on the stage
+are really little more than illustrative puppets. They play about the
+same part in the work that pictures play in a book. Wagner's method was
+something so new, so different to all we had been accustomed to, that it
+naturally provoked much indignation and enmity--not because it was bad,
+but because it was new. It was the old story of the Classicists and
+Romanticists over again.
+
+If you wanted to write a symphony, illustrative of the pangs and
+miseries of a sufferer from toothache, you would, if you were a disciple
+of Wagner, write your orchestral score so that the instruments should
+convey to the listener the whole gamut of groans--the temporary relief,
+the return of the pain, the sudden disappearance of it on ringing the
+bell at the dentist's door, the final wrench of extraction gone through
+by the poor patient. On the boards you would put a personage who, with
+voice and contortions, should help you, as pictorial illustrations help
+an author. Such is the Wagnerian method.
+
+[Illustration: "A TERRIBLE WAGNERITE."]
+
+After the play I met a terrible Wagnerite. Most Wagnerites are terrible.
+They will not admit that anything can be discussed, much less
+criticised, in the works of the master. They are not admirers,
+disciples; they are worshipers. To them Wagner's music is as perfect as
+America is to many a good-humored American. They will tell you that
+never have horses neighed so realistically as they do in the "Walk�re."
+Answer that this is almost lowering music to the level of ventriloquism,
+and they will declare you a profane, unworthy to live. My Wagnerite
+friend told me last night that Wagner's work constantly improved till it
+reached perfection in "Parsifal." "There," he said, quite seriously,
+"the music has reached such a state of perfection that, in the garden
+scene, you can smell the violets and the roses."
+
+"Well," I interrupted, "I heard 'Parsifal' in Bayreuth, and I must
+confess that it is, perhaps, the only work of Wagner's that I cannot
+understand."
+
+"I have heard it thirty-four times," he said, "and enjoyed it more the
+thirty-fourth time than I did the thirty-third."
+
+"Then," I remarked, "perhaps it has to be heard fifty times before it
+can be thoroughly appreciated. In which case, you must own that life is
+too short to enable one to see an opera fifty times in order to enjoy it
+as it should really be enjoyed. I don't care what science there is about
+music, or what labors a musician should have to go through. As one of
+the public, I say that music is a recreation, and should be understood
+at once. Auber, for example, with his delightful airs, that three
+generations of men have sung on their way home from the opera house, has
+been a greater benefactor of the human race than Wagner. I prefer music
+written for the heart to music written for the mind."
+
+On hearing me mention Auber's name in one breath with Wagner's, the
+Wagnerite threw a glance of contempt at me that I shall never forget.
+
+"Well," said I, to regain his good graces, "I may improve yet--I will
+try again."
+
+As a rule, the Wagnerite is a man utterly destitute of humor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 20._
+
+Yesterday morning I called on Judge Elliott Anthony, at the Superior
+Court. The Judge invited me to sit by his side on the tribunal, and
+kindly explained to me the procedure, as the cases went on. Certainly
+kindness is not rare in Europe, but such simplicity in a high official
+is only to be met with in America.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+  ANN ARBOR--THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN--DETROIT AGAIN--THE FRENCH OUT
+  OF FRANCE--OBERLIN COLLEGE, OHIO--BLACK AND WHITE--ARE ALL AMERICAN
+  CITIZENS EQUAL?
+
+
+     _Detroit, March 22._
+
+ONE of the most interesting and brilliant audiences that I have yet
+addressed was the large one which gathered in the lecture hall of the
+University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, last night. Two thousand young,
+bright faces to gaze at from the platform is a sight not to be easily
+forgotten. I succeeded in pleasing them, and they simply delighted me.
+
+The University of Michigan is, I think, the largest in the United
+States.
+
+Picture to yourself one thousand young men and one thousand young women,
+in their early twenties, staying together in the same boarding-houses,
+studying literature, science, and the fine arts in the same class-rooms,
+living happily and in perfect harmony.
+
+They are not married.
+
+No restraint of any sort. Even in the boarding-houses they are allowed
+to meet in the sitting-rooms; I believe that the only restriction is
+that, at eight o'clock in the evening, or at nine (I forget which), the
+young ladies have to retire to their private apartments.
+
+"But," some European will exclaim, "do the young ladies' parents trust
+all these young men?" They do much better than that, my dear
+friend--they trust their daughters.
+
+During eighteen years, I was told, three accidents happened, but three
+marriages happily resulted.
+
+The educational system of America engenders the high morality which
+undoubtedly exists throughout the whole of the United States, by
+accustoming women to the companionship of men from their infancy, first
+in the public schools, then in the high schools, and finally in the
+universities. It explains the social life of the country. It accounts
+for the delightful manner in which men treat women. It explains the
+influence of women. Receiving exactly the same education as the men, the
+women are enabled to enjoy all the intellectual pleasures of life. They
+are not inferior beings intended for mere housekeepers, but women
+destined to play an important part in all the stations of life.
+
+No praise can be too high for a system of education that places
+knowledge of the highest order at the disposal of every child born in
+America. The public schools are free, the high schools are free, and the
+universities,[4] through the aid that they receive from the United
+States and from the State in which they are, can offer their privileges,
+without charge for tuition, to all persons of either sex who are
+qualified by knowledge for admission.
+
+The University of Michigan comprises the Department of Literature,
+Science, and the Arts, the Department of Medicine and Surgery, the
+Department of Law, the School of Pharmacy, the Homoeopathic Medical
+College, and the College of Dental Surgery. Each department has its
+special Faculty of Instruction.
+
+I count 118 professors on the staff of the different faculties.
+
+The library contains 70,041 volumes, 14,626 unbound brochures, and 514
+maps and charts.
+
+The University also possesses beautiful laboratories, museums, an
+astronomical observatory, collections, workshops of all sorts, a lecture
+hall capable of accommodating over two thousand people, art studios,
+etc., etc. Almost every school has a building of its own, so that the
+University is like a little busy town.
+
+No visit that I have ever paid to a public institution interested me so
+much as the short one paid to the University of Michigan yesterday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dined this evening with Mr. W. H. Brearley, editor of the Detroit
+_Journal_. Mr. Brearley thinks that the Americans, who received from
+France such a beautiful present as the statue of "Liberty Enlightening
+the World," ought to present the mother country of General Lafayette
+with a token of her gratitude and affection, and he has started a
+national subscription to carry out his idea. He has already received
+support, moral and substantial. I can assure him that nothing would
+touch the hearts of the French people more than such a tribute of
+gratitude and friendship from the other great republic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening I had a crowded house in the large lecture hall of the
+Young Men's Christian Association.
+
+After the lecture, I met an interesting Frenchman residing in Detroit.
+
+"I was told a month ago, when I paid my first visit to Detroit, that
+there were twenty-five thousand French people living here," I said to
+him.
+
+"The number is exaggerated, I believe," he replied, "but certainly we
+are about twenty thousand."
+
+"I suppose you have French societies, a French Club?" I ventured.
+
+He smiled.
+
+"The Germans have," he said, "but we have not. We have tried many times
+to found French clubs in this city, so as to establish friendly
+intercourse among our compatriots, but we have always failed."
+
+"How is that?" I asked.
+
+"Well, I don't know. They all wanted to be presidents, or
+vice-presidents. They quarreled among themselves."
+
+"When six Frenchmen meet to start a society," I said, "one will be
+president, two vice-presidents, one secretary, and the other
+assistant-secretary. If the sixth cannot obtain an official position, he
+will resign and go about abusing the other five."
+
+"That's just what happened."
+
+It was my turn to smile. Why should the French in Detroit be different
+from the French all over the world, except perhaps in their own country?
+A Frenchman out of France is like a fish out of water. He loses his
+native amiability and becomes a sort of suspicious person, who spends
+his life in thinking that everybody wants to tread on his corns.
+
+"When two Frenchmen meet in a foreign land," goes an old saying, "there
+is one too many."
+
+[Illustration: THE TWO FRENCHMEN.]
+
+In Chicago there are two Frenchmen engaged in teaching the natives of
+the city "how to speak and write the French language correctly." The
+people of Chicago maintain that the streets are too narrow to let these
+two Frenchmen pass, when they walk in opposite directions. And it
+appears that one of them has lately started a little French paper--to
+abuse the other in.
+
+I think that all the faults and weaknesses of the French can be
+accounted for by the presence of a defect, jealousy; and the absence of
+a quality, humor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Oberlin, O., March 24._
+
+Have to-night given a lecture to the students of Oberlin College, a
+religious institution founded by the late Rev. Charles Finney, the
+friend of the slaves, and whose voice, they say, when he preached, shook
+the earth.
+
+The college is open to colored students; but in an audience of about a
+thousand young men and women, I could only discover the presence of two
+descendants of Ham.
+
+Originally many colored students attended at Oberlin College, but the
+number steadily decreased every year, and to-day there are only very
+few. The colored student is not officially "boycotted," but he has
+probably discovered by this time that he is not wanted in Oberlin
+College any more than in the orchestra stalls of an American theater.
+
+The Declaration of Independence proclaims that "all men are created
+equal," but I never met a man in America (much less still a woman) who
+believed this or who acted upon it.
+
+The railroad companies have special cars for colored people, and the
+saloons special bars. At Detroit, I was told yesterday that a
+respectable and wealthy mulatto resident, who had been refused service
+in one of the leading restaurants of the town, brought an action against
+the proprietor, but that, although there was no dispute of the facts,
+the jury unanimously decided against the plaintiff, who was moreover
+mulcted in costs to a heavy amount. But all this is nothing: the Young
+Men's Christian Association, one of the most representative and
+influential corporations in the United States, refuses to admit colored
+youths to membership.
+
+[Illustration: THE NEGRO.]
+
+It is just possible that in a few years colored students will have
+ceased to study at Oberlin College.
+
+I can perfectly well understand that Jonathan should not care to
+associate too closely with the colored people, for, although they do not
+inspire me with repulsion, still I cannot imagine--well, I cannot
+understand for one thing how the mulatto can exist.
+
+But since the American has to live alongside the negro, would it not be
+worth his while to treat him politely and honestly, give him his due as
+an equal, if not in his eyes, at any rate in the eyes of the law? Would
+it not be worth his while to remember that the "darky" cannot be
+gradually disposed of like the Indian, for Sambo adapts himself to his
+surroundings, multiplies apace, goes to school, and knows how to read,
+write, and reckon. Reckon especially.
+
+It might be well to remember, too, that all the greatest, bloodiest
+revolutions the world has ever seen were set on foot, not to pay off
+hardships, but as revenge for injustice. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was called
+a romance, nothing but a romance, by the aristocratic Southerners; but,
+to use the Carlylian phrase, their skins went to bind the hundreds of
+editions of that book. Another "Uncle Tom's Cabin" may yet appear.
+
+America will have "to work her thinking machine" seriously on this
+subject, and that before many years are over. If the next Presidential
+election is not run on the negro question, the succeeding one surely
+will be.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+  [4] A fee of ten dollars entitles a student to the privileges of
+    permanent membership in the University.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+  MR. AND MRS. KENDAL IN NEW YORK--JOSEPH JEFFERSON--JULIAN
+  HAWTHORNE--MISS ADA REHAN--"AS YOU LIKE IT" AT DALY'S THEATER.
+
+
+     _New York, March 28._
+
+The New York papers this morning announce that the "Society of Young
+Girls of Pure Character on the Stage" give a lunch to Mrs. Kendal
+to-morrow.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Kendal have conquered America. Their tour is a triumphal
+march through the United States, a huge success artistically,
+financially, and socially.
+
+I am not surprised at it. I went to see them a few days ago in "The
+Ironmaster," and they delighted me. As _Claire_ Mrs. Kendal was
+admirable. She almost succeeded in making me forget Madame Jane Hading,
+who created the part at the Gymnase, in Paris, six years ago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This morning Mr. Joseph Jefferson called on me at the Everett House. The
+veteran actor, who looks more like a man of fifty than like one of over
+sixty, is now playing with Mr. William J. Florence in "The Rivals." I
+had never seen him off the stage. I immediately saw that the
+characteristics of the actor were the characteristics of the
+man--kindness, naturalness, simplicity, _bonhomie_, and _finesse_. An
+admirable actor, a great artist, and a lovable man.
+
+At the Down-Town Club, I lunched with the son of Nathaniel
+Hawthorne--the greatest novelist that America has yet produced--Mr.
+Julian Hawthorne, himself a novelist of repute. Lately he has written a
+series of sensational novels in collaboration with the famous New York
+detective, Inspector Byrnes. Mr. Julian Hawthorne is a man of about
+forty-five, tall, well-proportioned, with an artistic-looking head
+crowned with grayish hair, that reminds a Frenchman of Alexandre Dumas,
+_fils_, and an American of Nathaniel Hawthorne. A charming, unaffected
+man, and a delightful _causeur_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening I went to Daly's Theater and saw "As You Like It." That
+bewitching queen of actresses, Miss Ada Rehan, played _Rosalind_. Miss
+Rehan is so original that it would be perfectly impossible to compare
+her to any of the other great actresses of France and England. She is
+like nobody else. She is herself. The coaxing drawl of her musical
+voice, the vivacity of her movements, the whimsical spontaneity that
+seems to direct her acting, her tall, handsome figure, her beautiful,
+intellectual face, all tend to make her a unique actress. She fascinates
+you, and so gets hold of you, that when she is on the stage she entirely
+fills it. Mr. John Drew as _Orlando_ and Mr. James Drew as _Touchstone_
+were admirable.
+
+It matters little what the play-bill announces at Daly's Theater. If I
+have not seen the play, I am sure to enjoy it; if I have seen it
+already, I am sure to enjoy it again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+  WASHINGTON--THE CITY--WILLARD'S HOTEL--THE POLITICIANS--GENERAL
+  BENJAMIN HARRISON, U. S. PRESIDENT--WASHINGTON
+  SOCIETY--BALTIMORE--PHILADELPHIA.
+
+
+     _Washington, April 3._
+
+Arrived here the day before yesterday, and put up at Willard's. I prefer
+this huge hotel to the other more modern houses of the capital, because
+it is thoroughly American; because it is in its rotunda that every
+evening the leading men of all parties and the notables of the nation
+may be found; because to meet at Willard's at night is as much the
+regular thing as to perform any of the official functions of office
+during the day; because, to use the words of a guide, which speaks the
+truth, it is pleasant to live in this historical place, in apartments
+where battles have been planned and political parties have been born or
+doomed to death, to become familiar with surroundings amid which
+Presidents have drawn their most important papers and have chosen their
+Cabinet Ministers, and where the proud beauties of a century have held
+their Court.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the subject of Washington hotels, I was told a good story the other
+day.
+
+[Illustration: EVENING AT WILLARD'S.]
+
+The most fashionable hotel of this city having outgrown its space, the
+proprietors sent a note to a lady, whose back yard adjoined, to say,
+that, contemplating still enlarging their hotel, they would be glad to
+know at what price she would sell her yard, and they would hand her the
+amount without any more discussion. The lady, in equally Yankee style,
+replied that she had been contemplating enlarging her back yard, and
+was going to inquire what they would take for part of their hotel!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How beautiful this city of Washington is, with its wide avenues, its
+parks, and its buildings! That Capitol, in white marble, standing on
+elevated ground, against a bright blue sky, is a poem--an epic poem.
+
+I am never tired of looking at the expanse of cloudless blue that is
+almost constantly stretched overhead. The sunsets are glorious. The
+poorest existence would seem bearable under such skies. I am told they
+are better still further West. I fancy I should enjoy to spend some time
+on a farm, deep in the country, far from the noisy, crowded streets, but
+I fear I am condemned to see none but the busy haunts of Jonathan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening I went to what is called a colored church. The place was
+packed with negroes of all shades and ages; the women, some of them very
+smartly dressed, and waving scarlet fans. In a pew sat a trio truly
+gorgeous. Mother, in black shiny satin, light-brown velvet mantle
+covered with iridescent beads, bonnet to match. Daughter of fifteen;
+costume of sky-blue satin, plush mantle, scarlet red, chinchilla fur
+trimmings, white hat with feathers. Second girl, or daughter, light-blue
+velvet, from top to toe, with large hat, apple-green and gold.
+
+[Illustration: A GORGEOUS TRIO.]
+
+Every one was intently listening to the preacher, a colored man, who
+gave them, in graphic language and stentorian voice, the story of the
+capture of the Jews by Cyrus, their slavery and their delivery. A low
+accompaniment of "Yes!" "Hear, hear!" "Allelujah!" "Glory!" from the
+hearers, showed their approbation of the discourse. From time to time,
+there would be a general chuckle or laughter, and exclamations of
+delight from the happy grin-lit mouths, as, for instance, when the
+preacher described the supper of Belshazzar, and the appearance of the
+writing on the wall, in his own droll fashion. "'Let's have a fine
+supper,' said Belshazzar. 'Dere's ole Cyrus out dere, but we'll have a
+good time and enjoy ourselves, and never mind him.' So he went for de
+cups dat had come from de Temple of Jerusalem, and began carousin'! Dere
+is Cyrus, all de while, marchin' his men up de bed ob de river. I see
+him comin'! I see him!" Then he pictured the state all that wicked party
+got in at the sight of the writing nobody could read, and by this time
+the excitement of the congregation was tremendous. The preacher thought
+this a good opportunity to point a moral. So he proceeded: "Now, drink
+is a poor thing; dere's too much of it in dis here city." Here followed
+a picture of certain darkies, who cut a dash with shiny hats and canes,
+and frequented bars and saloons. "When folks take to drinkin', somefin's
+sure to go wrong." Grins and grunts of approbation culminated in perfect
+shouts of glee, as the preacher said: "Ole Belshazzar and de rest of 'em
+forgot to shut de city gate, and in came Cyrus and his men."
+
+[Illustration: THE PREACHER.]
+
+They went nearly wild with pleasure over the story of the liberation of
+the Jews, and incidental remarks on their own freeing. "Oh, let dem go,"
+said their masters, when they found the game was up, "dey'll soon perish
+and die out!" Here the preacher laughed loudly, and then shouted: "But
+we don't die out so easy!" [Grins and chuckling.]
+
+One old negro was very funny to watch. When something met with his
+approval, he gave off a little "tchsu, tchsu!" and writhed forward and
+back on his seat for a moment, apparently in intense enjoyment; then
+jumped off his seat, turning round once or twice; then he would listen
+intently again, as if afraid to lose a word.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD NEGRO.]
+
+"I see dis, I see dat," said the preacher continually. His listeners
+seemed to see it too.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At ten minutes to twelve yesterday morning, I called at the White House.
+The President had left the library, but he was kind enough to return,
+and at twelve I had the honor to spend a few minutes in the company of
+General Benjamin Harrison. Two years ago I was received by Mr. Grover
+Cleveland with the same courtesy and the same total absence of red tape.
+
+The President of the United States is a man about fifty-five years old;
+short, exceedingly neat, and even _recherch�_ in his appearance. The
+hair and beard are white, the eyes small and very keen. The face is
+severe, but lights up with a most gentle and kind smile.
+
+General Harrison is a popular president; but the souvenir of Mrs.
+Cleveland is still haunting the minds of the Washingtonians. They will
+never forget the most beautiful lady who ever did the honors of the
+White House, and most of them look forward to the possibility of her
+returning to Washington in March, 1893.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Washington society moves in circles and sets. The wife of the President
+and the wives and daughters of the Cabinet Ministers form the first
+set--Olympus, as it were. The second set is composed of the ladies
+belonging to the families of the Judges of the Supreme Court! The
+Senators come next. The Army circle comes fourth. The House of
+Representatives supplies the last set. Each circle, a Washington friend
+tells me, is controlled by rigid laws of etiquette. Senators' wives
+consider themselves much superior to the wives of Congressmen, and the
+Judges' wives consider themselves much above those of the Senators. But,
+as a rule, the great lion of Washington society is the British Minister,
+especially when he happens to be a real live English lord. All look up
+to him; and if a young titled English _attach�_ wishes to marry the
+richest heiress of the capital, all he has to do is to throw the
+handkerchief, the young and the richest natives do not stand the ghost
+of a chance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lectured last night, in the Congregational Church, to a large and most
+fashionable audience. Senator Hoar took the chair, and introduced me in
+a short, neat, gracefully worded little speech. In to-day's Washington
+_Star_, I find the following remark:
+
+  The lecturer was handsomely introduced by Senator Hoar, who combines
+  the dignity of an Englishman, the sturdiness of a Scotchman, the
+  _savoir faire_ of a Frenchman, and the culture of a Bostonian.
+
+
+What a strange mixture! I am trying to find where the compliment comes
+in, surely not in "the _savoir faire_ of a Frenchman!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Armed with a kind letter of introduction to Miss Kate Field, I called
+this morning at the office of this lady, who is characterized by a
+prominent journalist as "the very brainiest woman in the United States."
+Unfortunately she was out of town.
+
+I should have liked to make the personal acquaintance of this brilliant,
+witty woman, who speaks, I am told, as she writes, in clear, caustic,
+fearless style. My intention was to interview her a bit. A telegram was
+sent to her in New York from her secretary, and her answer was wired
+immediately: "Interview _him_." So, instead of interviewing Miss Kate
+Field, I was interviewed, for her paper, by a young and very pretty lady
+journalist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Baltimore, April 4._
+
+I have spent the day here with some friends.
+
+Baltimore strikes one as a quiet, solid, somewhat provincial town. It is
+an eminently middle-class looking city. There is no great wealth in it,
+no great activity; but, on the other hand, there is little poverty; it
+is a well-to-do city _par excellence_. The famous Johns Hopkins
+University is here, and I am not surprised to learn that Baltimore is a
+city of culture and refinement.
+
+A beautiful forest, a mixture of cultivated park and wilderness, about a
+mile from the town, must be a source of delight to the inhabitants in
+summer and during the beautiful months of September and October.
+
+I was told several times that Baltimore was famous all over the States
+for its pretty women.
+
+They were not out to-day. And as I have not been invited to lecture in
+Baltimore, I must be content with hoping to be more lucky next time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Philadelphia, April 5._
+
+After my lecture in Association Hall to-night, I will return to New York
+to spend Easter Sunday with my friends. Next Monday off again to the
+West, to Cincinnati again, to Chicago again, and as far as Madison, the
+State city of Wisconsin.
+
+[Illustration: A BALTIMORE WOMAN.]
+
+By the time this tour is finished--in about three weeks--I shall have
+traveled something like thirty thousand miles.
+
+The more I think of it, the more I feel the truth of this statement,
+which I made in "Jonathan and His Continent": To form an exact idea of
+what a lecture tour is in America, just imagine that you lecture
+to-night in London, to-morrow in Paris, then in Berlin, then in Vienna,
+then in Constantinople, then in Teheran, then in Bombay, and so forth.
+With this difference, that if you had to undertake the work in Europe,
+at the end of a week you would be more dead than alive.
+
+[Illustration: "THE GOOD, ATTENTIVE, POLITE CONDUCTOR OF ENGLAND."]
+
+But here you are not caged on the railroad lines, you can circulate.
+There is no fear of cold, no fear of hunger, and if the good, attentive,
+polite railway conductors of England could be induced to do duty on
+board the American cars, I would anytime go to America for the mere
+pleasure of traveling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+EASTER SUNDAY IN NEW YORK.
+
+
+     _New York, April 6 (Easter Sunday.)_
+
+[Illustration: A BELLOWING SOPRANO.]
+
+This morning I went to Dr. Newton's church in Forty-eighth Street. He
+has the reputation of being one of the best preachers in New York, and
+the choir enjoys an equally great reputation. The church was literally
+packed until the sermon began, and then some of the strollers who had
+come to hear the anthems moved on. Dr. Newton's voice and delivery were
+not at all to my taste, so I did not sit out his sermon either. He has a
+big, unctuous voice, with the intonations and inflections of a showman
+at the fair. He has not the flow of ideas that struck me so forcibly
+when I heard the late Henry Ward Beecher in London; he has not the
+histrionic powers of Dr. Talmage, either. There was more show than
+beauty about the music, too. A bellowing, shrieking soprano overpowered
+all the other voices in the choir, including that of a really beautiful
+tenor that deserved to be heard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+New York blossoms like the rose on Easter Day. Every woman has a new
+bonnet and walks abroad to show it.
+
+[Illustration: SOME EASTER BONNETS.]
+
+There are grades in millinery as there are in society. The imported
+bonnet takes the proudest rank; it is the aristocrat in the world of
+headgear. It does not always come with the conqueror (in one of her
+numerous trunks), but it always comes to conquer, and a proud, though
+ephemeral triumph it enjoys, perched on the dainty head of a New York
+belle, and supplemented by a frock from Felix's or Redfern's.
+
+It is a unique sight, Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday, when all the
+up-town churches have emptied themselves of their gayly garbed
+worshipers.
+
+[Illustration: KEEPING LENT.]
+
+The "four hundred" have been keeping Lent in polite, if not rigorous,
+fashion. Who shall say what it has cost them in self-sacrifice to limit
+themselves to the sober, modest violet for table and bonnet decoration
+during six whole weeks? These things cannot be lightly judged by the
+profane. I have even heard of sweet, devout New York girls who limited
+themselves to one pound of _marrons glac�s_ a week during Lent. Such
+feminine heroism deserves mention.
+
+[Illustration: A CLUB WINDOW.]
+
+And have they not been sewing flannel for the poor, once a week, instead
+of directing the manipulation of silk and gauze for their own fair
+forms, all the week long? Who shall gauge the self-control necessary for
+fasting such as this? But now Dorcas meetings are over, and dances begin
+again to-morrow. The Easter anthem has been sung, and the imported
+bonnet takes a turn on Fifth Avenue to salute and to hob-nob with
+Broadway imitations during the hour between church and lunch. To New
+Yorkers this Easter Church parade is as much of an institution in its
+way as those of Hyde Park during the season are to the Londoners. It
+was plain that the people sauntering leisurely on the broad sidewalks,
+the feminine portion at least, had not come out solely for religious
+exercise in church, but had every intention to see and to be seen,
+especially the latter. On my way down, I saw some folks who had not been
+to church, and only wanted to see, so stood with faces glued to the
+windows of the big clubs, looking out at the kaleidoscopic procession:
+old bachelors, I daresay, who hold the opinion that spring bonnets,
+whether imported or home-grown, ought to be labeled "dangerous." At all
+events they were gazing as one might gaze at some coveted but
+out-of-reach fruit, and looking as if they dared not face their
+fascinating young townswomen in all the splendor of their new war paint.
+A few, perhaps, were married men, and this was their quiet protest
+against fifty-dollar hats and five-hundred-dollar gowns.
+
+The sight was beautiful and one not to be forgotten.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening I dined with Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll and the members
+of his family. I noticed something which struck me as novel, but as
+perfectly charming. Each man was placed at table by the side of his
+wife, including the host and hostess. This custom in the colonel's
+family circle (I was the only guest not belonging to it) is another
+proof that his theories are put into practice in his house. Dinner and
+time vanished with rapidity in that house, where everything breathes
+love and happiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+  I MOUNT THE PULPIT, AND PREACH ON THE SABBATH, IN THE STATE OF
+  WISCONSIN--THE AUDIENCE IS LARGE AND APPRECIATIVE; BUT I PROBABLY FAIL
+  TO PLEASE ONE OF THE CONGREGATION.
+
+
+     _Milwaukee, April 21._
+
+To a certain extent I am a believer in climatic influence, and am
+inclined to think that Sabbath reformers reckon without the British
+climate when they hope to ever see a Britain full of cheerful
+Christians. M. Taine, in his "History of English Literature," ascribes
+the unlovable morality of Puritanism to the influence of the British
+climate. "Pleasure being out of question," he says, "under such a sky,
+the Briton gave himself up to this forbidding virtuousness." In other
+words, being unable to be cheerful, he became moral. This is not
+altogether true. Many Britons are cheerful who don't look it, many
+Britons are not moral who look it.
+
+But how would M. Taine explain the existence of this same puritanic
+"morality" which can be found under the lovely, clear, bright sky of
+America? All over New England, and indeed in most parts of America, the
+same Kill-joy, the same gloomy, frowning Sabbath-keeper is flourishing,
+doing his utmost to blot the sunshine out of every recurring seventh
+day.
+
+Yet Sabbath-keeping is a Jewish institution that has nothing to do with
+Protestantism; but there have always been Protestants more Protestant
+than Martin Luther, and Christians more Christian than Christ.
+
+[Illustration: PURITAN LACK OF CHEERFULNESS.]
+
+Luther taught that the Sabbath was to be kept, not because Moses
+commanded it, but because Nature teaches us the necessity of the seventh
+day's rest. He says "If anywhere the day is made holy for the mere day's
+sake, then I command you to work on it, ride on it, dance on it, do
+anything that will reprove this encroachment on Christian spirit and
+liberty."
+
+The old Scotch woman, who "did nae think the betterer on" the Lord for
+that Sabbath-day walk through the cornfield, is not a solitary type of
+Anglo-Saxon Christian. But it is when these Puritans judge other nations
+that they are truly great.
+
+Puritan lack of charity and dread of cheerfulness often lead Anglo-Saxon
+visitors to France to misjudge the French mode of spending Sunday.
+Americans, as well as English, err in this matter, as I had occasion to
+find out during my second visit to America.
+
+I had been lecturing last Saturday evening in the pretty little town of
+Whitewater, in Wisconsin, and received an invitation from a minister to
+address a meeting that was to be held yesterday, Sunday, in the largest
+church of the place to discuss the question, "How Sunday should be
+spent." I at first declined, on the ground that it might not be exactly
+in good taste for a foreigner to advise his hosts how to spend Sunday.
+However, when it was suggested that I might simply go and tell them how
+Sunday was spent in France, I accepted the task.
+
+The proceedings opened with prayer and an anthem; and a hymn in praise
+of the Jewish Sabbath having been chosen by the moderator, I thought the
+case looked bad for us French people, and that I was going to cut a poor
+figure.
+
+The first speaker unwittingly came to my rescue by making an onslaught
+upon the French mode of spending the seventh day. "With all due respect
+to the native country of our visitor," said he, "I am bound to say that
+on the one Sunday which I spent in Paris, I saw a great deal of low
+immorality, and I could not help coming to the conclusion that this was
+due to the fact of the French not being a Sabbath-keeping people." He
+wound up with a strong appeal to his townsmen to beware of any
+temptation to relax in their observance of the fourth commandment as
+given by Moses.
+
+I was called upon to speak next. I rose in my pew, but was requested to
+go into the rostrum.
+
+With alacrity I stepped forward, a little staggered, perhaps, at finding
+myself for the first time in a pulpit, but quite ready for the fray.
+
+"I am sorry," said I, "to hear the remarks made by the speaker who has
+just sat down. I cannot, however, help thinking that if our friend had
+spent that Sunday in Paris in respectable places, he would have been
+spared the sight of any low immorality. No doubt Paris, like every large
+city in the world, has its black spots, and you can easily discover
+them, if you make proper inquiries as to where they are, and if you are
+properly directed. Now, let me ask, where did he go? I should very much
+like to know. Being an old Parisian, I have still in my mind's eye the
+numerous museums that are open free to the people on Sundays. One of the
+most edifying sights in the city is that of our peasants and workmen in
+their clean Sunday blouses enjoying themselves with their families, and
+elevating their tastes among our art treasures. Did our friend go there?
+I know there are places where for little money the symphonies of
+Beethoven and other great masters may be and are enjoyed by thousands
+every Sunday. Did our friend go there? Within easy reach of the people
+are such places as the Bois de Boulogne, the Garden of Acclimation,
+where for fifty centimes a delightful day may be spent among the lawns
+and flower-beds of that Parisian "Zoo." Its goat cars, ostrich cars, its
+camel and elephant drives make it a paradise for children, and one might
+see whole families there on Sunday afternoons in the summer, the parents
+refreshing their bodies with this contact with nature and their hearts
+with the sight of the children's glee. Did our friend go there? We even
+have churches in Paris, churches that are crammed from six o'clock in
+the morning till one in the afternoon with worshipers who go on their
+knees to God. Now, did our friend go to church on that Sunday? Well,
+where did he go? I am quitting Whitewater to-morrow, and I leave it to
+his townspeople to investigate the matter. When I first visited New
+York, stories were told me of strange things to be seen there even on a
+Sunday. Who doubts, I repeat, that every great city has its black spots?
+I had no desire to see those of New York, there was so much that was
+better worth my time and attention. If our friend, our observing friend,
+would only have done in Paris as I did in New York, he would have seen
+very little low immorality."
+
+The little encounter at Whitewater was only one more illustration of the
+strange fact that the Anglo-Saxon, who is so good in his own country, so
+constant in his attendance at church, is seldom to be seen in a sacred
+edifice abroad, unless, indeed, he has been led there by Baedeker.
+
+And last night, at Whitewater, I went to bed pleased with myself, like a
+man who has fought for his country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I am in France, I often bore my friends with advice, and find, as
+usual, that advice is a luxurious gift thoroughly enjoyed by the one who
+gives it.
+
+"You don't know how to do these things," I say to them; "in England or
+in America, they are much more intelligent; they do like this and like
+that." And my friends generally advise me to return to England or
+America, where things are so beautifully managed.
+
+But, when I am out of France, the old Frenchman is all there, and if you
+pitch into my mother country, I stand up ready to fight at a minute's
+notice.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+  THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN HUMOR AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS--THE SACRED AND
+  THE PROFANE--THE GERMANS AND AMERICAN HUMOR--MY CORPSE WOULD "DRAW,"
+  IN MY IMPRESARIO'S OPINION.
+
+
+     _Madison, Wis., April 22._
+
+Have been lecturing during the past fortnight in about twelve places,
+few of which possessed any interest whatever. One of them,
+however--Cincinnati--I was glad to see again.
+
+This town of Madison is the only one that has really struck me as being
+beautiful. From the hills the scenery is perfectly lovely, with its
+wooded slopes and lakes. Through the kindness of Governor Hoard, I have
+had a comprehensive survey of the neighborhood; for he has driven me in
+his carriage to all the prettiest spots, delighting me all the while
+with his conversation. He is one of those Americans whom you may often
+meet if you have a little luck: witty, humorous, hospitable,
+kind-hearted, the very personification of unaffected good-fellowship.
+
+The conversation turned on humor.
+
+I have always wondered what the origin of American humor can be; where
+is or was the fountain-head. You certainly find humor in England among
+the cultured classes, but the class of English people who emigrate
+cannot have imported much humor into America. Surely Germany and
+Scandinavia cannot have contributed to the fund, either. The Scotch have
+dry, quiet, pawky, unconscious humor; but their influence can hardly
+have been great enough to implant their quaint native "wut" in American
+soil. Again, the Irish bull is droll, but scarcely humorous. The
+Italians, the Hungarians, have never yet, that I am aware of, been
+suspected of even latent humor.
+
+What then, can be the origin of American humor, as we know it, with its
+na�ve philosophy, its mixture of the sacred and the profane, its
+exaggeration and that preposterousness which so completely staggers the
+foreigner, the French and the German especially?
+
+The mixing of sacred with profane matter, no doubt, originated with the
+Puritans themselves, and is only an outcome of the cheek-by-jowl,
+next-door-neighbor fashion of addressing the Higher Powers, which is so
+common in the Scotch. Many of us have heard of the Scotch minister, whom
+his zeal for the welfare of missionaries moved to address Heaven in the
+following manner: "We commend to thy care those missionaries whose lives
+are in danger in the Fiji Islands ... which, Thou knowest, are situated
+in the Pacific Ocean." And he is not far removed in our minds from the
+New England pastor, who preached on the well-known text of St. Paul, and
+having read: "All things are possible to me," took a five-dollar bill
+out of his pocket, and placing it on the edge of the pulpit, said: "No,
+Paul, that is going too far. I bet you five dollars that you can't----"
+But continuing the reading of the text: "Through Christ who
+strengtheneth me," exclaimed, "Ah, that's a very different matter!" and
+put back the five-dollar bill in his pocket.
+
+[Illustration: THE MISSIONARY AND THE FIJIS.]
+
+This kind of amalgamation of the sacred and profane is constantly
+confronting one in American soil, and has a firm foothold in American
+humor.
+
+Colonel Elliott F. Shepard, proprietor of the New York _Mail and
+Express_, every morning sends to the editor a fresh text from the Bible
+for publication at the top of the editorials. One day that text was
+received, but somehow got lost, and by noon was still unfound. I was
+told that "you should have heard the compositors' room ring with: 'Where
+can that d----d text be?'" Finally the text was wired and duly inserted.
+These men, however, did not intend any religious disrespect. Such a
+thing was probably as far from their minds as it was from the minds of
+the Puritan preachers of old. There are men who swear, as others pray,
+without meaning anything. One is a bad habit, the other a good one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All that na�ve philosophy, with which America abounds, must, I fancy, be
+the outcome of hardship endured by the pioneers of former days, and by
+the Westerner of our own times.
+
+The element of exaggeration, which is so characteristic of American
+humor, may be explained by the rapid success of the Americans and the
+immensity of the continent which they inhabit. Everything is on a grand
+scale, or suggests hugeness. Then negro humor is mainly exaggeration,
+and has no doubt added its quota to the compound which, as I said just
+now, completely staggers certain foreigners.
+
+Governor Hoard was telling me to-day that a German was inclined to be
+offended with him for saying that the Germans, as a rule, were unable to
+see through an American joke, and he invited Governor Hoard to try the
+effect of one upon him. The governor, thereupon told him the story of
+the tree, "out West," which was so high that it took two men to see to
+the top. One of them saw as far as he could, then the second started
+from the place where the first stopped seeing, and went on. The recital
+did not raise the ghost of a smile, and Governor Hoard then said to the
+German: "Well, you see, the joke is lost upon you; you can't see
+American humor."
+
+[Illustration: "THAT'S A TAMNT LIE!"]
+
+"Oh, but," said the German, "that is not humor, that's a _tamnt_ lie!"
+
+And he is still convinced that he can see through an American joke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Grand Rapids, April 24._
+
+Have had to-day a lovely, sublime example of that preposterousness which
+so often characterizes American humor.
+
+Arrived here this morning from Chicago. At noon, the Grand Rapidite who
+was "bossing the show" called upon me at the Morton House, and kindly
+inquired whether there was anything he could do for me. Before leaving,
+he said: "While I am here, I may as well give you the check for
+to-night's lecture."
+
+"Just as you please," I said; "but don't you call that risky?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, I may die before the evening."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," he interrupted. "I'll exhibit your corpse; I
+guess there will be just as much money in it!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Grand Rapids is noted for its furniture manufactories. A draughtsman,
+who is employed to design artistic things for the largest of these
+manufactories, kindly showed me over the premises of his employers. I
+was not very surprised to hear that when the various retail houses come
+to make their yearly selections, they will not look at any models of the
+previous season, so great is the rage for novelties in every branch of
+industry in this novelty-loving America.
+
+[Illustration: MY EXHIBITOR.]
+
+No sinecure, that draughtsman's position, I can tell you.
+
+Over in Europe, furniture is reckoned by periods. Here it is an affair
+of seasons.
+
+Very funny to have to order a new sideboard or wardrobe, "to be sent
+home without delay" for fear of its being out of date.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+  GOOD-BY TO AMERICA--NOT "ADIEU," BUT "AU REVOIR"--ON BOARD THE
+  "TEUTONIC"--HOME AGAIN.
+
+
+     _New York, April 26._
+
+THE last two days have vanished rapidly in paying calls.
+
+This morning my impresario gave me a farewell breakfast at the Everett
+House. Edmund Clarence Stedman was there; Mark Twain, George Kennan,
+General Horace Porter, General Lloyd Bryce, Richard Watson Gilder, and
+many others sat at table, and joined in wishing me _bon voyage_.
+
+Good-by, my dear American friends, I shall carry away sweet
+recollections of you, and whether I am re-invited in your country or
+not, I will come again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _April 27._
+
+The saloon on board the _Teutonic_ is a mass of floral offerings sent by
+friends to the passengers. Two huge beautiful baskets of lilies and
+roses are mine.
+
+The whistle is heard for the third time. The hands are pressed and the
+faces kissed, and all those who are not passengers leave the boat and go
+and take up position on the wharf to wave their handkerchiefs until the
+steamer is out of sight. A great many among the dense crowd are friendly
+faces familiar to me.
+
+[Illustration: TWO BASKETS FOR ME.]
+
+The huge construction is set in motion, and gently and smoothly glides
+from the docks to the Hudson River. The sun is shining, the weather
+glorious.
+
+The faces on land get less and less distinct. For the last time I wave
+my hat.
+
+Hallo, what is the matter with me? Upon my word, I believe I am sad. I
+go to the library, and, like a child, seize a dozen sheets of note paper
+on which I write: "Good-by." I will send them to New York from Sandy
+Hook.
+
+[Illustration: THE "TEUTONIC."]
+
+The _Teutonic_ is behaving beautifully. We pass Sandy Hook. The sea is
+perfectly calm. Then I think of my dear ones at home, and the happiest
+thoughts take the place of my feelings of regret at leaving my friends.
+
+My impresario, Major J. B. Pond, shares a beautiful, well-lighted, airy
+cabin with me. He is coming to England to engage Mr. Henry M. Stanley
+for a lecture tour in America next season.
+
+The company on board is large and choice. In the steerage a few
+disappointed American statesmen return to Europe.
+
+[Illustration: "A FEW DISAPPOINTED STATESMEN."]
+
+Oh! that _Teutonic!_ can any one imagine anything more grand, more
+luxurious? She is going at the rate of 450 miles a day. In about five
+days we shall be at Queenstown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Liverpool, May 4._
+
+My most humble apologies are due to the Atlantic for libeling that ocean
+at the beginning of this book. For the last six days the sea has been
+perfectly calm, and the trip has been one of pleasure the whole time.
+Here is another crowd on the landing-stage at Liverpool.
+
+And now, dear reader, excuse me if I leave you. You were present at the
+friendly farewell handshakings on the New York side; but, on this
+Liverpool quay, I see a face that I have not looked upon for five
+months, and having a great deal to say to the owner of it, I will
+politely bow you out first.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  Max O'Rell's Impressions of America and the Americans.
+
+
+  JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT
+
+             BY
+
+         MAX O'RELL
+       AND JACK ALLYN
+
+  _TRANSLATED BY MADAME PAUL BLOU�T._
+
+  IN ONE ELEGANT 12MO VOLUME.
+
+  Extra Cloth, Gilt Top,      Price, $1.50.
+  Paper Binding,                "   50 cts.
+
+
+  WHAT THE PRESS SAYS:
+
+"We have laughed with him at our neighbors, and now if we are clever we
+will laugh with him at ourselves."--_Daily Graphic, N. Y._
+
+"One reads the book with a perpetual smile on one's face, punctuated
+every now and then by a loud laugh, as one follows the brilliant
+Frenchman through his six months' tour of America. * * * He has glanced
+at things with the eye of a trained observer, and commented upon them
+with originality and humor. * * * One lays down the book with a wish
+that one might know its author."--_Chicago News._
+
+"The sensation of the spring. * * * It will tickle the American in spots
+and make him mad in spots, but it will be read, talked of, and
+enjoyed."--_Home Journal, Boston._
+
+"Undoubtedly the most interesting and sprightly book of the season. * *
+* It is rich in information."--_Inter-Ocean, Chicago._
+
+
+    CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY,
+  104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+"Rarely has one sprung into so immediate a fame in two
+continents."--_Boston Home Journal._
+
+
+   A NEW VOLUME BY MAX O'RELL,
+            AUTHOR OF
+  _JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT._
+
+        JACQUES BONHOMME,
+  _JOHN BULL ON THE CONTINENT,
+    and FROM MY LETTER BOX._
+
+        By MAX O'RELL,
+  _Author of "Jonathan and His Continent," "John Bull, Jr.," etc., etc._
+
+  1 vol., 12mo, Paper, 50 cents. Extra Cloth, 75 cents.
+
+
+"If any one was absurd enough to feel aggrieved at Max O'Rell's
+amusement over us in 'Jonathan and His Continent,' he may take his
+revenge in 'Jacques Bonhomme,' wherein the light-headed Blouet laughs at
+his compatriots as well."--_The Springfield Republican._
+
+"The book is full of sprightly, keen observations ... there is not a
+dull line in it from first to last, and its information is as genuine
+and accurate in the way of glimpses into the more intimate life of the
+people as it is charming in its sparkle and glow of style.--_Boston
+Evening Traveller._
+
+"He is a keen observer and has a happy faculty of presenting the comical
+side of things, and that with unvarying good humor, apparently
+indifferent whether the joke hits himself or somebody else."--_The Troy
+Budget._
+
+"In it is pictured the French at school, at war, in leading strings, in
+love, at work, at play, and at table, in trouble, in England, etc.,
+etc.,"--_The Boston Times._
+
+"Take it all in all, we think the most delightful book that Max O'Rell
+has written is his last published, entitled 'Jacques Bonhomme.'"--_Home
+Journal, Boston._
+
+
+           NEW YORK
+  CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
+    104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE
+
+
+
+
+        JOHN BULL, JR.,
+
+              OR
+
+  French as She is Traduced.
+
+        By MAX O'RELL,
+
+         _AUTHOR OF
+  JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT_.
+
+  With a Preface by GEORGE C. EGGLESTON.
+
+  Boards, flexible; price, 50 cents. Cloth, gilt top, unique, $1.00.
+
+
+"There is not a page in this delightful little volume that does not
+sparkle."--_Phila. Press._
+
+"One expects Max O'Rell to be distinctively funny. He is regarded as a
+French Mark Twain."--_The Beacon._
+
+"The whole theory of education is to be extracted from these humorous
+sketches."--_Baltimore American._
+
+"A volume which is bubbling over with brightness, and is pervaded with
+wholesome common sense."--_N. Y. Com. Advertiser._
+
+"May be placed among those favored volumes whose interest is not
+exhausted by one perusal, but which may be taken up again with a renewal
+of the entertainment afforded by the first reading."--_Boston Gazette._
+
+
+     CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
+  104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Frenchman in America, by Max O'Rell
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Frenchman in America, by Max O'Rell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Frenchman in America
+       Recollections of Men and Things
+
+Author: Max O'Rell
+
+Release Date: May 5, 2010 [EBook #32261]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marius Masi, Chris Curnow and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="pt2">&nbsp;</div>
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:404px; height:610px" src="images/img000.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+<div class="pt3">&nbsp;</div>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2>A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA.</h2>
+<hr class="full" />
+<div class="pt2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:356px; height:630px" src="images/img005.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<div class="pt2">&nbsp;</div>
+<div class="verd">
+<p class="center f150 col"><i>A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA</i></p>
+
+
+<p class="center pt3 f90">Recollections of Men and Things</p>
+
+<p class="center pt3 f80">BY</p>
+<p class="center f120">MAX O&rsquo;RELL</p>
+
+<p class="center pt5 f80">AUTHOR OF &ldquo;JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT,&rdquo; &ldquo;JOHN BULL, JUNIOR,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;JACQUES BONHOMME,&rdquo; &ldquo;JOHN BULL AND HIS ISLAND,&rdquo; ETC.</p>
+
+<div class="pt2">&nbsp;</div>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p class="center f90">WITH OVER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS
+BY E. W. KEMBLE</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="pt5 center"><span class="f90">NEW YORK</span><br />
+CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY<br />
+<span class="f80 sc">104 &amp; 106 Fourth Avenue</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="pt5 center sc"><span class="f80">Copyright, 1891, by</span><br />
+<span class="f90">CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY.</span><br />
+
+<span class="f80"><i>All rights reserved.</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="f70 rt pt2">THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,</p>
+<p class="f70" style="text-align: right; padding-right: 5em;">RAHWAY, N. J.</p>
+<hr class="art" />
+
+<h3>CONTENTS.</h3>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="90%" summary="Contents">
+
+<tr><td class="tc3"><span class="f70">CHAPTER.</span></td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><span class="f70">PAGE.</span></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">I.&mdash;Departure&mdash;The Atlantic&mdash;Demoralization of the &ldquo;Boarders&rdquo;&mdash;Betting&mdash;The
+Auctioneer&mdash;An Inquisitive Yankee,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page1">1</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">II.&mdash;Arrival of the Pilot&mdash;First Look at American Newspapers,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page11">11</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">III.&mdash;Arrival&mdash;The Custom House&mdash;Things Look Bad&mdash;The Interviewers&mdash;First
+Visits&mdash;Things Look Brighter&mdash;&ldquo;O Vanity
+of Vanities,&rdquo;</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page14">14</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">IV.&mdash;Impressions of American Hotels,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page25">25</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">V.&mdash;My Opening Lecture&mdash;Reflections on Audiences I Have
+Had&mdash;The Man who Won&rsquo;t Smile&mdash;The One who Laughs
+too Soon, and Many Others,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page37">37</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">VI.&mdash;A Connecticut Audience&mdash;Merry Meriden&mdash;A Hard Pull,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page48">48</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">VII&mdash;A Tempting Offer&mdash;The Thursday Club&mdash;Bill Nye&mdash;Visit to
+Young Ladies&rsquo; Schools&mdash;The Players&rsquo; Club,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page52">52</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">VIII.&mdash;The Flourishing of Coats-of-Arms in America&mdash;Reflections
+Thereon&mdash;Forefathers Made to Order&mdash;The Phonograph at
+Home&mdash;The Wealth of New York&mdash;Departure for Buffalo,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page60">60</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">IX.&mdash;Different Ways of Advertising a Lecture&mdash;American Impressarios
+and Their Methods,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page66">66</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">X.&mdash;Buffalo&mdash;The Niagara Falls&mdash;A Frost&mdash;Rochester to the
+Rescue of Buffalo&mdash;Cleveland&mdash;I Meet Jonathan&mdash;Phantasmagoria,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page74">74</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XI.&mdash;A Great Admirer&mdash;Notes on Railway Traveling&mdash;Is America
+a Free Nation?&mdash;A Pleasant Evening in New York,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page81">81</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XII.&mdash;Notes on American Women&mdash;Comparisons&mdash;How Men
+Treat Women and Vice Versa&mdash;Scenes and Illustrations,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page90">90</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XIII.&mdash;More about Journalism in America&mdash;A Dinner at Delmonico&rsquo;s&mdash;My
+First Appearance in an American Church,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page110">110</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XIV.&mdash;Marcus Aurelius in America&mdash;Chairmen I Have Had&mdash;American,
+English, and Scotch Chairmen&mdash;One who had
+Been to Boulogne&mdash;Talkative and Silent Chairmen&mdash;A Trying
+Occasion&mdash;The Lord is Asked to Allow the Audience to
+See my Points,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page124">124</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XV.&mdash;Reflections on the Typical American,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page137">137</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XVI.&mdash;I am Asked to Express Myself Freely on America&mdash;I Meet
+Mrs. Blank and for the First Time Hear of Mr. Blank&mdash;Beacon
+Street Society&mdash;The Boston Clubs,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page149">149</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XVII.&mdash;A Lively Sunday in Boston&mdash;Lecture in the Boston Theater&mdash;Dr.
+Oliver Wendell Holmes&mdash;The Booth-Modjeska
+Combination,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page156">156</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XVIII&mdash;St. Johnsbury&mdash;The State of Maine&mdash;New England Self-control&mdash;Cold
+Climates and Frigid Audiences&mdash;Where is the
+Audience?&mdash;All Drunk!&mdash;A Reminiscence of a Scotch Audience
+on a Saturday Night,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page163">163</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XIX.&mdash;A Lovely Ride to Canada&mdash;Quebec, a Corner of Old France
+Strayed up and Lost in the Snow&mdash;The French Canadians&mdash;The
+Parties in Canada&mdash;Will the Canadians become Yankees?</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page172">172</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XX.&mdash;Montreal&mdash;The City&mdash;Mount Royal&mdash;Canadian Sports&mdash;Ottawa&mdash;The
+Government&mdash;Rideau Hall,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page182">182</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXI.&mdash;Toronto&mdash;The City&mdash;The Ladies&mdash;The Sports&mdash;Strange
+Contrasts&mdash;The Canadian Schools,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page191">191</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXII.&mdash;West Canada&mdash;Relations between British and Indians&mdash;Return
+to the United States&mdash;Difficulties in the Way&mdash;Encounter
+with an American Custom-House Officer,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page196">196</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXIII.&mdash;Chicago (First Visit)&mdash;The &ldquo;Neighborhood&rdquo; of Chicago&mdash;The
+History of Chicago&mdash;Public Servants&mdash;A Very Deaf
+Man,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page203">203</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXIV.&mdash;St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Sister Cities&mdash;Rivalries and
+Jealousies between Large American Cities&mdash;Minnehaha Falls&mdash;Wonderful
+Interviewers&mdash;My Hat gets into Trouble Again&mdash;Electricity
+in the Air&mdash;Forest Advertisements&mdash;Railway
+Speed in America,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page224">214</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXV.&mdash;Detroit&mdash;The Town&mdash;The Detroit &ldquo;Free Press&rdquo;&mdash;A Lady
+Interviewer&mdash;The &ldquo;Unco Guid&rdquo; in Detroit&mdash;Reflections on
+the Anglo-Saxon &ldquo;Unco Guid,&rdquo;</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page222">222</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXVI.&mdash;Milwaukee&mdash;A Well-filled Day&mdash;Reflections on the Scotch
+in America&mdash;Chicago Criticisms,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page236">236</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXVII.&mdash;The Monotony of Traveling in the States&mdash;&ldquo;Manon
+Lescaut&rdquo; in America,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page244">244</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXVIII.&mdash;For the First Time I See an American Paper Abuse Me&mdash;Albany
+to New York&mdash;A Lecture at Daly&rsquo;s Theater&mdash;Afternoon
+Audiences,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page248">248</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXIX.&mdash;Wanderings Through New York&mdash;Lecture at the Harmonie
+Club&mdash;Visit to the Century Club,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page255">255</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXX.&mdash;Visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music&mdash;Rev. Dr. Talmage,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page257">257</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXXI.&mdash;Virginia&mdash;The Hotels&mdash;The South&mdash;I will Kill a Railway
+Conductor before I Leave America&mdash;Philadelphia&mdash;Impressions
+of the Old City,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page263">263</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXXII.&mdash;My Ideas of the State of Texas&mdash;Why I will not Go
+There&mdash;The Story of a Frontier Man,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page274">274</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXXIII.&mdash;Cincinnati&mdash;The Town&mdash;The Suburbs&mdash;A German City&mdash;&ldquo;Over
+the Rhine&rdquo;&mdash;What is a Good Patriot?&mdash;An Impressive
+Funeral&mdash;A Great Fire&mdash;How It Appeared to Me,
+and How It Appeared to the Newspaper Reporters,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page279">279</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXXIV.&mdash;A Journey if you Like&mdash;Terrible Encounter with an
+American Interviewer,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page296">296</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXXV.&mdash;The University of Indiana&mdash;Indianapolis&mdash;The Veterans
+of the Grand Army of the Republic on the Spree&mdash;A Marvelous
+Equilibrist,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page306">306</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXXVI.&mdash;Chicago (Second Visit)&mdash;Vassili Verestchagin&rsquo;s Exhibition&mdash;The
+&ldquo;Angelus&rdquo;&mdash;Wagner and Wagnerites&mdash;Wanderings
+About the Big City&mdash;I Sit on the Tribunal,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page311">311</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXXVII.&mdash;Ann Arbor&mdash;The University of Michigan&mdash;Detroit
+Again&mdash;The French Out of France&mdash;Oberlin College, Ohio&mdash;Black
+and White&mdash;Are All American Citizens Equal?</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page322">322</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXXVIII.&mdash;Mr. and Mrs. Kendal in New York&mdash;Joseph Jefferson&mdash;Julian
+Hawthorne&mdash;Miss Ada Rehan&mdash;&ldquo;As You Like It&rdquo;
+at Daly&rsquo;s Theater,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page330">330</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XXXIX.&mdash;Washington&mdash;The City&mdash;Willard&rsquo;s Hotel&mdash;The Politicians&mdash;General
+Benjamin Harrison, U. S. President&mdash;Washington
+Society&mdash;Baltimore&mdash;Philadelphia,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page332">332</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XL.&mdash;Easter Sunday in New York,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page342">342</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XLI.&mdash;I Mount the Pulpit and Preach on the Sabbath, in the State
+of Wisconsin&mdash;The Audience is Large and Appreciative; but
+I Probably Fail to Please One of the Congregation,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page347">347</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XLII.&mdash;The Origin of American Humor and Its Characteristics&mdash;The
+Sacred and the Profane&mdash;The Germans and American
+Humor&mdash;My Corpse Would &ldquo;Draw,&rdquo; in my Impressario&rsquo;s
+Opinion,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page353">353</a></td> </tr>
+
+<tr><td class="tc3">XLIII.&mdash;Good-by to America&mdash;Not &ldquo;Adieu,&rdquo; but &ldquo;Au Revoir&rdquo;&mdash;On
+Board the <i>Teutonic</i>&mdash;Home Again,</td>
+    <td class="tc2b"><a href="#page361">361</a></td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="pt2">&nbsp;</div>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1" id="page1"></a>1</span></p>
+<p class="col sc verd f120 center"><b>A Frenchman in America.</b></p>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Departure&mdash;The Atlantic&mdash;Demoralization of
+the &ldquo;Boarders&rdquo;&mdash;Betting&mdash;The Auctioneer&mdash;An
+Inquisitive Yankee.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>On board the &ldquo;Celtic,&rdquo; Christmas Week,</i> 1889.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">In</span> the order of things the <i>Teutonic</i> was to have
+sailed to-day, but the date is the 25th of December,
+and few people elect to eat their Christmas dinner
+on the ocean if they can avoid it; so there are only
+twenty-five saloon passengers, and they have been committed
+to the brave little <i>Celtic</i>, while that huge floating
+palace, the <i>Teutonic</i>, remains in harbor.</p>
+
+<p>Little <i>Celtic</i>! Has it come to this with her and her
+companions, the <i>Germanic</i>, the <i>Britannic</i>, and the rest
+that were the wonders and the glory of the ship-building
+craft a few years ago? There is something almost
+sad in seeing these queens of the Atlantic dethroned,
+and obliged to rank below newer and grander ships.
+It was even pathetic to hear the remarks of the sailors,
+as we passed the <i>Germanic</i> who, in her day, had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page2" id="page2"></a>2</span>
+created even more wondering admiration than the two
+famous armed cruisers lately added to the &ldquo;White
+Star&rdquo; fleet.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I know nothing more monotonous than a voyage
+from Liverpool to New York.</p>
+
+<p>Nine times out of ten&mdash;not to say ninety-nine times
+out of a hundred&mdash;the passage is bad. The Atlantic
+Ocean has an ugly temper; it has forever got its back
+up. Sulky, angry, and terrible by turns, it only takes
+a few days&rsquo; rest out of every year, and this always occurs
+when you are not crossing.</p>
+
+<p>And then, the wind is invariably against you.
+When you go to America, it blows from the west;
+when you come back to Europe, it blows from the east.
+If the captain steers south to avoid icebergs, it is sure
+to begin to blow southerly.</p>
+
+<p>Doctors say that sea-sickness emanates from the brain.
+I can quite believe them. The blood rushes to your
+head, leaving your extremities cold and helpless. All
+the vital force flies to the brain, and your legs refuse
+to carry you. It is with sea-sickness as it is with wine.
+When people say that a certain wine goes up in the
+head, it means that it is more likely to go down to the
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>There you are, on board a huge construction that
+rears and kicks like a buck-jumper. She lifts you up
+bodily, and, after well shaking all your members in the
+air several seconds, lets them down higgledy-piggledy,
+leaving to Providence the business of picking them up
+and putting them together again. That is the kind of
+thing one has to go through about sixty times an hour.
+And there is no hope for you; nobody dies of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page3" id="page3"></a>3</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:458px; height:630px" src="images/img014.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;YOUR LEGS REFUSE TO CARRY YOU.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page4" id="page4"></a>4</span></p>
+
+<p>Under such conditions, the mental state of the boarders
+may easily be imagined. They smoke, they play
+cards, they pace the deck like bruin pacing a cage; or
+else they read, and forget at the second chapter all they
+have read in the first. A few presumptuous ones try
+to think, but without success. The ladies, the American
+ones more especially, lie on their deck chairs
+swathed in rugs and shawls like Egyptian mummies in
+their sarcophagi, and there they pass from ten to
+twelve hours a day motionless, hopeless, helpless,
+speechless. Some few incurables keep to their cabins
+altogether, and only show their wasted faces when it is
+time to debark. Up they come, with cross, stupefied,
+pallid, yellow-green-looking physiognomies, and seeming
+to say: &ldquo;Speak to me, if you like, but don&rsquo;t expect
+me to open my eyes or answer you, and above all,
+don&rsquo;t shake me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Impossible to fraternize.</p>
+
+<p>The crossing now takes about six days and a half.
+By the time you have spent two in getting your sea
+legs on, and three more in reviewing, and being reviewed
+by your fellow-passengers, you will find yourself
+at the end of your troubles&mdash;and your voyage.</p>
+
+<p>No, people do not fraternize on board ship, during
+such a short passage, unless a rumor runs from cabin
+to cabin that there has been some accident to the machinery,
+or that the boat is in imminent danger. At the
+least scare of this kind, every one looks at his neighbor
+with eyes that are alarmed, but amiable, nay, even
+amicable. But as soon as one can say: &ldquo;We have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page5" id="page5"></a>5</span>
+come off with a mere scare this time,&rdquo; all the facial
+traits stiffen once more, and nobody knows anybody.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:630px; height:551px" src="images/img016.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;LIKE EGYPTIAN MUMMIES.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>Universal grief only will bring about universal
+brotherhood. We must wait till the Day of Judgment.
+When the world is passing away, oh! how
+men will forgive and love one another! What
+outpourings of good-will and affection there will
+be! How touching, how edifying will be the sight!
+The universal republic will be founded in the
+twinkling of an eye, distinctions of creed and
+class forgotten. The author will embrace the
+critic and even the publisher, the socialist open
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page6" id="page6"></a>6</span>
+his arms to the capitalist. The married men will be
+seen &ldquo;making it up&rdquo; with their mothers-in-law, begging
+them to forgive and forget, and admitting that
+they had not been always quite so-so, in fact, as they
+might have been. If the Creator of all is a philosopher,
+or enjoys humor, how he will be amused to
+see all the various sects of Christians, who have passed
+their lives in running one another down, throw themselves
+into one another&rsquo;s arms. It will be a scene
+never to be forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, I repeat it, the voyage from Liverpool to New
+York is monotonous and wearisome in the extreme.
+It is an interval in one&rsquo;s existence, a week more or
+less lost, decidedly more than less.</p>
+
+<p>One grows gelatinous from head to foot, especially
+in the upper part of one&rsquo;s anatomy.</p>
+
+<p>In order to see to what an extent the brain softens,
+you only need look at the pastimes the poor passengers
+go in for.</p>
+
+<p>A state of demoralization prevails throughout.</p>
+
+<p>They bet. That is the form the disease takes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:575px; height:620px" src="images/img018.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE AUCTIONEER.</p></div>
+
+<p>They bet on anything and everything. They bet
+that the sun will or will not appear next day at eleven
+precisely, or that rain will fall at noon. They bet that
+the number of miles made by the boat at twelve o&rsquo;clock
+next day will terminate with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or
+9. Each draws one of these numbers and pays his
+shilling, half-crown, or even sovereign. Then these
+numbers are put up at auction. An improvised
+auctioneer, with the gift of the gab, puts his talent at
+the service of his fellow-passengers. It is really very
+funny to see him swaying about the smoking-room
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page7" id="page7"></a>7</span>
+table, and using all his eloquence over each number in
+turn for sale. A good auctioneer will run the bidding
+so smartly that the winner of the pool next day often
+pockets as much as thirty and forty pounds. On the
+eve of arrival in New York harbor, everybody knows
+that twenty-four pilots are waiting about for the advent
+of the liner, and that each boat carries her number on
+her sail. Accordingly, twenty-four numbers are rolled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page8" id="page8"></a>8</span>
+up and thrown into a cap, and betting begins again.
+He who has drawn the number which happens to be
+that of the pilot who takes the steamer into harbor
+pockets the pool.</p>
+
+<p>I, who have never bet on anything in my life, even bet
+with my traveling companion, when the rolling of the
+ship sends our portmanteaus from one side of the
+cabin to the other, that mine will arrive first. Intellectual
+faculties on board are reduced to this ebb.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>The nearest approach to a gay note, in this concert
+of groans and grumblings, is struck by some humorous
+and good-tempered American. He will come and ask
+you the most impossible questions with an ease and
+impudence perfectly inimitable. These catechisings
+are all the more droll because they are done with a
+<i>na�vet�</i> which completely disarms you. The phrase is
+short, without verb, reduced to its most concise expression.
+The intonation alone marks the interrogation.
+Here is a specimen.</p>
+
+<p>We have on board the <i>Celtic</i> an American who is not
+a very shrewd person, for it has actually taken him
+five days to discover that English is not my native
+tongue. This morning (December 30) he found it out,
+and, being seated near me in the smoke-room, has just
+had the following bit of conversation with me:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Foreigner?&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Foreigner,&rdquo; said I, replying in American.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;German, I guess.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Guess again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;French?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pure blood.&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page9" id="page9"></a>9</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:410px; height:620px" src="images/img020.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;GOING TO AMERICA?&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page10" id="page10"></a>10</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Married?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Married.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Going to America?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes&mdash;evidently.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pleasure trip?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On business?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On business, yes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s your line?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;H&rsquo;m&mdash;French goods.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! what class of goods?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>L&rsquo;article de Paris.</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The what?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The <i>ar-ti-cle de Pa-ris</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! yes, the <i>arnticle of Pahrriss</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Exactly so. Excuse <i>my</i> pronunciation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This floored him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rather impertinent, your smoke-room neighbor!&rdquo;
+you will say.</p>
+
+<p>Undeceive yourself at once upon that point. It is
+not impertinence, still less an intention to offend you,
+that urges him to put these incongruous questions to
+you. It is the interest he takes in you. The American
+is a good fellow; good fellowship is one of his
+chief characteristic traits. Of that I became perfectly
+convinced during my last visit to the United States.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page11" id="page11"></a>11</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt1">Arrival of the Pilot&mdash;First Look at American
+Newspapers.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Saturday, January</i> 4, 1890.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">We</span> shall arrive in New York Harbor to-night,
+but too late to go on shore. After sunset,
+the Custom House officers are not to be disturbed.
+We are about to land in a country where, as I remember,
+everything is in subjection to the paid servant.
+In the United States, he who is paid wages commands.</p>
+
+<p>We make the best of it. After having mercilessly
+tumbled us about for nine days, the wind has graciously
+calmed down, and our last day is going to be
+a good one, thanks be. There is a pure atmosphere.
+A clear line at the horizon divides space into two
+immensities, two sheets of blue sharply defined.</p>
+
+<p>Faces are smoothing out a bit. People talk, are
+becoming, in fact, quite communicative. One seems
+to say to another: &ldquo;Why, after all, you don&rsquo;t look
+half as disagreeable as I thought. If I had only
+known that, we might have seen more of each other,
+and killed time more quickly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The pilot boat is in sight. It comes toward us, and
+sends off in a rowing-boat the pilot who will take us
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page12" id="page12"></a>12</span>
+into port. The arrival of the pilot on board is not an
+incident. It is an event. Does he not bring the
+New York newspapers? And when you have been ten
+days at sea, cut off from the world, to read the papers
+of the day before is to come back to life again, and
+once more take up your
+place in this little planet that
+has been going on its jog-trot
+way during your temporary
+suppression.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 400px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:346px; height:400px" src="images/img023.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">PILOT WITH PAPERS.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The first article which
+meets my eyes, as I open
+the New York <i>World</i>, is
+headed &ldquo;High time for
+Mr. Nash to put
+a stop to it!&rdquo;
+This is the paragraph:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Ten days ago,
+Mrs. Nash brought
+a boy into existence.
+Three days
+afterward she presented
+her husband
+with a little girl. Yesterday the lady was safely delivered of a
+third baby.</p></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mrs. Nash takes her time over it&rdquo; would have been
+another good heading.</p>
+
+<p>Here we are in America. Old World ways don&rsquo;t obtain
+here. In Europe, Mrs. Nash would have ushered
+the little trio into this life in one day; but in Europe
+we are out of date, <i>rococo</i>, and if one came over to find
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page13" id="page13"></a>13</span>
+the Americans doing things just as they are done on the
+other side, one might as well stay at home.</p>
+
+<p>I run through the papers.</p>
+
+<p>America, I see, is split into two camps. Two young
+ladies, Miss Nelly Bly and Miss Elizabeth Bisland,
+have left New York by opposite routes to go around
+the world, the former sent by the New York <i>World</i>,
+the latter by the <i>Cosmopolitan</i>. Which will be back
+first? is what all America is conjecturing upon. Bets
+have been made, and the betting is even. I do not
+know Miss Bly, but last time I came over I had the
+pleasure of making Miss Bisland&rsquo;s acquaintance. Naturally,
+as soon as I get on shore, I shall bet on Miss
+Bisland. You would do the same yourself, would you
+not?</p>
+
+<p>I pass the day reading the papers. All the bits of
+news, insignificant or not, given in the shape of crisp,
+lively stories, help pass the time. They contain little
+information, but much amusement. The American
+newspaper always reminds me of a shop window with
+all the goods ticketed in a marvelous style, so as to attract
+and tickle the eye. You cannot pass over anything.
+The leading article is scarcely known across
+the &ldquo;wet spot&rdquo;; the paper is a collection of bits of
+gossip, hearsay, news, scandal, the whole served <i>� la
+sauce piquante</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Nine o&rsquo;clock.</i></p>
+
+<p>We are passing the bar, and going to anchor. New
+York is sparkling with lights, and the Brooklyn Bridge
+is a thing of beauty. I will enjoy the scene for an
+hour, and then turn in.</p>
+
+<p>We land to-morrow morning at seven.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page14" id="page14"></a>14</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Arrival&mdash;The Custom House&mdash;Things Look
+Bad&mdash;The Interviewers&mdash;First Visits&mdash;Things
+Look Brighter&mdash;&ldquo;O Vanity of Vanities.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York Harbor; January</i> 5.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">At</span> seven o&rsquo;clock in the morning the Custom House
+officers came on board. One of them at once
+recognizing me, said, calling me by name, that he was
+glad to see me back, and inquired if I had not brought
+Madame with me this time. It is extraordinary the
+memory of many of these Americans! This one had
+seen me for a few minutes two years before, and probably
+had had to deal with two or three hundred thousand
+people since.</p>
+
+<p>All the passengers came to the saloon and made
+their declarations one after another, after which they
+swore in the usual form that they had told the truth,
+and signed a paper to that effect. This done, many a
+poor pilgrim innocently imagines that he has finished
+with the Custom House, and he renders thanks to
+Heaven that he is going to set foot on a soil where a
+man&rsquo;s word is not doubted. He reckons without his
+host. In spite of his declaration, sworn and signed,
+his trunks are opened and searched with all the
+dogged zeal of a policeman who believes he is on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page15" id="page15"></a>15</span>
+track of a criminal, and who will only give up after
+perfectly convincing himself that the trunks do not
+contain the slightest dutiable article. Everything is
+taken out and examined. If there are any objects of
+apparel that appear like new ones to that scrutinizing
+eye, look out for squalls.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:433px; height:500px" src="images/img026.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">CUSTOM HOUSE OFFICERS.</p></div>
+
+<p>I must say that the officer was very kind to me.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page16" id="page16"></a>16</span>
+For that matter, the luggage of a man who travels
+alone, without Madame and her <i>impedimenta</i>, is soon
+examined.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving the ship, I went to shake hands with
+Captain Parsell, that experienced sailor whose bright,
+interesting conversation, added to the tempting delicacies
+provided by the cook, made many an hour pass
+right cheerily for those who, like myself, had the
+good fortune to sit at his table. I thanked him for all
+the kind attentions I had received at his hands. I
+should have liked to thank all the employees of the
+&ldquo;White Star&rdquo; line company. Their politeness is
+above all praise; their patience perfectly angelical.
+Ask them twenty times a day the most absurd questions,
+such as, &ldquo;Will the sea soon calm down?&rdquo; &ldquo;Shall
+we get into harbor on Wednesday?&rdquo; &ldquo;Do you think
+we shall be in early enough to land in the evening?&rdquo;
+and so on. You find them always ready with a kind
+and encouraging answer. &ldquo;The barometer is going up
+and the sea is going down,&rdquo; or, &ldquo;We are now doing our
+nineteen knots an hour.&rdquo; Is it true, or not? It satisfies
+you, at all events. In certain cases it is so
+sweet to be deceived! Better to be left to nurse a beloved
+illusion than have to give it up for a harsh reality
+that you are powerless against. Every one is
+grateful to those kind sailors and stewards for the
+little innocent fibs that they are willing to load their
+consciences with, in order that they may brighten your
+path across the ocean a little.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Everett House.</i> <i>Noon.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page17" id="page17"></a>17</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:430px; height:620px" src="images/img028.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">CAPTAIN PARSELL, R. M. S. &ldquo;MAJESTIC.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>My baggage examined, I took a cab to go to the
+hotel. Three dollars for a mile and a half. A mere
+trifle.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:430px; height:365px" src="images/img030.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">EVERY ONE HAS THE GRIPPE.</p></div>
+
+<p>It was pouring with rain. New York on a Sunday
+is never very gay. To-day the city seemed to me horrible:
+dull, dirty, and dreary. It is not the fault of
+New York altogether. I have the spleen. A horribly
+stormy passage, the stomach upside down, the heart up
+in the throat, the thought that my dear ones are three
+thousand miles away, all these things help to make
+everything look black. It would have needed a
+radiant sun in one of those pure blue skies that North
+America is so rich in to make life look agreeable and
+New York passable to-day.</p>
+
+<p>In ten minutes cabby set me down at the Everett
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page18" id="page18"></a>18</span>
+House. After having signed the register, I went and
+looked up my manager, whose bureau is on the ground
+floor of the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>The spectacle which awaited me was appalling.</p>
+
+<p>There sat the unhappy Major Pond in his office, his
+head bowed upon his chest, his arms hanging limp, the
+very picture of despair.</p>
+
+<p>The country is seized with a panic. Everybody has
+the influenza. Every one does not die of it, but every
+one is having it. The malady is not called influenza
+over here, as it is in Europe. It is called &ldquo;Grippe.&rdquo;
+No American escapes it. Some have <i>la grippe</i>, others
+have <i>the grippe</i>, a few, even, have <i>the la grippe</i>. Others,
+again, the lucky ones, think they have it. Those who
+have not had it, or do not think they have it yet,
+are expecting it. The nation is in a complete state of
+demoralization. Theaters are empty, business almost
+suspended, doctors on their backs or run off their
+legs.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve a telegram is handed to me. It is from
+my friend, Wilson Barrett, who is playing in Philadelphia.
+&ldquo;Hearty greetings, dear friend. Five grains of
+quinine and two tablets of antipyrine a day, or you
+get <i>grippe</i>.&rdquo; Then came many letters by every post.
+&ldquo;Impossible to go and welcome you in person. I
+have <i>la grippe</i>. Take every precaution.&rdquo; Such is the
+tenor of them all.</p>
+
+<p>The outlook is not bright. What to do? For a
+moment I have half a mind to call a cab and get
+on board the first boat bound for Europe.</p>
+
+<p>I go to my room, the windows of which overlook
+Union Square. The sky is somber, the street is black
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page19" id="page19"></a>19</span>
+and deserted, the air is suffocatingly warm, and a very
+heavy rain is beating against the windows.</p>
+
+<p>Shade of Columbus, how I wish I were home
+again!</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Cheer up, boy, the hand-grasps of your dear New
+York friends will be sweet after the frantic grasping
+of stair-rails and other ship furniture for so many
+days.</p>
+
+<p>I will have lunch and go and pay calls.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Excuse me if I leave you for a few minutes. The
+interviewers are waiting for me downstairs in Major
+Pond&rsquo;s office. The interviewers! a gay note at last.
+The hall porter hands me their cards. They are all
+there: representatives of the <i>Tribune</i>, the <i>Times</i>, the
+<i>Sun</i>, the <i>Herald</i>, the <i>World</i>, the <i>Star</i>.</p>
+
+<p>What nonsense Europeans have written on the
+subject of interviewing in America, to be sure! To
+hear them speak, you would believe that it is the
+greatest nuisance in the world.</p>
+
+<p>A Frenchman writes in the <i>Figaro</i>: &ldquo;I will go to
+America if my life can be insured against that terrific
+nuisance, interviewing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>An Englishman writes to an English paper, on
+returning from America: &ldquo;When the reporters called
+on me, I invariably refused to see them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Trash! Cant! Hypocrisy! With the exception
+of a king, or the prime minister of one of the great
+powers, a man is only too glad to be interviewed.
+Don&rsquo;t talk to me about the nuisance, tell the truth,
+it is always such a treat to hear it. I consider that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page20" id="page20"></a>20</span>
+interviewing is a compliment, a great compliment paid
+to the interviewed. In asking a man to give you his
+views, so as to enlighten the public on such and such
+a subject, you acknowledge that he is an important
+man, which is flattering to him; or you take him for
+one, which is more flattering still.</p>
+
+<p>I maintain that American interviewers are extremely
+courteous and obliging, and, as a rule, very faithful
+reporters of what you say to them.</p>
+
+<p>Let me say that I have a lurking doubt in my mind
+whether those who have so much to say against interviewing
+in America have ever been asked to be interviewed
+at all, or have even ever run such a danger.</p>
+
+<p>I object to interviewing as a sign of decadence in
+modern journalism; but I do not object to being
+interviewed, I like it; and, to prove it, I will go down
+at once, and be interviewed.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Midnight.</i></p>
+
+<p>The interview with the New York reporters passed
+off very well. I went through the operation like a
+man.</p>
+
+<p>After lunch, I went to see Mr. Edmund Clarence
+Stedman, who had shown me a great deal of kindness
+during my first visit to America. I found in him a
+friend ready to welcome me.</p>
+
+<p>The poet and literary critic is a man of about fifty,
+rather below middle height, with a beautifully chiseled
+head. In every one of the features you can detect
+the artist, the man of delicate, tender, and refined
+feelings. It was a great pleasure for me to see him
+again. He has finished his &ldquo;Library of American
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page21" id="page21"></a>21</span>
+Literature,&rdquo; a gigantic work of erudite criticism and
+judicious compilation, which he undertook a few years
+ago in collaboration with Miss Ellen Mackay Hutchinson.
+These eleven volumes form a perfect national
+monument, a complete cyclop�dia of American literature,
+giving extracts from the writings of every
+American who has published anything for the last
+three hundred years (1607-1890).</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:340px; height:350px" src="images/img034.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE INTERVIEWERS.</p></div>
+
+<p>On leaving him, I went to call on Mrs. Anna Bowman
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page22" id="page22"></a>22</span>
+Dodd, the author of &ldquo;Cathedral Days,&rdquo; &ldquo;Glorinda,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;The Republic of the Future,&rdquo; and other
+charming books, and one of the brightest conversationalists
+it has ever been my good fortune to meet.
+After an hour&rsquo;s chat with her, I had forgotten all
+about the <i>grippe</i>, and all other more or less imaginary
+miseries.</p>
+
+<p>I returned to the Everett House to dress, and went
+to the Union League Club to dine with General Horace
+Porter.</p>
+
+<p>The general possesses a rare and most happy combination
+of brilliant flashing Parisian wit and dry, quiet,
+American humor. This charming <i>causeur</i> and <i>conteur</i>
+tells an anecdote as nobody I know can do; he
+never misses fire. He assured me at table that the
+copyright bill will soon be passed, for, he added, &ldquo;we
+have now a pure and pious Administration. At the
+White House they open their oysters with prayer.&rdquo;
+The conversation fell on American society, or, rather,
+on American Societies. The highest and lowest of
+these can be distinguished by the use of <i>van</i>. &ldquo;The
+blue blood of America put it before their names, as
+<i>Van Nicken</i>; political society puts it after, as <i>Sullivan</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">O Van-itas Van-itatum!</span></p>
+
+<p>Time passed rapidly in such delightful company.</p>
+
+<p>I finished the evening at the house of Colonel
+Robert G. Ingersoll. If there had been any cloud of
+gloom still left hanging about me, it would have vanished
+at the sight of his sunny face. There was a
+small gathering of some thirty people, among them
+Mr. Edgar Fawcett, whose acquaintance I was delighted
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page23" id="page23"></a>23</span>
+to make. Conversation went on briskly with one and
+the other, and at half-past eleven I returned to the
+hotel completely cured.</p>
+
+<p>To-morrow morning I leave for Boston at ten o&rsquo;clock
+to begin the lecture tour in that city, or, to use an
+Americanism, to &ldquo;open the show.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>There is a knock at the door.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:288px; height:340px" src="images/img036.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">HALL PORTER.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is the hall porter with a letter: an invitation to
+dine with the members of the Clover Club at Philadelphia
+on Thursday next, the 16th.</p>
+
+<p>I look at my list of engagements and find I am in
+Pittsburg on that day.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page24" id="page24"></a>24</span> </p>
+
+<p>I take a telegraph form and pen the following, which
+I will send to my friend, Major M. P. Handy, the
+president of this lively association:</p>
+
+<p>Many thanks. Am engaged in Pittsburg on the 16th. Thank
+God, cannot attend your dinner.</p>
+
+<p>I remember how those &ldquo;boys&rdquo; cheeked me two
+years ago, laughed at me, sat on me. That&rsquo;s my telegram
+to you, dear Cloverites, with my love.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:37px" src="images/img037.jpg" alt="" />
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page25" id="page25"></a>25</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt1">Impressions of American Hotels.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Boston</i>, <i>January</i> 6.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Arrived</span> here this afternoon, and resumed acquaintance
+with American hotels.</p>
+
+<p>American hotels are all alike.</p>
+
+<p>Some are worse.</p>
+
+<p>Describe one and you have described them all.</p>
+
+<p>On the ground floor, a large entrance hall strewed
+with cuspidores for the men, and a side entrance provided
+with a triumphal arch for the ladies. On this
+floor the sexes are separated as at the public baths.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:412px; height:500px" src="images/img039.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE SAD-EYED CLERK.</p></div>
+
+<p>In the large hall, a counter behind which solemn
+clerks, whose business faces relax not a muscle, are
+ready with their book to enter your name and assign
+you a number. A small army of colored porters ready
+to take you in charge. Not a salute, not a word, not
+a smile of welcome. The negro takes your bag and
+makes a sign that your case is settled. You follow
+him. For the time being you lose your personality
+and become No. 375, as you would in jail. Don&rsquo;t ask
+questions; theirs not to answer; don&rsquo;t ring the bell to
+ask for a favor, if you set any value on your time. All
+the rules of the establishment are printed and posted
+in your bedroom; you have to submit to them. No
+question to ask&mdash;you know everything. Henceforth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page26" id="page26"></a>26</span>
+you will have to be hungry from 7 to 9 A.M.; from 1
+to 3 P.M.; from 6 to 8 P.M. The slightest infringement
+of the routine would stop the wheel, so don&rsquo;t ask if you
+could have a meal at four o&rsquo;clock; you would be taken
+for a lunatic, or a crank (as they call it in America).
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page27" id="page27"></a>27</span> </p>
+
+<p>Between meals you will be supplied with ice-water
+<i>ad libitum</i>.</p>
+
+<p>No privacy. No coffee-room, no smoking-room.
+No place where you can go and quietly sip a cup of
+coffee or drink a glass of beer with a cigar. You can
+have a drink at the bar, and then go and sit down in
+the hall among the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>Life in an American hotel is an alternation of the
+cellular system during the night and of the gregarious
+system during the day, an alternation of the penitentiary
+systems carried out at Philadelphia and at Auburn.</p>
+
+<p>It is not in the bedroom, either, that you must seek
+anything to cheer you. The bed is good, but only for
+the night. The room is perfectly nude. Not even
+&ldquo;Napoleon&rsquo;s Farewell to his Soldiers at Fontainebleau&rdquo;
+as in France, or &ldquo;Strafford walking to the
+Scaffold&rdquo; as in England. Not that these pictures are
+particularly cheerful, still they break the monotony of
+the wall paper. Here the only oases in the brown or
+gray desert are cautions.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, a notice that, in a cupboard near the
+window, you will find some twenty yards of coiled rope
+which, in case of fire, you are to fix to a hook outside
+the window. The rest is guessed. You fix the rope,
+and&mdash;you let yourself go. From a sixth, seventh, or
+eighth story, the prospect is lively. Another caution
+informs you of all that you must not do, such as your
+own washing in the bedroom. Another warns you that
+if, on retiring, you put your boots outside the door, you
+do so at your own risk and peril. Another is posted
+near the door, close to an electric bell. With a little
+care and practice, you will be able to carry out the
+instructions printed thereon. The only thing wonderful
+about the contrivance is that the servants never
+make mistakes.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page28" id="page28"></a>28</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:424px; height:610px" src="images/img041.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE HOTEL FIRE ESCAPE.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page29" id="page29"></a>29</span> </p>
+
+<div class="f90">
+<table class="nobctr" width="70%" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcl">Press once</td> <td class="tcl">for ice-water.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Press twice</td> <td class="tcl">for hall boy.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Press three times</td> <td class="tcl">for fireman.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Press four times</td> <td class="tcl">for chambermaid.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Press five times</td> <td class="tcl">for hot water.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Press six times</td> <td class="tcl">for ink and writing materials.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Press seven times</td> <td class="tcl">for baggage.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Press eight times</td> <td class="tcl">for messenger.</td></tr></table>
+</div>
+
+<p>In some hotels I have seen the list carried to number
+twelve.</p>
+
+<p>Another notice tells you what the proprietor&rsquo;s responsibilities
+are, and at what time the meals take
+place. Now this last notice is the most important of
+all. Woe to you if you forget it! For if you should
+present yourself one minute after the dining-room door
+is closed, no human consideration would get it open
+for you. Supplications, arguments would be of no
+avail. Not even money.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; some old-fashioned European
+will exclaim. &ldquo;When the <i>table d&rsquo;h�te</i> is over,
+of course you cannot expect the <i>menu</i> to be served to
+you; but surely you can order a steak or a chop.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>No, you cannot, not even an omelette or a piece of
+cold meat. If you arrive at one minute past three (in
+small towns, at one minute past two) you find the
+dining-room closed, and you must wait till six o&rsquo;clock
+to see its hospitable doors open again.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>When you enter the dining-room, you must not believe
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page30" id="page30"></a>30</span>
+that you can go and sit where you like. The chief
+waiter assigns you a seat, and you must take it. With
+a superb wave of the hand, he signs to you to follow
+him. He does not even turn round to see if you are
+behind him, following him in all the meanders he describes,
+amid the sixty, eighty, sometimes hundred
+tables that are in the room. He takes it for granted
+you are an obedient, submissive traveler who knows
+his duty. Altogether I traveled in the United States
+for about ten months, and I never came across an
+American so daring, so independent, as to actually
+take any other seat than the one assigned to him by
+that tremendous potentate, the head waiter. Occasionally,
+just to try him, I would sit down in a chair I
+took a fancy to. But he would come and fetch me,
+and tell me that I could not stay there. In Europe,
+the waiter asks you where you would like to sit. In
+America, you ask him where you may sit. He is a
+paid servant, therefore a master in America. He is in
+command, not of the other waiters, but of the guests.
+Several times, recognizing friends in the dining-room,
+I asked the man to take me to their tables (I should
+not have dared go by myself), and the permission was
+granted with a patronizing sign of the head. I have
+constantly seen Americans stop on the threshold of
+the dining-room door, and wait until the chief waiter
+had returned from placing a guest to come and fetch
+them in their turn. I never saw them venture alone,
+and take an empty seat, without the sanction of the
+waiter.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page31" id="page31"></a>31</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:493px; height:610px" src="images/img044.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE HEAD MAN.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page32" id="page32"></a>32</span></p>
+
+<p>The guests feel struck with awe in that dining-room,
+and solemnly bolt their food as quickly as they can.
+You hear less noise in an American hotel dining-room
+containing five hundred people, than you do at a
+French <i>table d&rsquo;h�te</i> accommodating fifty people, at a
+German one containing a dozen guests, or at a table
+where two Italians
+are dining <i>t�te-�-t�te</i>.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 300px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:252px; height:400px" src="images/img045.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">&ldquo;LOOK LIKE DUSKY PRINCES.&rdquo;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The head waiter,
+at large Northern
+and Western hotels,
+is a white man. In
+the Southern ones,
+he is a mulatto or a
+black; but white or
+black, he is always a
+magnificent specimen
+of his race.
+There is not a ghost
+of a savor of the
+serving man about
+him; no whiskers
+and shaven upper
+lips reminding you
+of the waiters of the
+Old World; but always
+a fine mustache,
+the twirling of which
+helps to give an air
+of <i>nonchalant</i> superiority to its wearer. The mulatto
+head-waiters in the South really look like dusky
+princes. Many of them are so handsome and carry
+themselves so superbly that you find them very impressive
+at first and would fain apologize to them.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page33" id="page33"></a>33</span>
+You feel as if you wanted
+to thank them for kindly
+condescending to concern
+themselves about anything
+so commonplace as your seat
+at table.</p>
+
+<p>In smaller hotels, the
+waiters are all waitresses.
+The &ldquo;waiting&rdquo; is
+done by damsels
+entirely&mdash;or
+rather by the
+guests of the
+hotel.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 390px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:339px; height:450px" src="images/img046.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">&ldquo;SHE IS CROWNED WITH A GIGANTIC MASS
+OF FRIZZLED HAIR.&rdquo;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>If the Southern
+head waiter
+looks like a
+prince, what
+shall we say of
+the head-waitress
+in the East,
+the North, and
+the West?
+No term short
+of queenly will
+describe her
+stately bearing
+as she moves about among her bevy of reduced
+duchesses. She is evidently chosen for her appearance.
+She is &ldquo;divinely tall,&rdquo; as well as &ldquo;most
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page34" id="page34"></a>34</span>
+divinely fair,&rdquo; and, as if to add to her importance,
+she is crowned with a gigantic mass of frizzled
+hair. All the waitresses have this coiffure. It is
+a livery, as caps are in the Old World; but instead
+of being a badge of servitude it looks, and is, alarmingly
+emancipated&mdash;so much so that, before making
+close acquaintance with my dishes, I always examine
+them with great care. A beautiful mass of hair looks
+lovely on the head of a woman, but <i>one</i> in your soup,
+even if it had strayed from the tresses of your beloved
+one, would make the corners of your mouth go down,
+and the tip of your nose go up.</p>
+
+<p>A regally handsome woman always &ldquo;goes well in
+the landscape,&rdquo; as the French say, and I have seen
+specimens of these waitresses so handsome and so
+commanding-looking that, if they cared to come over
+to Europe and play the queens in London pantomimes,
+I feel sure they would command quite exceptional
+prices, and draw big salaries and crowded houses.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>The thing which strikes me most disagreeably, in the
+American hotel dining-room, is the sight of the tremendous
+waste of food that goes on at every meal.
+No European, I suppose, can fail to be struck with
+this; but to a Frenchman it would naturally be most
+remarkable. In France, where, I venture to say,
+people live as well as anywhere else, if not better,
+there is a horror of anything like waste of good food.
+It is to me, therefore, a repulsive thing to see the
+wanton manner in which some Americans will waste
+at one meal enough to feed several hungry fellow-creatures.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page35" id="page35"></a>35</span> </p>
+
+<p>In the large hotels, conducted on the American
+plan, there are rarely fewer than fifty different dishes
+on the <i>menu</i> at dinner-time. Every day, and at every
+meal, you may see people order three times as much
+of this food as they could under any circumstances eat,
+and, after picking it and spoiling one dish after another,
+send the bulk away uneaten. I am bound to say that
+this practice is not only to be observed in hotels where
+the charge is so much per day, but in those conducted
+on the European plan, that is, where you pay for every
+item you order. There I notice that people proceed
+in much the same wasteful fashion. It is evidently
+not a desire to have more than is paid for, but simply
+a bad and ugly habit. I hold that about five hundred
+hungry people could be fed out of the waste that is
+going on at such large hotels as the Palmer House or
+the Grand Pacific Hotel of Chicago&mdash;and I have no
+doubt that such five hundred hungry people could
+easily be found in Chicago every day.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I think that many Europeans are prevented from
+going to America by an idea that the expense of
+traveling and living there is very great. This is
+quite a delusion. For my part I find that hotels are
+as cheap in America as in England at any rate, and
+railway traveling in Pullman cars is certainly cheaper
+than in European first-class carriages, and incomparably
+more comfortable. Put aside in America such
+hotels as Delmonico&rsquo;s, the Brunswick in New York;
+the Richelieu in Chicago; and in England such hotels
+as the Metrop�le, the Victoria, the Savoy; and take
+the good hotels of the country, such as the Grand
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page36" id="page36"></a>36</span>
+Pacific at Chicago; the West House at Minneapolis,
+the Windsor at Montreal, the Cadillac at Detroit. I
+only mention those I remember as the very best. In
+these hotels, you are comfortably lodged and magnificently
+fed for from three to five dollars a day. In
+no good hotel of England, France, Germany, Italy,
+Switzerland, would you get the same amount of comfort,
+or even luxury, at the same price, and those who
+require a sitting-room get it for a little less than they
+would have to pay in a European hotel.</p>
+
+<p>The only very dear hotels I have come across in the
+United States are those of Virginia. There I have
+been charged as much as two dollars a day, but never
+in my life did I pay so dear for what I had, never
+in my life did I see so many dirty rooms or so many
+messes that were unfit for human food.</p>
+
+<p>But I will just say this much for the American refinement
+of feeling to be met with, even in the hotels
+of Virginia, even in the &ldquo;lunch&rdquo; rooms in small stations,
+you are supplied, at the end of each meal, with a
+bowl of water&mdash;to rinse your mouth.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:107px" src="images/img049.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page37" id="page37"></a>37</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">My Opening Lecture&mdash;Reflections on Audiences
+I Have Had&mdash;The Man who Won&rsquo;t
+Smile&mdash;The One who Laughs too Soon, and
+Many Others.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Boston</i>, <i>January</i> 7.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Began</span> my second American tour under most favorable
+auspices last night, in the Tremont Temple.
+The huge hall was crowded with an audience of about
+2500 people&mdash;a most kind, warm, keen, and appreciative
+audience. I was a little afraid of the Bostonians; I had
+heard so much about their power of criticism that I had
+almost come to the conclusion that it was next to impossible
+to please them. The Boston newspapers this
+morning give full reports of my lecture. All of them are
+kind and most favorable. This is a good start, and I
+feel hopeful.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of my lecture was &ldquo;A National Portrait
+Gallery of the Anglo-Saxon Races,&rdquo; in which I delineated
+the English, the Scotch, and the American characters.
+Strange to say, my Scotch sketches seemed to
+tickle them most. This, however, I can explain to
+myself. Scotch &ldquo;wut&rdquo; is more like American humor
+than any kind of wit I know. There is about it
+the same dryness, the same quaintness, the same preposterousness,
+the same subtlety.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page38" id="page38"></a>38</span> </p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 290px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:242px; height:350px" src="images/img051.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">BOSTON.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>My Boston audience also seemed to enjoy my criticisms
+of America and the Americans, which disposes
+of the absurd belief that the Americans will not listen to
+the criticism of their country. There are Americans
+and Americans, as there
+is criticism and criticism.
+If you can speak of
+people&rsquo;s virtues without
+flattery; if you can speak
+of their weaknesses
+and failings with
+kindness and good
+humor, I believe
+you can
+criticise to
+your heart&rsquo;s
+content without
+ever fearing
+to give offense
+to intelligent
+and fair-minded
+people.
+I admire
+and love the
+Americans.
+How could
+they help seeing
+it through all the little criticisms that I indulged
+in on the platform? On the whole, I was delighted
+with my Boston audience, and, to judge from the
+reception they gave me, I believe I succeeded in
+pleasing them. I have three more engagements in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page39" id="page39"></a>39</span>
+Boston, so I shall have the pleasure of meeting the
+Bostonians again.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I have never been able to lecture, whether in England,
+in Scotland, in Ireland or in America, without discovering,
+somewhere in the hall, after speaking for five
+minutes or so, an old gentleman who will not smile.
+He was there last night, and it is evident that he is
+going to favor me with his presence every night during
+this second American tour. He generally sits near
+the platform, and not unfrequently on the first row.
+There is a horrible fascination about that man. You
+cannot get your eyes off him. You do your utmost to
+&ldquo;fetch him&rdquo;&mdash;you feel it to be your duty not to send
+him home empty-headed; your conscience tells you
+that he has not to please you, but that <i>you</i> are paid to
+please him, and you struggle on. You would like to
+slip into his pocket the price of his seat and have him
+removed, or throw the water bottle at his face and
+make him show signs of life. As it is, you try to look
+the other way, but you know he is there, and that does
+not improve matters.</p>
+
+<p>Now this man, who will not smile, very often is not
+so bad as he looks. You imagine that you bore him
+to death, but you don&rsquo;t. You wonder how it is he
+does not go, but the fact is he actually enjoys himself&mdash;inside.
+Or, maybe, he is a professional man
+himself, and no conjuror has ever been known to laugh
+at another conjuror&rsquo;s tricks. A great American
+humorist relates that, after speaking for an hour
+and a half without succeeding in getting a smile from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page40" id="page40"></a>40</span>
+a certain man in the audience, he sent some one to inquire
+into the state of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me, sir, did you not enjoy the lecture that
+has been delivered to-night?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very much indeed,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;it was a most
+clever and entertaining lecture.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you never smiled&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, no&mdash;I&rsquo;m a liar myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes there are other reasons to explain the
+unsmiling man&rsquo;s attitude.</p>
+
+<p>One evening I had lectured in Birmingham. On
+the first row there sat the whole time an old gentleman,
+with his umbrella standing between his legs, his
+hands crossed on the handle, and his chin resting on
+his hands. Frowning, his mouth gaping, and his eyes
+perfectly vacant, he remained motionless, looking at
+me, and for an hour and twenty minutes seemed to
+say to me: &ldquo;My poor fellow, you may do what you
+like, but you won&rsquo;t &lsquo;fetch&rsquo; me to-night, I can tell
+you.&rdquo; I looked at him, I spoke to him, I winked at
+him, I aimed at him; several times even I paused so
+as to give him ample time to see a point. All was in
+vain. I had just returned, after the lecture, to the secretary&rsquo;s
+room behind the platform, when he entered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, that man again!&rdquo; I cried, pointing to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He advanced toward me, took my hand, and said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you very much for your excellent lecture, I
+have enjoyed it very much.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you?&rdquo; said I.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page41" id="page41"></a>41</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:455px; height:610px" src="images/img054.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE OLD GENTLEMAN WHO WILL NOT SMILE.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page42" id="page42"></a>42</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Would you be kind enough to give me your autograph?&rdquo;
+And he pulled out of his pocket a beautiful
+autograph book.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I said to the secretary in a whisper, &ldquo;this
+old gentleman is extremely kind to ask for my autograph,
+for I am certain he has not enjoyed my lecture.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What makes you think so?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, he never smiled once.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, poor old gentleman,&rdquo; said the secretary; &ldquo;he
+is stone deaf.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Many a lecturer must have met this man.</p>
+
+<p>It would be unwise, when you discover that certain
+members of the audience will not laugh, to give them
+up at once. As long as you are on the platform there
+is hope.</p>
+
+<p>I was once lecturing in the chief town of a great
+hunting center in England. On the first row sat half
+a dozen hair-parted-in-the-middle, single-eye-glass
+young swells. They stared at me unmoved, and
+never relaxed a muscle except for yawning. It was
+most distressing to see how the poor fellows looked
+bored. How I did wish I could do something for
+them! I had spoken for nearly an hour when, by accident,
+I upset the tumbler on my table. The water
+trickled down the cloth. The young men laughed,
+roared. They were happy and enjoying themselves,
+and I had &ldquo;fetched&rdquo; them at last. I have never forgotten
+this trick, and when I see in the audience an
+apparently hopeless case, I often resort to it, generally
+with success.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>There are other people who do not much enjoy
+your lecture: your own.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page43" id="page43"></a>43</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:600px; height:278px" src="images/img056.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE CHAPPIES WHO WOULD NOT LAUGH.</p></div>
+
+<p>Of course you must forgive your wife. The dear
+creature knows all your lectures by heart; she has
+heard your jokes hundreds of times. She comes to
+your lectures rather to see how you are going to be
+received than to listen to you. Besides, she feels that
+for an hour and a half you do not belong to her.
+When she comes with you to the lecture hall, you are
+both ushered into the secretary&rsquo;s room. Two or three
+minutes before it is time to go on the platform, it is
+suggested to her that it is time she should take her
+seat among the audience. She looks at the secretary
+and recognizes that for an hour and a half her husband
+is the property of this official, who is about to hand
+him over to the tender mercies of the public. As she
+says, &ldquo;Oh, yes, I suppose I must go,&rdquo; she almost feels
+like shaking hands with her husband, as Mrs. Baldwin
+takes leave of the Professor before he starts on his
+aerial trip. But, though she may not laugh, her heart
+is with you, and she is busy watching the audience,
+ever ready to tell them, &ldquo;Now, don&rsquo;t you think this is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page44" id="page44"></a>44</span>
+a very good point? Well, then, if you do, why don&rsquo;t
+you laugh and cheer?&rdquo; She is part and parcel of
+yourself. She is not jealous of your success, for she
+is your helpmate, your kind and sound counselor, and
+I can assure you that if an audience should fail to be
+responsive, it would never enter her head to lay the
+blame on her husband; she would feel the most supreme
+contempt for &ldquo;that stupid audience that was
+unable to appreciate you.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s all.</p>
+
+<p>But your other own folk! You are no hero to them.
+To judge the effect of anything, you must be placed at
+a certain distance, and your own folks are too near you.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon I had given a lecture to a large and
+fashionable audience in the South of England. A near
+relative of mine, who lived in the neighborhood, was
+in the hall. He never smiled. I watched him from
+the beginning to the end. When the lecture was
+over he came to the little room behind the platform to
+take me to his house. As he entered the room I was
+settling the money matters with my <i>impresario</i>. I will
+let you into the secret. There was fifty-two pounds in
+the house, and my share was two-thirds of the gross
+receipts, that is about thirty-four pounds. My relative
+heard the sum. As we drove along in his dog-cart he
+nudged me and said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did you make thirty-four pounds this afternoon?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, did you hear?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Yes, that was my
+part of the takings. For a small town I am quite
+satisfied.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should think you were!&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;If you
+had made thirty-four shillings you would have been
+well paid for your work!&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page45" id="page45"></a>45</span> </p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more true to life than the want of appreciation
+the successful man encounters from relatives
+and also from former friends. Nothing is more certain
+than when a man has lived on terms of perfect
+equality and familiarity with a certain set of men, he
+can never hope to be anything but &ldquo;plain John&rdquo; to
+them, though by his personal efforts he may have obtained
+the applause of the public. Did he not rub
+shoulders with them for years in the same walk of
+life? Why these bravos? What was there in him
+more than in them? Even though they may have
+gone so far as to single him out as a &ldquo;rather clever
+fellow,&rdquo; while he was one of theirs, still the surprise at
+the public appreciation is none the less keen, his advance
+toward the front an unforgivable offense, and
+they are immediately seized with a desire to rush out
+in the highways and proclaim that he is only &ldquo;Jack,&rdquo;
+and not the &ldquo;John&rdquo; that his admirers think him. I
+remember that, in the early years of my life in England,
+when I had not the faintest idea of ever writing a book
+on John Bull, a young English friend of mine did me
+the honor of appreciating highly all my observations
+on British life and manners, and for years urged me
+hard and often to jot them down to make a book of.
+One day the book was finished and appeared in print.
+It attracted a good deal of public attention, but no
+one was more surprised than this man, who, from a
+kind friend, was promptly transformed into the most
+severe and unfriendly of my critics, and went about
+saying that the book and the amount of public attention
+bestowed upon it were both equally ridiculous.
+He has never spoken to me since.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page46" id="page46"></a>46</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:375px; height:480px" src="images/img059.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE MAN WHO LAUGHS.</p></div>
+
+<p>A successful man is very often charged with wishing
+to turn his back on his former friends. No accusation
+is more false. Nothing would please him more than
+to retain the friends of more modest times, but it
+is they who have changed their feelings. They snub
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page47" id="page47"></a>47</span>
+him, and this man, who is in constant need of moral
+support and <i>pick-me-up</i>, cannot stand it.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>But let us return to the audience.</p>
+
+<p>The man who won&rsquo;t smile is not the only person
+who causes you some annoyance.</p>
+
+<p>There is the one who laughs too soon; who laughs
+before you have made your points, and who thinks,
+because you have opened your lecture with a joke,
+that everything you say afterward is a joke. There is
+another rather objectionable person; it is the one
+who explains your points to his neighbor, and makes
+them laugh aloud just at the moment when you require
+complete silence to fire off one of your best
+remarks.</p>
+
+<p>There is the old lady who listens to you frowning,
+and who does not mind what you are saying, but is all
+the time shaking for fear of what you are going to say
+next. She never laughs before she has seen other
+people laugh. Then she thinks she is safe.</p>
+
+<p>All these I am going to have in America again; that
+is clear. But I am now a man of experience. I have
+lectured in concert rooms, in lecture halls, in theaters,
+in churches, in schools. I have addressed embalmed
+Britons in English health resorts, petrified English
+mummies at hydropathic establishments, and lunatics
+in private asylums.</p>
+
+<p>I am ready for the fray.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page48" id="page48"></a>48</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt1">A Connecticut Audience&mdash;Merry Meriden&mdash;A
+Hard Pull.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>From Meriden</i>, <i>January</i> 8.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">A Connecticut</span> audience was a new experience
+to me. Yesterday I had a crowded room
+at the Opera House in Meriden; but if you had been
+behind the scenery, when I made my appearance on
+the stage, you would not have suspected it, for not
+one of the audience treated me to a little applause. I
+was frozen, and so were they. For a quarter of an
+hour I proceeded very cautiously, feeling the ground,
+as it were, as I went on. By that time, the thaw set
+in, and they began to smile. I must say that they had
+been very attentive from the beginning, and seemed
+very interested in the lecture. Encouraged by this, I
+warmed too. It was curious to watch that audience.
+By twos and threes the faces lit up with amusement
+till, by and by, the house wore quite an animated
+aspect. Presently there was a laugh, then two, then
+laughter more general. All the ice was gone. Next,
+a bold spirit in the stalls ventured some applause. At
+his second outburst he had company. The uphill
+work was nearly over now, and I began to feel better.
+The infection spread up to the circles and the gallery,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page49" id="page49"></a>49</span>
+and at last there came a real good hearty round of
+applause. I had &ldquo;fetched&rdquo; them after all. But it
+was tough work. When once I had them in hand, I
+took good care not to let them go.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I visited several interesting establishments this
+morning. Merry Meriden is famous for its manufactories
+of electro-plated silverware. Unfortunately I am
+not yet accustomed to the heated rooms of America,
+and I could not stay in the show-rooms more than a
+few minutes. I should have thought the heat was
+strong enough to melt all the goods on view. This
+town looks like a bee-hive of activity, with its animated
+streets, its electric cars. Dear old Europe! With the
+exception of a few large cities, the cars are still drawn
+by horses, like in the time of Sesostris and Nebuchadnezzar.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>On arriving at the station a man took hold of my
+bag and asked to take care of it until the arrival of the
+train. I do not know whether he belonged to the
+hotel where I spent the night, or to the railroad company.
+Whatever he was, I felt grateful for this wonderful
+show of courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I heard you last night at the Opera House,&rdquo; he
+said to me.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, were you at the lecture?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir, and I greatly enjoyed it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, why didn&rsquo;t you laugh sooner?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wanted to very much!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page50" id="page50"></a>50</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:301px; height:610px" src="images/img063.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;I WAS AT YOUR LECTURE LAST NIGHT.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page51" id="page51"></a>51</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir, I couldn&rsquo;t very well laugh before the
+rest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you give the signal?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You see, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we are in Connecticut.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is laughter prohibited by the Statute Book in
+Connecticut?&rdquo; I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir, but if you all laugh at the same time,
+then&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see, nobody can tell who is the real criminal.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The train arrived. I shook hands with my friend,
+after offering him half a dollar for holding my bag&mdash;which
+he refused&mdash;and went on board.</p>
+
+<p>In the parlor car, I met my kind friend Colonel
+Charles H. Taylor, editor of that very successful paper,
+the Boston <i>Globe</i>. We had luncheon together in the
+dining car, and time passed delightfully in his company
+till we reached the Grand Central station, New
+York, when we parted. He was kind enough to make
+me promise to look him up in Boston in a fortnight&rsquo;s
+time, when I make my second appearance in the City
+of Culture.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:110px; height:140px" src="images/img064.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page52" id="page52"></a>52</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">A Tempting Offer&mdash;The Thursday Club&mdash;Bill
+Nye&mdash;Visit to Young Ladies&rsquo; Schools&mdash;The
+Players&rsquo; Club.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>January</i> 9.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">On</span> returning here, I found a most curious letter
+awaiting me. I must tell you that in Boston,
+last Monday, I made the following remarks in my
+lecture:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The American is, I believe, on the road to the
+possession of all that can contribute to the well-being
+and success of a nation, but he seems to me to have
+missed the path that leads to real happiness. To live
+in a whirl is not to live well. The little French shopkeeper
+who locks his shop-door from half-past one, so
+as not to be disturbed while he is having his dinner
+with his wife and family, has come nearer to solving
+the great problem of life, &lsquo;How to be happy,&rsquo; than the
+American who sticks on his door: &lsquo;Gone to dinner,
+shall be back in five minutes.&rsquo; You eat too fast, and I
+understand why your antidyspeptic pill-makers cover
+your walls, your forests even, with their advertisements.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And I named the firm of pill-makers.</p>
+
+<p>The letter is from them. They offer me $1000 if I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page53" id="page53"></a>53</span>
+will repeat the phrase at every lecture I give during
+my tour in the United States.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:383px; height:430px" src="images/img066.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">WHERE INDIGESTION IS MANUFACTURED.</p></div>
+
+<p>You may imagine if I will be careful to abstain in
+the future.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I lectured to-night before the members of the
+Thursday Club&mdash;a small, but very select audience,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page54" id="page54"></a>54</span>
+gathered in the drawing-room of one of the members.
+The lecture was followed by a <i>conversazione</i>. A very
+pleasant evening.</p>
+
+<p>I left the house at half-past eleven. The night
+was beautiful. I walked to the hotel, along Fifth
+Avenue to Madison Square, and along Broadway to
+Union Square.</p>
+
+<p>What a contrast to the great thoroughfares of London!
+Thousands of people here returning from the
+theaters and enjoying their walks, instead of being
+obliged to rush into vehicles to escape the sights presented
+at night by the West End streets of London.
+Here you can walk at night with your wife and
+daughter, without the least fear of their coming into
+contact with flaunting vice.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Excuse a reflection on a subject of a very domestic
+character. My clothes have come from the laundress
+with the bill.</p>
+
+<p>Now let me give you a sound piece of advice.</p>
+
+<p>When you go to America, bring with you a dozen
+shirts. No more. When these are soiled, buy a
+new dozen, and so on. You will thus get a supply
+of linen for many years to come, and save your washing
+bills in America, where the price of a shirt is
+much the same as the cost of washing it.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>January</i> 10.</p>
+
+<p>I was glad to see Bill Nye again. He turned up
+at the Everett House this morning. I like to gaze
+at his clean-shaven face, that is seldom broken by a
+smile, and to hear his long, melancholy drawl. His
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page55" id="page55"></a>55</span>
+lank form, and his polished dome of thought, as he
+delights in calling his joke box, help to make him so
+droll on the platform. When his audience begins to
+scream with laughter, he stops, looks at them in
+astonishment; the corners of his mouth drop and an
+expression of sadness comes over his face. The effect
+is irresistible. They shriek for mercy. But they
+don&rsquo;t get it. He is accompanied by his own manager,
+who starts with him for the north to-night.
+This manager has no sinecure. I don&rsquo;t think Bill
+Nye has ever been found in a depot ready to catch a
+train. So the manager takes him to the station, puts
+him in the right car, gets him out of his sleeping
+berth, takes him to the hotel, sees that he is behind
+the platform a few minutes before the time announced
+for the beginning of the lecture, and generally looks
+after his comfort. Bill is due in Ohio to-morrow
+night, and leaves New York to-night by the Grand
+Central Depot.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you sure it&rsquo;s by the Grand Central?&rdquo; he said
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, of course, corner of Forty-second Street, a
+five or ten minutes&rsquo; ride from here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>You should have seen the expression on his face, as
+he drawled away:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How&mdash;shall&mdash;I&mdash;get&mdash;there, I&mdash;wonder?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>This afternoon I paid a most interesting visit to
+several girls&rsquo; schools. The pupils were ordered by
+the head-mistress, in each case, to gather in the large
+room. There they arrived, two by two, to the sound
+of a march played on the piano by one of the under-mistresses.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page56" id="page56"></a>56</span>
+When they had all reached their respective
+places, two chords were struck on the instrument,
+and they all sat down with the precision of the best
+drilled Prussian regiment. Then some sang, others
+recited little poems, or epigrams&mdash;mostly at the expense
+of men. When, two years ago, I visited the
+Normal School for girls in the company of the President
+of the Education Board and Colonel Elliott F.
+Shepard, it was the anniversary of George Eliot&rsquo;s
+birth. The pupils, one by one, recited a few quotations
+from her works, choosing all she had written
+against man.</p>
+
+<p>When the singing and the recitations were over, the
+mistress requested me to address a few words to the
+young ladies. An American is used from infancy to
+deliver a speech on the least provocation. I am not.
+However, I managed to congratulate these young
+American girls on their charming appearance, and to
+thank them for the pleasure they had afforded me.
+Then two chords were struck on the piano and all
+stood up; two more chords, and all marched off in
+double file to the sound of another march. Not a
+smile, not a giggle. All these young girls, from sixteen
+to twenty, looked at me with modesty, but complete
+self-assurance, certainly with far more assurance
+than I dared look at them.</p>
+
+<p>Then the mistress asked me to go to the gymnasium.
+There the girls arrived and, as solemnly as before,
+went through all kinds of muscular exercises.
+They are never allowed to sit down in the class rooms
+more than two hours at a time. They have to go
+down to the gymnasium every two hours.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page57" id="page57"></a>57</span> </p>
+
+<p>I was perfectly amazed to see such discipline.
+These young girls are the true daughters of a great Republic:
+self-possessed, self-confident, dignified, respectful,
+law-abiding.</p>
+
+<p>I also visited the junior departments of those schools.
+In one of them, eight hundred little girls from five to
+ten years of age were gathered together, and, as in the
+other departments, sang and recited to me. These
+young children are taught by the girls of the Normal
+School, under the supervision of mistresses. Here
+teaching is learned by teaching. A good method.
+Doctors are not allowed to practice before they have
+attended patients in hospitals. Why should people be
+allowed to teach before they have attended schools as
+apprentice teachers?</p>
+
+<p>I had to give a speech to these dear little ones. I
+wish I had been able to give them a kiss instead.</p>
+
+<p>In my little speech I had occasion to remark that I
+had arrived in America only a week before. After I
+left, it appears that a little girl, aged about six, went to
+her mistress and said to her:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s only been here a week! And how beautifully
+he speaks English already!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I have been &ldquo;put up&rdquo; at the Players&rsquo; Club by Mr.
+Edmund Clarence Stedman, and dined with him there
+to-night.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:341px; height:430px" src="images/img071.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;HOW BEAUTIFULLY HE SPEAKS ENGLISH.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>This club is the snuggest house I know in New
+York. Only a few months old, it possesses treasures
+such as few clubs a hundred years old possess. It
+was a present from Mr. Edwin Booth, the greatest
+actor America has produced. He bought the house
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page58" id="page58"></a>58</span>
+in Twentieth Street, facing Gramercy Park, furnished
+it handsomely and with the greatest taste, and filled it
+with all the artistic treasures that he has collected during
+his life: portraits of celebrated actors, most valuable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page59" id="page59"></a>59</span>
+old engravings, photographs with the originals&rsquo;
+autographs, china, curios of all sorts, stage properties,
+such as the sword used by Macready in <i>Macbeth</i>, and
+hundreds of such beautiful and interesting souvenirs.
+On the second floor is the library, mostly composed
+of works connected with the drama.</p>
+
+<p>This club is a perfect gem.</p>
+
+<p>When in New York, Mr. Booth occupies a suite of
+rooms on the second floor, which he has reserved for
+himself; but he has handed over the property to the
+trustees of the club, who, after his death, will become
+the sole proprietors of the house and of all its priceless
+contents. It was a princely gift, worthy of the prince
+of actors. The members are all connected with literature,
+art, and the drama, and number about one hundred.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:63px" src="images/img072.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page60" id="page60"></a>60</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">The Flourishing of Coats-of-Arms in America&mdash;Reflections
+Thereon&mdash;Forefathers Made
+to Order&mdash;The Phonograph at Home&mdash;The
+Wealth of New York&mdash;Departure for
+Buffalo.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>January</i> 11.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">There</span> are in America, as in many other countries
+of the world, people who have coats-of-arms,
+and whose ancestors had no arms to their coats.</p>
+
+<p>This remark was suggested by the reading of the
+following paragraph in the New York <i>World</i> this
+morning:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>There is growing in this country the rotten influence of rank,
+pride of station, contempt for labor, scorn of poverty, worship of
+caste, such as we verily believe is growing in no country in the
+world. What are the ideals that fill so large a part of the day and
+generation? For the boy it is riches; for the girl the marrying of
+a title. The ideal of this time in America is vast riches and the
+trappings of rank. It is good that proper scorn should be
+expressed of such ideals.</p></div>
+
+<p>American novelists, journalists, and preachers are
+constantly upbraiding and ridiculing their countrywomen
+for their love of titled foreigners; but the
+society women of the great Republic only love the
+foreign lords all the more; and I have heard some of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page61" id="page61"></a>61</span>
+them openly express their contempt of a form of government
+whose motto is one of the clauses of the
+great Declaration of Independence: &ldquo;All men are created
+equal.&rdquo; I really believe that if the society
+women of America had their own way, they would
+set up a monarchy to-morrow, in the hope of seeing an
+aristocracy established as the sequel of it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:432px; height:350px" src="images/img074.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">A TITLE.</p></div>
+
+<p>President Garfield once said that the only real coats-of-arms
+in America were shirt-sleeves. The epigram is
+good, but not based on truth, as every epigram should
+be. Labor in the States is not honorable for its own
+sake, but only if it brings wealth. President Garfield&rsquo;s
+epigram &ldquo;fetched&rdquo; the crowd, no doubt, as any smart
+democratic or humanitarian utterance will anywhere,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page62" id="page62"></a>62</span>
+whether it be emitted from the platform, the stage,
+the pulpit, or the hustings; but if any American
+philosopher heard it, he must have smiled.</p>
+
+<p>A New York friend who called on me this morning,
+and with whom I had a chat on this subject, assured
+me that there is now such a demand in the States for
+pedigrees, heraldic insignia, mottoes, and coronets,
+that it has created a new industry. He also informed
+me that almost every American city has a college of
+heraldry, which will provide unbroken lines of ancestors,
+and make to order a new line of forefathers &ldquo;of
+the most approved pattern, with suitable arms, etc.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Addison&rsquo;s prosperous foundling, who ordered at the
+second-hand picture-dealer&rsquo;s &ldquo;a complete set of ancestors,&rdquo;
+is, according to my friend, a typical personage
+to be met with in the States nowadays.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Bah! after all, every country has her snobs. Why
+should America be an exception to the rule? When I
+think of the numberless charming people I have met in
+this country, I may as well leave it to the Europeans
+who have come in contact with American snobs to
+speak about them, inasmuch as the subject is not particularly
+entertaining.</p>
+
+<p>What amuses me much more here is the effect of
+democracy on what we Europeans would call the lower
+classes.</p>
+
+<p>A few days ago, in a hotel, I asked a porter if my
+trunk had arrived from the station and had been taken
+to my room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; he said majestically; &ldquo;you ask
+that gentleman.&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page63" id="page63"></a>63</span> </p>
+
+<p>The gentleman pointed out to me was the negro
+who looks after the luggage in the establishment.</p>
+
+<p>In the papers you may read in the advertisement
+columns: &ldquo;Washing
+wanted by a lady at
+such and such address.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 260px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:214px; height:300px" src="images/img076.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">THE NEW YORK CABMAN.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The cabman will
+ask, &ldquo;If you are the
+<i>man</i> as wants a <i>gentleman</i>
+to drive him
+to the <i>deepo</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>During an inquiry
+concerning the work-house
+at Cambridge,
+Mass., a witness
+spoke of the &ldquo;ladies&rsquo;
+cells,&rdquo; as being all that
+should be desired.</p>
+
+<p>Democracy, such
+is thy handiwork!</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I went to the Stock Exchange in Wall Street at one
+o&rsquo;clock. I thought that Whitechapel, on Saturday
+night, was beyond competition as a scene of rowdyism.
+I have now altered this opinion. I am still wondering
+whether I was not guyed by my pilot, and whether I
+was not shown the playground of a madhouse, at the
+time when all the most desperate lunatics are let
+loose.</p>
+
+<p>After lunch I went to Falk&rsquo;s photograph studio to
+be taken, and read the first page of &ldquo;Jonathan and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page64" id="page64"></a>64</span>
+His Continent,&rdquo; into his phonograph. Marvelous, this
+phonograph! I imagine Mr. Falk has the best collection
+of cylinders in the world. I heard a song by
+Patti, the piano played by Von B�low, speeches, orchestras,
+and what not! The music is reproduced most
+faithfully. With the voice the instrument is not quite
+so successful. Instead of your own voice, you fancy
+you hear an imitation of it by Punch. All the same, it
+seems to me to be the wonder of the age.</p>
+
+<p>After paying a few calls, and dining quietly at the
+Everett House, I went to the Metropolitan Opera
+House, and saw &ldquo;The Barber of Bagdad.&rdquo; Cornelius&rsquo;s
+music is Wagnerian in aim, but I did not carry away
+with me a single bar of all I heard. After all, this is
+perhaps the aim of Wagnerian music.</p>
+
+<p>What a sight is the Metropolitan Opera House, with
+its boxes full of lovely women, arrayed in gorgeous
+garments, and blazing with diamonds! What luxury!
+What wealth is gathered there!</p>
+
+<p>How interesting it would be to know the exact
+amount of wealth of which New York can boast! In
+this morning&rsquo;s papers I read that land on Fifth Avenue
+has lately sold for $115 a square foot. In an acre of
+land there are 43,560 square feet, which at $115 a
+foot would be $5,009,400 an acre. Just oblige me by
+thinking of it!</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>January</i> 12.</p>
+
+<p>Went to the Catholic Cathedral at eleven. A mass
+by Haydn was splendidly rendered by full orchestra
+and admirable chorus. The altar was a blaze of candles.
+The yellow of the lights and the plain mauve of two
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page65" id="page65"></a>65</span>
+windows, one on each side of the candles, gave a most
+beautiful crocus-bed effect. I enjoyed the service.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening I dined with Mr. Lloyd Bryce, editor
+of the <i>North American Review</i>, at the splendid residence
+of his father-in-law, Mr. Cooper, late Mayor of
+New York. Mrs. Lloyd Bryce is one of the handsomest
+American women I have met, and a most
+charming and graceful hostess. I reluctantly left
+early so as to prepare for my night journey to
+Buffalo.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:109px" src="images/img078.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page66" id="page66"></a>66</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt1">Different Ways of Advertising a Lecture&mdash;American
+Impresarios and Their Methods.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Buffalo</i>, <i>January</i> 13.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">When</span> you intend to give a lecture anywhere,
+and you wish it to be a success, it is a mistake
+to make a mystery of it.</p>
+
+<p>On arriving here this morning, I found that my coming
+had been kept perfectly secret.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps my impresario wishes my audience to be
+very select, and has sent only private circulars to the
+intelligent, well-to-do inhabitants of the place&mdash;or, I
+said to myself, perhaps the house is all sold, and he has
+no need of any further advertisements.</p>
+
+<p>I should very much like to know.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, however, it is a mistake to advertise a
+lecture too widely. You run the risk of getting the
+wrong people.</p>
+
+<p>A few years ago, in Dundee, a little corner gallery,
+placed at the end of the hall where I was to speak, was
+thrown open to the public at sixpence. I warned the
+manager that I was no attraction for the sixpenny
+public; but he insisted on having his own way.</p>
+
+<p>The hall was well filled, but not the little gallery,
+where I counted about a dozen people. Two of these,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page67" id="page67"></a>67</span>
+however, did not remain long, and, after the lecture, I
+was told that they had gone to the box-office and asked
+to have their money returned to them. &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; they
+said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a d&mdash;&mdash; swindle; it&rsquo;s only a man talking.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The man at the box-office was a Scotchman, and it
+will easily be understood that the two sixpences
+remained in the hands of the management.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I can well remember how startled I was, two years
+ago, on arriving in an American town where I was to
+lecture, to see the walls covered with placards announcing
+my lecture thus: &ldquo;He is coming, ah, ha!&rdquo; And
+after I had arrived, new placards were stuck over the
+old ones: &ldquo;He has arrived, ah, ha!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In another American town I was advertised as &ldquo;the
+best paying platform celebrity in the world.&rdquo; In
+another, in the following way: &ldquo;If you would grow
+fat and happy, go and hear Max O&rsquo;Rell to-night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>One of my Chicago lectures was advertised thus:
+&ldquo;Laughter is restful. If you desire to feel as though
+you had a vacation for a week, do not fail to attend
+this lecture.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I was once fortunate enough to deal with a local
+manager who, before sending it to the newspapers,
+submitted to my approbation the following advertisement,
+of which he was very proud. I don&rsquo;t know
+whether it was his own literary production, or whether
+he had borrowed it of a showman friend. Here it is:</p>
+
+<p class="center pt2 sc">Two Hours of Unalloyed Fun and Happiness</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Will put two inches of solid fat even upon the ribs of the most
+cadaverous old miser. Everybody shouts peals of laughter as the
+rays of fun are emitted from this famous son of merry-makers.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page68" id="page68"></a>68</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:367px; height:610px" src="images/img081.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">AS JOHN BULL.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page69" id="page69"></a>69</span> </p>
+
+<p>I threatened to refuse to appear if the advertisement
+was inserted in the papers. This manager later
+gave his opinion that, as a lecturer, I was good, but
+that as a man, I was a little bit &ldquo;stuck-up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When you arrive in an American town to lecture,
+you find the place flooded with your pictures, huge
+lithographs stuck on the walls, on the shop windows,
+in your very hotel entrance hall. Your own face
+stares at you everywhere, you are recognized by
+everybody. You have to put up with it. If you love
+privacy, peace, and quiet, don&rsquo;t go to America on a
+lecturing tour. That is what your impresario will tell
+you.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>In each town where you go, you have a local manager
+to &ldquo;boss the show&rdquo;; as he has to pay you a certain
+fee, which he guarantees, you cannot find fault
+with him for doing his best to have a large audience.
+He runs risks; you do not. Suppose, for instance,
+you are engaged, not by a society for a fee, but by a
+manager on sharing terms, say sixty per cent. of the
+gross receipts for you and forty for himself. Suppose
+his local expenses amount to $200; he has to bring
+$500 into the house before there is a cent for himself.
+You must forgive him if he goes about the place beating
+the big drum. If you do not like it, there is a
+place where you can stay&mdash;home.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>An impresario once asked me if I required a piano,
+and if I would bring my own accompanist. Another
+wrote to ask the subject of my &ldquo;entertainment.&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page70" id="page70"></a>70</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:433px; height:610px" src="images/img083.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">AS SANDY.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page71" id="page71"></a>71</span></p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 250px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:202px; height:200px" src="images/img084.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">AS PAT.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>I wrote back to say that my lecture was generally
+found entertaining, but that I objected to its being
+called an entertainment.
+I added that
+the lecture was composed
+of four character
+sketches, viz., John
+Bull, Sandy, Pat, and
+Jonathan.</p>
+
+<p>In his answer to this,
+he inquired whether I
+should change my dress
+four times during the
+performance, and
+whether it would not
+be a good thing to have a little music during the
+intervals.</p>
+
+<p>Just fancy my appearing on the platform successively
+dressed as John, Sandy, Pat, and Jonathan!</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>A good impresario is constantly on the look out for
+anything that may draw the attention of the public to
+his entertainment. Nothing is sacred for him. His
+eyes and ears are always open, all his senses on the alert.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon I was walking with my impresario
+over the beautiful Clifton Suspension Bridge. I was
+to lecture at the Victoria Hall, Bristol, in the evening.
+We leaned on the railings, and grew pensive as we
+looked at the scenery and the abyss under us.</p>
+
+<p>My impresario sighed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are you thinking about?&rdquo; I said to him.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page72" id="page72"></a>72</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:222px; height:500px" src="images/img085.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">AS JONATHAN.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page73" id="page73"></a>73</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Last year,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;a girl tried to commit suicide
+and jumped over this bridge; but the wind got
+under her skirt, made a parachute of it, and she
+descended to the bottom of the valley perfectly unhurt.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:423px; height:430px" src="images/img086.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE WOULD-BE SUICIDE.</p></div>
+
+<p>And he sighed again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;why do you sigh?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! my dear fellow, if you could do the same this
+afternoon, there would be &lsquo;standing room only&rsquo; in the
+Victoria Hall to-night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I left that bridge in no time.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page74" id="page74"></a>74</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Buffalo&mdash;The Niagara Falls&mdash;A Frost&mdash;Rochester
+to the Rescue of Buffalo&mdash;Cleveland&mdash;I
+Meet Jonathan&mdash;Phantasmagoria.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Buffalo</i>, <i>January</i> 14.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">This</span> town is situated twenty-seven miles from
+Niagara Falls. The Americans say that the
+Buffalo people can hear the noise of the water-fall
+quite distinctly. I am quite prepared to believe it.
+However, an hour&rsquo;s journey by rail and then a quarter
+of an hour&rsquo;s sleigh ride will take you from Buffalo
+within sight of this, perhaps the grandest piece of
+scenery in the world. Words cannot describe it. You
+spend a couple of hours visiting every point of view.
+You are nailed, as it were, to the ground, feeling like
+a pigmy, awestruck in the presence of nature at her
+grandest. The snow was falling thickly, and though
+it made the view less clear, it added to the grandeur of
+the scene.</p>
+
+<p>I went down by the cable car to a level with the rapids
+and the place where poor Captain Webb was last seen
+alive; a presumptuous pigmy, he, to dare such waters
+as these. His widow keeps a little bazaar near the
+falls and sells souvenirs to the visitors.</p>
+
+<p>It was most thrilling to stand within touching distance
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page75" id="page75"></a>75</span>
+of that great torrent of water, called the Niagara
+Falls, in distinction to the Horseshoe Falls, to
+hear the roar of it as it fell. The idea of force it gives
+one is tremendous. You stand and wonder how many
+ages it has been roaring on, what eyes besides your
+own have gazed awestruck at its mighty rushing, and
+wonder if the pigmies will ever do what they say
+they will; one day make those columns of water
+their servants to turn wheels at their bidding.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:469px; height:430px" src="images/img088.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">SHOOTING THE RAPIDS.</p></div>
+
+<p>We crossed the bridge over to the Canadian side,
+and there we had the whole grand panorama before
+our eyes.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page76" id="page76"></a>76</span> </p>
+
+<p>It appears that it is quite a feasible thing to run the
+rapids in a barrel. Girls have done it, and it may become
+the fashionable sport for American girls in the
+near future. It has been safely accomplished plenty of
+times by young fellows up for an exciting day&rsquo;s sport.</p>
+
+<p>On the Canadian shore was a pretty villa where
+Princess Louise stayed while she painted the scene.
+Some of the pretty houses were fringed all round the
+roofs and balconies in the loveliest way, with icicles a
+yard long, and loaded with snow. They looked most
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>On the way back we called at Prospect House, a
+charming hotel which I hope, if ever I go near Buffalo
+again, I shall put up at for a day or two, to see the
+neighborhood well.</p>
+
+<p>Two years ago I was lucky enough to witness a
+most curious sight. The water was frozen under the
+falls, and a natural bridge, formed by the ice, was being
+used by venturesome people to cross the Niagara
+River on. This occurs very seldom.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I have had a fizzle to-night. I almost expected it.
+In a hall that could easily have accommodated fifteen
+hundred people, I lectured to an audience of about
+three hundred. Fortunately they proved so intelligent,
+warm, and appreciative that I did not feel at all
+depressed; but my impresario did. However, he congratulated
+me on having been able to do justice to the
+<i>causerie</i>, as if I had had a bumper house.</p>
+
+<p>I must own that it is much easier to be a tragedian
+than a light comedian before a $200 house.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page77" id="page77"></a>77</span> </p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Cleveland, O.</i>, <i>January</i> 15.</p>
+
+<p>The weather is so bad that I shall be unable to see
+anything of this city, which, people tell me, is very
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>On arriving at the Weddell House, I met a New
+York friend.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;how are you getting on? Where
+do you come from?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;From Buffalo,&rdquo; said I, pulling a long face.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is the matter? Don&rsquo;t you like the Buffalo
+people?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; I liked those I saw. I should have liked to
+extend my love to a larger number. I had a fizzle;
+about three hundred people. Perhaps I drew all the
+brain of Buffalo.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How many people do you say you had in the
+hall?&rdquo; said my friend.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;About three hundred.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then you must have drawn a good many people
+from Rochester, I should think,&rdquo; said he quite solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>In reading the Buffalo newspapers this morning, I
+noticed favorable criticisms of my lecture; but while
+my English was praised, so far as the language went,
+severe comments were passed on my pronunciation.
+In England, where the English language is spoken
+with a decent pronunciation, I never once read a condemnation
+of my pronunciation of the English language.</p>
+
+<p>I will not appear again in Buffalo until I feel much
+improved.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page78" id="page78"></a>78</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:403px; height:430px" src="images/img091.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;GOING TO PITTSBURG, I GUESS.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>En route to Pittsburg</i>, <i>January</i> 16.</p>
+
+<p>The American railway stations have special waiting
+rooms for ladies&mdash;not, as in England, places furnished
+with looking-glasses, where they can go and arrange
+their bonnets, etc. No, no. Places where they can
+wait for the trains, protected against the contamination
+of man, and where they are spared the sight
+of that eternal little round piece of furniture with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page79" id="page79"></a>79</span>
+which the floors of the whole of the United States
+are dotted.</p>
+
+<p>At Cleveland Station, this morning, I met Jonathan,
+such as he is represented in the comic papers of the
+world. A man of sixty, with long straight white hair
+falling over his shoulders; no mustache, long imperial
+beard, a razor-blade-shaped nose, small keen eyes, and
+high prominent cheek-bones, the whole smoking the
+traditional cigar; the Anglo-Saxon indianized&mdash;Jonathan.
+If he had had a long swallow-tail coat on, a
+waistcoat ornamented with stars, and trowsers with
+stripes, he might have sat for the cartoons of <i>Puck</i> or
+<i>Judge</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In the car, Jonathan came and sat opposite me.
+A few minutes after the train had started, he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Going to Pittsburg, I guess.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To lecture?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you know I lecture?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, certainly; I heard you in Boston ten days
+ago.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He offered me a cigar, told me his name&mdash;I mean
+his three names&mdash;what he did, how much he earned,
+where he lived, how many children he had; he read
+me a poem of his own composition, invited me to go
+and see him, and entertained me for three hours and a
+half, telling me the history of his life, etc. Indeed, it
+was Jonathan.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>All the Americans I have met have written a poem
+(pronounced <i>pome</i>). Now I am not generalizing. I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page80" id="page80"></a>80</span>
+do not say that all the Americans have written a poem,
+I say <i>all the Americans I have met</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Pittsburg</i> (<i>same day later</i>).</p>
+
+<p>I lecture here to-night under the auspices of the
+Press Club of the town. The president of the club
+came to meet me at the station, in order to show me
+something of the town.</p>
+
+<p>I like Pittsburg very much. From the top of the
+hill, which you reach in a couple of minutes by the cable
+car, there is a most beautiful sight to contemplate:
+one never to be forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>On our way to the hotel, my kind friend took me to
+a fire station, and asked the man in command of the
+place to go through the performance of a fire-call for
+my own edification.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in two words, here is the thing.</p>
+
+<p>You touch the fire bell in your own house. That
+causes the name of your street and the number of your
+house to appear in the fire station; it causes all the
+doors of the station to open outward. Wait a minute&mdash;it
+causes whips which are hanging behind the
+horses, to lash them and send them under harnesses
+that fall upon them and are self-adjusting; it causes
+the men, who are lying down on the first floor, to slide
+down an incline and fall on the box and steps of the
+cart. And off they gallop. It takes about two minutes
+to describe it as quickly as possible. It only takes
+fourteen seconds to do it. It is the nearest approach
+to phantasmagoria that I have yet seen in real life.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page81" id="page81"></a>81</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">A Great Admirer&mdash;Notes on Railway Traveling&mdash;Is
+America a Free Nation?&mdash;A Pleasant
+Evening in New York.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>In the vestibule train from Pittsburg to New York</i>,
+<i>January</i> 17.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">This</span> morning, before leaving the hotel in Pittsburg,
+I was approached by a young man who,
+after giving me his card, thanked me most earnestly
+for my lecture of last night. In fact, he nearly embraced
+me.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I never enjoyed myself so much in my life,&rdquo; he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>I grasped his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am glad,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;that my humble effort
+pleased you so much. Nothing is more gratifying to
+a lecturer than to know he has afforded pleasure to his
+audience.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it gave me immense pleasure.
+You see, I am engaged to be married to a girl in town.
+All her family went to your show, and I had the girl
+at home all to myself. Oh! I had such a good time!
+Thank you so much! Do lecture here again soon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And, after wishing me a pleasant journey, he left
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page82" id="page82"></a>82</span>
+me. I was glad to know I left at least one friend and
+admirer behind me in Pittsburg.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I had a charming audience last night, a large and
+most appreciative one. I was introduced by Mr.
+George H. Welshons, of the Pittsburg <i>Times</i>, in a neat
+little speech, humorous and very gracefully worded.
+After the lecture, I was entertained at supper in the
+rooms of the Press Club, and thoroughly enjoyed myself
+with the members. As I entered the Club, I was
+amused to see two journalists, who had heard me at
+the lecture discourse on chewing, go to a corner of the
+room, and there get rid of their <i>wads</i>, before coming
+to shake hands with me.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>If you have not journeyed in a vestibule train of the
+Pennsylvania Railroad Company, you do not know
+what it is to travel in luxurious comfort. Dining
+saloon, drawing room, smoking room, reading room
+with writing tables, supplied with the papers and a
+library of books, all furnished with exquisite taste and
+luxury. The cookery is good and well served.</p>
+
+<p>The day has passed without adventures, but in comfort.
+We left Pittsburg at seven in the morning. At
+nine we passed Johnstown. The terrible calamity that
+befell that city two years ago was before my mind&rsquo;s
+eye; the town suddenly inundated, the people rushing
+on the bridge, and there caught and burnt alive.
+America is the country for great disasters. Everything
+here is on a huge scale. Toward noon, the
+country grew hilly, and, for an hour before we reached
+Harrisburg, it gave me great enjoyment, for in America,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page83" id="page83"></a>83</span>
+where there is so much sameness in the landscapes,
+it is a treat to see the mountains of Central
+Pennsylvania breaking the monotony of the huge flat
+stretch of land.</p>
+
+<p>The employees (I must be careful not to say &ldquo;servants&rdquo;)
+of the Pennsylvania Railroad are polite and
+form an agreeable contrast to those of the other railway
+companies. Unhappily, the employees whom
+you find on board the Pullman cars are not in the control
+of the company.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>The train will reach Jersey City for New York at
+seven to-night. I shall dine at my hotel.</p>
+
+<p>About 5.30 it occurred to me to go to the dining-room
+car and ask for a cup of tea. Before entering
+the car I stopped at the lavatory to wash my hands.
+Some one was using the basin. It was the conductor,
+the autocrat in charge of the dining car, a fat, sleek,
+chewing, surly, frowning, snarling cur.</p>
+
+<p>He turned round.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should very much like to wash my hands,&rdquo; I
+timidly ventured.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You see very well I am using the basin. You go
+to the next car.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I came to America this time with a large provision
+of philosophy, and quite determined to even enjoy
+such little scenes as this. So I quietly went to the
+next lavatory, returned to the dining-car, and sat down
+at one of the tables.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Will you, please, give me a cup of tea?&rdquo; I said to
+one of the colored waiters.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page84" id="page84"></a>84</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t do dat, sah,&rdquo; said the negro. &ldquo;You can have
+dinnah.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t want <i>dinnah</i>,&rdquo; I replied; &ldquo;I want a cup
+of tea.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Den you must ask dat gem&rsquo;man if you can have
+it,&rdquo; said he, pointing to the above mentioned &ldquo;gentleman.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I went to him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;are you the nobleman who
+runs this show?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He frowned.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to dine; I should like to have a cup
+of tea.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He frowned a little more, and deigned to hear my
+request to the end.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can I?&rdquo; I repeated.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke not; he brought his eyebrows still lower
+down, and solemnly shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t I really?&rdquo; I continued.</p>
+
+<p>At last he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can,&rdquo; quoth he, &ldquo;for a dollar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And, taking the bill of fare in his hands, without
+wasting any more of his precious utterances, he pointed
+out to me:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Each meal one dollar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The argument was unanswerable.</p>
+
+<p>I went back to my own car, resumed my seat, and
+betook myself to reflection.</p>
+
+<p>What I cannot, for the life of me, understand is
+why, in a train which has a dining car and a kitchen, a
+man cannot be served with a cup of tea, unless he pays
+the price of a dinner for it, and this notwithstanding
+the fact of his having paid five dollars extra to enjoy
+the extra luxury of this famous vestibule train.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page85" id="page85"></a>85</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:513px; height:600px" src="images/img098.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;WELL, WHAT DO YOU WANT?&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page86" id="page86"></a>86</span>
+After all, this is one out of the many illustrations
+one could give to show that whatever Jonathan is, he
+is not the master in his own house.</p>
+
+<p>The Americans are the most docile people in the
+world. They are the slaves of their servants, whether
+these are high officials, or the &ldquo;reduced duchesses&rdquo; of
+domestic service. They are so submitted to their lot
+that they seem to find it quite natural.</p>
+
+<p>The Americans are lions governed by bull-dogs and
+asses.</p>
+
+<p>They have given themselves a hundred thousand
+masters, these folks who laugh at monarchies, for
+example, and scorn the rule of a king, as if it were
+better to be bullied by a crowd than by an individual.</p>
+
+<p>In America, the man who pays does not command
+the paid. I have already said it; I will maintain the
+truth of the statement that, in America, the paid servant
+rules. Tyranny from above is bad; tyranny from
+below is worse.</p>
+
+<p>Of my many first impressions that have deepened into
+convictions, this is one of the firmest.</p>
+
+<p>When you arrive at an English railway station, all
+the porters seem to say: &ldquo;Here is a customer, let us
+treat him well.&rdquo; And it is who shall relieve you of
+your luggage, or answer any questions you may be
+pleased to ask. They are glad to see you.</p>
+
+<p>In America, you may have a dozen parcels, not a
+hand will move to help you with them. So Jonathan
+is obliged to forego the luxury of hand baggage, so
+convenient for long journeys.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page87" id="page87"></a>87</span> </p>
+
+<p>When you arrive at an American station, the officials
+are all frowning and seem to say: &ldquo;Why the deuce
+don&rsquo;t you go to Chicago by some other line instead of
+coming here to bother us?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:392px; height:430px" src="images/img100.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">ENGLISH RAILWAY STATION.</p></div>
+
+<p>This subject reminds me of an interesting fact, told
+me by Mr. Chauncey M. Depew on board the <i>Teutonic</i>.
+When tram-cars were first used in the States, it was a
+long time before the drivers and conductors would
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page88" id="page88"></a>88</span>
+consent to wear any kind of uniform, so great is the
+horror of anything like a badge of paid servitude.
+Now that they do wear
+some kind of uniform,
+they spend their time
+in standing sentry at
+the door of their dignity,
+and in thinking
+that, if they were polite,
+you would take
+their affable manners
+for servility.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 285px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:235px; height:400px" src="images/img101.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">THE RAILWAY PORTER.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Everett House, New York.</i> (<i>Midnight.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>So many charming
+houses have opened
+their hospitable doors
+to me in New York
+that, when I am in
+this city, I have soon
+forgotten the little annoyances
+of a railway journey or the hardships of a
+lecture tour.</p>
+
+<p>After dining here, I went to spend the evening at
+the house of Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, the poet, and
+editor of the <i>Century Magazine</i>, that most successful
+of all magazines in the world. A circulation of
+nearly 300,000 copies&mdash;just think of it! But it need
+not excite wonder in any one who knows this beautiful
+and artistic periodical, to which all the leading
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page89" id="page89"></a>89</span>
+<i>litt�rateurs</i> of America lend their pens, and the best
+artists their pencils.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Richard Watson Gilder is one of the best and
+most genial hostesses in New York. At her Fridays,
+one meets the cream of intellectual society, the best
+known names of the American aristocracy of talent.</p>
+
+<p>To-night I met Mr. Frank R. Stockton, the novelist,
+Mr. Charles Webb, the humorist, Mr. Frank Millet,
+the painter, and his wife, and a galaxy of celebrities
+and beautiful women, all most interesting and
+delightful people to meet. Conversation went on
+briskly all over the rooms till late.</p>
+
+<p>The more I see of the American women, the more
+confirmed I become in my impression that they are
+typical; more so than the men. They are like no
+other women I know. The brilliancy of their conversation,
+the animation of their features, the absence
+of affectation in their manners, make them unique.
+There are no women to compare to them in a drawing-room.
+There are none with whom I feel so much at
+ease. Their beauty, physically speaking, is great;
+but you are still more struck by their intellectual
+beauty, the frankness of their eyes, and the naturalness
+of their bearing.</p>
+
+<p>I returned to the Everett House, musing all the way
+on the difference between the American women and
+the women of France and England. The theme was
+attractive, and, remembering that to-morrow would be
+an off-day for me, I resolved to spend it in going more
+fully into this fascinating subject with pen and ink.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page90" id="page90"></a>90</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Notes on American Women&mdash;Comparisons&mdash;How
+Men Treat Women and Vice Versa&mdash;Scenes
+and Illustrations.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>January</i> 18.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">A man</span> was one day complaining to a friend that
+he had been married twenty years without being
+able to understand his wife. &ldquo;You should not complain
+of that,&rdquo; remarked the friend. &ldquo;I have been married
+to my wife two years only, and I understand her
+perfectly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The leaders of thought in France have long ago proclaimed
+that woman was the only problem it was not
+given to man to solve. They have all tried, and they
+have all failed. They all acknowledge it&mdash;but they
+are trying still.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, the interest that woman inspires in every
+Frenchman is never exhausted. Parodying Terence,
+he says to himself, &ldquo;I am a man, and all that concerns
+woman interests me.&rdquo; All the French modern novels
+are studies, analytical, dissecting studies, of woman&rsquo;s
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>To the Anglo-Saxon mind, this may sometimes appear
+a trifle puerile, if not also ridiculous. But to understand
+this feeling, one must remember how a
+Frenchman is brought up.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page91" id="page91"></a>91</span> </p>
+
+<p>In England, boys and girls meet and play together;
+in America and Canada, they sit side by side on the
+same benches at school, not only as children of tender
+age, but at College and in the Universities. They get
+accustomed to each other&rsquo;s company; they see nothing
+strange in being in contact with one another, and
+this naturally tends to reduce the interest or curiosity
+one sex takes in the other. But in France they are
+apart, and the ball-room is the only place where they
+can meet when they have attained the age of twenty!</p>
+
+<p>Strange to reflect that young people of both sexes
+can meet in ball-rooms without exciting their
+parents&rsquo; suspicions, and that they cannot do so in
+class-rooms!</p>
+
+<p>When I was a boy at school in France, I can well remember
+how we boys felt on the subject. If we heard
+that a young girl, say the sister of some school-fellow,
+was with her mother in the common parlor to see her
+brother, why, it created a commotion, a perfect revolution
+in the whole establishment. It was no use trying
+to keep us in order. We would climb on the top
+of the seats or of the tables to endeavor to see something
+of her, even if it were but the top of her hat, or
+a bit of her gown across the recreation yard at the very
+end of the building. It was an event. Many of us
+would even immediately get inspired and compose
+verses addressed to the unknown fair visitor. In these
+poetical effusions we would imagine the young girl
+carried off by some miscreant, and we would fly to her
+rescue, save her, and throw ourselves at her feet to receive
+her hand as our reward. Yes, we would get quite
+romantic or, in plain English, quite silly. We could
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page92" id="page92"></a>92</span>
+not imagine that a woman was a reasoning being with
+whom you can talk on the topics of the day, or have
+an ordinary conversation on any ordinary subject. To
+us a woman was a being with whom you can only talk
+of love, or fall in love, or, maybe, for whom you may
+die of love.</p>
+
+<p>This manner of training young men goes a long way
+toward explaining the position of woman in France as
+well as her ways. It explains why a Frenchman and
+a Frenchwoman, when they converse together, seldom
+can forget that one is a man and the other a woman.
+It does not prove that a Frenchwoman must necessarily
+be, and is, affected in her relations with men;
+but it explains why she does not feel, as the American
+woman does, that a man and woman can enjoy a <i>t�te-�-t�te</i>
+free from all those commonplace flatteries, compliments,
+and platitudes that badly-understood gallantry
+suggests. Many American ladies have made me forget,
+by the easiness of their manner and the charm and
+naturalness of their conversation, that I was speaking
+with women, and with lovely ones, too. This I
+could never have forgotten in the company of French
+ladies.</p>
+
+<p>On account of this feeling, and perhaps also of the
+difference which exists between the education received
+by a man and that received by a woman in France,
+the conversation will always be on some light topics,
+literary, artistic, dramatic, social, or other. Indeed, it
+would be most unbecoming for a man to start a very
+serious subject of conversation with a French lady to
+whom he had just been introduced. He would be
+taken for a pedant or a man of bad breeding.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page93" id="page93"></a>93</span> </p>
+
+<p>In America, men and women receive practically
+the same education, and this of course enlarges the
+circle of conversation between the sexes. I shall
+always remember a beautiful American girl, not more
+than twenty years of age, to whom I was once introduced
+in New York, as she was giving to a lady sitting
+next to her a most detailed description of the latest
+bonnet invented in Paris, and who, turning toward me,
+asked me point-blank if I had read M. Ernest Renan&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;History of the People of Israel.&rdquo; I had to confess
+that I had not yet had time to read it. But she had,
+and she gave me, without the remotest touch of affectation
+or pedantry, a most interesting and learned
+analysis of that remarkable work. I related this incident
+in &ldquo;Jonathan and his Continent.&rdquo; On reading
+it, some of my countrymen, critics and others, exclaimed:
+&ldquo;We imagine the fair American girl had a
+pair of gold spectacles on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, my dear compatriots, nothing of the sort. No
+gold spectacles, no guy. It was a beautiful girl,
+dressed with most exquisite taste and care, and most
+charming and womanly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>An American woman, however learned she may be,
+is a sound politician, and she knows that the best
+thing she can make of herself is a woman, and she remains
+a woman. She will always make herself as
+attractive as she possibly can. Not to please men&mdash;I
+believe she has a great contempt for them&mdash;but to
+please herself. If, in a French drawing-room, I were
+to remark to a lady how clever some woman in the
+room looked, she would probably closely examine that
+woman&rsquo;s dress to find out what I thought was wrong
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page94" id="page94"></a>94</span>
+about it. It would probably be the same in England,
+but not in America.</p>
+
+<p>A Frenchwoman will seldom be jealous of another
+woman&rsquo;s cleverness. She will far more readily forgive
+her this qualification than beauty. And in this particular
+point, it is probable that the Frenchwoman
+resembles all the women in the Old World.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Of all the ladies I have met, I have no hesitation in
+declaring that the American ones are the least affected.
+With them, I repeat it, I feel at ease as I do with no
+other women in the world.</p>
+
+<p>With whom but an <i>Am�ricaine</i> would the following
+little scene have been possible?</p>
+
+<p>I was in Boston. It was Friday, and knowing it to
+be the reception day of Mrs. X., an old friend of mine
+and my wife&rsquo;s, I thought I would call upon her early,
+before the crowd of visitors had begun to arrive. So I
+went to the house about half-past three in the afternoon.
+Mrs. X. received me in the drawing-room, and
+we were soon talking on the hundred and one topics
+that old friends have on their tongue tips. Presently
+the conversation fell on love and lovers. Mrs. X.
+drew her chair up a little nearer to the fire, put the
+toes of her little slippers on the fender stool, and with
+a charmingly confidential, but perfectly natural, manner,
+said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are married and love your wife; I am married
+and love my husband; we are both artists, let&rsquo;s have
+our say out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And we proceeded to have our say out.</p>
+
+<p>But all at once I noticed that about half an inch of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page95" id="page95"></a>95</span>
+seam of her black silk bodice was unsewn. We men,
+when we see a lady with something awry in her toilette,
+how often do we long to say to her: &ldquo;Excuse
+me, madam, but perhaps you don&rsquo;t know that you
+have a hairpin sticking out two inches just behind
+your ear,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Pardon me, Miss, I&rsquo;m a married man,
+there is something wrong there behind, just under
+your waist belt.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now I felt for Mrs. X., who was just going to receive
+a crowd of callers with a little rent in one of her bodice
+seams, and tried to persuade myself to be brave and
+tell her of it. Yet I hesitated. People take things so
+differently. The conversation went on unflagging.
+At last I could not stand it any longer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mrs. X.,&rdquo; said I, all in a breath, &ldquo;you are married
+and love your husband; I am married and love my
+wife; we are both artists; there is a little bit of seam
+come unsewn, just there by your arm, run and get it
+sewn up!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The peals of laughter that I heard going on upstairs,
+while the damage was being repaired, proved
+to me that there was no resentment to be feared, but,
+on the contrary, that I had earned the gratitude of
+Mrs. X.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>In many respects I have often been struck with the
+resemblance which exists between French and American
+women. When I took my first walk on Broadway,
+New York, on a fine afternoon some two years and
+a half ago, I can well remember how I exclaimed:
+&ldquo;Why, this is Paris, and all these ladies are <i>Parisiennes</i>!&rdquo;
+It struck me as being the same type of face,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page96" id="page96"></a>96</span>
+the same animation of features, the same brightness of
+the eyes, the same self-assurance, the same attractive
+plumpness in women over thirty. To my mind, I was
+having a walk on my own Boulevards (every Parisian
+<i>owns</i> that place). The more I became acquainted with
+American ladies, the more forcibly this resemblance
+struck me. This was not a mere first impression. It
+has been, and is still, a deep conviction; so much so
+that whenever I returned to New York from a journey
+of some weeks in the heart of the country, I felt as if
+I was returning home.</p>
+
+<p>After a short time, a still closer resemblance between
+the women of the two countries will strike a Frenchman
+most forcibly. It is the same <i>finesse</i>, the same
+suppleness of mind, the same wonderful adaptability.
+Place a little French milliner in a good drawing-room
+for an hour, and at the end of that time she will behave,
+talk, and walk like any lady in the room. Suppose
+an American, married below his <i>status</i> in society,
+is elected President of the United States, I believe, at
+the end of a week, this wife of his would do the honors
+of the White House with the ease and grace of a highborn
+lady.</p>
+
+<p>In England it is just the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>Of course good society is good society everywhere.
+The ladies of the English aristocracy are perfect
+queens; but the Englishwoman, who was not born a
+lady, will seldom become a lady, and I believe this is
+why <i>m�salliances</i> are more scarce in England than in
+America, and especially in France. I could name
+many Englishmen at the head of their professions,
+who cannot produce their wives in society because
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page97" id="page97"></a>97</span>
+these women have not been able to raise themselves to
+the level of their husbands&rsquo; station in life. The
+Englishwoman, as a rule, has no faculty for fitting herself
+for a higher position than the one she was born
+in; like a rabbit, she will often taste of the cabbage
+she fed on. And I am bound to add that this is perhaps
+a quality, and proves the truthfulness of her
+character. She is no actress.</p>
+
+<p>In France, the <i>m�salliance</i>, though not relished by
+parents, is not feared so much, because they know the
+young woman will observe and study, and very soon
+fit herself for her new position.</p>
+
+<p>And while on this subject of <i>m�salliance</i>, why not
+try to destroy an absurd prejudice that exists in almost
+every country on the subject of France?</p>
+
+<p>It is, I believe, the firm conviction of foreigners that
+Frenchmen marry for money, that is to say, that all
+Frenchmen marry for money. As a rule, when people
+discuss foreign social topics, they have a wonderful
+faculty for generalization.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that many Frenchmen do marry for money
+is not to be denied, and the explanation of it is this:
+We have in France a number of men belonging to a
+class almost unknown in other countries, small <i>bourgeois</i>
+of good breeding and genteel habits, but relatively
+poor, who occupy posts in the different Government
+offices. Their name is legion and their salary
+something like two thousand francs ($400). These men
+have an appearance to keep up, and, unless a wife
+brings them enough to at least double their income,
+they cannot marry. These young men are often sought
+after by well-to-do parents for their daughters, because
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page98" id="page98"></a>98</span>
+they are steady, cultured, gentlemanly, and occupy an
+honorable position, which brings them a pension for
+their old age. With the wife&rsquo;s dowry, the couple can
+easily get along, and lead a peaceful, uneventful, and
+happy jog-trot life, which is the great aim of the
+majority of the French people.</p>
+
+<p>But, on the other hand, there is no country where
+you will see so many cases of <i>m�salliance</i> as France, and
+this alone should dispose of the belief that Frenchmen
+marry for money. Indeed, it is a most common thing
+for a young Frenchman of good family to fall in love
+with a girl of a much lower station of life than his own,
+to court her, at first with perhaps only the idea of killing
+time or of starting a <i>liaison</i>, to soon discover that
+the girl is highly respectable, and to finally marry her.
+This is a most common occurrence. French parents
+frown on this sort of thing, and do their best to discourage
+it, of course; but rather than cross their son&rsquo;s
+love, they give their consent, and trust to that adaptability
+of Frenchwomen, of which I was speaking just
+now, to raise herself to her husband&rsquo;s level and make a
+wife he will never be ashamed of.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>The Frenchman is the slave of his womankind, but
+not in the same way as the American is. The Frenchman
+is brought up by his mother, and remains under
+her sway till she dies. When he marries, his wife
+leads him by the nose (an operation which he seems to
+enjoy), and when, besides, he has a daughter, on whom
+he generally dotes, this lady soon joins the other two
+in ruling this easy-going, good-humored man. As a
+rule, when you see a Frenchman, you behold a man
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page99" id="page99"></a>99</span>
+who is kept in order by three generations of women:
+mother, wife, and daughter.</p>
+
+<p>The American will lavish attention and luxury on
+his wife and daughters, but he will save them the
+trouble of being mixed in his affairs. His business is
+his, his office is private. His womankind is the sun
+and glory of his life, whose company he will hasten to
+enjoy as soon as he can throw away the cares of his
+business. In France, a wife is a partner, a cashier who
+takes care of the money, even an adviser on stock and
+speculations. In the mercantile class, she is both
+cashier and bookkeeper. Enter a shop in France,
+Paris included, and behind &ldquo;Pay Here,&rdquo; you will see
+Madame, smiling all over as she pockets the money
+for the purchase you have made. When I said she
+is a partner, I might safely have said that she is the
+active partner, and, as a rule, by far the shrewder of
+the two. She brings to bear her native suppleness,
+her fascinating little ways, her persuasive manners, and
+many a customer whom her husband was allowing to go
+away without a purchase, has been brought back by the
+wife, and induced to part with his cash in the shop.
+Last year I went to Paris, on my way home from Germany,
+to spend a few days visiting the Exposition.
+One day I entered a shop on the Boulevards to buy a
+white hat. The new-fashioned hats, the only hats
+which the man showed me, were narrow-brimmed, and
+I declined to buy one. I was just going to leave,
+when the wife, who, from the back parlor, had listened
+to my conversation with her husband, stepped in and
+said: &ldquo;But, Adolphe, why do you let Monsieur go?
+Perhaps he does not care to follow the fashion. We
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page100" id="page100"></a>100</span>
+have a few white broad-brimmed hats left from last
+year that we can let Monsieur have <i>� bon compte</i>.
+They are upstairs, go and fetch them.&rdquo;  And, sure
+enough, there was one which fitted and pleased me, and
+I left in that shop a little sum of twenty-five francs,
+which the husband was going to let me take elsewhere,
+but which the wife managed to secure for the firm.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:369px; height:430px" src="images/img113.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">MADAM IS THE CASHIER.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page101" id="page101"></a>101</span> </p>
+
+<p>No one who has lived in France has failed to be
+struck with the intelligence of the women, and there
+exist few Frenchmen who do not readily admit how intellectually
+inferior they are to their countrywomen,
+chiefly among the middle and lower classes. And this
+is not due to any special training, for the education received
+by the women of that class is of the most limited
+kind; they are taught to read, write, and reckon,
+and their education is finished. Shrewdness is inborn
+in them, as well as a peculiar talent for getting a hundred
+cents&rsquo; worth for every dollar they spend. How to
+make a house look pretty and attractive with small outlay;
+how to make a dress or turn out a bonnet with a
+few knick-knacks; how to make a savory dish out of a
+small remnant of beef, mutton, and veal; all that is a
+science not to be despised when a husband, in receipt
+of a four or five hundred dollar salary, wants to make a
+good dinner, and see his wife look pretty. No doubt
+the aristocratic inhabitants of Mayfair and Belgravia in
+London, and the plutocracy of New York, may think
+all this very small, and these French people very uninteresting.
+They can, perhaps, hardly imagine that such
+people may live on such incomes and look decent. But
+they do live, and live very happy lives, too. And I
+will go so far as to say that happiness, real happiness,
+is chiefly found among people of limited income. The
+husband, who perhaps for a whole year has put quietly
+by a dollar every week, so as to be able to give his
+dear wife a nice present at Christmas, gives her a far
+more valuable, a far better appreciated present, than
+the millionaire who orders Tiffany to send a diamond
+<i>rivi�re</i> to his wife. That quiet young French couple,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page102" id="page102"></a>102</span>
+whom you see at the upper circle of a theater, and who
+have saved the money to enable them to come and hear
+such and such a play, are happier than the occupants
+of the boxes on
+the first tier. If
+you doubt it,
+take your opera
+glasses, and
+&ldquo;look on this
+picture, and on
+this.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 300px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:248px; height:200px" src="images/img115.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">THE UPPER CIRCLE.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>In observing
+nations, I have
+always taken
+more interest in
+the &ldquo;million,&rdquo;
+who differ in
+every country, than in the &ldquo;upper ten,&rdquo; who are alike
+all over the world. People who have plenty of money
+at their disposal generally discover the same way of
+spending it, and adopt the same mode of living.
+People who have only a small income show their
+native instincts in the intelligent use of it. All these
+differ, and these only are worth studying, unless you
+belong to the staff of a &ldquo;society&rdquo; paper. (As a
+Frenchman, I am glad to say we have no &ldquo;society&rdquo;
+papers. England and America are the only two
+countries in the world where these official organs of
+Anglo-Saxon snobbery can be found, and I should not
+be surprised to hear that Australia possessed some of
+these already.)</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page103" id="page103"></a>103</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:440px; height:430px" src="images/img116.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE SAD-EYED OCCUPANTS OF THE BOX.</p></div>
+
+<p>The source of French happiness is to be found in
+the thrift of the women, from the best middle class to
+the peasantry. This thrift is also the source of French
+wealth. A nation is really wealthy when the fortunes
+are stable, however small. We have no railway kings,
+no oil kings, no silver kings, but we have no tenement
+houses, no Unions, no Work-houses. Our lower classes
+do not yet ape the upper class people, either in their
+habits or dress. The wife of a peasant or of a mechanic
+wears a simple snowy cap, and a serge or cotton dress.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page104" id="page104"></a>104</span>
+The wife of a shopkeeper does not wear any jewelry
+because she cannot afford to buy real stones, and her
+taste is too good to allow of her wearing false ones.
+She is not ashamed of her husband&rsquo;s occupation; she
+does not play the fine lady while he is at work. She
+saves him the expense of a cashier or of an extra clerk
+by helping him in his business. When the shutters
+are up, she enjoys life with him, and is the companion
+of his pleasures as well as of his hardships. Club life
+is unknown in France, except among the upper classes.
+Man and wife are constantly together, and France is a
+nation of Darbys and Joans. There is, I believe, no
+country where men and women go through life on such
+equal terms as in France.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>In England (and here again I speak of the masses
+only), the man thinks himself a much superior being to
+the woman. It is the same in Germany. In America,
+I should feel inclined to believe that a woman looks
+down upon a man with a certain amount of contempt.
+She receives at his hands attentions of all sorts, but I
+cannot say, as I have remarked before, that I have ever
+discovered in her the slightest trace of gratitude to
+man.</p>
+
+<p>I have often tried to explain to myself this gentle
+contempt of American ladies for the male sex; for, contrasting
+it with the lovely devotion of Jonathan to his
+womankind, it is a curious enigma. Have I found the
+solution at last? Does it begin at school? In American
+schools, boys and girls, from the age of five, follow
+the same path to learning, and sit side by side on the
+same benches. Moreover, the girls prove themselves
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page105" id="page105"></a>105</span>
+capable of keeping pace with the boys. Is it not possible
+that those girls, as they watched the performances
+of the boys in the study, learned to say, &ldquo;Is
+that all?&rdquo; While the young lords of creation, as they
+have looked on at what &ldquo;those girls&rdquo; can do, have
+been fain to exclaim: &ldquo;Who would have thought it!&rdquo;
+And does not this explain the two attitudes: the great
+respect of men for women, and the mild contempt of
+women for men?</p>
+
+<p>Very often, in New York, when I had time to saunter
+about, I would go up Broadway and wait until a car,
+well crammed with people, came along. Then I would
+jump on board and stand near the door. Whenever a
+man wanted to get out, he would say to me &ldquo;Please,&rdquo;
+or &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; or just touch me lightly to warn me
+that I stood in his way. But the women! Oh, the
+women! why, it was simply lovely. They would just
+push me away with the tips of their fingers, and turn
+up such disgusted and haughty noses! You would
+have imagined it was a heap of dirty rubbish in their
+way.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Would you have a fair illustration of the respective
+positions of woman in France, in England, and in
+America?</p>
+
+<p>Go to a hotel, and watch the arrival of couples in
+the dining-room.</p>
+
+<p>Now don&rsquo;t go to the Louvre, the Grand Hotel, or
+the Bristol, in Paris. Don&rsquo;t go to the Savoy, the
+Victoria, or the Metropole, in London. Don&rsquo;t go to
+the Brunswick, in New York, because in all these hotels
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page106" id="page106"></a>106</span>
+you will see that all behave alike. Go elsewhere and,
+I say, watch.</p>
+
+<p>In France, you will see the couples arrive together,
+walk abreast toward the table assigned to them, very
+often arm in arm, and smiling at each other&mdash;though
+married.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:423px; height:430px" src="images/img119.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">IN FRANCE.</p></div>
+
+<p>In England, you will see John Bull leading the way.
+He does not like to be seen eating in public, and
+thinks it very hard that he should not have the dining-room
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page107" id="page107"></a>107</span>
+all to himself. So he enters, with his hands in
+his pockets, looking askance at everybody right and
+left. Then, meek and demure, with her eyes cast down,
+follows Mrs. John Bull.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:408px; height:430px" src="images/img120.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">IN ENGLAND.</p></div>
+
+<p>In America, behold the dignified, nay, the majestic
+entry of Mrs. Jonathan, a perfect queen going toward
+her throne, bestowing a glance on her subjects right
+and left&mdash;and Jonathan behind!
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page108" id="page108"></a>108</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:474px; height:610px" src="images/img121.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">IN AMERICA.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page109" id="page109"></a>109</span> </p>
+
+<p>They say in France that Paris is the paradise of
+women. If so, there is a more blissful place than
+paradise; there is another word to invent to give an
+idea of the social position enjoyed by American ladies.</p>
+
+<p>If I had to be born again, and might choose my sex
+and my birthplace, I would shout at the top of my
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, make me an American woman!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:116px" src="images/img122.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page110" id="page110"></a>110</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">More about Journalism in America&mdash;A Dinner
+at Delmonico&rsquo;s&mdash;My First Appearance in an
+American Church.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>Sunday Night, January</i> 19.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Have</span> been spending the whole day in reading
+the Sunday papers.</p>
+
+<p>I am never tired of reading and studying the American
+newspapers. The whole character of the nation
+is there: Spirit of enterprise, liveliness, childishness,
+inquisitiveness, deep interest in everything that is
+human, fun and humor, indiscretion, love of gossip,
+brightness.</p>
+
+<p>Speak of electric light, of phonographs and graphophones,
+if you like; speak of those thousand and one
+inventions which have come out of the American
+brain; but if you wish to mention the greatest and
+most wonderful achievement of American activity,
+do not hesitate for a moment to give the palm to
+American journalism; it is simply the <i>ne plus ultra</i>.</p>
+
+<p>You will find some people, even in America, who
+condemn its loud tone; others who object to its meddling
+with private life; others, again, who have something
+to say of its contempt for statements which are
+not in perfect accordance with strict truth. I even
+believe that a French writer, whom I do not wish to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page111" id="page111"></a>111</span>
+name, once said that very few statements to be found
+in an American paper were to be relied upon&mdash;beyond
+the date. People may say this and may say that
+about American journalism; I confess that I like it,
+simply because it will supply you with twelve&mdash;on
+Sundays with thirty&mdash;pages that are readable from
+the first line to the last. Yes, from the first line to
+the last, including the advertisements.</p>
+
+<p>The American journalist may be a man of letters,
+but, above all, he must possess a bright and graphic
+pen, and his services are not wanted if he cannot write
+a racy article or paragraph out of the most trifling incident.
+He must relate facts, if he can, but if he cannot,
+so much the worse for the facts; he must be
+entertaining and turn out something that is readable.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose, for example, a reporter has to send to his
+paper the account of a police-court proceeding. There
+is nothing more important to bring to the office than
+the case of a servant girl who has robbed her mistress
+of a pair of diamond earrings. The English reporter
+will bring to his editor something in the following
+style:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Mary Jane So-and-So was yesterday charged before the magistrate
+with stealing a pair of diamond earrings from her mistress.
+It appears [always <i>it appears</i>, that is the formula] that, last Monday,
+as Mrs. X. went to her room to dress for dinner, she missed a
+pair of diamond earrings, which she usually kept in a little drawer
+in her bedroom. On questioning her maid on the subject, she received
+incoherent answers. Suspicion that the maid was the thief
+arose in her mind, and&mdash;&mdash;</p></div>
+
+<p>A long paragraph in this dry style will be published
+in the <i>Times</i>, or any other London morning paper.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page112" id="page112"></a>112</span> </p>
+
+<p>Now, the American reporter will be required to
+bring something a little more entertaining if he hopes
+to be worth his salt on the staff of his paper, and he
+will probably get up an account of the case somewhat
+in the following fashion:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Mary Jane So-and-so is a pretty little brunette of some twenty
+summers. On looking in the glass at her dainty little ears, she
+fancied how lovely a pair of diamond earrings would look in them.
+So one day she thought she would try on those of her mistress.
+How lovely she looked! said the looking-glass, and the Mephistopheles
+that is hidden in the corner of every man or woman&rsquo;s
+breast suggested that she should keep them. This is how Mary
+Jane found herself in trouble, etc., etc.</p></div>
+
+<p>The whole will read like a little story, probably entitled
+something like &ldquo;Another Gretchen gone wrong
+through the love of jewels.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The heading has to be thought of no less than the
+paragraph. Not a line is to be dull in a paper sparkling
+all over with eye-ticklers of all sorts. Oh! those
+delicious headings that would resuscitate the dead, and
+make them sit up in their graves!</p>
+
+<p>A Tennessee paper which I have now under my eyes
+announces the death of a townsman with the following
+heading:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At ten o&rsquo;clock last night Joseph W. Nelson put on
+his angel plumage.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Racy, catching advertisements supplied to the
+trade,&rdquo; such is the announcement that I see in the
+same paper. I understand the origin of such literary
+productions as the following, which I cull from a Colorado
+sheet:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page113" id="page113"></a>113</span> </p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>This morning our Saviour summoned away the jeweler William
+T. Sumner, of our city, from his shop to another and a better
+world. The undersigned, his widow, will weep upon his tomb, as
+will also his two daughters, Maud and Emma, the former of whom
+is married, and the other is open to an offer. The funeral will
+take place to-morrow. Signed. His disconsolate widow, Mathilda
+Sumner.</p>
+
+<p><i>P. S.</i>&mdash;This bereavement will not interrupt our business, which
+will be carried on as usual, only our place of business will be removed
+from Washington Street to No. 17 St. Paul Street, as our
+grasping landlord has raised our rent.&mdash;M. S.</p></div>
+
+<p>The following advertisement probably emanates
+from the same firm:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p><span class="sc">Personal&mdash;His Love Suddenly Returned</span>.&mdash;Recently
+they had not been on the best of terms, owing to a little family jar
+occasioned by the wife insisting on being allowed to renovate his
+wearing apparel, and which, of course, was done in a bungling
+manner; in order to prevent the trouble, they agreed to send all
+their work hereafter to D., the tailor, and now everything is lovely,
+and peace and happiness again reign in their household.</p></div>
+
+<p>All this is lively. Never fail to read the advertisements
+of an American paper, or you will not have got
+out of it all the fun it supplies.</p>
+
+<p>Here are a few from the Cincinnati <i>Enquirer</i>, which
+tell different stories:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>1. The young <span class="sc">Madame J. C. Antonia</span>, just arrived from
+Europe, will remain a short time; tells past, present, and future;
+tells by the letters in hand who the future husband or wife will be;
+brings back the husband or lover in so many days, and guarantees
+to settle family troubles; can give good luck and success; ladies
+call at once; also cures corns and bunions. Hours 10 <span class="scs">A. M.</span> and
+9 <span class="scs">P. M.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Also cures corns and bunions&rdquo; is a poem!
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page114" id="page114"></a>114</span> </p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>2. The acquaintance desired of lady passing along Twelfth
+Street at three o&rsquo;clock Sunday afternoon, by blond gent standing
+at corner. Address <span class="sc">Lou</span> K., 48, <i>Enquirer</i> Office.</p>
+
+<p>3. Will the three ladies that got on the electric car at the Zoo
+Sunday afternoon favor three gents that got off at Court and Walnut
+Streets with their address? Address <span class="sc">Electric Car</span>, <i>Enquirer</i>
+Office.</p>
+
+<p>4. Will two ladies on Clark Street car, that noticed two gents
+in front of Grand Opera House about seven last evening, please
+address <span class="sc">Jands</span>, <i>Enquirer</i> Office.</p></div>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>A short time ago a man named Smith was bitten by
+a rattlesnake and treated with whisky at a New York
+hospital. An English paper would have just mentioned
+the fact, and have the paragraph headed: &ldquo;A
+Remarkable Cure&rdquo;; or, &ldquo;A Man Cured of a Rattlesnake
+Bite by Whisky&rdquo;; but a kind correspondent
+sends me the headings of this bit of intelligence in five
+New York papers. They are as follows:</p>
+
+<p>1. &ldquo;Smith Is All Right!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>2. &ldquo;Whisky Does It!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>3. &ldquo;The Snake Routed at all Points!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>4. &ldquo;The Reptile is Nowhere!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>5. &ldquo;Drunk for Three Days and Cured.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Let a batch of officials be dismissed. Do not suppose
+that an American editor will accept the news
+with such a heading as &ldquo;Dismissal of Officials.&rdquo; The
+reporter will have to bring some label that will fetch
+the attention. &ldquo;Massacre at the Custom House,&rdquo; or,
+&ldquo;So Many Heads in the Basket,&rdquo; will do. Now, I
+maintain that it requires a wonderful imagination&mdash;something
+little short of genius, to be able, day after
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page115" id="page115"></a>115</span>
+day, to hit on a hundred of such headings. But the
+American journalist does it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:463px; height:430px" src="images/img128.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">SMITH CURED OF RATTLESNAKE BITE.</p></div>
+
+<p>An American paper is a collection of short stories.
+The Sunday edition of the New York <i>World</i>, the
+New York <i>Herald</i>, the Boston <i>Herald</i>, the Boston
+<i>Globe</i>, the Chicago <i>Tribune</i>, the Chicago <i>Herald</i>, and
+many others, is something like ten volumes of miscellaneous
+literature, and I do not know of any achievement
+to be compared to it.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot do better than compare an American
+paper to a large store, where the goods, the articles,
+are labeled so as to immediately strike the customer.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page116" id="page116"></a>116</span> </p>
+
+<p>A few days ago, I heard my friend, Colonel Charles
+H. Taylor, editor of the Boston <i>Globe</i>, give an interesting
+summary of an address on journalism which he
+is to deliver next Saturday before the members of the
+New England Club of Boston. He maintained that the
+proprietor of a newspaper has as much right to make
+his shop-window attractive to the public as any tradesman.
+If the colonel is of opinion that journalism
+is a trade, and the journalist a mere tradesman, I agree
+with him. If journalism is not to rank among the
+highest and noblest of professions, and is to be nothing
+more than a commercial enterprise, I agree with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if we study the evolution of journalism for the
+last forty or fifty years, we shall see that daily journalism,
+especially in a democracy, has become a commercial
+enterprise, and that journalism, as it was understood
+forty years ago, has become to-day monthly journalism.
+The dailies have now no other object than to give the
+news&mdash;the latest&mdash;just as a tradesman that would succeed
+must give you the latest fashion in any kind of
+business. The people of a democracy like America are
+educated in politics. They think for themselves, and
+care but little for the opinions of such and such a journalist
+on any question of public interest. They want
+news, not literary essays on news. When I hear some
+Americans say that they object to their daily journalism,
+I answer that journalists are like other people who
+supply the public&mdash;they keep the article that is
+wanted.</p>
+
+<p>A free country possesses the government it deserves,
+and the journalism it wants. A people active and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page117" id="page117"></a>117</span>
+busy as the Americans are, want a journalism that will
+keep their interest awake and amuse them; and they
+naturally get it. The average American, for example,
+cares not a pin for what his representatives say or
+do in Washington; but he likes to be acquainted with
+what is going on in Europe, and that is why the
+American journalist will give him a far more detailed
+account of what is going on in the Palace at Westminster
+than of what is being said in the Capitol.</p>
+
+<p>In France, journalism is personal. On any great
+question of the day, domestic or foreign, the Frenchman
+will want to read the opinion of John Lemoinne
+in the <i>Journal des D�bats</i>, or the opinion of Edouard
+Lockroy in the <i>Rappel</i>, or maybe that of Paul de
+Cassagnac or Henri Rochefort. Every Frenchman is
+more or less led by the editor of the newspaper which
+he patronizes. But the Frenchman is only a democrat
+in name and aspirations, not in fact. France made
+the mistake of establishing a republic before she made
+republicans of her sons. A French journalist signs
+his articles, and is a leader of public opinion, so much
+so that every successful journalist in France has been,
+is now, and ever will be, elected a representative of
+the people.</p>
+
+<p>In America, as in England, the journalist has no
+personality outside the literary classes. Who, among
+the masses, knows the names of Bennett, Dana, Whitelaw
+Reid, Medill, Childs, in the United States? Who,
+in England, knows the names of Lawson, Mudford,
+Robinson, and other editors of the great dailies? If
+it had not been for his trial and imprisonment, Mr. W.
+T. Stead himself, though a most brilliant journalist,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page118" id="page118"></a>118</span>
+would never have seen his name on anybody&rsquo;s
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>A leading article in an American or an English
+newspaper will attract no notice at home. It will
+only be quoted on the European Continent.</p>
+
+<p>It is the monthly and the weekly papers and magazines
+that now play the part of the dailies of bygone
+days. An article in the <i>Spectator</i> or <i>Saturday Review</i>,
+or especially in one of the great monthly magazines,
+will be quoted all over the land, and I believe that
+this relatively new journalism, which is read only by
+the cultured, has now for ever taken the place of the
+old one.</p>
+
+<p>In a country where everybody reads, men as well
+as women; in a country where nobody takes much
+interest in politics outside of the State and the city in
+which he lives, the journalist has to turn out every
+day all the news he can gather, and present them to
+the reader in the most readable form. Formerly daily
+journalism was a branch of literature; now it is a
+news store, and is so not only in America. The English
+press shows signs of the same tendency, and so
+does the Parisian press. Take the London <i>Pall Mall
+Gazette</i> and <i>Star</i>, and the Paris <i>Figaro</i>, as illustrations
+of what I advance.</p>
+
+<p>As democracy makes progress in England, journalism
+will become more and more American, although the
+English reporter will have some trouble in succeeding
+to compete with his American <i>confr�re</i> in humor and
+liveliness.</p>
+
+<p>Under the guidance of political leaders, the newspapers
+of Continental Europe direct public opinion.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page119" id="page119"></a>119</span>
+In a democracy, the newspapers follow public opinion
+and cater to the public taste; they are the servants of
+the people. The American says to his journalists: &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t care a pin for your opinions on such a question.
+Give me the news and I will comment on it myself.
+Only don&rsquo;t forget that I am an overworked man, and
+that before, or after, my fourteen hours&rsquo; work, I want
+to be entertained.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So, as I have said elsewhere, the American journalist
+must be spicy, lively, and bright. He must know
+how, not merely to report, but to relate in a racy,
+catching style, an accident, a trial, a conflagration, and
+be able to make up an article of one or two columns
+upon the most insignificant incident. He must be
+interesting, readable. His eyes and ears must be
+always open, every one of his five senses on the alert,
+for he must keep ahead in this wild race for news.
+He must be a good conversationalist on most subjects,
+so as to bring back from his interviews with different
+people a good store of materials. He must be a man
+of courage, to brave rebuffs. He must be a philosopher,
+to pocket abuse cheerfully.</p>
+
+<p>He must be a man of honor, to inspire confidence
+in the people he has to deal with. Personally I can
+say this of him, that wherever I have begged him, for
+instance, to kindly abstain from mentioning this or
+that which might have been said in conversation
+with him, I have invariably found that he kept his
+word.</p>
+
+<p>But if the matter is of public interest, he is, before
+and above all, the servant of the public; so, never
+challenge his spirit of enterprise, or he will leave no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page120" id="page120"></a>120</span>
+stone unturned until he has found out your secret and
+exhibited it in public.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think that American journalism needs an
+apology.</p>
+
+<p>It is the natural outcome of circumstances and the
+democratic times we live in. The Th��tre-Fran�ais is
+not now, under a Republic, and probably never again
+will be, what it was when it was placed under the patronage
+and supervision of the French Court. Democracy
+is the form of government least of all calculated to
+foster literature and the fine arts. To that purpose,
+Monarchy, with its Court and its fashionable society,
+is the best. This is no reason to prefer a monarchy to
+a republic. Liberty, like any other luxury, has to be
+paid for.</p>
+
+<p>Journalism cannot be now what it was when papers
+were read by people of culture. In a democracy, the
+stage and journalism have to please the masses of the
+people. As the people become better and better educated,
+the stage and journalism will rise with them.
+What the people want, I repeat it, is news, and journals
+are properly called <i>news</i> papers.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking of American journalism, no man need use
+apologetic language.</p>
+
+<p>Not when the proprietor of an American paper will
+not hesitate to spend thousands of dollars to provide
+his readers with the minutest details about some great
+European event.</p>
+
+<p>Not when an American paper will, at its own expense,
+send Henry M. Stanley to Africa in search of Livingstone.</p>
+
+<p>Not so long as the American press is vigilant, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page121" id="page121"></a>121</span>
+keeps its thousand eyes open on the interests of the
+American people.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Midnight.</i></p>
+
+<p>Dined this evening with Richard Mansfield at Delmonico&rsquo;s.
+I sat between Mr. Charles A. Dana, the
+first of American journalists, and General Horace Porter,
+and had what my American friends would call &ldquo;a
+mighty elegant time.&rdquo; The host was delightful, the
+dinner excellent, the wine &ldquo;extra dry,&rdquo; the speeches
+quite the reverse. &ldquo;Speeches&rdquo; is rather a big word
+for what took place at dessert. Every one supplied an
+anecdote, a story, a reminiscence, and contributed to
+the general entertainment of the guests.</p>
+
+<p>The Americans have too much humor to spoil their
+dinners with toasts to the President, the Senate, the
+House of Representatives, the army, the navy, the
+militia, the volunteers, and the reserved forces.</p>
+
+<p>I once heard Mr. Chauncey M. Depew referring to
+the volunteers, at some English public dinner, as &ldquo;men
+invincible&mdash;in peace, and invisible&mdash;in war.&rdquo; After
+dinner I remarked to an English peer:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have heard to-night the great New York after-dinner
+speaker; what do you think of his speech?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it was witty; but I think his
+remark about our volunteers was not in very good
+taste.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I remained composed, and did not burst.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Newburgh, N. Y.</i>, <i>January</i> 21.</p>
+
+<p>I lectured in Melrose, near Boston, last night, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page122" id="page122"></a>122</span>
+had the satisfaction of pleasing a Massachusetts audience
+for the second time. After the lecture, I had
+supper with Mr. Nat Goodwin, a very good actor, who
+is now playing in Boston in a new play by Mr. Steele
+Mackaye. Mr. Nat Goodwin told many good stories
+at supper. He can entertain his friends in private as
+well as he can the public.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>To-night I have appeared in a church, in Newburgh.
+The minister, who took the chair, had the good sense
+to refrain from opening the lecture with prayer. There
+are many who have not the tact necessary to see that
+praying before a humorous lecture is almost as irreverent
+as praying before a glass of grog. It is as an artist,
+however, that I resent that prayer. After the audience
+have said <i>Amen</i>, it takes them a full quarter of an hour
+to realize that the lecture is not a sermon; that they
+are in a church, but not at church; and the whole
+time their minds are in that undecided state, all
+your points fall flat and miss fire. Even without the
+preliminary prayer, I dislike lecturing in a church.
+The very atmosphere of a church is against the success
+of a light, humorous lecture, and many a point,
+which would bring down the house in a theater, will be
+received only with smiles in a lecture hall, and in respectful
+silence in a church. An audience is greatly
+influenced by surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I must say that the interior of an American
+church, with its lines of benches, its galleries, and its
+platform, does not inspire in one such religious feelings
+as the interior of a European Catholic church. In
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page123" id="page123"></a>123</span>
+many American towns, the church is let for meetings,
+concerts, exhibitions, bazaars, etc., and so far as you
+can see, there is nothing to distinguish it from an ordinary
+lecture hall.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it is a church, and both lecturer and audience
+feel it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:97px" src="images/img136.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption"></p></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page124" id="page124"></a>124</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Marcus Aurelius in America&mdash;Chairmen I have
+had&mdash;American, English, and Scotch Chairmen&mdash;One
+who had Been to Boulogne&mdash;Talkative
+and Silent Chairmen&mdash;A Trying Occasion&mdash;The
+Lord is Asked to Allow the
+Audience to See my Points.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>January</i> 22.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">There</span> are indeed very few Americans who have
+not either tact or a sense of humor. They make
+the best of chairmen. They know that the audience
+have not come to hear them, and that all that is required
+of them is to introduce the lecturer in very few
+words, and to give him a good start. Who is the
+lecturer that would not appreciate, nay, love, such a
+chairman as Dr. R. S. MacArthur, who introduced me
+yesterday to a New York audience in the following
+manner?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ladies and Gentlemen,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the story goes
+that, last summer, a party of Americans staying in
+Rome paid a visit to the famous Spith�ver&rsquo;s bookshop
+in the Piazza di Spagna. Now Spith�ver is the most
+learned of bibliophiles. You must go thither if you need
+artistic and arch�ological works of the profoundest
+research and erudition. But one of the ladies in this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page125" id="page125"></a>125</span>
+tourists&rsquo; party only wanted the lively travels in America
+of Max O&rsquo;Rell, and she asked for the book at Spith�ver&rsquo;s.
+There came in a deep guttural voice&mdash;an
+Anglo-German voice&mdash;from a spectacled clerk behind
+a desk, to this purport: &lsquo;Marcus Aurelius vos neffer in
+te Unided Shtaates!&rsquo; But, ladies and gentlemen, he
+is now, and here he is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With such an introduction, I was immediately in
+touch with my audience.</p>
+
+<p>What a change after English chairmen!</p>
+
+<p>A few days before lecturing in any English town,
+under the auspices of a Literary Society or Mechanics&rsquo;
+Institute, the lecturer generally receives from the
+secretary a letter running somewhat as follow:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p><span class="sc">Dear Sir</span>:</p>
+
+<p>I have much pleasure in informing you that our Mr. Blank, one
+of our vice-presidents and a well-known resident here, will take the
+chair at your lecture.</p></div>
+
+<p>Translated into plain English, this reads:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>My poor fellow, I am much grieved to have to inform you that a
+chairman will be inflicted upon you on the occasion of your lecture
+before the members of our Society.</p></div>
+
+<p>In my few years&rsquo; lecturing experience, I have come
+across all sorts and conditions of chairmen, but I can
+recollect very few that &ldquo;have helped me.&rdquo; Now, what
+is the office, the duty, of a chairman on such occasions?
+He is supposed to introduce the lecturer to the
+audience. For this he needs to be able to make a neat
+speech. He has to tell the audience who the lecturer
+is, in case they should not know it, which is seldom the
+case.  I was once introduced to an audience who
+knew me, by a chairman who, I don&rsquo;t think, had ever
+heard of me in his life. Before going on the platform
+he asked me whether I had written anything, next
+whether I was an Irishman or a Frenchman, etc.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page126" id="page126"></a>126</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:438px; height:610px" src="images/img139.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;MARCUS AURELIUS VOS NEFFER IN TE UNIDED SHTAATES!&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page127" id="page127"></a>127</span> </p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the chairman is nervous; he hems and
+haws, cannot find the words he wants, and only succeeds
+in fidgeting the audience. Sometimes, on the
+other hand, he is a wit. There is danger again. I was
+once introduced to a New York audience by General
+Horace Porter. Those of my readers who know the
+delightful general and have heard him deliver one of
+those little gems of speeches in his own inimitable
+manner, will agree with me that certainly there was
+danger in that; and they will not be surprised when I
+tell them that after his delightfully witty and graceful
+little introduction, I felt as if the best part of the show
+was over.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the chair has to be offered to a magnate
+of the neighborhood, though he may be noted for his
+long, prosy orations&mdash;which annoy the public; or to a
+very popular man in the locality who gets all the applause&mdash;which
+annoys the lecturer.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Brevity is the soul of wit,&rdquo; should be the motto of
+chairmen, and I sympathize with a friend of mine who
+says that chairmen, like little boys and girls, should be
+seen and not heard.</p>
+
+<p>Of those chairmen who can and do speak, the Scotch
+ones are generally good. They have a knack of starting
+the evening with some droll Scotch anecdote, told
+with that piquant and picturesque accent of theirs, and
+of putting the audience in a good humor. Occasionally
+they will also make <i>apropos</i> and equally droll little
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page128" id="page128"></a>128</span>
+speeches at the close. One evening, in talking of
+America, I had mentioned the fact that American banquets
+were very lively, and that I thought the fact of
+Americans being able to keep up such a flow of wit for
+so many hours, was perhaps due to their drinking Apollinaris
+water instead of stronger things after dessert.
+At the end of the lecture, the chairman rose and said
+he had greatly enjoyed it, but that he must take exception
+to one statement the lecturer had made, for
+he thought it &ldquo;fery deeficult to be wutty on Apollinaris
+watter.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Another kind of chairman is the one who kills your
+finish, and stops all the possibility of your being called
+back for applause, by coming forward, the very instant
+the last words are out of your mouth, to inform the
+audience that the next lecture will be given by Mr. So-and-So,
+or to make a statement of the Society&rsquo;s financial
+position, concluding by appealing to the members
+to induce their friends to join.</p>
+
+<p>Then there is the chairman who does not know what
+you are going to talk about, but thinks it his duty to
+give the audience a kind of summary of what he imagines
+the lecture is going to be. He is terrible. But he
+is nothing to the one who, when the lecture is over,
+will persist in summing it up, and explaining your
+own jokes, especially the ones he has not quite seen
+through. This is the dullest, the saddest chairman yet
+invented.</p>
+
+<p>Some modest chairmen apologize for standing between
+the lecturer and the audience, and declare they
+cannot speak, but do. Others promise to speak a minute
+only, but don&rsquo;t.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page129" id="page129"></a>129</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:437px; height:610px" src="images/img142.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE CHAIRMAN.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page130" id="page130"></a>130</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What shall I speak about?&rdquo; said a chairman to me
+one day, after I had been introduced to him in the little
+back room behind the platform.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you will oblige me, sir,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;kindly speak
+about&mdash;one minute.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Once I was introduced to the audience as the promoter
+of good feelings between France and England.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sometimes,&rdquo; said the chairman, &ldquo;we see clouds of
+misunderstanding arise between the French&mdash;between
+the English&mdash;between the two. The lecturer of this
+evening makes it his business to disperse these clouds&mdash;these
+clouds&mdash;to&mdash;to&mdash;&mdash; But I will not detain you
+any longer. His name is familiar to all of us. I&rsquo;m
+sure he needs no introduction to this audience. We
+all know him. I have much pleasure in introducing
+to you Mr.&mdash;Mosshiay&mdash;Mr. &mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; Then he looked at
+me in despair.</p>
+
+<p>It was evident he had forgotten my name.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Max O&rsquo;Rell is, I believe, what you are driving at,&rdquo;
+I whispered to him.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>The most objectionable chairmen in England are,
+perhaps, local men holding civic honors. Accustomed
+to deliver themselves of a speech whenever and wherever
+they get a chance, aldermen, town councilors,
+members of local boards, and school boards, never
+miss an opportunity of getting upon a platform to
+address a good crowd. Not long ago, I was introduced
+to an audience in a large English city by a candidate
+for civic honors. The election of the town council
+was to take place a fortnight afterward, and this gentleman
+profited by the occasion to air all his grievances
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page131" id="page131"></a>131</span>
+against the sitting council, and to assure the citizens
+that if they would only elect him, there were bright
+days in store for them and their city. This was the
+gist of the matter. The speech lasted twenty minutes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:458px; height:430px" src="images/img144.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE YOUR NAME?&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>Once the chair was taken by an alderman in a Lancashire
+city, and the hall was crowded. &ldquo;What a fine
+house!&rdquo; I remarked to the chairman as we sat down
+on the platform.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very fine indeed,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;everybody in the
+town knew I was going to take the chair.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I was sorry I had spoken.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page132" id="page132"></a>132</span> </p>
+
+<p>More than once, when announced to deliver a lecture
+on France and the French, I have been introduced
+by a chairman who, having spent his holidays in that
+country once or twice, opened the evening&rsquo;s proceedings
+by himself delivering a lecture on France. I have
+felt very tempted to imitate a <i>confr�re</i>, and say to the
+audience: &ldquo;Ladies and Gentlemen, as one lecture on
+France is enough for an evening, perhaps you would
+rather I spoke about something else now.&rdquo; The <i>confr�re</i>
+I have just mentioned was to deliver a lecture on
+Charles Dickens one evening. The chairman knew
+something of Charles Dickens and, for quite a quarter
+of an hour, spoke on the great English novelist, giving
+anecdotes, extracts of his writings, etc. When the
+lecturer rose, he said: &ldquo;Ladies and Gentlemen, two
+lectures on Charles Dickens are perhaps more than you
+expected to hear to-night. You have just heard a
+lecture on Charles Dickens. I am now going to give
+you one on Charles Kingsley.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes I get a little amusement, however (as in
+the country town of X.), out of the usual proceedings
+of the society before whose members I am engaged to
+appear. At X., the audience being assembled and the
+time up, I was told to go on the platform alone and,
+being there, to immediately sit down. So I went on,
+and sat down. Some one in the room then rose and
+proposed that Mr. N. should take the chair. Mr. N.,
+it appeared, had been to Boulogne (<i>to B&rsquo;long</i>), and was
+particularly fitted to introduce a Frenchman. In a
+speech of about five minutes duration, all Mr. N.&rsquo;s
+qualifications for the post of chairman that evening
+were duly set forth. Then some one else rose and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page133" id="page133"></a>133</span>
+seconded the proposition, re-enumerating most of these
+qualifications. Mr. N. then marched up the hall,
+ascended the platform, and proceeded to return thanks
+for the kind manner in which he had been proposed
+for the chair and for the enthusiasm (a few friends had
+applauded) with which the audience had sanctioned
+the choice. He said it was true that he had been in
+France, and that he greatly admired the country and
+the people, and he was glad to have this opportunity
+to say so before a Frenchman. Then he related some
+of his traveling impressions in France. A few people
+coughed, two or three more bold stamped their feet,
+but he took no heed and, for ten minutes, he gave the
+audience the benefit of the information he had gathered
+in Boulogne. These preliminaries over, I gave
+my lecture, after which Mr. N. called upon a member
+of the audience to propose a vote of thanks to the
+lecturer &ldquo;for the most amusing and interesting discourse,
+etc.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now a paid lecturer wants his check when his work
+is over, and although a vote of thanks, when it is
+spontaneous, is a compliment which he greatly appreciates,
+he is more likely to feel awkwardness than
+pleasure when it is a mere red-tape formality. The
+vote of thanks, on this particular occasion, was proposed
+in due form. Then it was seconded by some
+one who repeated two or three of my points and spoiled
+them. By this time I began to enter into the fun of
+the thing, and, after having returned thanks for the
+vote of thanks and sat down, I stepped forward again,
+filled with a mild resolve to have the last word:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ladies and Gentlemen,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I have now much
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page134" id="page134"></a>134</span>
+pleasure in proposing that a hearty vote of thanks be
+given Mr. N. for the able manner in which he has
+filled the chair. I am proud to have been introduced
+to you by an Englishman who knows my country so
+well.&rdquo; I went again through the list of Mr. N.&rsquo;s
+qualifications, not forgetting the trip to Boulogne and
+the impressions it had left on him. Somebody rose
+and seconded this. Mr. N. delivered a speech to
+thank the audience once more, and then those who
+had survived went home.</p>
+
+<p>Some Nonconformist societies will engage a light or
+humorous lecturer, put him in their chapel, and open
+his mouth with prayer. Prayer is good, but I would
+as soon think of saying grace before dancing as of beginning
+my lecture with a prayer. This kind of experience
+has been mine several times. A truly trying
+experience it was, on the first occasion, to be accompanied
+to the platform by the minister, who, motioning
+me to sit down, advanced to the front, lowered his
+head, and said in solemn accents: &ldquo;Let us pray.&rdquo;
+After I got started, it took me fully ten minutes to
+make the people realize that they were not at church.
+This experience I have had in America as well as in
+England. Another experience in this line was still
+worse, for the prayer was supplemented by the singing
+of a hymn of ten or twelve verses. You may easily
+imagine that my first remark fell dead flat.</p>
+
+<p>I have been introduced to audiences as Mossoo,
+Meshoe, and Mounzeer O&rsquo;Reel, and other British adaptations
+of our word <i>Monsieur</i>, and found it very difficult
+to bear with equanimity a chairman who maltreated
+a name which I had taken some care to keep correctly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page135" id="page135"></a>135</span>
+spelt before the public. Yet this man is charming
+when compared with the one who, in the midst of his
+introductory remarks, turns to you, and in a stage
+whisper perfectly audible all over the hall, asks: &ldquo;How
+do you pronounce your name?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Passing over chairman chatty and chairman terse,
+chairman eloquent and chairman the reverse, I feel decidedly
+most kindly toward the silent chairman. He
+is very rare, but he does exist and, when met with, is exceedingly
+precious. Why he exists, in some English
+Institutes, I have always been at a loss to imagine.
+Whether he comes on to see that the lecturer does not
+run off before his time is up, or with the water bottle,
+which is the only portable thing on the platform generally;
+whether he is a successor to some venerable
+deaf and dumb founder of his Society; or whether he
+goes on with the lecturer to give a lesson in modesty
+to the public, as who should say: &ldquo;I could speak an if
+I would, but I forbear.&rdquo; Be his <i>raison d&rsquo;�tre</i> what it
+may, we all love him. To the nervous novice he is a
+kind of quiet support, to the old stager he is as a picture
+unto the eye and as music unto the ear.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Here I pause. I want to collect my thoughts. Does
+my memory serve me? Am I dreaming, or worse still,
+am I on the point of inventing? No, I could not invent
+such a story, it is beyond my power.</p>
+
+<p>I was once lecturing to the students of a religious
+college in America. Before I began, a professor
+stepped forward, and offered a prayer, in which he
+asked the Lord to allow the audience to see my points.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I duly feel the weight of responsibility attaching
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page136" id="page136"></a>136</span>
+to such a statement, and in justice to myself I
+can do no less than give the reader the petition just
+as it fell on my astonished ears:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lord, Thou knowest that we work hard for Thee,
+and that recreation is necessary in order that we may
+work with renewed vigor. We have to-night with us
+a gentleman from France [excuse my recording a compliment
+too flattering], whose criticisms are witty and
+refined, <i>but subtle</i>, and we pray Thee to so prepare our
+minds that we may thoroughly understand and enjoy
+them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>But subtle!</i>&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I am still wondering whether my lectures are so
+subtle as to need praying over, or whether that audience
+was so dull that they needed praying for.</p>
+
+<p>Whichever it was, the prayer was heard, for the audience
+proved warm, keen, and thoroughly appreciative.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:88px" src="images/img149.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page137" id="page137"></a>137</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XV.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt1">Reflections on the Typical American.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>January</i> 23.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">I was</span> asked to-day by the editor of the <i>North
+American Review</i> to write an article on the typical
+American.</p>
+
+<p>The typical American!</p>
+
+<p>In the eyes of my beloved compatriots, the typical
+American is a man with hair falling over his shoulders,
+wearing a sombrero, a red shirt, leather leggings, a
+pair of revolvers in his belt, spending his life on horseback,
+and able to shoot a fly off the tip of your nose
+without for a moment endangering your olfactory
+organ; and, since Buffalo Bill has been exhibiting his
+Indians and cowboys to the Parisians, this impression
+has become a deep conviction.</p>
+
+<p>I shall never forget the astonishment I caused to my
+mother when I first broke the news to her that I
+wanted to go to America. My mother had practically
+never left a lovely little provincial town of
+France. Her face expressed perfect bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say you want to go to America?&rdquo;
+she said. &ldquo;What for?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am invited to give lectures there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lectures? in what language?&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page138" id="page138"></a>138</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, mother, I will try my best in English.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do they speak English out there?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;H&rsquo;m&mdash;pretty well, I think.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We did not go any further on the subject that time.
+Probably the good mother thought of the time when
+the Californian gold-fields attracted all the scum of
+Europe, and, no doubt, she thought that it was strange
+for a man who had a decent position in Europe, to go
+and &ldquo;seek fortune&rdquo; in America.</p>
+
+<p>Later on, however, after returning to England, I
+wrote to her that I had made up my mind to go.</p>
+
+<p>Her answer was full of gentle reproaches, and of
+sorrow at seeing that she had lost all her influence
+over her son. She signed herself &ldquo;always your loving
+mother,&rdquo; and indulged in a postscript. Madame de
+S�vign� said that the gist of a woman&rsquo;s letter was to
+be found in the postscript.</p>
+
+<p>My mother&rsquo;s was this:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;P.S.&mdash;I shall not tell any one in the town that you
+have gone to America.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This explains why I still dare show my face in my
+little native town.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>The typical American!</p>
+
+<p>First of all, does he exist? I do not think so. As
+I have said elsewhere, there are Americans in plenty,
+but <i>the</i> American has not made his appearance yet.
+The type existed a hundred years ago in New England.
+He is there still; but he is not now a national type,
+he is only a local one.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page139" id="page139"></a>139</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:375px; height:610px" src="images/img152.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE TYPICAL AMERICAN.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page140" id="page140"></a>140</span> </p>
+
+<p>I was talking one day with two eminent Americans
+on the subject of the typical American, real or imaginary.
+One of them was of opinion that he was a taciturn
+being; the other, on the contrary, maintained
+that he was talkative. How is a foreigner to dare
+decide, where two eminent natives find it impossible to
+agree?</p>
+
+<p>In speaking of the typical American, let us understand
+each other. All the civilized nations of the
+earth are alike in one respect; they are all composed
+of two kinds of men, those that are gentlemen, and
+those that are not. America is no exception to this
+rule. Fifth Avenue does not differ from Belgravia
+and Mayfair. A gentleman is everywhere a gentleman.
+As a type, he belongs to no particular country,
+he is universal.</p>
+
+<p>When the writer of some &ldquo;society&rdquo; paper, English
+or American, reproaches a sociologist for writing about
+the masses instead of the classes, suggesting that &ldquo;he
+probably never frequented the best society of the
+nation he describes,&rdquo; that writer writes himself down
+an ass.</p>
+
+<p>In the matters of feeling, conduct, taste, culture, I
+have never discovered the least difference between a
+gentleman from America and a gentleman from
+France, England, Russia, or any other country of
+Europe&mdash;including Germany. So, if we want to find a
+typical American, it is not in good society that we
+must search for him, but among the mass of the population.</p>
+
+<p>Well, it is just here that our search will break down.
+We shall come across all sorts and conditions of Americans,
+but not one that is really typical.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page141" id="page141"></a>141</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:485px; height:610px" src="images/img154.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE AMERICAN OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page142" id="page142"></a>142</span></p>
+
+<p>A little while ago, the <i>Century Magazine</i> published
+specimens of composite photography. First, there was
+the portrait of one person, then that of this same face
+with another superposed, then another containing
+three faces blended, and so on up to eight or nine. On
+the last page the result was shown. I can only compare
+the typical American to the last of those. This
+appears to me the process of evolution through which
+the American type is now going. What it will be
+when this process of evolution is over, no one, I imagine,
+can tell. The evolution will be complete when
+immigration shall have ceased, and all the different
+types have been well mixed and assimilated. While
+the process of assimilation is still going on, the result
+is suspended, and the type is incomplete.</p>
+
+<p>But, meanwhile, are there not certain characteristic
+traits to be found throughout almost all America?
+That is a question much easier to answer.</p>
+
+<p>Is it necessary to repeat that I put aside good society
+and confine myself merely to the people?</p>
+
+<p>Nations are like individuals: when they are young,
+they have the qualities and the defects of children.
+The characteristic trait of childhood is curiosity. It is
+also that of the American. I have never been in Australia,
+but I should expect to find this trait in the
+Australian.</p>
+
+<p>Look at American journalism. What does it live
+on? Scandal and gossip. Let a writer, an artist, or
+any one else become popular in the States, and the
+papers will immediately tell the public at what time
+he rises and what he takes for breakfast. When any
+one of the least importance arrives in America, he is
+quickly beset by a band of reporters who ask him a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page143" id="page143"></a>143</span>
+host of preposterous questions and examine him minutely
+from head to foot, in order to tell the public
+next day whether he wears laced, buttoned, or elastic
+boots, enlighten them as to the cut of his coat and the
+color of his trowsers, and let them know if he parts his
+hair in the middle or not.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:420px; height:430px" src="images/img156.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">CURIOSITY IN AUSTRALIA.</p></div>
+
+<p>Every time I went into a new town to lecture I was
+interviewed, and the next day, besides an account of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page144" id="page144"></a>144</span>
+the lecture, there was invariably a paragraph somewhat
+in this style:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>The lecturer is a man of about forty, whose cranium is getting
+visible through his hair. He wears a double eye-glass, with which
+he plays while talking to his audience. His handkerchief was
+black-bordered. He wore the regulation patent leather shoes, and
+his shirt front was fastened with a single stud. He spoke without
+effort or pretension, and often with his hands in his pockets, etc.</p></div>
+
+<p>A few days ago, on reading the morning papers in a
+town where I had lectured the night before, I found,
+in one of them, about twenty lines consecrated to my
+lecture, and half a column to my hat.</p>
+
+<p>I must tell you that this hat was brown, and all the
+hats in America are black. If you wear anything
+that is not exactly like what Americans wear, you are
+gazed at as if you were a curious animal. The Americans
+are as great <i>badauds</i> as the Parisians. In London,
+you may go down Regent Street or Piccadilly
+got up as a Swiss admiral, a Polish general, or even a
+Highlander, and nobody will take the trouble to look at
+you. But, in America, you have only to put on a brown
+hat or a pair of light trowsers, and you will become the
+object of a curiosity which will not fail very promptly
+to bore you, if you are fond of tranquility, and like to
+go about unremarked.</p>
+
+<p>I was so fond of that poor brown hat, too! It was
+an incomparably obliging hat. It took any shape, and
+adapted itself to any circumstances. It even went into
+my pocket on occasions. I had bought it at Lincoln
+&amp; Bennett&rsquo;s, if you please. But I had to give it up.
+To my great regret, I saw that it was imperative: its
+popularity bid fair to make me jealous. Twenty lines
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page145" id="page145"></a>145</span>
+about me, and half a column about that hat! It was
+time to come to some determination. It was not to
+be put up with any longer. So I took it up tenderly,
+smoothed it with care, and laid it in a neat box which
+was then posted to the chief editor of the paper with
+the following note:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p><span class="sc">Dear Sir</span>:</p>
+
+<p>I see by your estimable paper that my hat has attracted a good
+deal of public attention during its short sojourn in your city. I am
+even tempted to think that it has attracted more of it than my
+lecture. I send you the interesting headgear, and beg you will
+accept it as a souvenir of my visit, and with my respectful compliments.</p></div>
+
+<p>A citizen of the Great Republic knows how to take
+a joke. The worthy editor inserted my letter in the
+next number of his paper, and informed his readers
+that my hat fitted him to a nicety, and that he was
+going to have it dyed and wear it. He further said,
+&ldquo;Max O&rsquo;Rell evidently thinks the song, &lsquo;Where did
+you get that hat?&rsquo; was specially written to annoy
+him,&rdquo; and went on to the effect that &ldquo;Max O&rsquo;Rell is
+not the only man who does not care to tell where he
+got his hat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Do not run away with the idea that such nonsense as
+this has no interest for the American public. It has.</p>
+
+<p>American reporters have asked me, with the most
+serious face in the world, whether I worked in the
+morning, afternoon, or evening, and what color paper
+I used (<i>sic</i>). One actually asked me whether it was
+true that M. Jules Claretie used white paper to write
+his novels on, and blue paper for his newspaper articles.
+Not having the honor of a personal acquaintance with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page146" id="page146"></a>146</span>
+the director of the Com�die-Fran�aise, I had to confess
+my inability to gratify my amiable interlocutor.</p>
+
+<p>Look at the advertisements in the newspapers.
+There you have the bootmaker, the hatter, the traveling
+quack, publishing their portraits at the head of
+their advertisements. Why are those portraits there,
+if it be not to satisfy the curiosity of customers?</p>
+
+<p>The mass of personalities, each more trumpery than
+the other, those details of people&rsquo;s private life, and all
+the gossip daily served up in the newspapers, are they
+not proof enough that curiosity is a characteristic trait
+of the American?</p>
+
+<p>This curiosity, which often shows itself in the most
+impossible questions, gives immense amusement to
+Europeans. Unhappily, it amuses them at the expense
+of well-bred Americans&mdash;people who are as innocent
+of it as the members of the stiffest aristocracy in
+the world could be. The English, especially, persist
+in not distinguishing Americans who are gentlemen
+from Americans who are not.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>And even that easy-going American <i>bourgeois</i>, with
+his childish but good-humored nature, they often fail
+to do justice to. They too often look at his curiosity
+as impertinence and ill-breeding, and will not admit
+that, in nine cases out of ten, the freedom he uses
+with you is but a show of good feeling, an act of good-fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>Take, for instance, the following little story:</p>
+
+<p>An American is seated in a railway carriage, and
+opposite him is a lady in deep mourning, and looking a
+picture of sadness; a veritable <i>mater dolorosa</i>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page147" id="page147"></a>147</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lost a father?&rdquo; begins the worthy fellow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A mother, maybe?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! a child then?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir; I have lost my husband.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your husband! Ah! Left you comfortable?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The lady, rather offended, retires to the other end
+of the car, and cuts short the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rather stuck up, this woman,&rdquo; remarks the good
+Yankee to his neighbor.</p>
+
+<p>The intention was good, if the way of showing it
+was not. He had but wanted to show the poor lady
+the interest he took in her.</p>
+
+<p>After having seen you two or three times, the
+American will suppress &ldquo;Mr.&rdquo; and address you by
+your name without any handle to it. Do not say that
+this is ill placed familiarity; it is meant as an act of
+good-fellowship, and should be received by you as
+such.</p>
+
+<p>If you are stiff, proud, and stuck-up, for goodness&rsquo;
+sake, never go to America; you will never get on there.
+On the contrary, take over a stock of simple, affable
+manners and a good temper, and you will be treated
+as a friend everywhere, f�ted, and well looked after.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, try to deserve a certificate of good-fellowship,
+such as the Clover Club, of Philadelphia, awards
+to those who can sit at its hospitable table without
+taking affront at the little railleries leveled at them by
+the members of that lively association. With people
+of refinement who have humor, you can indulge in a
+joke at their expense. So says La Bruy�re. Every
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page148" id="page148"></a>148</span>
+visitor to America, who wants to bring back a pleasant
+recollection of his stay there, should lay this to heart.</p>
+
+<p>Such are the impressions that I formed of the American
+during my first trip to his country, and the more
+I think over the matter, the more sure I am that
+they were correct. Curiosity is his chief little failing,
+and good-fellowship his most prominent quality. This
+is the theme I will develop and send to the Editor of
+the <i>North American Review</i>. I will profit by having a
+couple of days to spend in New York to install myself
+in a cosy corner of that cosiest of clubs, the &ldquo;Players,&rdquo;
+and there write it.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that, in the same number of this magazine,
+the same subject is to be treated by Mr. Andrew Lang.
+He has never seen Jonathan at home, and it will be interesting
+to see what impressions he has formed of him
+abroad. In the hands of such a graceful writer, the
+&ldquo;typical American&rdquo; is sure to be treated in a pleasant
+and interesting manner.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:110px; height:57px" src="images/img161.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption"></p></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page149" id="page149"></a>149</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVI.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">I am Asked to Express Myself Freely on
+America&mdash;I Meet Mrs. Blank and for the
+First Time Hear of Mr. Blank&mdash;Beacon Street
+Society&mdash;The Boston Clubs.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Boston</i>, <i>January</i> 25.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">It</span> amuses me to notice how the Americans to whom
+I have the pleasure of being introduced, refrain
+from asking me what I think of America. But they
+invariably inquire if the impressions of my first visit are
+confirmed.</p>
+
+<p>This afternoon, at an &ldquo;At Home,&rdquo; I met a lady from
+New York, who asked me a most extraordinary question.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have read &lsquo;Jonathan and His Continent,&rsquo;&rdquo; she
+said to me. &ldquo;I suppose that is a book of impressions
+written for publication. But now, tell me <i>en confidence</i>,
+what do you think of us?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is there anything in that book,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;which
+can make you suppose that it is not the faithful expression
+of what the author thinks of America and
+the Americans?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it is so complimentary, taken altogether,
+that I must confess I had a lurking suspicion
+of your having purposely flattered us and indulged our
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page150" id="page150"></a>150</span>
+national weakness for hearing ourselves praised, so as
+to make sure of a warm reception for your book.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;by writing a flattering book
+on any country, you would greatly increase your
+chance of a large sale in that country; but, on the
+other hand, you may write an abusive book on any
+country and score a great success among that nation&rsquo;s
+neighbors. For my part, I have always gone my own
+quiet way, philosophizing rather than opinionating, and
+when I write, it is not with the aim of pleasing any
+particular public. I note down what I see, say what
+I think, and people may read me or not, just as they
+please. But I think I may boast, however, that my
+pen is never bitter, and I do not care to criticise unless
+I feel a certain amount of sympathy with the subject
+of my criticism. If I felt that I could only honestly
+say hard things of people, I would always abstain
+altogether.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said my fair questioner, &ldquo;how is it that you
+have so little to say about our Fifth Avenue folks? Is it
+because you have seen very little of them, or is it because
+you could only have said hard things of them?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On the contrary,&rdquo; I replied; &ldquo;I saw a good deal of
+them, but what I saw showed me that to describe them
+would be only to describe polite society, as it exists in
+London and elsewhere. Society gossip is not in my
+line; boudoir and club smoking-room scandal has no
+charm for me. Fifth Avenue resembles too much
+Mayfair and Belgravia to make criticism of it worth
+attempting.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I knew this answer would have the effect of putting
+me into the lady&rsquo;s good graces at once, and I was not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page151" id="page151"></a>151</span>
+disappointed. She accorded to me her sweetest smile,
+as I bowed to her to go and be introduced to another
+lady by the mistress of the house.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:431px; height:430px" src="images/img164.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">FIFTH AVENUE FOLK.</p></div>
+
+<p>The next lady was a Bostonian. I had to explain to
+her why I had not spoken of Beacon Street people,
+using the same argument as in the case of Fifth Avenue
+society, and with the same success.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>At the same &ldquo;At Home,&rdquo; I had the pleasure of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page152" id="page152"></a>152</span>
+meeting Mrs. Blank, whom I had met many times in
+London and Paris.</p>
+
+<p>She is one of the crowd of pretty and clever women
+whom America sends to brighten up European society,
+and who reappear in London and Paris with the
+regularity of the swallows. You meet them everywhere,
+and conclude that they must be married, since
+they are styled Mrs. and not Miss. But whether they
+are wives, widows, or <i>divorc�es</i>, you rarely think of inquiring,
+and you may enjoy their friendship for years
+without knowing whether they have a living lord or
+not.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:493px; height:370px" src="images/img165.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">A TELEPHONE AND TICKER.</p></div>
+
+<p>Mrs. Blank, as I say, is a most fascinating specimen
+of America&rsquo;s daughters, and to-day I find that Mr.
+Blank is also very much alive, but that the companions
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page153" id="page153"></a>153</span>
+of his joys and sorrows are the telephone and the
+ticker; in fact it is thanks to his devotion to these
+that the wife of his bosom is able to adorn European
+society during every recurring season.</p>
+
+<p>American women have such love for freedom and
+are so cool-headed that their visits to Europe could
+not arouse suspicion even in the most malicious.
+But, nevertheless, I am glad to have heard of Mr.
+Blank, because it is comfortable to have one&rsquo;s mind at
+rest on these subjects. Up to now, whenever I had
+been asked, as sometimes happened, though seldom:
+&ldquo;Who is Mr. Blank, and where is he?&rdquo; I had always
+answered: &ldquo;Last puzzle out!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Lunched to-day in the beautiful Algonquin Club,
+as the guest of Colonel Charles H. Taylor, and met the
+editors of the other Boston papers, among whom was
+John Boyle O&rsquo;Reilly,<a name="FnAnchor_1" id="FnAnchor_1" href="#Footnote_1"><span class="sp">1</span></a> the lovely poet, and the delightful
+man. The general conversation turned on two
+subjects most interesting to me, viz., American journalism,
+and American politics. All these gentlemen
+seemed to agree that the American people take an
+interest in local politics only, but not in imperial
+politics, and this explains why the papers of the
+smaller towns give detailed accounts of what is
+going on in the houses of legislature of both city and
+State, but do not concern themselves about what is
+going on in Washington. I had come to that conclusion
+myself, seeing that the great papers of New York,
+Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago devoted columns to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page154" id="page154"></a>154</span>
+sayings and doings of the political world in London
+and Paris, and seldom a paragraph to the sittings of
+Congress in Washington.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, before lunch, I had called on Mr.
+John Holmes, the editor of the Boston <i>Herald</i>, and
+there met a talented lady who writes under the <i>nom de
+plume</i> of &ldquo;Max Eliot,&rdquo; and with whom I had a delightful
+half-hour&rsquo;s chat.</p>
+
+<p>I have had to-day the pleasure of meeting the editors
+of all the Boston newspapers.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, I dined with the members of the
+New England Club, who meet every month to listen, at
+dessert, to some interesting debate or lecture. The
+wine is supplied by bets. You bet, for instance, that
+the sun will shine on the following Friday at half-past
+two. If you lose, you are one of those who will have
+to supply one, two, or three bottles of champagne at
+the next dinner, and so on. This evening the lecture,
+or rather the short address, was given by Colonel Charles
+H. Taylor on the history of American journalism. I
+was particularly interested to hear the history of the
+foundation of the New York <i>Herald</i>, by James Gordon
+Bennett, and that of the New York <i>World</i>, by Mr.
+Pulitzer, a Hungarian emigrant, who, some years ago,
+arrived in the States, unable to speak English, became
+jack-of-all-trades, then a reporter on a German paper,
+proprietor of a Western paper, and then bought
+the <i>World</i>, which is now one of the best paying concerns
+in the whole of the United States. This man,
+who, to maintain himself, not in health, but just alive,
+is obliged to be constantly traveling, directs the paper
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page155" id="page155"></a>155</span>
+by telegraph from Australia, from Japan, from London,
+or wherever he happens to be. It is nothing short of
+marvelous.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I finished the evening in the St. Botolph Club, and
+I may say that I have to-day spent one of the most
+delightful days of my life, with those charming and
+highly cultured Bostonians, who, a New York witty
+friend of mine declares, &ldquo;are educated beyond their
+intellects.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr class="foot" /><div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1" href="#FnAnchor_1"><span class="fn">1</span></a> J. B. O&rsquo;Reilly died in 1890.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:126px" src="images/img168.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page156" id="page156"></a>156</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">A Lively Sunday in Boston&mdash;Lecture in
+the Boston Theater&mdash;Dr. Oliver Wendell
+Holmes&mdash;The Booth-Modjeska Combination.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Boston</i>, <i>January</i> 26.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">&ldquo;Max Eliot&rdquo;</span> devotes a charming and most
+flattering article to me in this morning&rsquo;s <i>Herald</i>,
+embodying the conversation we had together
+yesterday in the Boston <i>Herald&rsquo;s</i> office. Many thanks,
+Max.</p>
+
+<p>A reception was given to me this afternoon by
+Citizen George Francis Train, and I met many
+artists, journalists, and a galaxy of charming
+women.</p>
+
+<p>The Citizen is pronounced to be the greatest crank
+on earth. I found him decidedly eccentric, but entertaining,
+witty, and a first-rate <i>raconteur</i>. He shakes
+hands with you in the Chinese fashion&mdash;he shakes
+his own. He has taken a solemn oath that his
+body shall never come in contact with the body of
+any one.</p>
+
+<p>A charming programme of music and recitations
+was gone through.</p>
+
+<p>The invitation cards issued for the occasion speak
+for themselves.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page157" id="page157"></a>157</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:458px; height:610px" src="images/img170.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE CITIZEN SHAKES HANDS.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page158" id="page158"></a>158</span> </p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>CITIZEN</p>
+<p style="margin-left: 2em;">GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN&rsquo;S</p>
+<p style="margin-left: 4em;">RECEPTION</p>
+<p style="margin-left: 8em;">To</p>
+<p style="margin-left: 10em;">CITOYEN MAX O&rsquo;RELL.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-right: 50%;">P.S.&mdash;&ldquo;Demons&rdquo; have checkmated
+&ldquo;Psychos&rdquo;! Invitations
+canceled! &ldquo;Hub&rdquo; Boycotts Sunday
+Receptions! Boston half
+century behind New York and
+Europe&rsquo;s Elite Society. (Ancient
+Athens still Ancient!) Regrets
+and Regards! Good-by, Tremont!
+(The Proprietors not to
+blame.)</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><i>Vide</i> some of his &ldquo;Apothegmic Works&rdquo;! (Reviewed in Pulitzer&rsquo;s
+New York <i>World</i> and Cosmos Press!)</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>John Bull et Son Ile! Les Filles de John Bull! Les Chers
+Voisins! L&rsquo;Ami Macdonald! John Bull, Junior! Jonathan et
+Son Continent! L&rsquo;Eloquence Fran�aise! etc.</p>
+
+<p class="center1">YOU ARE INVITED TO MEET</p>
+
+<p class="center1">this distinguished French Traveler, Author, and Lecturer (From
+the land of Lafayette, Rochambeau, and De Grasse),</p>
+
+<p class="center1">AT MY SIXTH &ldquo;POP-CORN RECEPTION&rdquo;!</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><span class="sc">Sunday, January Twenty-Sixth</span>, From 2 to 7 <span class="scs">P. M.</span>
+(Tremont House!)</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><i>Private Banquet Hall!</i>&emsp;&emsp;<i>Fifty &ldquo;Notables&rdquo;!</i></p>
+
+<p>Talent from Dozen Operas and Theaters! All Stars! No
+Airs! No &ldquo;Wall Flowers&rdquo;! No Amens! No Selahs! But
+&ldquo;MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB OF GOOD FELLOWSHIP&rdquo;!
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page159" id="page159"></a>159</span>
+No Boredom! No Formality! (Dress as you like!)
+No Programme! (Pianos! Cellos! Guitars! Mandolins!
+Banjos! Violins! Harmonicas! Zithers!) Opera, Theater
+and Press Represented!</p>
+
+<p>Succeeding Receptions: To Steele Mackaye! Nat Goodwin!
+Count Zubof (St. Petersburg)! Prima Donna Clementina De
+Vere (Italy)! Albany Press Club! (Duly announced printed
+invitations!)</p>
+
+<p class="center1">GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN,</p>
+<p class="rt">Tremont House for Winter!</p>
+
+<p class="noind">Psychic Press thanks for friendly</p>
+<p>notices of Sunday Musicales!</p></div>
+
+<p>It will be seen from the &ldquo;P. S.&rdquo; that the reception
+could not be held at the Tremont House; but the
+plucky Citizen did not allow himself to be beaten, and
+the reception took place at the house of a friend.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>In the evening I lectured in the Boston Theater to
+a beautiful audience.</p>
+
+<p>If there is a horrible fascination about &ldquo;the man
+who won&rsquo;t smile,&rdquo; as I mentioned in a foregoing
+chapter, there is a lovely fascination about the lady
+who seems to enjoy your lecture thoroughly. You
+watch the effects of your remarks on her face, and her
+bright, intellectual eyes keep you in good form the
+whole evening; in fact, you give the lecture to her. I
+perhaps never felt the influence of that face more
+powerfully than to-night. I had spoken for a few
+minutes, when Madame Modjeska, accompanied by
+her husband, arrived and took a seat on the first row
+of the orchestra stalls. To be able to entertain the
+great <i>trag�dienne</i> became my sole aim, and as soon as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page160" id="page160"></a>160</span>
+I perceived that I was successful, I felt perfectly proud
+and happy. I lectured to her the whole evening.
+Her laughter and applause encouraged me, her beautiful,
+intellectual face cheered me up, and I was able to
+introduce a little more acting and by-play than usual.</p>
+
+<p>I had had the pleasure of making Madame Modjeska&rsquo;s
+acquaintance two years ago, during my first
+visit to the United States, and it was a great pleasure
+to be able to renew it after the lecture.</p>
+
+<p>I will go and see her <i>Ophelia</i> to-morrow night.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>January</i> 27.</p>
+
+<p>Spent the whole morning wandering about Boston,
+and visiting a few interesting places. Beacon Street,
+the public gardens, and Commonwealth Avenue are
+among the finest thoroughfares I know. What enormous
+wealth is contained in those miles of huge
+mansions!</p>
+
+<p>The more I see Boston, the more it strikes me as a
+great English city. It has a character of its own, as
+no other American city has, excepting perhaps Washington
+and Philadelphia. The solidity of the buildings,
+the parks, the quietness of the women&rsquo;s dresses,
+the absence of the twang in most of the voices, all
+remind you of England.</p>
+
+<p>After lunch I called on Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes.
+The &ldquo;Autocrat of the Breakfast Table&rdquo; is now over
+eighty, but he is as young as ever, and will die with a
+kind smile on his face and a merry twinkle in his eyes.
+I know no more delightful talker than this delightful
+man. You may say of him that every time he talks
+he says something. When he asked me what it was I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page161" id="page161"></a>161</span>
+had found most interesting in America, I wished I
+could have answered: &ldquo;Why, my dear doctor, to see
+and to hear such a man as you, to be sure!&rdquo; But the
+doctor is so simple, so unaffected, that I felt an answer
+of that kind, though perfectly sincere, would not have
+been one calculated to please him. The articles
+&ldquo;Over the Tea Cups,&rdquo; which he writes every month
+for the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, and which will soon appear
+in book form, are as bright, witty, humorous, and philosophic
+as anything he ever wrote. Long may he
+live to delight his native land!</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>In the evening I went to see Mr. Edwin Booth and
+Madame Modjeska in &ldquo;Hamlet.&rdquo; By far the two
+greatest tragedians of America in Shakespeare&rsquo;s
+greatest tragedy. I expected great things. I had
+seen Mounet-Sully in the part, Henry Irving, Wilson
+Barrett; and I remembered the witty French <i>quatrain</i>,
+published on the occasion of Mounet-Sully attempting
+the part:</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+<p>Sans Fechter ni Rivi�re</p>
+<p>Le cas �tait hasardeux;</p>
+<p>Jamais, non jamais sur terre,</p>
+<p>On n&rsquo;a fait d&rsquo;Hamlet sans eux.</p>
+
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>I had seen Mr. Booth three times before. As
+<i>Brutus</i>, I thought he was excellent. As <i>Richelieu</i> he
+was certainly magnificent; as <i>Iago</i> ideally superb.</p>
+
+<p>His <i>Hamlet</i> was a revelation to me. After seeing
+the raving <i>Hamlet</i> of Mounet-Sully, the somber <i>Hamlet</i>
+of Irving, and the dreamy <i>Hamlet</i> of Wilson Barrett, I
+saw this evening <i>Hamlet</i> the philosopher, the rhetorician.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page162" id="page162"></a>162</span> </p>
+
+<p>Mr. Booth is too old to play <i>Hamlet</i> as he does,
+that is to say, without any attempt at making-up. He
+puts on a black wig, and that is all, absolutely all. It
+is, however, a most remarkable, subtle piece of acting
+in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Modjeska was beautiful as <i>Ophelia</i>. No
+<i>trag�dienne</i> that I have ever seen weeps more naturally.
+In all sad situations she makes the chords of
+one&rsquo;s heart vibrate, and that without any trick or artifice,
+but simply by the modulations of her singularly
+sympathetic voice and such like natural means.</p>
+
+<p>It is very seldom that you can see in America, outside
+of New York, more than one very good actor or
+actress playing together. So you may imagine the
+success of such a combination as Booth-Modjeska.</p>
+
+<p>Every night the theater is packed from floor to ceiling,
+although the prices of admission are doubled.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:130px; height:91px" src="images/img175.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption"></p></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page163" id="page163"></a>163</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XVIII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">St. Johnsbury&mdash;The State of Maine&mdash;New England
+Self-Control&mdash;Cold Climates and Frigid
+Audiences&mdash;Where is the Audience?&mdash;All
+Drunk!&mdash;A Reminiscence of a Scotch Audience
+on a Saturday Night.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>St. Johnsbury (Vt.)</i>, <i>January</i> 28.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">St. Johnsbury</span> is a charming little town perched
+on the top of a mountain, from which a lovely
+scene of hills and woods can be enjoyed. The whole
+country is covered with snow, and as I looked at it in
+the evening by the electric light, the effect was very
+beautiful. The town has only six thousand inhabitants,
+eleven hundred of whom came to hear my lecture
+to-night. Which is the European town of six
+thousand inhabitants that would supply an audience
+of eleven hundred people to a literary <i>causerie</i>?</p>
+
+<p>St. Johnsbury has a dozen churches, a public library
+of 15,000 volumes, with a reading-room beautifully
+fitted with desks and perfectly adapted for study. A
+museum, a Young Men&rsquo;s Christian Association, with
+gymnasium, school-rooms, reading-rooms, play-rooms,
+and a lecture hall capable of accommodating over
+1000 people. Who, after that, would consider himself
+an exile if he had to live in St. Johnsbury? There is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page164" id="page164"></a>164</span>
+more intellectual life in it than in any French town
+outside of Paris and about a dozen more large cities.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Portsea, January</i> 30.</p>
+
+<p>I have been in the State of Maine for two days; a
+strange State to be in, let me tell you.</p>
+
+<p>After addressing the Connecticut audience in Meriden
+a few days ago, I thought I had had the experience
+of the most frigid audience that could possibly
+be gathered together. Last Tuesday night, at Portsea,
+I was undeceived.</p>
+
+<p>Half-way between St. Johnsbury and Portsea, the
+day before yesterday, I was told that the train would
+be very late, and would not arrive at Portsea before
+half-past eight. My lecture in that city was to begin
+at eight. The only thing to do was to send a telegram
+to the manager of the lecture. At the next station I
+sent the following:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Train late. If possible, keep audience waiting
+half an hour. Will dress on board.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I dressed in the state-room of the parlor-car. At
+forty minutes past eight the train arrived at Portsea.
+I immediately jumped into a cab and drove to the
+City Hall, where the lecture was to take place. The
+building was lighted, but, as I ascended the stairs,
+there was not a person to be seen or a sound to be
+heard. &ldquo;The place is deserted,&rdquo; I thought; &ldquo;and if
+anybody came to hear me, they have all gone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I opened the door of the private room behind the
+platform and there found the manager, who expressed
+his delight to see me. I excused myself, and was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page165" id="page165"></a>165</span>
+going to enter into a
+detailed explanation
+when he interrupted:</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 250px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:198px; height:500px" src="images/img178.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">I TIP-TOED OUT.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s all right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you
+mean?&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Have
+you got an audience
+there, on the other side
+of that door?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, we have got
+fifteen hundred people.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There?&rdquo; said I,
+pointing to the door.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, on the other
+side of that door.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I can&rsquo;t hear a
+sound.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I guess you can&rsquo;t.
+But that&rsquo;s all right;
+they are there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; I said,
+&ldquo;I had better apologize
+to them for keeping
+them waiting three-quarters
+of an hour.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, just as you
+please,&rdquo; said the manager.
+&ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No; I guess they
+would have waited another half-hour without showing
+any sign of impatience.&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page166" id="page166"></a>166</span> </p>
+
+<p>I opened the door trembling. My desk was far, far
+away. My manager was right; the audience was there.
+I stepped on the platform, shut the door after me,
+making as little noise as I could, and, walking on tiptoe
+so as to wake up as few people as possible, proceeded
+toward the table. Not one person applauded. A few
+people looked up unconcernedly, as if to say, &ldquo;I guess
+that&rsquo;s the show.&rdquo; The rest seemed asleep, although
+their eyes were open.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the desk, I faced the audience, and ventured
+a little joke, which fell dead flat.</p>
+
+<p>I began to realize the treat that was in store for me
+that night.</p>
+
+<p>I tried another little joke, and&mdash;missed fire.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never mind, old fellow,&rdquo; I said to myself; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s
+two hundred and fifty dollars; go ahead.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And I went on.</p>
+
+<p>I saw a few people smile, but not one laughed, although
+I noticed that a good many were holding their
+handkerchiefs over their mouths, probably to stifle any
+attempt at such a frivolous thing as laughter. The
+eyes of the audience, which I always watch, showed
+signs of interest, and nobody left the hall until the
+conclusion of the lecture. When I had finished, I
+made a small bow, when certainly fifty people
+applauded. I imagined they were glad it was all over.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I said to the manager, when I had returned
+to the little back room, &ldquo;I suppose we must call this a
+failure.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A failure!&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s nothing of the sort. Why,
+I have never seen them so enthusiastic in my life!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I went to the hotel, and tried to forget the audience
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page167" id="page167"></a>167</span>
+I had just had by recalling to my mind a joyous evening
+in Scotland. This happened about a year ago, in
+a mining town in the neighborhood of Glasgow, where
+I had been invited to lecture, on a Saturday night, to
+the members of a popular&mdash;very popular&mdash;Institute.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:518px; height:430px" src="images/img180.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">I AM ESCORTED TO THE HALL.</p></div>
+
+<p>I arrived at the station from Glasgow at half-past
+seven, and there found the secretary and the treasurer of
+the Institute, who had been kind enough to come and
+meet me. We shook hands. They gave me a few
+words of welcome. I thought my friends looked a
+little bit queer. They proposed that we should walk to
+the lecture hall. The secretary took my right arm, the
+treasurer took my left, and, abreast, the three of us
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page168" id="page168"></a>168</span>
+proceeded toward the hall. They did not take me to
+that place; <i>I</i> took them, holding them fast all the way&mdash;the
+treasurer especially.</p>
+
+<p>We arrived in good time, although we stopped once
+for light refreshment. At eight punctually, I entered
+the hall, preceded by the president, and followed by
+the members of the committee. The president introduced
+me in a most queer, incoherent speech. I rose,
+and was vociferously cheered. When silence was restored,
+I said in a calm, almost solemn manner: &ldquo;Ladies
+and Gentlemen.&rdquo; This was the signal for more cheering
+and whistling. In France whistling means hissing,
+and I began to feel uneasy, but soon I bore in mind
+that whistling, in the North of Great Britain, was used
+to express the highest pitch of enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>So I went on.</p>
+
+<p>The audience laughed at everything I said, and even
+before I said it. I had never addressed such keen
+people. They seemed so anxious to laugh and cheer
+in the right place that they laughed and cheered all
+the time&mdash;so much so that in an hour and twenty
+minutes, I had only got through half my lecture, which
+I had to bring to a speedy conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>The president rose and proposed a vote of thanks in
+another most queer speech, which was a new occasion
+for cheering.</p>
+
+<p>When we had retired in the committee room, I said
+to the secretary: &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with the president?
+Is he quite right?&rdquo; I added, touching my
+forehead.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said the secretary, striking his chest as
+proudly as possible, &ldquo;he is drunk&mdash;and so am I.&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page169" id="page169"></a>169</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:412px; height:610px" src="images/img182.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;HE&rsquo;S DRUNK, AND SO AM I.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page170" id="page170"></a>170</span> </p>
+
+<p>The explanation of the whole strange evening
+dawned upon me. Of course they were drunk, and
+so was the audience.</p>
+
+<p>That night, I believe I was the only sober person on
+the premises.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday, I had an interesting chat with a native of
+the State of Maine on the subject of my lecture at
+Portsea.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are perfectly wrong,&rdquo; he said to me, &ldquo;in supposing
+that your lecture was not appreciated. I was
+present, and I can assure you that the attentive silence
+in which they listened to you from beginning to end is
+the proof that they appreciated you. You would also
+be wrong in supposing that they do not appreciate
+humor. On the contrary, they are very keen of it,
+and I believe that the old New Englander was the
+father of American humor, through the solemn
+manner in which he told comic things, and the
+comic manner in which he told the most serious
+ones. Yes, they are keen of humor, and their apparent
+want of appreciation is only due to reserve,
+to self-control.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And, as an illustration of it, my friend told me the
+following anecdote which, I have no doubt, a good
+many Americans have heard before:</p>
+
+<p>Mark Twain had lectured to a Maine audience without
+raising a single laugh in his listeners, when, at the
+close, he was thanked by a gentleman who came to
+him in the green-room, to tell him how hugely every
+one had enjoyed his amusing stories. When the lecturer
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page171" id="page171"></a>171</span>
+expressed his surprise at this announcement,
+as the audience had not laughed, the gentleman
+added:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, we never were so amused in our lives, and if
+you had gone on five minutes more, upon my word
+I don&rsquo;t think we could have held out any longer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Such is New England self-control.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:110px; height:124px" src="images/img184.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page172" id="page172"></a>172</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XIX.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">A Lovely Ride to Canada&mdash;Quebec, a Corner
+of Old France Strayed up and Lost in the
+Snow&mdash;The French Canadians&mdash;The Parties
+in Canada&mdash;Will the Canadians Become Yankees?</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Montreal</i>, <i>February</i> 1.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">The</span> ride from the State of Maine to Montreal is
+very picturesque, even in the winter. It offers
+you four or five hours of Alpine scenery through the
+American Switzerland. The White Mountains, commanded
+by Mount Washington, are, for a distance of
+about forty miles, as wild and imposing as anything
+the real Switzerland can supply the tourist. Gorges,
+precipices, torrents, nothing is wanting.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly the whole time we journeyed across pine
+forests, coming, now and then, across saw mills, and
+little towns looking like bee-hives of activity. Now
+there was an opening, and frozen rivers, covered with
+snow, formed, with the fields, a huge uniform mass of
+dazzling whiteness. The effect, under a pure blue sky
+and in a perfectly clear atmosphere, was very beautiful.
+Now the country became hilly again. On the slopes,
+right down to the bottom of the valley, we saw Berlin
+Falls, bathing its feet in the river. The yellow houses
+with their red roofs and gables, rest the eyes from that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page173" id="page173"></a>173</span>
+long stretch of blue and white. How beautiful this
+town and its surroundings must be in the fall, when
+Dame Nature in America puts on her cloak of gold
+and scarlet! All the country on the line we traveled
+is engaged in the lumber trade.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 280px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:226px; height:310px" src="images/img186.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">THE AMIABLE CONDUCTOR.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>For once I had an amiable conductor in the parlor
+car; even more than
+amiable&mdash;quite friendly
+and familiar. He put
+his arms on my shoulders
+and got quite patronizing.
+I did not
+mind that a bit. I hate
+anonymous landscapes,
+and he explained and
+named everything to
+me. My innocence of
+American things in
+general touched him.
+He was a great treat
+after those &ldquo;ill-licked
+bears&rdquo; that you so
+often come across in
+the American cars. He went further than that: he
+kindly recommended me to the Canadian custom-house
+officers, when we arrived at the frontier, and
+the examination of my trunk and valise did not last
+half a minute.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether, the long journey passed rapidly and
+agreeably. We were only two people in the parlor
+car, and my traveling companion proved a very pleasant
+man. First, I did not care for the look of him.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page174" id="page174"></a>174</span>
+He had a new silk hat on, a multicolored satin cravat
+with a huge diamond pin fixed in it; a waistcoat covered
+with silk embroidery work, green, blue, and pink;
+a coat with silk facings, patent-leather boots. Altogether,
+he was rather dressed for a garden party (in
+more than doubtful taste) than for a fifteen hours&rsquo; railway
+journey. But in America the cars are so luxurious
+and kept so warm that traveling dresses are not known
+in the country. Ulsters, cloaks, rugs, garments made
+of tweed and rough materials, all these things are unnecessary
+and therefore unknown. I soon found out,
+however, that this quaintly got-up man was interesting
+to speak to. He knew every bit of the country we
+passed, and, being easily drawn out, he poured into my
+ears information that was as rapid as it was valuable. He
+was well read and had been to Europe several times.
+He spoke of France with great enthusiasm, which enrolled
+my sympathy, and he had enjoyed my lecture,
+which, you may imagine, secured for his intelligence
+and his good taste my boundless admiration. When
+we arrived at Montreal, we were a pair of friends.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I begin my Canadian tour here on Monday and then
+shall go West. I was in Quebec two years ago; but
+the dear old place is not on my list this time. No
+words could express my regret. I shall never forget
+my feelings on landing under the great cliff on which
+stands the citadel, and on driving, bumped along in a
+sleigh over the half-thawed snow, in the street that
+lies under the fortress, and on through the other quaint
+winding steep streets, and again under the majestic
+archways to the upper town, where I was set down at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page175" id="page175"></a>175</span>
+the door of the Florence, a quiet, delightful little hotel
+that the visitor to Quebec should not fail to stop at, if
+he like home comforts and care to enjoy magnificent
+scenery from his window. It seemed as though I was
+in France, in my dear old Brittany. It looked like St.
+Malo strayed up here and lost in the snow. The illusion
+became complete when I saw the gray houses,
+heard the people talk with the Breton intonation, and
+saw over the shops Langlois, Maillard, Clouet, and all
+the names familiar to my childhood. But why say
+&ldquo;illusion&rdquo;? It was a fact: I was in France. These
+folks have given their faith to England, but, as the
+Canadian poet says, they have kept their hearts for
+France. Not only their hearts, but their manners and
+their language. Oh, there was such pleasure in it all!
+The lovely weather, the beautiful scenery, the kind welcome
+given to me, the delight of seeing these children
+of Old France, more than three thousand miles from
+home, happy and thriving&mdash;a feast for the eyes, a feast
+for the heart. And the drive to Montmorency Falls
+in the sleigh, gliding smoothly along on the hard snow!
+And the sleighs laden with wood for the Quebec folks,
+the carmen stimulating their horses with a <i>hue l�</i> or <i>hue
+donc</i>! And the return to the Florence, where a good
+dinner served in a private room awaited us! And that
+polite, quiet, attentive French girl who waited on us,
+the antipodes of the young Yankee lady who makes
+you sorry that breakfasting and dining are necessary,
+in some American hotels, and whose waiting is like
+taking sand and vinegar with your food!</p>
+
+<p>The mere spanking along through the cold, brisk
+air, when you are well muffled in furs is exhilarating,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page176" id="page176"></a>176</span>
+especially when the sun is shining in a cloudless blue
+sky. The beautiful scenery at Quebec was, besides, a
+feast for eyes tired with the monotonous flatness of
+America. The old city is on a perfect mountain, and
+as we came bumping down its side in our sleigh over
+the roads which were there in a perfect state of sherbet,
+there was a lovely picture spread out in front of
+us. In the distance the bluest mountains I ever saw
+(to paint them one must use pure cobalt); away to the
+right the frozen St. Lawrence and the Isle of Orl�ans,
+all snow-covered, of course, but yet distinguishable
+from the farm lands of Jacques Bonhomme, whose
+cosy, clean cottages we soon began to pass. The long,
+ribbon-like strips of farm were indicated by the tops of
+the fences peeping through the snow, and told us of
+French thrift and prosperity.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:339px; height:320px" src="images/img189.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;THAT QUIET, ATTENTIVE FRENCH GIRL.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page177" id="page177"></a>177</span> </p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was all delightful. When I left Quebec I felt
+as much regret as I do every time that I leave my little
+native town.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I have been told that the works of Voltaire are prohibited
+in Quebec, not so much because they are irreligious
+as because they were written by a man who,
+after the loss of Quebec to the French Crown, exclaimed:
+&ldquo;Let us not be concerned about the loss of
+a few acres of snow.&rdquo; The memory of Voltaire is
+execrated, and for having made a flattering reference
+to him on the platform in Montreal two years ago, I
+was near being &ldquo;boycotted&rdquo; by the French population.</p>
+
+<p>The French Canadians take very little interest in
+politics&mdash;I mean in outside politics. They are steady,
+industrious, saving, peaceful, and so long as the English
+leave them alone, in the safe enjoyment of their
+belongings, they will not give them cause for any
+anxiety. Among the French Canadians there is no
+desire for annexation to the United States. Indeed,
+during the War of Independence, Canada was saved to
+the English Crown by the French Canadians, not because
+the latter loved the English, but because they
+hated the Yankees. When Lafayette took it for
+granted that the French Canadians would rally round
+his flag, he made a great mistake; they would have, if
+compelled to fight, used their bullets against the
+Americans. If they had their own way, the French in
+Canada would set up a little country of their own
+under the rule of the Catholic Church, a little corner
+of France two hundred years old.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page178" id="page178"></a>178</span> </p>
+
+<p>The education of the lower classes is at a very low
+stage; thirty per cent. of the children of school age in
+Quebec do not attend school. The English dare not
+introduce gratuitous and compulsory education. They
+have an understanding with the Catholic Church,
+which insists upon exercising entire control over public
+education. The Quebec schools are little more than
+branches of the confessional box. The English shut
+their eyes, for part of the understanding with the
+Church is that the latter will keep loyalty to the English
+Crown alive among her submissive flock.</p>
+
+<p>The tyranny exercised by the Catholic Church may
+easily be imagined from the following newspaper extract:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>A well-to-do butcher of Montreal attended the Catholic Church
+at Ile Perrault last Sunday. He was suffering at the time with
+acute cramps, and when that part of the service arrived during
+which the congregation kneel, he found himself unable to do more
+than assume a reclining devotional position, with one knee on the
+floor. His action was noticed, and the church-warden, in concert
+with others, had him brought before the court charged with an act
+of irreverence, and he was fined $8 and costs.</p></div>
+
+<p>Such a judgment does not only expose the tyranny
+of the Catholic Church, but the complicity of the
+English, who uphold Romanism in the Province of
+Quebec as they uphold Buddhism in India, so as not
+to endanger the security of their possessions.</p>
+
+<p>The French Canadians are multiplying so rapidly
+that in a very few years the Province of Quebec will
+be as French as the town of Quebec itself. Every day
+they push their advance from east to west. They
+generally marry very young. When a lad is seen in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page179" id="page179"></a>179</span>
+the company of a girl, he is asked by the priest if he is
+courting that girl. In which case he is bidden to go
+straightway to the altar, and these young couples rear
+families of twelve and fifteen children, none of whom
+leave the country. The English have to make room
+for them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:359px; height:430px" src="images/img192.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PRIEST.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page180" id="page180"></a>180</span></p>
+
+<p>The average attendance in Catholic churches on
+Sundays in Montreal is 111,483; in the sixty churches
+that belong to the different Protestant denominations,
+the average attendance is 34,428. The former number
+has been steadily increasing, the latter steadily decreasing.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>What is the future reserved to French Canada, and
+indeed to the whole Dominion?</p>
+
+<p>There are only two political parties, Liberals and
+Conservatives, but I find the population divided into
+four camps: Those in favor of Canada, an independent
+nation; those in favor of the political union of
+Canada and the United States; those in favor of Canada
+going into Imperial Federation, and those in favor
+of Canada remaining an English colony, or in other
+words, in favor of the actual state of things.</p>
+
+<p>Of course the French Canadians are dead against
+going into Imperial Federation, which would simply
+crush them, and Canadian &ldquo;society&rdquo; is in favor of remaining
+English. The other Canadians seem pretty
+equally divided.</p>
+
+<p>It must be said that the annexation idea has been
+making rapid progress of late years, among prominent
+men as well as among the people. The Americans
+will never fire one shot to have the idea realized. If
+ever the union becomes an accomplished fact, it will become
+so with the assent of all parties. The task will
+be made easy through Canada and the United States
+having the same legislature. The local and provincial
+governments are the same in the Canadian towns and
+provinces as they are in the American towns and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page181" id="page181"></a>181</span>
+States&mdash;a House of Representatives, a Senate, and a
+Governor, with this difference, this great difference,
+to the present advantage of Canada: whereas every
+four years the Americans elect a new master, who appoints
+a ministry responsible to himself alone, the
+Canadians have a ministry responsible to their parliament,
+that is, to themselves. The representation of
+the American people at Washington is democratic, but
+the government is autocratic. In Canada, both legislature
+and executive are democratic, as in England,
+that greatest and truest of all democracies.</p>
+
+<p>The change in Canada would have to be made on
+the American plan.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of Quebec and parts of Montreal,
+Canada is built like America; the country has
+the same aspect, the currency is the same. Suppress
+the Governor-General in Ottawa, who is there to remind
+Canada that she is a dependency of the English
+Crown, strew the country with more cuspidores, and
+you have part of Jonathan&rsquo;s big farm.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:27px" src="images/img194.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page182" id="page182"></a>182</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XX.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Montreal&mdash;The City&mdash;Mount Royal&mdash;Canadian
+Sports&mdash;Ottawa&mdash;The Government&mdash;Rideau
+Hall.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Montreal</i>, <i>February</i> 2.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Montreal</span> is a large and well-built city, containing
+many buildings of importance, mostly
+churches, of which about thirty are Roman Catholic,
+and over sixty are devoted to Protestant worship, in
+all its branches and variations, from the Anglican
+church to the Salvation Army.</p>
+
+<p>I arrived at a station situated on a level with the
+St. Lawrence River. From it, we mounted in an omnibus
+up, up, up, through narrow streets full of shops
+with Breton or Norman names over them, as in Quebec;
+on through broader ones, where the shops grew
+larger and the names became more frequently English;
+on, on, till I thought Montreal had no end, and, at last
+alighted on a great square, and found myself at the
+door of the Windsor Hotel, an enormous and fine
+construction, which has proved the most comfortable,
+and, in every respect the best hotel I have yet stopped
+at on the great American continent. It is about a
+quarter of a mile from my bedroom to the dining-hall,
+which could, I believe, accommodate nearly a thousand
+guests.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 300px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:246px; height:240px" src="images/img196.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">THE OLD GENTLEMAN AND THE
+TOBOGGAN SLIDE.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>My first visit was to an afternoon &ldquo;At Home,&rdquo; given
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page183" id="page183"></a>183</span>
+by the St. George&rsquo;s Club, who have a club-house high
+up on Mount Royal. It was a ladies&rsquo; day, and there was
+music, dancing, etc. We went in a sleigh up the very
+steep hill, much to my astonishment. I should have
+thought the thing practically impossible. On our way
+we passed a toboggan slide down the side of Mount
+Royal. It took my breath away to think of coming
+down it at the rate
+of over a mile a minute.
+The view from
+the club-house was
+splendid, taking in a
+great sweep of snow-covered
+country, the
+city and the frozen
+St. Lawrence. There
+are daily races on the
+river, and last year
+they ran tram-cars
+on it.</p>
+
+<p>It was odd to hear
+the phrase, &ldquo;after the flood.&rdquo; When I came to
+inquire into it, I learned that when the St. Lawrence
+ice breaks up, the lower city is flooded, and this is
+yearly spoken of as &ldquo;the flood.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I drove back from the club with my manager and
+two English gentlemen, who are here on a visit. As
+we passed the toboggan slide, my manager told me of
+an old gentleman over sixty, who delights in those
+breathless passages down the side of Mount Royal.
+One may see him out there &ldquo;at it,&rdquo; as early as ten in
+the morning. Plenty of people, however, try one ride
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page184" id="page184"></a>184</span>
+and never ask for another. One gentleman my manager
+told me of, after having tried it, expressed pretty
+well the feelings of many others. He said, &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t
+do it again for two thousand dollars, but I wouldn&rsquo;t
+have missed it for three.&rdquo; I asked one of the two Englishmen
+who accompanied us, whether he had had a
+try. He was a
+quiet, solemn,
+middle-aged Englishman.
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo;
+he said, &ldquo;yes, I
+have. It had to
+be done, and I
+did it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 320px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:267px; height:350px" src="images/img197.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">A SNOWSHOER.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Last night I was
+most interested in
+watching the members
+of the Snowshoe
+Club start
+from the Windsor,
+on a kind of a
+picnic over the
+country. Their
+costumes were
+very picturesque;
+a short tunic of woolen material fastened round the
+waist by a belt, a sort of woolen nightcap, with tassel
+falling on the shoulder, thick woolen stockings, and
+knickerbockers.</p>
+
+<p>In Russia and the northern parts of the United States,
+the people say: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s too cold to go out.&rdquo; In Canada,
+they say: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very cold, let&rsquo;s all go out.&rdquo; Only rain
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page185" id="page185"></a>185</span>
+keeps them indoors. In the coldest weather, with a temperature
+of many degrees below zero, you have great
+difficulty in finding a closed carriage. All, or nearly
+all, are open sleighs. The driver wraps you up in
+furs, and as you go, gliding on the snow, your face is
+whipped by the cold air, you feel glowing all over
+with warmth, and altogether the sensation is delightful.</p>
+
+<p>This morning, Joseph Howarth, the talented American
+actor, breakfasted with me and a few friends.
+Last night, I went to see him play in Steele Mackaye&rsquo;s
+&ldquo;Paul Kauvar.&rdquo; Canada has no actors worth mentioning,
+and the people here depend on American artists
+for all their entertainments. It is wonderful how the
+feeling of independence engenders and develops the
+activity of the mind in a country. Art and literature
+want a home of their own, and do not flourish in
+other people&rsquo;s houses. Canada has produced nothing
+in literature: the only two poets she can boast are
+French, Louis Fr�chette and Octave Cr�mazie. It is
+not because Canada has no time for brain productions.
+America is just as busy as she is, felling forests and
+reclaiming the land; but free America, only a hundred
+years old as a nation, possesses already a list of historians,
+novelists, poets, and essayists, that would do
+honor to any nation in the world.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>February</i> 4.</p>
+
+<p>I had capital houses in the Queen&rsquo;s Hall last night
+and to-night.</p>
+
+<p>The Canadian audiences are more demonstrative
+than the American ones, and certainly quite as keen
+and appreciative. When you arrive on the platform
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page186" id="page186"></a>186</span>
+they are glad to see you, and they let you know it; a
+fact which in America, in New England especially,
+you have to find out for yourself.</p>
+
+<p>Montreal possesses a very wealthy and fashionable
+community, and what strikes me most, coming as I do
+from the United States, is the stylish simplicity of the
+women. I am told that Canadian women in their
+tastes and ways have always been far more English
+than American, and that the fashions have grown
+more and more simple since Princess Louise gave the
+example of always dressing quietly when occupying
+Rideau Hall in Ottawa.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Ottawa</i>, <i>February</i> 5.</p>
+
+<p>One of the finest sights I have yet seen in this
+country was from the bridge on my way from the
+station to the Russell this morning. On the right the
+waterfalls, on the left, on the top of a high and almost
+perpendicular rock, the Houses of Parliament, a grand
+pile of buildings in gray stone, standing out clear
+against a cloudless, intense blue sky. The Russell is
+one of those huge babylonian hotels so common on
+the American continent, where unfortunately the
+cookery is not on a level with the architectural pretensions;
+but most of the leading Canadian politicians are
+boarding here while Parliament is sitting, and I am
+interested to see them.</p>
+
+<p>After visiting the beautiful library and other parts
+of the government buildings, I had the good luck to
+hear, in the House of Representatives, a debate between
+Mr. Chapleau, a minister and one of the leaders
+of the Conservatives now in office, and Mr. Laurier,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page187" id="page187"></a>187</span>
+one of the chiefs of the Opposition. Both gentlemen
+are French. It was a fight between a tribune and a
+scholar; between a short, thickset, long-maned lion,
+and a tall, slender, delicate fox.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:473px; height:360px" src="images/img200.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;THE RADIANT, LOVELY CANADIENNE.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>After lunch, I went to Rideau Hall, the residence of
+the Governor-General, Lord Stanley of Preston. The
+executive mansion stands in a pretty park well wooded
+with firs, a mile out of the town. His Excellency was
+out, but his aid-de-camp, to whom I had a letter of
+introduction, most kindly showed me over the place.
+Nothing can be more simple and unpretentious than
+the interior of Rideau Hall. It is furnished like any
+comfortable little provincial hotel patronized by the
+gentry of the neighborhood. The panels of the drawing-room
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page188" id="page188"></a>188</span>
+were painted by Princess Louise, when she
+occupied the house with the Marquis of Lorne some
+eight or ten years ago. This is the only touch of
+luxury about the place. In the time of Lord Dufferin,
+a ball-room and a tennis court were added to the building,
+and these are among the many souvenirs of his
+popular rule. As a diplomatist, as a viceroy, and as
+an ambassador, history will one day record that this
+noble son of Erin never made a mistake.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, I lectured in the Opera House to a
+large audience.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Kingston</i>, <i>February</i> 6.</p>
+
+<p>This morning, at the Russell, I was called at the
+telephone. It was His Excellency, who was asking me
+to lunch at Rideau Hall. I felt sorry to be obliged to
+leave Ottawa, and thus forego so tempting an invitation.</p>
+
+<p>Kingston is a pretty little town on the border of
+Lake Ontario, possessing a university, a penitentiary,
+and a lunatic asylum, in neither of which I made my
+appearance to-night. But as soon as I had started
+speaking on the platform of the Town Hall, I began to
+think the doors of the lunatic asylum had been carelessly
+left open that night, for close under the window
+behind the platform, there began a noise which was
+like Bedlam let loose. Bedlam with trumpets and
+other instruments of torture. It was impossible to go
+on with the lecture, so I stopped. On inquiry, the
+unearthly din was found to proceed from a detachment
+of the Salvation Army outside the building. After
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page189" id="page189"></a>189</span>
+some parleying, they consented to move on and storm
+some other citadel.</p>
+
+<p>But it was a stormy evening, and peace was not yet.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:379px; height:470px" src="images/img202.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">A SALVATIONIST.</p></div>
+
+<p>As soon as I had fairly restarted, a person in the
+audience began to show signs of disapproval, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page190" id="page190"></a>190</span>
+twice or thrice he gave vent to his disapproval rather
+loudly.</p>
+
+<p>I was not surprised to learn, at the close of the evening,
+that this individual had come in with a free pass.
+He had been admitted on the strength of his being announced
+to give a &ldquo;show&rdquo; of some sort himself a week
+later in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>If a man is inattentive or creates a disturbance at
+any performance, you may take it for granted that his
+ticket was given to him.  He never paid for it.</p>
+
+<p>To-morrow I go to Toronto, where I am to give two
+lectures. I had not time to see that city properly on
+my last visit to Canada, and all my friends prophesy
+that I shall have a good time.</p>
+
+<p>So does the advance booking, I understand.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:111px" src="images/img203.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page191" id="page191"></a>191</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXI.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Toronto&mdash;The City&mdash;The Ladies&mdash;The Sports&mdash;Strange
+Contrasts&mdash;The Canadian Schools.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Toronto</i>, <i>February</i> 9.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Have</span> passed three very pleasant days in this city,
+and had two beautiful audiences in the Pavilion.</p>
+
+<p>Toronto is a thoroughly American city in appearance,
+but only in appearance, for I find the inhabitants
+British in heart, in tastes, and habits. When I say
+that it is an American city, I mean to say that Toronto
+is a large area, covered with blocks of parallelograms
+and dirty streets, overspread with tangles of telegraph
+and telephone wires. The hotels are perfectly American
+in every respect.</p>
+
+<p>The suburbs are exceedingly pretty. Here once
+more are fine villas standing in large gardens, a sight
+rarely seen near an American city. It reminds me of
+England. I admire many buildings, the University<a name="FnAnchor_2" id="FnAnchor_2" href="#Footnote_2"><span class="sp">2</span></a>
+especially.</p>
+
+<p>English-looking, too, are the rosy faces of the Toronto
+ladies whom I passed in my drive. How charming
+they are with the peach-like bloom that their outdoor
+exercise gives them!</p>
+
+<p>I should like to be able to describe, as it deserves,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page192" id="page192"></a>192</span>
+the sight of these Canadian women in their sleighs, as
+the horses fly along with bells merrily jingling, the
+coachman in his curly black dogskin and huge busby
+on his head. Furs float over the back of the sleigh,
+and, in it, muffled up to the chin in sumptuous skins
+and also capped in furs, sits the radiant, lovely Canadienne,
+the milk and roses of her complexion enhanced
+by the proximity of the dark furs. As they skim past
+over the white snow, under a glorious sunlit blue sky,
+I can call to mind no prettier sight, no more beautiful
+picture, to be seen on this huge continent, so far as I
+have got yet.</p>
+
+<p>One cannot help being struck, on coming here from
+the United States, at the number of lady pedestrians
+in the streets. They are not merely shopping, I am
+assured, nor going straight from one point to another
+of the town, but taking their constitutional walks in
+true English fashion. My impresario took me in the
+afternoon to a club for ladies and gentlemen, and
+there I had the, to me, novel sight of a game of hockey.
+On a large frozen pond there was a party of young
+people engaged in this graceful and invigorating game,
+and not far off was a group of little girls and boys imitating
+their elders very sensibly and, as it seemed to
+me, successfully. The clear, healthy complexion of
+the Canadian women is easy to account for, when one
+sees how deep-rooted, even after transplantation, is the
+good British love of exercise in the open air.</p>
+
+<p>Last evening I was taken to a ball, and was able to
+see more of the Canadian ladies than is possible in
+furs, and on further acquaintance I found them as delightful
+in manners as in appearance; English in their
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page193" id="page193"></a>193</span>
+coloring and in their simplicity of dress, American in
+their natural bearing and in their frankness of speech.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:265px; height:430px" src="images/img206.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">A HOCKEY PLAYER.</p></div>
+
+<p>Churches, churches, everywhere. In my drive this
+afternoon, I counted twenty-eight in a quarter of an
+hour. They are of all denominations, Catholic, Anglican,
+Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, etc., etc. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page194" id="page194"></a>194</span>
+Canadians must be still more religious&mdash;I mean still
+more church-going&mdash;than the English.</p>
+
+<p>From seven in the evening on Saturday, all the taverns
+are closed, and remain closed throughout Sunday.
+In England the Bible has to compete with the gin
+bottle, but here the Bible has all its own way on Sundays.
+Neither tram-car, omnibus, cab, nor hired carriage
+of any description is to be seen abroad. Scotland
+itself is outdone completely; the land of John Knox
+has to take a back seat.</p>
+
+<p>The walls of this city of churches and chapels are at
+the present moment covered with huge coarse posters
+announcing in loud colors the arrival of a company of
+performing women. Of these posters, one represents
+Cleopatra in a bark drawn through the water by
+nude female slaves. Another shows a cavalcade of
+women dressed in little more than a fig-leaf. Yet another
+represents the booking-office of the theater
+stormed by a crowd of <i>blas�</i>-looking, single eye-glassed
+old <i>beaux</i>, grinning with pleasure in anticipation of
+the show within. Another poster displays the charms
+of the proprietress of the undertaking. You must
+not, however, imagine any harm of the performers
+whose attractions are so liberally placarded. They
+are taken to their cars in the depot immediately
+after the performance and locked up; there is an
+announcement to that effect. These placards are
+merely eye-ticklers. But this mixture of churches,
+strict sabbatarianism, and posters of this kind, is
+part of the eternal history of the Anglo-Saxon race&mdash;violent
+contrast.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page195" id="page195"></a>195</span> </p>
+
+<p>A school inspector has kindly shown me several
+schools in the town.</p>
+
+<p>The children of rich and poor alike are educated
+together in the public schools, from which they get
+promoted to the high schools. All these schools are
+free. Boys and girls sit on the same benches and receive
+the same education, as in the United States.
+This enables the women in the New World to compete
+with men for all the posts that we Europeans
+consider the monopoly of man; it also enables them
+to enjoy all the intellectual pleasures of life. If it
+does not prevent them, as it has yet to be proved
+that it does, from being good wives and mothers, the
+educational system of the New World is much superior
+to the European one. It is essentially democratic.
+Europe will have to adopt it.</p>
+
+<p>Society in the Old World will not stand long on its
+present basis. There will always be rich and poor, but
+every child that is born will require to be given a
+chance, and, according as he avails himself of it or
+not, will be successful or a failure. But give him a
+chance, and the greatest and most real grievance of
+mankind in the present day will be removed.</p>
+
+<p>Every child that is born in America, whether in the
+United States or in Canada, has that chance.</p>
+
+<hr class="foot" /><div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2" href="#FnAnchor_2"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Destroyed by fire three days after I left Toronto.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:24px" src="images/img208.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page196" id="page196"></a>196</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">West Canada&mdash;Relations between British and
+Indians&mdash;Return to the United States&mdash;Difficulties
+in the Way&mdash;Encounter with
+an American Custom-House Officer.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>In the train from Canada to Chicago</i>, <i>February</i> 15.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Lectured</span> in Bowmanville, Ont., on the 12th,
+in Brantford on the 13th, and in Sarnia on the
+14th, and am now on my way to Chicago, to go from
+there to Wisconsin and Minnesota.</p>
+
+<p>From Brantford I drove to the Indian Reservation,
+a few miles from the town. This visit explained to
+me why the English are so successful with their
+colonies: they have inborn in them the instinct of
+diplomacy and government.</p>
+
+<p>Whereas the Americans often swindle, starve, and
+shoot the Indians, the English keep them in comfort.
+England makes paupers and lazy drunkards of them,
+and they quietly and gradually disappear. She supplies
+them with bread, food, Bibles, and fire-water,
+and they become so lazy that they will not even
+take the trouble to sow the land of their reservations.
+Having a dinner supplied to them, they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page197" id="page197"></a>197</span>
+give up hunting, riding, and all their native sports,
+and become enervated. They go to school and die
+of attacks of civilization. England gives them
+money to celebrate their national f�tes and rejoicings,
+and the good Indians shout at the top of
+their voices, <i>God save the Queen!</i> that is&mdash;<i>God save
+our pensions!</i></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:508px; height:400px" src="images/img210.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE BRITISH INDIAN.</p></div>
+
+<p>England, or Great Britain, or again, if you prefer,
+Greater Britain, goes further than that. In Brantford,
+in the middle of a large square, you can see the statue
+of the Indian chief Brant, erected to his memory by
+public subscriptions collected among the British
+Canadians.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page198" id="page198"></a>198</span> </p>
+
+<p>Here lies the secret of John Bull&rsquo;s success as a
+colonizer. To erect a statue to an Indian chief is a
+stroke of genius.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>What has struck me as most American in Canada is,
+perhaps, journalism.</p>
+
+<p>Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec possess excellent
+newspapers, and every little town can boast one
+or two journals.</p>
+
+<p>The tone of these papers is thoroughly American
+in its liveliness&mdash;I had almost said, in its
+loudness. All are readable and most cleverly
+edited. Each paragraph is preceded by a neat
+and attractive heading. As in the American papers,
+the editorials, or leading articles, are of secondary
+importance. The main portion of the publication
+is devoted to news, interviews, stories, gossip, jokes,
+anecdotes, etc.</p>
+
+<p>The Montreal papers are read by everybody in the
+Province of Quebec, and the Toronto papers in the
+Province of Ontario, so that the newspapers published
+in small towns are content with giving all the news of
+the locality. Each of these has a &ldquo;society&rdquo; column.
+Nothing is more amusing than to read of the society
+doings in these little towns. &ldquo;Miss Brown is visiting
+Miss Smith.&rdquo; &ldquo;Miss Smith had tea with Miss Robinson
+yesterday.&rdquo; When Miss Brown, or Miss Smith,
+or Miss Robinson has given a party, the names of all
+the guests are inserted as well as what they had for
+dinner, or for supper, as the case may be. So I take
+it for granted that when anybody gives a party, a ball,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page199" id="page199"></a>199</span>
+a dinner, a reporter receives an invitation to describe
+the party in the next issue of the paper.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>At nine o&rsquo;clock this evening, I left Sarnia, on the
+frontier of Canada, to cross the river and pass into the
+United States. The train left the town, and, on
+arriving on the bank of the River St. Clair, was divided
+into two sections which were run on board the ferry-boat
+and made the crossing side by side. The passage
+across the river occupied about twenty minutes. On
+arriving at the other bank, at Port Huron, in the State
+of Michigan, the train left the boat in the same fashion
+as it had gone on board, the two parts were coupled
+together, and the journey on <i>terra firma</i> was smoothly
+resumed.</p>
+
+<p>There is something fascinating about crossing a
+river at night, and I had promised myself some agreeable
+moments on board the ferry-boat, from which I
+should be able to see Port Huron lit up with twinkling
+lights. I was also curious to watch the train boarding
+the boat. But, alas, I had reckoned without my host.
+Instead of star-gazing and <i>r�verie</i>, there was in store
+for me a &ldquo;bad quarter of an hour.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had the train boarded the ferry-boat than
+there came to the door of the parlor car a surly-looking,
+ill-mannered creature, who roughly bade me come
+to the baggage van, in the other section of the train,
+and open my trunks for him to inspect.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as I had complied, he went down on his
+knees among my baggage, and it was plain to see that
+he meant business.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page200" id="page200"></a>200</span> </p>
+
+<p>The first thing he took out was a suit of clothes,
+which he threw on the dirty floor of the van.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have these been worn?&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They have,&rdquo; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>Then he took out a blue jacket which I used to
+cross the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:391px; height:430px" src="images/img213.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;HAVE YOU WORN THIS?&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you worn this?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, for the last two years.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; he said, with a low sardonic grin.</p>
+
+<p>My trunk was the only one he had to examine,
+as I was the only passenger in the parlor car; and I
+saw that he meant to annoy me, which, I imagined, he
+could do with perfect impunity.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page201" id="page201"></a>201</span> </p>
+
+<p>The best thing, in fact, the only thing to do was to
+take the misadventure good-humoredly.</p>
+
+<p>He took out my linen and examined it in
+detail.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have these shirts all been worn?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I guess they have. But how is it that you,
+an official of the government, seem to ignore the law
+of your own country? Don&rsquo;t you know that if all
+these articles are for my own private use, they are not
+dutiable, whether new or not?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The man did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>He took out more linen, which he put on the floor,
+and spreading open a pair of unmentionables, he asked
+again:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you worn this? It looks quite new.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I nodded affirmatively.</p>
+
+<p>He then took out a pair of socks.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you worn these?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Have a sniff at
+them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He continued his examination, and was about to
+throw my evening suit on the floor. I had up to now
+been <i>almost</i> amused at the proceedings, but I felt my
+good-humor was going, and the lion began to wag its
+tail. I took the man by the arm, and looking at him
+sternly, I said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, you put this carefully on the top of some
+other clothes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me and complied.</p>
+
+<p>By this time all the contents of my large trunk were
+spread on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>He got up on his feet and said:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page202" id="page202"></a>202</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have I looked everywhere?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 280px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:232px; height:200px" src="images/img215.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">THE CONTENTS.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you haven&rsquo;t. Do you know how
+the famous Regent diamond, worn by the last kings
+of France on their
+crowns, was smuggled
+into French territory?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The creature looked
+at me with an air of
+impudence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>I explained to him,
+and added:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have not
+looked <i>there</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The lion, that lies dormant at the bottom of the
+quietest man, was fairly roused in me, and on the least
+provocation, I would have given this man a first-class
+hiding.</p>
+
+<p>He went away, wondering whether I had insulted
+him or not, and left me in the van to repack my trunk
+as best I could, an operation which, I understand, it
+was his duty to perform himself.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:83px" src="images/img215b.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page203" id="page203"></a>203</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Chicago (First Visit)&mdash;The &ldquo;Neighborhood&rdquo;
+of Chicago&mdash;The History of Chicago&mdash;Public
+Servants&mdash;A Very Deaf Man.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Chicago</i>, <i>February</i> 17.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Oh!</span> a lecturing tour in America!</p>
+
+<p>I am here on my way to St. Paul and Minneapolis.</p>
+
+<p>Just before leaving New York, I saw in a comic
+paper that Bismarck must really now be considered as
+a great man, because, since his departure from office,
+there had been no rumor of his having applied to
+Major Pond to get up a lecturing tour for him in the
+United States.</p>
+
+<p>It was not news to me that there are plenty of
+people in America who laugh at the European author&rsquo;s
+trick of going to the American platform as soon as he
+has made a little name for himself in his own country.
+The laugh finds an echo in England, especially from
+some journalists who have never been asked to go,
+and from a few men who, having done one tour, think
+it wise not to repeat the experience. For my part,
+when I consider that Emerson, Holmes, Mark Twain,
+have been lecturers, that Dickens, Thackeray, Matthew
+Arnold, Sala, Stanley, Archdeacon Farrar, and many
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page204" id="page204"></a>204</span>
+more, all have made their bow to American audiences,
+I fail to discover anything very derogatory in the proceeding.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 250px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:202px; height:200px" src="images/img217.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">A PIG SQUEALING.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Besides, I feel bound to say that there is nothing in
+a lecturing tour in America, even in a highly successful
+one, that can excite
+the envy of the
+most jealous &ldquo;failure&rdquo;
+in the world.
+Such work is about
+the hardest that a
+man, used to the
+comforts of this life,
+can undertake. Actors,
+at all events,
+stop a week, sometimes
+a fortnight, in
+the cities they visit;
+but a lecturer is on
+the road every day, happy when he has not to start
+at night.</p>
+
+<p>No words can picture the monotony of journeys
+through an immense continent, the sameness of which
+strikes you as almost unbearable. Everything is made
+on one pattern. All the towns are alike. To be in a
+railroad car for ten or twelve hours day after day can
+hardly be called luxury, or even comfort. To have
+one&rsquo;s poor brain matter thus shaken in the cranium is
+terrible, especially when the cranium is not quite full.
+Constant traveling softens the brain, liquefies it, churns
+it, evaporates it, and it runs out of you through all the
+cracks of your head. I own that traveling is comfortable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page205" id="page205"></a>205</span>
+in America, even luxurious; but the best fare
+becomes monotonous and unpalatable when the dose
+is repeated every day.</p>
+
+<p>To-morrow night I lecture in Minneapolis. The
+next night I am in Detroit. Distance about seven
+hundred miles.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can I manage it?&rdquo; said I to my impresario, when
+he showed me my route.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, certn&rsquo;ly,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;if you catch a train
+after your lecture, I guess you will arrive in time for
+your lecture in Detroit the next day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>These remarks, in America, are made without a
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>On arriving at Chicago this morning, I found awaiting
+me at the Grand Pacific Hotel, a letter from my
+impresario. Here is the purport of it:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>I know you have with you a trunk and a small portmanteau. I
+would advise you to leave your trunk at the Grand Pacific, and to
+take with you only the portmanteau, while you are in the neighborhood
+of Chicago. You will thus save trouble, expense, etc.</p></div>
+
+<p>On looking at my route, I found that the &ldquo;neighborhood
+of Chicago&rdquo; included St. Paul, Minneapolis, Milwaukee,
+Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis:
+something like a little two-thousand-mile tour &ldquo;in the
+neighborhood of Chicago,&rdquo; to be done in about one
+week.</p>
+
+<p>When I confided my troubles to my American
+friends, I got little sympathy from them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s quite right,&rdquo; they would say; &ldquo;we call the
+neighborhood of a city any place which, by starting
+after dinner, you can reach at about breakfast time the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page206" id="page206"></a>206</span>
+next day. You dine, you go on board the car, you
+have a smoke, you go to bed, you sleep, you wake up,
+you dress&mdash;and there you are. Do you see?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>After all you may be of this opinion, if you do not
+reckon sleeping time. But I do reckon it, when I
+have to spend the night in a closed box, six feet long,
+and three feet wide, and about two feet high, and
+especially when the operation has to be repeated three
+or four times a week.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>And the long weary days that are not spent in
+traveling, how can they be passed, even tolerably, in
+an American city, where the lonely lecturer knows
+nobody, and where there is absolutely nothing to be
+seen beyond the hotels and the dry-goods stores?
+Worse still: he sometimes has the good luck to make
+the acquaintance of some charming people: but he has
+hardly had time to fix their features in his memory,
+when he has to go, probably never to see them again.</p>
+
+<p>The lecturer speaks for an hour and a half on the
+platform every evening, the rest of his time is exclusively
+devoted to keeping silence. Poor fellow! how
+grateful he is to the hotel clerk who sometimes&mdash;alas,
+very seldom&mdash;will chat with him for a few minutes.
+As a rule the hotel clerk is a mute, who assigns a room
+to you, or hands you the letters waiting for you in the
+box corresponding to your number. His mouth is
+closed. He may have seen you for half a minute only;
+he will remember you. Even in a hotel accommodating
+over a thousand guests, he will know you, he will know
+the number of your room, but he won&rsquo;t speak. He is
+not the only American that won&rsquo;t speak. Every man
+in America who is attending to some duty of other,
+has his mouth closed. I have tried the railroad conductor,
+and found him mute. I have had a shot at the
+porter in the Pullman car, and found him mute. I
+have endeavored to
+draw out the janitors
+of the halls where I
+was to speak in the
+evening, and I have
+failed. Even the
+negroes won&rsquo;t speak.
+You would imagine
+that speaking was
+prohibited by the
+statute-book. When
+my lecture was over,
+I returned to the
+hotel, and like a culprit
+crept to bed.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page207" id="page207"></a>207</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:386px; height:610px" src="images/img220.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE SLEEPING CAR.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page208" id="page208"></a>208</span></p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 280px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:233px; height:300px" src="images/img221.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">THE JANITOR.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>How I do love
+New York! It is
+not that it possesses
+a single building that I really care for; it is because
+it contains scores and scores of delightful people,
+brilliant, affable, hospitable, warm-hearted friends, who
+were kind enough to welcome me when I returned
+from a tour, and in whose company I could break up
+the cobwebs that had had time to form in the corners
+of my mouth.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>The history of Chicago can be written in a few lines.
+So can the history of the whole of America.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page209" id="page209"></a>209</span> </p>
+
+<p>In about 1830 a man called Benjamin Harris, with
+his family, moved to Chicago, or Fort Dearborn, as it
+was then called. Not more than half a dozen whites,
+all of whom were Indian traders, had preceded them.
+In 1832 they had a child, the first white female born
+in Chicago&mdash;now married, called Mrs. S. A. Holmes,
+and the mother of fourteen children. In 1871 Chicago
+had over 100,000 inhabitants, and was burned to
+the ground. To-day Chicago has over 1,200,000 inhabitants,
+and in ten years&rsquo; time will have two millions.</p>
+
+<p>The activity in Chicago is perfectly amazing. And
+I don&rsquo;t mean commercial activity only. Compare
+the following statistics: In the great reading rooms
+of the British Museum, there was an average of 620
+readers daily during the year 1888. In the reading-room
+of the Chicago Public Library, there was an average
+of 1569 each day in the same year. Considering
+that the population of London is nearly five times that
+of Chicago, it shows that the reading public is ten
+times more numerous in Chicago than in London.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>It is a never failing source of amusement to watch
+the ways of public servants in this country.</p>
+
+<p>I went to pay a visit to a public museum this afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>In Europe, the keepers, that is to say, the servants
+of the public, have cautions posted in the museums, in
+which &ldquo;the public are requested not to touch.&rdquo; In
+France, they are &ldquo;begged,&rdquo; which is perhaps a more
+suitable expression, as the museums, after all, belong
+to the public.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page210" id="page210"></a>210</span> </p>
+
+<p>In America, the notice is &ldquo;Hands off!&rdquo; This is
+short and to the point. The servants of the public allow
+you to enter the museums, charge you twenty-five
+cents, and warn you to behave well. &ldquo;Hands off&rdquo;
+struck me as rather off-handed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:352px; height:430px" src="images/img223.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE &ldquo;BRUSH-UP.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>I really admire the independence of all the servants
+in this country. You may give them a tip, you will
+not run the risk of making them servile or even
+polite.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page211" id="page211"></a>211</span> </p>
+
+<p>The railway conductor says &ldquo;ticket!&rdquo; The word
+<i>please</i> does not belong to his vocabulary any more than
+the words &ldquo;thank you.&rdquo; He says &ldquo;ticket&rdquo; and
+frowns. You show it to him. He looks at it suspiciously,
+and gives it back to you with a haughty air
+that seems to say: &ldquo;I hope you will behave properly
+while you are in my car.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The tip in America is not <i>de rigueur</i> as in Europe.
+The cabman charges you so much, and expects nothing
+more. He would lose his dignity by accepting a
+tip (many run the risk). He will often ask you for more
+than you owe him; but this is the act of a sharp
+man of business, not the act of a servant. In doing so,
+he does not derogate from his character.</p>
+
+<p>The negro is the only servant who smiles in America,
+the only one who is sometimes polite and attentive,
+and the only one who speaks English with a pleasant
+accent.</p>
+
+<p>The negro porter in the sleeping cars has seldom
+failed to thank me for the twenty-five or fifty cent
+piece I always give him after he has brushed&mdash;or
+rather, swept&mdash;my clothes with his little broom.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes ago, as I was packing my valise for
+a journey to St. Paul and Minneapolis to-night, the
+porter brought in a card. The name was unknown
+to me; but the porter having said that it was the
+card of a gentleman who was most anxious to speak
+to me, I said, &ldquo;Very well, bring him here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman entered the room, saluted me,
+shook hands, and said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hope I am not intruding.&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page212" id="page212"></a>212</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I must ask you not to detain me
+long, because I am off in a few minutes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I understand, sir, that some time ago you were engaged
+in teaching the French language in one of the
+great public schools of England.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was, sir,&rdquo; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I have a son whom I wish to speak French
+properly, and I have come to ask for your views
+on the subject. In other words, will you be good
+enough to tell me what are the best methods for
+teaching this language? Only excuse me, I am
+very deaf.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:418px; height:250px" src="images/img225.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">LEFT.</p></div>
+
+<p>He pulled out of his back pocket two yards of gutta-percha
+tube, and, applying one end to his ear and
+placing the other against my mouth, he said, &ldquo;Go
+ahead.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Really?&rdquo; I shouted through the tube. &ldquo;Now
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page213" id="page213"></a>213</span>
+please shut your eyes; nothing is better for increasing
+the power of hearing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The man shut his eyes and turned his head sideways,
+so as to have the listening ear in front of me.
+I took my valise and ran to the elevator as fast as I
+could.</p>
+
+<p>That man may still be waiting for aught I know and
+care.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving the hotel, I made the acquaintance
+of Mr. George Kennan, the Russian traveler. His
+articles on Russia and Siberia, published in the <i>Century
+Magazine</i>, attracted a great deal of public attention,
+and people everywhere throng to hear him relate
+his terrible experiences on the platform. He has two
+hundred lectures to give this season. He struck me
+as a most remarkable man&mdash;simple, unaffected in his
+manner, with unflinching resolution written on his
+face; a man in earnest, you can see. I am delighted
+to find that I shall have the pleasure of meeting him
+again in New York in the middle of April. He looks
+tired. He, too, is lecturing in the &ldquo;neighborhood of
+Chicago,&rdquo; and is off now to the night train for Cincinnati.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:75px" src="images/img226.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page214" id="page214"></a>214</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIV.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Sister Cities&mdash;Rivalries
+and Jealousies between Large American
+Cities&mdash;Minnehaha Falls&mdash;Wonderful
+Interviewers&mdash;My Hat gets into Trouble
+Again&mdash;Electricity in the Air&mdash;Forest Advertisements&mdash;Railway
+Speed in America.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>St. Paul, Minn.</i>, <i>February</i> 20.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Arrived</span> at St. Paul the day before yesterday
+to pay a professional visit to the two great sister
+cities of the north of America.</p>
+
+<p>Sister cities! Yes, they are near enough to shake
+hands and kiss each other, but I am afraid they avail
+themselves of their proximity to scratch each other&rsquo;s
+faces.</p>
+
+<p>If you open Bouillet&rsquo;s famous Dictionary of History
+and Geography (edition 1880), you will find in it neither
+St. Paul nor Minneapolis. I was told yesterday that
+in 1834 there was one white inhabitant in Minneapolis.
+To-day the two cities have about 200,000 inhabitants
+each. Where is the dictionary of geography that
+can keep pace with such wonderful phantasmagoric
+growth? The two cities are separated by a distance
+of about nine miles, but they are every day growing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page215" id="page215"></a>215</span>
+up toward each other, and to-morrow they will practically
+have become one.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more amusing than the jealousies which
+exist between the different large cities of the United
+States, and when these rival places are close to each
+other, the feeling of jealousy is so intensified as to
+become highly entertaining.</p>
+
+<p>St. Paul charges Minneapolis with copying into
+the census names from tombstones, and it is affirmed
+that young men living in either one of the cities
+will marry girls belonging to the other so as to decrease
+its population by one. The story goes
+that once a preacher having announced, in a Minneapolis
+church, that he had taken the text of his
+sermon from St. Paul, the congregation walked out
+<i>en masse</i>.</p>
+
+<p>New York despises Philadelphia, and pokes fun at
+Boston. On the other hand, Boston hates Chicago,
+and <i>vice versa</i>. St. Louis has only contempt for Chicago,
+and both cities laugh heartily at Detroit and
+Milwaukee. San Francisco and Denver are left alone
+in their prosperity. They are so far away from the
+east and north of America, that the feeling they inspire
+is only one of indifference.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Philadelphia is a city of homes, not of lodging-houses,&rdquo;
+once said a Philadelphian to a New Yorker;
+&ldquo;and it spreads over a far greater area than New York,
+with less than half the inhabitants.&rdquo; &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; replied
+the New Yorker, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s because it has been so much
+sat upon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are a city of commerce,&rdquo; said a Bostonian to
+a New York wit; &ldquo;Boston is a city of culture.&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page216" id="page216"></a>216</span>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied the New Yorker. &ldquo;You spell culture
+with a big C, and God with a small g.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Of course St. Paul and Minneapolis accuse each
+other of counting their respective citizens twice over.
+All that is diverting in the highest degree. This feeling
+does not exist only between the rival cities of the
+New World, it exists in the Old. Ask a Glasgow man
+what he thinks of Edinburgh, and an Edinburgh man
+what he thinks of Glasgow!</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>On account of the intense cold (nearly thirty degrees
+below zero), I have not been able to see much either of
+St. Paul or of Minneapolis, and I am unable to please
+or vex either of these cities by pointing out their
+beauties and defects. Both are large and substantially
+built, with large churches, schools, banks, stores, and
+all the temples that modern Christians erect to Jehovah
+and Mammon. I may say that the Ryan Hotel at St.
+Paul and the West House at Minneapolis are among
+the very best hotels I have come across in America, the
+latter especially. When I have added that, the day
+before yesterday, I had an immense audience in the
+People&rsquo;s Church at St. Paul, and that to-night I have
+had a crowded house at the Grand Opera House in
+Minneapolis, it is hardly necessary for me to say that I
+shall have enjoyed myself in the two great towns, and
+that I shall carry away with me a delightful recollection
+of them.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Soon after arriving in Minneapolis yesterday, I went
+to see the Minnehaha Falls, immortalized by Longfellow.
+The motor line gave me an idea of rapid transit.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page217" id="page217"></a>217</span>
+I returned to the West House for lunch and spent
+the afternoon writing. Many interviewers called.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:312px; height:430px" src="images/img230.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;WHAT YEARLY INCOME DOES YOUR BOOKS
+AND LECTURES BRING IN?&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>The first who came sat down in my room and point-blank
+asked me my views on contagious diseases.
+Seeing that I was not disposed to talk on the subject,
+he asked me to discourse on republics and the prospects
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page218" id="page218"></a>218</span>
+of General Boulanger. In fact, anything for
+copy.</p>
+
+<p>The second one, after asking me where I came from
+and where I was going, inquired whether I had exhausted
+the Anglo-Saxons and whether I should write
+on other nations. After I had satisfied him, he asked me
+what yearly income my books and lectures brought in.</p>
+
+<p>Another wanted to know why I had not brought my
+wife with me, how many children I had, how old they
+were, and other details as wonderfully interesting to
+the public. By and by I saw he was jotting down a
+description of my appearance, and the different clothes
+I had on! &ldquo;I will unpack this trunk,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and
+spread all its contents on the floor. Perhaps you would
+be glad to have a look at my things.&rdquo; He smiled:
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t trouble any more,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I am very much
+obliged to you for your courtesy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This morning, on opening the papers, I see that my
+hat is getting into trouble again. I thought that, after
+getting rid of my brown hat and sending it to the editor
+in the town where it had created such a sensation, peace
+was secured. Not a bit. In the Minneapolis <i>Journal</i>
+I read the following:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>The attractive personality of the man [allow me to record this for
+the sake of what follows], heightened by his n�glig� sack coat and
+vest, with a background of yellowish plaid trowsers, occasional
+glimpses of which were revealed from beneath the folds of a heavy
+ulster, which swept the floor [I was sitting of course] and was
+trimmed with fur collar and cuffs. And then that hat! On the
+table, carelessly thrown amid a pile of correspondence, was his
+nondescript headgear. One of those half-sombreros affected by the
+wild Western cowboy when on dress parade, an impossible combination
+of dark-blue and bottle-green.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page219" id="page219"></a>219</span>
+Fancy treating in this off-handed way a $7.50 soft
+black felt hat bought of the best hatter in New York!
+No, nothing is sacred for those interviewers. Dark-blue
+and bottle-green! Why, did that man imagine that I
+wore my hat inside out so as to show the silk lining?</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>The air here is perfectly wonderful, dry and full of
+electricity. If your fingers come into contact with
+anything metallic, like the hot-water pipes, the chandeliers,
+the stopper of your washing basin, they draw
+a spark, sharp and vivid. One of the reporters who
+called here, and to whom I mentioned the fact, was
+able to light my gas with his finger, by merely obtaining
+an electric spark on the top of the burner. When
+he said he could thus light the gas, I thought he was
+joking.</p>
+
+<p>I had observed this phenomenon before. In Ottawa,
+for instance.</p>
+
+<p>Whether this air makes you live too quickly, I do
+not know; but it is most bracing and healthy. I have
+never felt so well and hearty in my life as in these cold,
+dry climates.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I was all the more flattered to have such a large and
+fashionable audience at the Grand Opera House to-night,
+that my <i>causerie</i> was not given under the auspices
+of any society, or as one of any course of lectures.</p>
+
+<p>I lecture in Detroit the day after to-morrow. I shall
+have to leave Minneapolis to-morrow morning at six
+o&rsquo;clock for Chicago, which I shall reach at ten in the
+evening. Then I shall have to run to the Michigan
+Central Station to catch the night train to Detroit at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page220" id="page220"></a>220</span>
+eleven. Altogether, twenty-three hours of railway
+traveling&mdash;745 miles.</p>
+
+<p>And still in &ldquo;the neighborhood of Chicago!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:399px; height:430px" src="images/img233.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">AN ADVERTISEMENT.</p></div>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>In the train to Chicago</i>, <i>February</i> 21.</p>
+
+<p>Have just passed a wonderful advertisement. Here,
+in the midst of a forest, I have seen a huge wide board
+nailed on two trees, parallel to the railway line. On it
+was written, round a daub supposed to represent one of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page221" id="page221"></a>221</span>
+the loveliest English ladies: &ldquo;If you would be as lovely
+as the beautiful Lady de Gray, use Gray perfumes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><i>Soyez donc belle</i>, to be used as an advertisement in
+the forests of Minnesota!</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 230px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:175px; height:200px" src="images/img234.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">&ldquo;I RETURNED THANKS.&rdquo;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>My lectures have never been criticised in more kind,
+flattering, and eulogistic terms than in the St. Paul and
+the Minneapolis papers, which I am reading on my
+way to Chicago. I find
+newspaper reading a
+great source of amusement
+in the trains.
+First of all because
+these papers always are
+light reading, and also
+because reading is a
+possibility in a well
+lighted carriage going
+only at a moderate
+speed. Eating is comfortable,
+and even writing
+is possible <i>en route</i>.
+With the exception of
+a few trains, such as are run from New York to Boston,
+Chicago, and half a dozen other important cities, railway
+traveling is slower in America than in England
+and France; but I have never found fault with the
+speed of an American train. On the contrary, I have
+always felt grateful to the driver for running slowly.
+And every time that the car reached the other side
+of some of the many rotten wooden bridges on which
+the train had to pass, I returned thanks.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page222" id="page222"></a>222</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXV.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Detroit&mdash;The Town&mdash;The Detroit &ldquo;Free
+Press&rdquo;&mdash;A Lady Interviewer&mdash;The &ldquo;Unco
+Guid&rdquo; in Detroit&mdash;Reflections on the
+Anglo-Saxon &ldquo;Unco Guid.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Detroit</i>, <i>February</i> 22.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Am</span> delighted with Detroit. It possesses beautiful
+streets, avenues, and walks, and a fine square in the
+middle of which stands a remarkably fine monument.
+I am also grateful to this city for breaking the monotony
+of the eternal parallelograms with which the
+whole of the United States are built. My national
+vanity almost suggests to me that this town owes its
+gracefulness to its French origin. There are still, I
+am told, about 25,000 French people settled in
+Detroit.</p>
+
+<p>I have had to-night, in the Church of Our Father,
+a crowded and most brilliant audience, whose keenness,
+intelligence, and kindness were very flattering.</p>
+
+<p>I was interviewed, both by a lady and a gentleman,
+for the Detroit <i>Free Press</i>, that most witty of American
+newspapers. The charming young lady interviewer
+came to talk on social topics, I remarked that
+she was armed with a copy of &ldquo;Jonathan and his
+Continent,&rdquo; and I came to the conclusion that she
+would probably ask for a few explanations about that
+book. I was not mistaken. She took exception, she
+informed me, to many statements concerning the
+American girl in the book. I made a point to prove
+to her that all was right, and all was truth, and I think
+I persuaded her to abandon the prosecution.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page223" id="page223"></a>223</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:467px; height:610px" src="images/img236.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE LADY INTERVIEWER.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page224" id="page224"></a>224</span></p>
+
+<p>To tell the truth, now the real truth, mind you, I
+am rather tired of hearing about the American girl.
+The more I see of her the more I am getting convinced
+that she is&mdash;like the other girls in the world.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>A friend, who came to have a chat with me after this
+lecture, has told me that the influential people of the
+city are signing a petition to the custodians of the
+museum calling upon them to drape all the nude
+statues, and intimating their intention of boycotting
+the institution, if the Venuses and Apollos are not
+forthwith provided with tuckers and togas.</p>
+
+<p>It is a well-known fact in the history of the world,
+that young communities have no taste for fine art&mdash;they
+have no time to cultivate it. If I had gone to
+Oklahoma, I should not have expected to find any art
+feeling at all; but that in a city like Detroit, where
+there is such evidence of intellectual life and high
+culture among the inhabitants, a party should be
+found numerous and strong enough to issue such a
+heathen dictate as this seems scarcely credible. I am
+inclined to think it must be a joke. That the &ldquo;unco
+guid&rdquo; should flourish under the gloomy sky of Great
+Britain I understand, but under the bright blue sky of
+America, in that bracing atmosphere, I cannot.</p>
+
+<p>It is most curious that there should be people who,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page225" id="page225"></a>225</span>
+when confronted with some glorious masterpiece of
+sculpture, should not see the poetry, the beauty of the
+human form divine. This is beyond me, and beyond
+any educated Frenchman.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:357px; height:430px" src="images/img238.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE DRAPED STATUES.</p></div>
+
+<p>Does the &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; exist in America, then? I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page226" id="page226"></a>226</span>
+should have thought that these people, of the earth
+earthy, were not found out of England and Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>When I was in America two years ago, I heard that
+an English author of some repute, talking one day
+with Mr. Richard Watson Gilder about the Venus of
+Milo, had remarked that, as he looked at her beautiful
+form, he longed to put his arms around her and kiss
+her. Mr. Gilder, who, as a poet, as an artist, has felt
+only respect mingled with his admiration of the matchless
+divinity, replied: &ldquo;I hope she would have grown
+a pair of arms for the occasion, so as to have slapped
+your face.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It is not so much the thing that offends the &ldquo;unco
+guid&rdquo;; it is the name, the reflection, the idea. Unhealthy-minded
+himself, he dreads a taint where there
+is none, and imagines in others a corruption which
+exists only in himself.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the One, whom he would fain call Master, but
+whose teachings he is slow in following, said: &ldquo;Woe be
+to them by whom offense cometh.&rdquo; But the &ldquo;unco
+guid&rdquo; is a Christian failure, a <i>parvenu</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>The <i>parvenu</i> is a person who makes strenuous efforts
+to persuade other people that he is entitled to the
+position he occupies.</p>
+
+<p>There are <i>parvenus</i> in religion, as there are <i>parvenus</i>
+in the aristocracy, in society, in literature, in the fine
+arts, etc.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 240px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:193px; height:500px" src="images/img240.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">THE PARVENU.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The worst type of the French <i>parvenu</i> is the one
+whose father was a worthy, hard-working man called
+<i>Dubois</i> or <i>Dumont</i>, and who, at his father&rsquo;s death, dubs
+himself <i>du Bois</i> or <i>du Mont</i>, becomes a clericalist and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page227" id="page227"></a>227</span>
+the stanchest monarchist,
+and runs down
+the great Revolution
+which made one of his
+grand-parents a man.
+M. <i>du Bois</i> or <i>du Mont</i>
+outdoes the genuine
+nobleman, who needs
+make no noise to attract
+attention to a
+name which everybody
+knows, and which, in
+spite of what may be
+said on the subject,
+often recalls the memory
+of some glorious
+event in the past.</p>
+
+<p>The worst type of
+Anglo-Saxon <i>parvenu</i>
+is probably the &ldquo;unco
+guid,&rdquo; or religious <i>parvenu</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Anglo-Saxon
+&ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; is seldom
+to be found among
+Roman Catholics; that
+is, among the followers
+of the most ancient
+Christian religion. He
+is to be found among
+the followers of the newest forms of &ldquo;Christianity.&rdquo;
+This is quite natural. He has to try to eclipse his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page228" id="page228"></a>228</span>
+fellow-Christians by his piety, in order to show that
+the new religion to which he belongs was a necessary
+invention.</p>
+
+<p>The Anglo-Saxon &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; is easily recognized.
+He is dark (all bigots and fanatics are). He is dressed
+in black, shiny broadcloth raiment. A wide-brimmed
+felt hat covers his head. He walks with light, short,
+jaunty steps, his head a little inclined on one side.
+He never carries a stick, which might give a rather
+fast appearance to his turn-out. He invariably carries
+an umbrella, even in the brightest weather, as being
+more respectable&mdash;and this umbrella he never rolls, for
+he would avoid looking in the distance as if he had a
+stick. He casts right and left little grimaces that are
+so many forced smiles of self-satisfaction. &ldquo;Try to be
+as good as I am,&rdquo; he seems to say to all who happen
+to look at him, &ldquo;and you will be as happy.&rdquo; And he
+&ldquo;smiles, and smiles, and smiles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He has a small soul, a small heart, and a small brain.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, he is a well-to-do person. It pays better
+to have a narrow mind than to have broad sympathies.</p>
+
+<p>He drinks tea, but prefers cocoa, as being a more
+virtuous beverage.</p>
+
+<p>He is perfectly destitute of humor, and is the most
+inartistic creature in the world. Everything suggests
+to him either profanity or indecency. The &ldquo;Reminiscences
+of Scottish Life and Character,&rdquo; by Dean
+Ramsay, would strike him as profane, and if placed in
+the Mus�e du Louvre, before the Venus of Milo, he
+would see nothing but a woman who has next to no
+clothes on.</p>
+
+<p>His distorted mind makes him take everything in ill
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page229" id="page229"></a>229</span>
+part. His hands get pricked on every thorn that he
+comes across on the road, and he misses all the roses.</p>
+
+<p>If I were not a Christian, the following story, which
+is not as often told as it should be, would have converted
+me long ago:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>Jesus arrived one evening at the gates of a certain city, and he
+sent his disciples forward to prepare supper, while he himself, intent
+on doing good, walked through the streets into the marketplace.
+And he saw at the corner of the market some people gathered
+together, looking at an object on the ground; and he drew
+near to see what it might be. It was a dead dog, with a halter
+round his neck, by which he appeared to have been dragged
+through the dirt; and a viler, a more abject, a more unclean thing,
+never met the eyes of man. And those who stood by looked on
+with abhorrence. &ldquo;Faugh!&rdquo; said one, stopping his nose, &ldquo;it
+pollutes the air.&rdquo; &ldquo;How long,&rdquo; said another, &ldquo;shall this foul
+beast offend our sight?&rdquo; &ldquo;Look at his torn hide,&rdquo; said a third;
+&ldquo;one could not even cut a shoe out of it!&rdquo; &ldquo;And his ears,&rdquo; said
+a fourth, &ldquo;all draggled and bleeding!&rdquo; &ldquo;No doubt,&rdquo; said a fifth,
+&ldquo;he has been hanged for thieving!&rdquo; And Jesus heard them, and
+looking down compassionately on the dead creature, he said:
+&ldquo;Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth!&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>If I understand the Gospel, the gist of its teachings
+is contained in the foregoing little story. Love and
+forgiveness: finding something to pity and admire
+even in a dead dog. Such is the religion of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>The &ldquo;Christianity&rdquo; of the &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; is as like
+this religion as are the teachings of the Old Testament.</p>
+
+<p>Something to condemn, the discovery of wickedness
+in the most innocent, and often elevating, recreations,
+such is the favorite occupation of the Anglo-Saxon
+&ldquo;unco guid.&rdquo; Music is licentious, laughter wicked,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page230" id="page230"></a>230</span>
+dancing immoral, statuary almost criminal, and, by
+and by, the &ldquo;Society for the Suggestion of Indecency,&rdquo;
+which is placed under his immediate patronage
+and supervision, will find fault with our going out
+in the streets, on the plea that under our garments we
+carry our nudity.</p>
+
+<p>The Anglo-Saxon &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; is the successor of
+the Pharisee. In reading Christ&rsquo;s description of the
+latter, you are immediately struck with the likeness.
+The modern &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; &ldquo;loves to pray standing in
+the churches and chapels and in the corners of the
+streets, that he may be seen of men.&rdquo; &ldquo;He uses vain
+repetitions, for he thinks that he shall be heard for his
+much speaking.&rdquo; &ldquo;When he fasts, he is of sad countenance;
+for he disfigures his face, that he may appear
+unto men to fast.&rdquo; There is not one feature of the
+portrait that does not fit in exactly.</p>
+
+<p>The Jewish &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; crucified Christ. The
+Anglo-Saxon one would crucify Him again if He should
+return to earth and interfere with the prosperous business
+firms that make use of His name.</p>
+
+<p>The &ldquo;unco guid&rsquo;s&rdquo; Christianity consists in extolling
+his virtues and ignoring other people&rsquo;s. He spends
+his time in &ldquo;pulling motes out of people&rsquo;s eyes,&rdquo; but
+cannot see clearly to do it, &ldquo;owing to the beams that
+are in his own.&rdquo; He overwhelms you, he crushes you,
+with his virtue, and one of the greatest treats is to
+catch him tripping, a chance which you may occasionally
+have, especially when you meet him on the Continent
+of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The Anglo-Saxon &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; calls himself a
+Christian, but the precepts of the Gospel are the very
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page231" id="page231"></a>231</span>
+opposite of those he practices. The gentle, merciful,
+forgiving, Man-God of the Gospel has not for him the
+charms and attractions of the Jehovah who commanded
+the cowardly, ungrateful, and bloodthirsty people of
+his choice to treat their women as slaves, and to exterminate
+their enemies, sparing neither old men,
+women, nor children. This cruel, revengeful, implacable
+deity is far more to the Anglo-Saxon &ldquo;unco
+guid&rsquo;s&rdquo; liking than the Saviour who bade His disciples
+love their enemies and put up their swords in the
+presence of his persecutors. The &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; is not
+a Christian, he is a Jew in all but name. And I will
+say this much for him, that the Commandments given
+on Mount Sinai are much easier to follow than the
+Sermon on the Mount. It is easier not to commit
+murder than to hold out your right cheek after your
+left one has been slapped. It is easier not to steal
+than to run after the man who has robbed us, in order
+to offer him what he has not taken. It is easier to
+honor our parents than to love our enemies.</p>
+
+<p>The teachings of the Gospel are trying to human
+nature. There is no religion more difficult to follow;
+and this is why, in spite of its beautiful, but too lofty,
+precepts, there is no religion in the world that can
+boast so many hypocrites&mdash;so many followers who
+pretend that they follow their religion, but who do
+not, and very probably cannot.</p>
+
+<p>Being unable to love man, as he is bidden in the
+Gospel, the &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; loves God, as he is bidden
+in the Old Testament. He loves God in the abstract.
+He tells Him so in endless prayers and litanies.</p>
+
+<p>For him Christianity consists in discussing theological
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page232" id="page232"></a>232</span>
+questions, whether a minister shall preach with or
+without a white surplice on, and in singing hymns
+more or less out of tune.</p>
+
+<p>As if God could be loved to the exclusion of man!
+You love God, after all, as you love anybody else, not
+by professions of love, but by deeds.</p>
+
+<p>When he prays, the &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; buries his face in
+his hands or in his hat. He screws up his face, and the
+more fervent the prayer is (or the more people are
+looking at him), the more grimaces he makes. Heinrich
+Heine, on coming out of an English church, said
+that &ldquo;a blaspheming Frenchman must be a more
+pleasing object in the sight of God than many a praying
+Englishman.&rdquo; He had, no doubt, been looking at
+the &ldquo;unco guid.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>If you do not hold the same religious views as he
+does, you are a wicked man, an atheist. He alone has
+the truth. Being engaged in a discussion with an
+&ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; one day, I told him that if God had
+given me hands to handle, surely He had given me a
+little brain to think. &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; he quickly
+interrupted; &ldquo;but, with the hands that God gave you
+you can commit a good action, and you can also commit
+murder.&rdquo; Therefore, because I did not think as
+he did, I was the criminal, for, of course, he was the
+righteous man. For all those who, like myself, believe
+in a future life, there is, I believe, a great treat in store:
+the sight of the face he will make, when his place is
+assigned to him in the next world. <i>Qui mourra, verra.</i></p>
+
+<p>Anglo-Saxon land is governed by the &ldquo;unco guid.&rdquo;
+Good society cordially despises him; the aristocracy
+of Anglo-Saxon intelligence&mdash;philosophers, scientists,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page233" id="page233"></a>233</span>
+men of letters, artists&mdash;simply loathe him; but all have
+to bow to his rule, and submit their works to his
+most incompetent criticism, and all are afraid of him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:371px; height:430px" src="images/img246.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE POOR MAN&rsquo;S SABBATH.</p></div>
+
+<p>In a moment of wounded national pride, Sydney
+Smith once exclaimed: &ldquo;What a pity it is we have
+no amusements in England except vice and religion!&rdquo;
+The same exclamation might be uttered to-day, and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page234" id="page234"></a>234</span>
+cause laid at the Anglo-Saxon &ldquo;unco guid&rsquo;s&rdquo; door. It
+is he who is responsible for the degradation of the British
+lower classes, by refusing to enable them to elevate
+their minds on Sundays at the sight of the masterpieces
+of art which are contained in the museums, or
+at the sound of the symphonies of Beethoven and
+Mozart, which might be given to the people at reduced
+prices on that day. The poor people must choose
+between vice and religion, and as the wretches know
+they are not wanted in the churches, they go to the
+taverns.</p>
+
+<p>It is this same &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; who is responsible for
+the state of the streets in the large cities of Great
+Britain by refusing to allow vice to be regulated. If you
+were to add the amount of immorality to be found in
+the streets of Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and the other capitals
+of Europe, no fair-minded Englishman &ldquo;who knows&rdquo;
+would contradict me, if I said that the total thus obtained
+would be much below the amount supplied by
+London alone; but the &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; stays at home of
+an evening, advises you to do the same, and ignoring,
+or pretending to ignore, what is going on round his
+own house, he prays for the conversion&mdash;of the French.</p>
+
+<p>The &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; thinks that his own future safety
+is assured, so he prays for his neighbors&rsquo;. He reminds
+one of certain Scots, who inhabit two small islands on
+the west coast of Scotland. Their piety is really most
+touching. Every Sunday in their churches, they commend
+to God&rsquo;s care &ldquo;the puir inhabitants of the two
+adjacent islands of Britain and Ireland.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks ago, there appeared in a Liverpool paper
+a letter, signed &ldquo;A Lover of Reverence,&rdquo; in which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page235" id="page235"></a>235</span>
+this anonymous person complained of a certain lecturer,
+who had indulged in profane remarks. &ldquo;I was
+not present myself,&rdquo; he or she said, &ldquo;but have heard of
+what took place,&rdquo; etc. You see, this person was not
+present, but as a good &ldquo;Christian,&rdquo; he hastened to
+judge. However, this is nothing. In the letter, I
+read: &ldquo;Fortunately, there are in Liverpool, a few
+Christians, like myself, always on the watch, and
+ever looking after our Maker&rsquo;s honor.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Fortunate Liverpool! What a proud position for
+the Almighty, to be placed in Liverpool under the
+protection of the &ldquo;Lover of Reverence!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Probably this &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; and myself would not agree
+on the definition of the word <i>profanity</i>, for, if I had
+written and published such a letter, I would consider
+myself guilty, not only of profanity, but of blasphemy.</p>
+
+<p>If the &ldquo;unco guid&rdquo; is the best product of Christianity,
+Christianity must be pronounced a ghastly failure,
+and I should feel inclined to exclaim, with the late
+Dean Milman, &ldquo;If all this is Christianity, it is high
+time we should try something else&mdash;say the religion
+of Christ, for instance.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:161px" src="images/img248.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page236" id="page236"></a>236</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVI.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Milwaukee&mdash;A Well-filled Day&mdash;Reflections
+on the Scotch in America&mdash;Chicago Criticisms.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Milwaukee</i>, <i>February</i> 25.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Arrived</span> here from Detroit yesterday. Milwaukee
+is a city of over two hundred thousand
+inhabitants, a very large proportion of whom are Germans,
+who have come here to settle down, and wish
+good luck to the <i>Vaterland</i>, at the respectful distance
+of five thousand miles.</p>
+
+<p>At the station I was met by Mr. John L. Mitchell,
+the railway king, and by a compatriot of mine, M. A.
+de Guerville, a young enthusiast who has made up his
+mind to check the German invasion of Milwaukee, and
+has succeeded in starting a French society, composed
+of the leading inhabitants of the city. On arriving, I
+found a heavy but delightful programme to go through
+during the day: a lunch to be given me by the ladies
+at Milwaukee College at one o&rsquo;clock; a reception by
+the French Club at Mrs. John L. Mitchell&rsquo;s house at
+four; a dinner at six; my lecture at eight, and a reception
+and a supper by the Press Club at half-past ten; the
+rest of the evening to be spent as circumstances would
+allow or suggest. I was to be the guest of Mr. Mitchell
+at his magnificent house in town.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page237" id="page237"></a>237</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:489px; height:610px" src="images/img250.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">A CITIZEN OF MILWAUKEE.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page238" id="page238"></a>238</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;let us begin.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Went through the whole programme. The reception
+by the French Club, in the beautiful Moorish-looking
+rooms of Mrs. John L. Mitchell&rsquo;s superb mansion,
+was a great success. I was amazed to meet so
+many French-speaking people, and much amused to
+see my young compatriot go from one group to another,
+to satisfy himself that all the members of the
+club were speaking French; for I must tell you that,
+among the statutes of the club, there is one that imposes
+a fine of ten cents on any member caught in
+the act of speaking English at the gatherings of the
+association.</p>
+
+<p>The lecture was a great success. The New Plymouth
+Church<a name="FnAnchor_3" id="FnAnchor_3" href="#Footnote_3"><span class="sp">3</span></a> was packed, and the audience extremely
+warm and appreciative. The supper offered to me by
+the Press Club proved most enjoyable. And yet, that
+was not all. At one o&rsquo;clock the Press Club repaired
+to a perfect German <i>Brauerei</i>, where we spent an hour
+in Bavaria, drinking excellent Bavarian beer while
+chatting, telling stories, etc.</p>
+
+<p>I will omit to mention at what time we returned
+home, so as not to tell tales about my kind host.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the late hours we kept last night, breakfast
+was punctually served at eight this morning.
+First course, porridge. Thanks to the kind, thoroughly
+Scotch hospitality of Mr. John L. Mitchell and his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page239" id="page239"></a>239</span>
+charming family, thanks to the many friends and
+sympathizers I met here, I shall carry away a most
+pleasant recollection of this large and beautiful city.
+I shall leave Milwaukee with much regret. Indeed,
+the worst feature of a thick lecturing tour is to feel,
+almost every day, that you leave behind friends whom
+you may never see again.</p>
+
+<p>I lecture at the Central Music Hall, Chicago, this
+evening; but Chicago is reached from here in two
+hours and a half, and I will go as late in the day as I
+can.</p>
+
+<p>No more beds for me now, until I reach Albany, in
+three days.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>The railway king in Wisconsin is a Scotchman.
+I was not surprised to hear it. The iron king in Pennsylvania
+is a Scotchman, Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The
+oil king of Ohio is a Scotchman, Mr. Alexander Macdonald.
+The silver king of California is a Scotchman,
+Mr. Mackay. The dry-goods-store king of New York&mdash;he
+is dead now&mdash;was a Scotchman, Mr. Stewart.
+It is just the same in Canada, just the same in Australia,
+and all over the English-speaking world. The
+Scotch are successful everywhere, and the new countries
+offer them fields for their industry, their perseverance,
+and their shrewdness. There you see them
+landowners, directors of companies, at the head of all
+the great enterprises. In the lower stations of life,
+thanks to their frugality and saving habits, you find
+them thriving everywhere. You go to the manufactory,
+you are told that the foremen are Scotch.</p>
+
+<p>I have, perhaps, a better illustration still.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page240" id="page240"></a>240</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:393px; height:430px" src="images/img253.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">TALES OF OLD SCOTLAND.</p></div>
+
+<p>If you travel in Canada, either by the Grand Trunk
+or the Canadian Pacific, you will meet in the last parlor
+car, near the stove, a man whose duty consists in seeing
+that, all along the line, the workmen are at their
+posts, digging, repairing, etc. These workmen are all
+day exposed to the Canadian temperature, and often
+have to work knee-deep in the snow. Well, you will
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page241" id="page241"></a>241</span>
+find that the man with small, keen eyes, who is able to
+do his work in the railroad car, warming himself comfortably
+by the stove, is invariably a Scotchman. There
+is only one berth with a stove in the whole business;
+it is he who has got it. Many times I have had a
+chat with that Scotchman on the subject of old Scotland.
+Many times I have sat with him in the little
+smoking-room of the parlor car, listening to the history
+of his life, or, maybe, a few good Scotch anecdotes.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>In the train from Chicago to Cleveland</i>, <i>February</i> 26.</p>
+
+<p>I arrived in Chicago at five o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon
+yesterday, dined, dressed, and lectured at the Music
+Hall under the auspices of the Drexel free Kindergarten.
+There was a large audience, and all passed
+off very well. After the lecture, I went to the Grand
+Pacific Hotel, changed clothes, and went on board the
+sleeping car bound for Cleveland, O.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>The criticisms of my lecture in this morning&rsquo;s Chicago
+papers are lively.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Herald</i> calls me:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>A dapper little Frenchman. Five feet eleven in height, and two
+hundred pounds in weight!</p></div>
+
+<p>The <i>Times</i> says:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>That splendid trinity of the American peerage, the colonel, the
+judge, and the professor, turned out in full force at Central Music
+Hall last night. The lecturer is a magician who serves up your
+many little defects, peculiar to the auditors&rsquo; own country, on a
+silver salver, so artistically garnished that one forgets the sarcasm
+in admiration of the sauce.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page242" id="page242"></a>242</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:397px; height:610px" src="images/img255.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">A CELEBRATED EXECUTIONER.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page243" id="page243"></a>243</span> </p>
+
+<p>The <i>Tribune</i> is quite as complimentary and quite as
+lively:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>His satire is as keen as the blade of the celebrated executioner
+who could cut a man&rsquo;s head off, and the unlucky person not know
+it until a pinch of snuff would cause a sneeze, and the decapitated
+head would, much to its surprise, find itself rolling over in the
+dust.</p></div>
+
+<p>And after a good breakfast at Toledo station, I enjoyed
+an hour poring over the Chicago papers.</p>
+
+<p>I lecture in Cleveland to-night, and am still in &ldquo;the
+neighborhood of Chicago.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<hr class="foot" /><div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3" href="#FnAnchor_3"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Very strange, that church with its stalls, galleries, and boxes&mdash;a
+perfect theater. From the platform it was interesting to watch
+the immense throng, packing the place from floor to ceiling, in
+front, on the sides, behind, everywhere.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:100px; height:202px" src="images/img256.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page244" id="page244"></a>244</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt1">The Monotony of Traveling in the States&mdash;&ldquo;Manon
+Lescaut&rdquo; in America.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>In the train from Cleveland to Albany</i>, <i>February</i> 27.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Am</span> getting tired and ill. I am not bed-ridden,
+but am fairly well rid of a bed. I have lately
+spent as many nights in railway cars as in hotel beds.</p>
+
+<p>Am on my way to Albany, just outside &ldquo;the neighborhood
+of Chicago.&rdquo; I lecture in that place to-night,
+and shall get to New York to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>I am suffering from the monotony of life. My
+greatest objection to America (indeed I do not believe
+I have any other) is the sameness of everything. I
+understand the Americans who run away to Europe
+every year to see an old church, a wall covered with
+moss and ivy, some good old-fashioned peasantry not
+dressed like the rest of the world.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 250px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:197px; height:320px" src="images/img258.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">&ldquo;THE SAME &lsquo;INDIAN.&rsquo;&rdquo;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>What strikes a European most, in his rambles
+through America, is the absence of the picturesque.
+The country is monotonous, and eternally the same.
+Burned-up fields, stumps of trees, forests, wooden
+houses all built on the same pattern. All the stations
+you pass are alike. All the towns are alike. To say
+that an American town is ten times larger than another
+simply means that it has ten times more blocks of houses.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page245" id="page245"></a>245</span>
+All the streets are alike, with the same telegraph poles,
+the same &ldquo;Indian&rdquo; as a sign for tobacconists, the same
+red, white, and blue pole as a sign for barbers. All the
+hotels are the same,
+all the <i>menus</i> are the
+same, all the plates
+and dishes the same&mdash;why,
+all the ink-stands
+are the same.
+All the people are
+dressed in the same
+way. When you
+meet an American
+with all his beard,
+you want to shake
+his hands and thank
+him for not shaving
+it, as ninety-nine out
+of every hundred
+Americans do. Of
+course I have not
+seen California, the
+Rocky Mountains,
+and many other parts
+of America where the
+scenery is very beautiful; but I think my remarks can
+apply to those States most likely to be visited by a
+lecturer, that is, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois,
+Wisconsin, Minnesota, and others, during the winter
+months, after the Indian summer, and before the renewal
+of verdure in May.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page246" id="page246"></a>246</span> </p>
+
+<p>After breakfast, that indefatigable man of business,
+that intolerable bore, who incessantly bangs the doors
+and brings his stock-in-trade to the cars, came and
+whispered in my ears:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;New book&mdash;just out&mdash;a forbidden book!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A forbidden book! What is that?&rdquo; I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>He showed it to me. It was &ldquo;Manon Lescaut.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 210px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:160px; height:220px" src="images/img259.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">&ldquo;NEW BOOK JUST OUT&mdash;A FORBIDDEN
+BOOK!&rdquo;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Is it possible? That literary and artistic <i>chef-d&rsquo;&oelig;uvre</i>,
+which has been the original type of &ldquo;Paul et
+Virginie&rdquo; and &ldquo;Atala&rdquo;;
+that touching drama,
+which the prince of critics,
+Jules Janin, declared
+would be sufficient to save
+contemporary literature
+from complete oblivion,
+dragged in the mire,
+clothed in a dirty coarse
+English garb! and advertised
+as a forbidden
+book! Three generations
+of French people have
+wept over the pathetic
+story. Here it is now,
+stripped of its unique
+style and literary beauty, sold to the American
+public as an improper book&mdash;a libel by translation
+on a genius. British authors have complained for
+years that their books were stolen in America. They
+have suffered in pockets, it is true, but their reputation
+has spread through an immense continent. What is
+their complaint compared to that of the French authors
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page247" id="page247"></a>247</span>
+who have the misfortune to see their works
+translated into American? It is not only their pockets
+that suffer, but their reputation. The poor French
+author is at the mercy of incapable and malicious
+translators hired at starvation wages by the American
+pirate publisher. He is liable to a species of defamation
+ten times worse than robbery.</p>
+
+<p>And as I looked at that copy of &ldquo;Manon Lescaut,&rdquo;
+I almost felt grateful that Prevost was dead.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:79px" src="images/img260.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page248" id="page248"></a>248</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">For the First Time I See an American Paper
+Abuse Me&mdash;Albany to New York&mdash;A Lecture
+at Daly&rsquo;s Theater&mdash;Afternoon Audiences.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>February</i> 23.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">The</span> American press has always been very good to
+me. Fairness one has a right to expect, but kindness
+is an extra that is not always thrown in, and
+therefore the uniform amiability of the American press
+toward me could not fail to strike me most agreeably.</p>
+
+<p>Up to yesterday I had not seen a single unkind
+notice or article, but in the Albany <i>Express</i> of yesterday
+morning I read:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>This evening the people of Albany are asked to listen to a lecture
+by Max O&rsquo;Rell, who was in this country two years ago, and was
+treated with distinguished courtesy. When he went home he
+published a book filled with deliberate misstatements and willful
+exaggerations of the traits of the American people.</p></div>
+
+<p>This paper &ldquo;has reason,&rdquo; as the French say. My
+book contained one misstatement, at all events, and
+that was that &ldquo;all Americans have a great sense of
+humor.&rdquo; You may say that the French are a witty
+people, but that does not mean that France contains
+no fools. It is rather painful to have to explain such
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page249" id="page249"></a>249</span>
+things, but I do so for the benefit of that editor and
+with apologies to the general reader.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this diverting little &ldquo;par,&rdquo; I had an immense
+audience last night in Harmanus Bleecker
+Hall, a new and magnificent construction in Albany,
+excellent, no doubt, for music, but hardly adapted
+for lecturing in, on account of its long and narrow
+shape.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:292px; height:320px" src="images/img262.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">RIP VAN WINKLE.</p></div>
+
+<p>I should have liked to stay longer in Albany, which
+struck me as being a remarkably beautiful place, but
+having to lecture in New York this afternoon, I took
+the vestibule train early this morning for New York.
+This journey is exceedingly picturesque along the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page250" id="page250"></a>250</span>
+Hudson River, traveling as you do between two
+ranges of wooded hills, dotted over with beautiful
+habitations, and now and then passing a little town
+bathing its feet in the water. In the distance one gets
+good views of the Catskill Mountains, immortalized by
+Washington Irving in &ldquo;Rip Van Winkle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On boarding the train, the first thing I did was to
+read the news of yesterday. Imagine my amusement,
+on opening the Albany <i>Express</i> to read the following
+extract from the report of my lecture:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>He has an agreeable but not a strong voice. This was the only
+point that could be criticised in his lecture, which consisted of
+many clever sketches of the humorous side of the character of
+different Anglo-Saxon nations. His humor is keen. He evidently
+is a great admirer of America and Americans, only bringing into
+ridicule some of their most conspicuously objectionable traits....
+His lecture was entertaining, clever, witty and thoroughly enjoyable.</p></div>
+
+<p>The most amusing part of all this is that the American
+sketches which I introduced into my lecture last
+night, and which seemed to have struck the Albany
+<i>Express</i> so agreeably, were all extracts from the book
+&ldquo;filled with deliberate misstatements and willful exaggerations
+of the traits of the American people.&rdquo;
+Well, after all, there is humor, unconscious humor, in
+the Albany <i>Express</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the Grand Central Station in New York
+at noon, I gave up my check to a transfer man, but
+learned to my chagrin that the vestibule train from
+Albany had carried no baggage, and that my things
+would only arrive by the next train at about three
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page251" id="page251"></a>251</span>
+o&rsquo;clock. Pleasant news for a man who was due to
+address an audience at three!</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 210px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:156px; height:320px" src="images/img264.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">&ldquo;A LITTLE BIT STIFF.&rdquo;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>There was only one way out of the difficulty. Off
+I went post-haste to a ready-made tailor&rsquo;s, who sold
+me a complete fit-out from head
+to foot. I did not examine the
+cut and fit of each garment very
+minutely, but went off satisfied
+that I was presenting a neat and
+respectable appearance. Before
+going on the stage, however, I
+discovered that the sleeves of the
+new coat, though perfectly smooth
+and well-behaved so long as the
+arms inside them were bent at the
+elbow, developed a remarkable
+cross-twist as soon as I let my
+arms hang straight down.</p>
+
+<p>By means of holding it firm
+with the middle finger, I managed
+to keep the recalcitrant sleeve in
+position, and the affair passed off
+very well. Only my friends remarked, after the lecture,
+that they thought I looked a little bit stiff,
+especially when making my bow to the audience.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>My lecture at Daly&rsquo;s Theater this afternoon was
+given under the auspices of the Bethlehem Day Nursery,
+and I am thankful to think that this most interesting
+association is a little richer to-day than it was
+yesterday. For an afternoon audience it was remarkably
+warm and responsive.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page252" id="page252"></a>252</span> </p>
+
+<p>I have many times lectured to afternoon audiences,
+but have not, as a rule, enjoyed it. Afternoon &ldquo;shows&rdquo;
+are a mistake. Do not ask me why; but think of
+those you have ever been to, and see if you have a
+lively recollection of them. There is a time for everything.
+Fancy playing the guitar under your lady love&rsquo;s
+window by daylight, for instance!</p>
+
+<p>Afternoon audiences are kid-gloved ones. There is
+but a sprinkling of men, and so the applause, when it
+comes, is a feeble affair, more chilling almost than
+silence. In some fashionable towns it is bad form to
+applaud at all in the afternoon. I have a vivid recollection
+of the effect produced one afternoon in Cheltenham
+by the vigorous applause of a sympathizing
+friend of mine, sitting in the reserved seats. How all
+the other reserved seats craned their necks in credulous
+astonishment to get a view of this innovator, this outer
+barbarian! He was new to the wondrous ways of the
+<i>Chillitonians</i>. In the same audience was a lady, Irish
+and very charming, as I found out on later acquaintance,
+who showed her appreciation from time to time
+by clapping the tips of her fingers together noiselessly,
+while her glance said: &ldquo;I should very much like to
+applaud, but you know I can&rsquo;t do it; we are in Cheltenham,
+and such a thing is bad form, especially in the
+afternoon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:419px; height:430px" src="images/img266.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE GOUTY MAN.</p></div>
+
+<p>Afternoon audiences in the southern health resorts
+of England are probably the least inspiriting and inspiring
+of all. There are the sick, the lame, the halt.
+Some of them are very interesting people, but a large
+proportion appear to be suffering more from the boredom
+of life than any other complaint, and look as if
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page253" id="page253"></a>253</span>
+it would do them good to follow out the well-known
+advice, &ldquo;Live on sixpence a day, and earn it.&rdquo; It is
+hard work entertaining people who have done everything,
+seen everything, tasted everything, been everywhere&mdash;people
+whose sole aim is to kill time. A fair
+sprinkling are gouty. They spend most of their waking
+hours in a bath-chair. As a listener, the gouty
+man is sometimes decidedly funny. He gives signs of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page254" id="page254"></a>254</span>
+life from time to time by a vigorous slap on his thigh
+and a vicious looking kick. Before I began to know
+him, I used to wonder whether it was my discourse
+producing some effect upon him.</p>
+
+<p>I am not afraid of meeting these people in America.
+Few people are bored here, all are happy to live, and
+all work and are busy. American men die of brain
+fever, but seldom of the gout. If an American saw
+that he must spend his life wheeled in a bath-chair, he
+would reflect that rivers are numerous in America, and
+he would go and take a plunge into one of them.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:130px; height:93px" src="images/img267.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page255" id="page255"></a>255</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXIX.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt1">Wanderings through New York&mdash;Lecture at
+the Harmonie Club&mdash;Visit to the Century
+Club.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>March</i> 1.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">The</span> more I see New York, the more I like
+it.</p>
+
+<p>After lunch I had a drive through Central Park and
+Riverside Park, along the Hudson, and thoroughly
+enjoyed it. I returned to the Everett House through
+Fifth Avenue. I have never seen Central Park in
+summer, but I can realize how beautiful it must be
+when the trees are clothed. To have such a park in
+the heart of the city is perfectly marvelous. It is
+true that, with the exception of the superb Catholic
+Cathedral, Fifth Avenue has no monument worth
+mentioning, but the succession of stately mansions is
+a pleasant picture to the eye. What a pity this
+cathedral cannot stand in a square in front of some
+long thoroughfare, it would have a splendid effect. I
+know this was out of the question. Built as New
+York is, the cathedral could only take the place of a
+block. It simply represents so many numbers between
+Fiftieth and Fifty-first streets on Fifth Avenue.</p>
+
+<p>In the Park I saw statues of Shakespeare, Walter
+Scott, and Robert Burns. I should have liked to see
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page256" id="page256"></a>256</span>
+those of Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and many
+other celebrities of the land. Washington, Franklin,
+and Lincoln are practically the only Americans whose
+statues you see all over the country. They play here
+the part that Wellington and Nelson play in England.
+After all, the &ldquo;bosses&rdquo; and the local politicians who
+run the towns probably never heard of Longfellow,
+Bryant, Poe, etc.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>At four o&rsquo;clock, Mr. Thomas Nast, the celebrated
+caricaturist, called. I was delighted to make his
+acquaintance, and found him a most charming man.</p>
+
+<p>I dined with General Horace Porter and a few other
+friends at the Union League Club. The witty general
+was in his best vein.</p>
+
+<p>At eight o&rsquo;clock I lectured at the Harmonie Club,
+and had a large and most appreciative audience, composed
+of the pick of the Israelite community in New
+York.</p>
+
+<p>After the lecture I attended one of the &ldquo;Saturdays&rdquo;
+at the Century Club, and met Mr. Kendal, who, with
+his talented wife, is having a triumphant progress
+through the United States.</p>
+
+<p>There is no gathering in the world where you can
+see so many beautiful, intelligent faces as at the Century
+Club. There you see gathered together the
+cleverest men of a nation whose chief characteristic
+is cleverness.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page257" id="page257"></a>257</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXX.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt1">Visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music&mdash;Rev.
+Dr. Talmage.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>March</i> 2.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Went</span> to hear Dr. T. de Witt Talmage this morning
+at the Academy of Music, Brooklyn.</p>
+
+<p>What an actor America has lost by Dr. Talmage
+choosing the pulpit in preference to the stage!</p>
+
+<p>The Academy of Music was crowded. Standing-room
+only. For an old-fashioned European, to see a
+theater, with its boxes, stalls, galleries, open for divine
+service was a strange sight; but we had not gone very
+far into the service before it became plain to me that
+there was nothing divine about it. The crowd had
+come there, not to worship God, but to hear Mr. Talmage.</p>
+
+<p>At the door the programme was distributed. It consisted
+of six hymns to be interluded with prayers by
+the doctor. Between the fifth and sixth, he delivered
+the lecture, or the sermon, if you insist on the name,
+and during the sixth there was the collection, that
+hinge on which the whole service turns in Protestant
+places of worship.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 240px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:192px; height:320px" src="images/img271.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">THE LEADER OF THE CHOIR.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>I took a seat and awaited with the rest the entrance
+of Dr. Talmage. There was subdued conversation going
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page258" id="page258"></a>258</span>
+on all around, just as there would be at a theater
+or concert: in fact, throughout the whole of the proceedings,
+there was no sign of a silent lifting up of the
+spirit in worship.
+Not a person in that
+strange congregation,
+went on his or her
+knees to pray. Most
+of them put one hand
+in front of the face,
+and this was as near
+as they got that morning
+to an attitude of
+devotion. Except for
+this, and the fact that
+they did not applaud,
+there was absolutely
+no difference between
+them and any other
+theater audience I
+ever saw.</p>
+
+<p>The monotonous
+hymns were accompanied
+by a <i>cornet-�-piston</i>,
+which lent a
+certain amount of life to them, but very little
+religious harmony. That cornet was the key-note
+of the whole performance. The hymns, composed,
+I believe, for Dr. Talmage&rsquo;s flock, are not of
+high literary value. &ldquo;General&rdquo; Booth would
+probably hesitate to include such in the <i>r�pertoire</i>
+of the Salvation Army. Judge of them for yourself.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page259" id="page259"></a>259</span>
+Here are three illustrations culled from the
+programme:</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+<p>Sing, O sing, ye heirs of glory!</p>
+<p>Shout your triumphs as you go:</p>
+<p>Zion&rsquo;s gates will open for you,</p>
+<p>You shall find an entrance through.</p>
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+<p>&rsquo;Tis the promise of God, full salvation to give</p>
+<p>Unto him who on Jesus, his Son, will believe.</p>
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+<p>Though the pathway be lonely, and dangerous too, (<i>sic</i>)</p>
+<p>Surely Jesus is able to carry me thro&rsquo;.</p>
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>This is poetry such as you find inside Christmas
+crackers.</p>
+
+<p>Another hymn began:</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+<p>One more day&rsquo;s work for Jesus,</p>
+<p>One less of life for me!</p>
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>I could not help thinking that there would be good
+employment for a prophet of God, with a stout whip,
+in the congregations of the so-called faithful of to-day.
+I have heard them by hundreds shouting at the top of
+their voices:</p>
+
+<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td>
+<div class="poemr">
+
+<p>O Paradise, O Paradise!</p>
+  <p class="i1">&rsquo;Tis weary waiting here;</p>
+<p>I long to be where Jesus is,</p>
+  <p class="i1">To feel, to see him near.</p>
+<p>O Paradise, O Paradise!</p>
+  <p class="i1">I greatly long to see</p>
+<p>The special place my dearest Lord,</p>
+  <p class="i1">In love, prepares for me!</p>
+
+</div>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Knowing something of those people outside the
+church doors, I have often thought what an edifying
+sight it would be if the Lord deigned to listen and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page260" id="page260"></a>260</span>
+take a few of them at their word. If the fearless
+Christ were here on earth again, what crowds of cheats
+and humbugs he would drive out of the Temple! And
+foremost, I fancy, would go the people who, instead of
+thanking their Maker who allows the blessed sun to
+shine, the birds to sing, and the flowers to grow for
+them here, howl and whine lies about longing for the
+joy of moving on to the better world, to the &ldquo;special
+place&rdquo; that is prepared for them. If there be a better
+world, it will be too good for hypocrites.</p>
+
+<p>After hymn the fifth, Dr. Talmage takes the floor.
+The audience settled in their seats in evident anticipation
+of a good time, and it was soon clear to me that
+the discourse was not to be dull at any rate. But I
+waited in vain for a great thought, a lofty idea, or refined
+language. There came none. Nothing but commonplaces
+given out with tricks of voice and the gestures
+of a consummate actor. The modulations of the
+voice have been studied with care, no single platform
+trick was missing.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor comes on the stage, which is about forty
+feet wide. He begins slowly. The flow of language
+is great, and he is never at a loss for a word. Motionless,
+in his lowest tones, he puts a question to us.
+Nobody replies, of course. Thereupon he paces wildly
+up and down the whole length of the stage. Then,
+bringing up in full view of his auditors, he stares at
+them, crosses his arms, gives a double and tremendous
+stamp on the boards, and in a terrific voice he repeats
+the question, and answers it. The desired effect is
+produced: he never misses fire.</p>
+
+<p>Being an old stager of several years&rsquo; standing myself,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page261" id="page261"></a>261</span>
+I admire him professionally. Nobody is edified,
+nobody is regenerated, nobody is improved, but all are
+entertained. It is not a divine service, but it is a
+clever performance, and the Americans never fail to
+patronize a clever performance. All styles go down
+with them. They will give a hearing to everybody
+but the bore, especially on Sundays, when other forms
+of entertainment are out of the running.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:352px; height:300px" src="images/img274.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE DESIRED EFFECT.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is not only the Brooklyn public that are treated
+to the discourses of Dr. Talmage, but the whole of
+America. He syndicates his sermons, and they are
+published in Monday&rsquo;s newspapers in all quarters of
+America. I have also seen them reproduced in the
+Australian papers.</p>
+
+<p>The delivery of these orations by Dr. Talmage is so
+superior to the matter they are made of, that to read
+them is slow indeed compared to hearing them.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page262" id="page262"></a>262</span> </p>
+
+<p>At the back of the programme was a flaring advertisement
+of Dr. Talmage&rsquo;s paper, called:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p class="center1">CHRISTIAN HERALD AND SIGNS OF OUR TIMES.</p>
+
+<p>A live, undenominational, illustrated Christian paper, with a
+weekly circulation of fifty thousand copies, and rapidly increasing.
+Every State of the Union, every Province of Canada, and every
+country in the world is represented on its enormous subscription
+list. Address your subscription to Mr. N., treasurer, etc.</p></div>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Signs of our times,&rdquo; indeed!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:70px" src="images/img275.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page263" id="page263"></a>263</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXI.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Virginia&mdash;The Hotels&mdash;The South&mdash;I will Kill
+a Railway Conductor before I leave America&mdash;Philadelphia&mdash;Impressions
+of the Old City.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Petersburg, Va.</i>, <i>March</i> 3.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Left</span> New York last night
+and arrived here at
+noon. No change
+in the
+scenery.
+The same burnt-up fields,
+the same placards all over
+the land. The roofs of
+houses, the trees in the forests,
+the fences in the fields, all
+announce to the world the magic
+properties of castor oil, aperients,
+and liver pills.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 420px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:368px; height:420px" src="images/img276.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">MY SUPPER.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>A little village inn in the bottom
+of old Brittany is a palace of
+comfort compared to the best
+hotel of a Virginia town. I feel
+wretched. My bedroom is so
+dirty that I shall not dare to
+undress to-night. I have just had lunch: a piece
+of tough dried-up beef, custard pie, and a glass of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page264" id="page264"></a>264</span>
+filthy water, the whole served by an old negro on an
+old, ragged, dirty table-cloth.</p>
+
+<p>Petersburg, which awakes so many souvenirs of the
+War of Secession, is a pretty town scattered with
+beautiful villas. It strikes one as a provincial town.
+To me, coming from the busy North, it looks asleep.
+The South has not yet recovered from its disasters of
+thirty years ago. That is what struck me most, when,
+two years ago, I went through Virginia, Carolina, and
+Georgia.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then American eccentricity reveals itself.
+I have just seen a church built on the model of a Greek
+temple, and surmounted with a pointed spire lately
+added. Just imagine to yourself Julius C�sar with
+his toga and buskin on, and having a chimney-top hat
+on his head.</p>
+
+<p>The streets seemed deserted, dead.</p>
+
+<p>To my surprise, the Opera House was crowded to-night.
+The audience was fashionable and appreciative,
+but very cool, almost as cool as in Connecticut and
+Maine.</p>
+
+<p>Heaven be praised! a gentleman invited me to have
+supper at a club after the lecture.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>March</i> 4.</p>
+
+<p>I am sore all over. I spent the night on the bed,
+outside, in my day clothes, and am bruised all over. I
+have pains in my gums too. Oh, that piece of beef
+yesterday! I am off to Philadelphia. My bill at the
+hotel amounts to $1.50. Never did I pay so much
+through the nose for what I had through the mouth.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page265" id="page265"></a>265</span> </p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Philadelphia</i>, <i>March</i> 4.</p>
+
+<p>Before I return to Europe I will kill a railway conductor.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:302px; height:430px" src="images/img278.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;IMAGINE JULIUS C�SAR WITH A BIG HAT.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>From Petersburg to Richmond I was the only occupant
+of the parlor car. It was bitterly cold. The
+conductor of the train came in the smoke-room, and
+took a seat. I suppose it was his right, although I
+doubt it, for he was not the conductor attached to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page266" id="page266"></a>266</span>
+parlor car. He opened the window. The cold, icy air
+fell on my legs, or (to use a more proper expression, as I
+am writing in Philadelphia) on my lower limbs. I said
+nothing, but rose and closed the window. The fellow
+frowned, rose, and opened the window again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;I thought that perhaps you
+had come here to look after my comfort. If you
+have not I will look after it myself.&rdquo; And I rose and
+closed the window.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I want the window open,&rdquo; said the conductor, and
+he prepared to re-open it, giving me a mute, impudent
+scowl.</p>
+
+<p>I was fairly roused. Nature has gifted me with a
+biceps and a grip of remarkable power. I seized the
+man by the collar of his coat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As true as I am alive,&rdquo; I exclaimed, &ldquo;if you open
+this window, I will pitch you out of it.&rdquo; And I prepared
+for war. The cur sneaked away and made an
+exit compared to which a whipped hound&rsquo;s would be
+majestic.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I am at the Bellevue, a delightful hotel. My friend
+Wilson Barrett is here, and I have come to spend the
+day with him. He is playing every night to crowded
+houses, and after each performance he has to make a
+speech. This is his third visit to Philadelphia. During
+the first visit, he tells me that the audience wanted
+a speech after each act.</p>
+
+<p>It is always interesting to compare notes with a
+friend who has been over the same ground as yourself.
+So I was eager to hear Mr. Wilson Barrett&rsquo;s impressions
+of his long tour in the States.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page267" id="page267"></a>267</span> </p>
+
+<p>Several points we both agreed perfectly upon at
+once; the charming geniality and good-fellowship of
+the best Americans, the brilliancy and naturalness of
+the ladies, the wonderful intelligence and activity of
+the people, and the wearing monotony of life on the
+road.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:346px; height:340px" src="images/img280.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE WHIPPED CONDUCTOR.</p></div>
+
+<p>After the scene in the train, I was interested, too, to
+find that the train conductors&mdash;those mute, magnificent
+monarchs of the railroad&mdash;had awakened in Mr. Barrett
+much the same feeling as in myself. We Europeans
+are used to a form of obedience or, at least, deference
+from our paid servants, and the arrogant attitude of
+the American wage-earner first amazes, and then enrages
+us&mdash;when we have not enough humor, or good-humor,
+to get some amusement out it. It is so novel
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page268" id="page268"></a>268</span>
+to be tyrannized over by people whom you pay to
+attend to your comfort! The American keeps his
+temper under the process, for he is the best-humored
+fellow in the world. Besides, a small squabble is no
+more in his line than a small anything else. It is not
+worth his while. The Westerner may pull out a pistol
+and shoot you if you annoy him, but neither he nor
+the Eastern man will wrangle for mastery.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:378px; height:430px" src="images/img281.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">A BOSS.</p></div>
+
+<p>If such was not the case, do you believe for a moment
+that the Americans would submit to the rule of
+the &ldquo;Rings,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Leaders,&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Bosses&rdquo;?</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I like Philadelphia, with its magnificent park, its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page269" id="page269"></a>269</span>
+beautiful houses that look like homes. It is not brand
+new, like the rest of America.</p>
+
+<p>My friend, Mr. J. M. Stoddart, editor of <i>Lippincott&rsquo;s
+Magazine</i>, has kindly chaperoned me all the day.</p>
+
+<p>I visited in detail the State House, Independence
+Square. These words evoke sentiments of patriotism
+in the hearts of the Americans. Here was the bell
+that &ldquo;proclaimed liberty throughout the Colonies&rdquo; so
+loudly that it split. It was on the 8th of July, 1776,
+that the bell was rung, as the public reading of the
+Declaration of Independence took place in the State
+House on that day,
+and there were great
+rejoicings. John
+Adams, writing to
+Samuel Chase on the
+9th of July, said:
+&ldquo;The bell rang all
+day, and almost all
+night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 310px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:255px; height:320px" src="images/img282.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">THE OLD LIBERTY BELL.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>It is recorded by
+one writer that, on
+the 4th of July, when
+the motion to adopt
+the declaration
+passed the majority
+of the Assembly, although
+not signed
+by all the delegates, the old bell-ringer awaited anxiously,
+with trembling hope, the signing. He kept saying:
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll never do it, they&rsquo;ll never do it!&rdquo; but his
+eyes expanded, and his grasp grew firm when the voice
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page270" id="page270"></a>270</span>
+of a blue-eyed youth reached his ears in shouts of triumph
+as he flew up the stairs of the tower, shouting:
+&ldquo;Ring, grandpa, ring; they&rsquo;ve signed!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>What a day this old &ldquo;Liberty Bell&rdquo; reminds you
+of!</p>
+
+<p>There, in the Independence Hall, the delegates were
+gathered. Benjamin Harrison, the ancestor of the
+present occupier of the White House, seized John
+Hancock, upon whose head a price was set, in his arms,
+and placing him in the presidential chair, said: &ldquo;We
+will show Mother Britain how little we care for her, by
+making our president a Massachusetts man, whom she
+has excluded from pardon by public proclamation,&rdquo;
+and, says Mr. Chauncey M. Depew in one of his beautiful
+orations, when they were signing the Declaration,
+and the slender Elbridge Gerry uttered the grim pleasantry,
+&ldquo;We must hang together, or surely we will hang
+separately,&rdquo; the portly Harrison responded with more
+daring humor, &ldquo;It will be all over with me in a moment,
+but you will be
+kicking in the air half
+an hour after I am
+gone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 350px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:302px; height:220px" src="images/img283.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">THE INKSTAND.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The National Museum
+is the auxiliary
+chamber to Independence
+Hall, and there
+you find many most
+interesting relics of Colonial
+and Revolutionary
+days: the silver inkstand used in signing the
+famous Declaration; Hancock&rsquo;s chair; the little table
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page271" id="page271"></a>271</span>
+upon which the document was signed, and hundreds
+of souvenirs piously preserved by generations of
+grateful Americans.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>It is said that Philadelphia has produced only two
+successful men, Mr. Wanamaker, the great dry-goods-store
+man, now a member of President Benjamin Harrison&rsquo;s
+Cabinet, and Mr. George W. Childs, proprietor
+of the Philadelphia <i>Public Ledger</i>, one of the most important
+and successful newspapers in the United States.</p>
+
+<p>I went to Mr. Wanamaker&rsquo;s dry-goods-store, an establishment
+strongly reminding you of the Paris <i>Bon
+March�</i>, or Mr. Whiteley&rsquo;s warehouses in London.</p>
+
+<p>By far the most interesting visit was that which I
+paid to Mr. George W. Childs in his study at the <i>Public
+Ledger&rsquo;s</i> offices. It would require a whole volume to
+describe in detail all the treasures that Mr. Childs has
+accumulated: curios of all kinds, rare books, manuscripts
+and autographs, portraits, china, relics from the
+celebrities of the world, etc. Mr. Childs, like the
+Prussians during their unwelcome visit to France in
+1870, has a strong <i>penchant</i> for clocks. Indeed his collection
+is the most remarkable in existence. His study
+is a beautiful <i>sanctum sanctorum</i>; it is also a museum
+that not only the richest lover of art would be proud to
+possess, but that any nation would be too glad to acquire,
+if it could be acquired; but Mr. Childs is a very
+wealthy man, and he means to keep it, and, I understand,
+to hand it over to his successor in the ownership
+of the <i>Public Ledger</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. George W. Childs is a man of about fifty years
+of age, short and plump, with a most kind and amiable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page272" id="page272"></a>272</span>
+face. His munificence and philanthropy are well
+known and, as I understand his character, I believe he
+would not think much of my gratitude to him for the
+kindness he showed me if I dwelt on them in these
+pages.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to my kind friends, every minute has been
+occupied visiting some interesting place, or meeting
+some interesting people. I shall lecture here next
+month, and shall look forward to the pleasure of being
+in Philadelphia again.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:514px; height:400px" src="images/img285.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">WHEN IRELAND IS FREE.</p></div>
+
+<p>At the Union League Club I met Mr. Rufus E.
+Shapley, who kindly gave me a copy of his clever and
+witty political satire, &ldquo;Solid for Mulhooly,&rdquo; illustrated
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page273" id="page273"></a>273</span>
+by Mr. Thomas Nast. I should advise any one who
+would understand how Jonathan is ruled municipally,
+to peruse this little book. It gives the history of
+Pat&rsquo;s rise from the Irish cabin in Connaught to the
+City Hall of the large American cities.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When one man,&rdquo; says Mr. Shapley, &ldquo;owns and dominates
+four wards or counties, he becomes a leader.
+Half a dozen such leaders combined constitute what is
+called a Ring. When one leader is powerful enough
+to bring three or four such leaders under his yoke,
+he becomes a Boss; and a Boss wields a power almost
+as absolute, while it lasts, as that of the Czar of Russia
+or the King of Zululand.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Extracts from this book would not do it justice. It
+should be read in its entirety. I read it with all the
+more pleasure that, in &ldquo;Jonathan and His Continent,&rdquo;
+I ventured to say: &ldquo;The English are always wondering
+why Americans all seem to be in favor of Home
+Rule, and ready to back up the cause with their dollars.
+Why? I will tell you. Because they are in hopes
+that, when the Irish recover the possession of Ireland,
+they will all go home.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A foreigner who criticises a nation is happy to see
+his opinions shared by the natives.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:108px" src="images/img286.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page274" id="page274"></a>274</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt1">My Ideas of the State of Texas&mdash;Why I Will
+Not Go There&mdash;The Story of a Frontier Man.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>March</i> 5.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Have</span> had cold audiences in Maine and Connecticut;
+and indifferent ones in several cities,
+while I have been warmly received in many others.
+It seems that, if I went to Texas, I might get it
+hot.</p>
+
+<p>I have received to-day a Texas paper containing a
+short editorial marked at the four corners in blue pencil.
+Impossible not to see it. The editorial abuses
+me from the first line to the last. When there appears
+in a paper an article, or even only a short paragraph,
+abusing you, you never run the risk of not seeing it.
+There always is, somewhere, a kind friend who will
+post it to you. He thinks you may be getting a little
+conceited, and he forwards the article to you, that you
+may use it as wholesome physic. It does him good,
+and does you no harm.</p>
+
+<p>The article in question begins by charging me with
+having turned America and the Americans into ridicule,
+goes on wondering that the Americans can receive me
+so well everywhere, and, after pitching into me right
+and left, winds up by warning me that, if I should go
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page275" id="page275"></a>275</span>
+to Texas, I might for a change meet with a hot reception.</p>
+
+<p>A shot, perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>A shot in Texas! No, no, no.</p>
+
+<p>I won&rsquo;t go to Texas. I should strongly object
+to being shot anywhere, but especially in Texas,
+where the event would attract so little public
+attention.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:317px; height:340px" src="images/img288.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;A SHOT IN TEXAS.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Yet, I should have liked to go to Texas, for was it
+not from that State that, after the publication of
+&ldquo;Jonathan and His Continent,&rdquo; I received the two
+following letters, which I have kept among my treasures?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page276" id="page276"></a>276</span> </p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p class="sc">Dear Sir:</p>
+
+<p>I have read your book on America and greatly enjoyed it.
+Please to send me your autograph. I enclose a ten-cent piece.
+The postage will cost you five cents. Don&rsquo;t trouble about the
+change.</p>
+
+<p class="sc">My Dear Sir:</p>
+
+<p>I have an album containing the photographs of many well-known
+people from Europe as well as from America. I should
+much like to add yours to the number. If you will send it to me, I
+will send you mine and that of my wife in return.</p></div>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>And I also imagine that there must be in Texas a
+delightful primitiveness of manners and good-fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>A friend once related to me the following reminiscence:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>I arrived one evening in a little Texas town, and asked for a
+bedroom at the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>There was no bedroom to be had, but only a bed in a double-bedded
+room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Will that suit you?&rdquo; said the clerk.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; I said hesitatingly. &ldquo;Who is the
+other?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; said the clerk, &ldquo;you may set your mind at
+rest on that subject.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;I will take that bed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At about ten o&rsquo;clock, as I was preparing to go to bed, my bedroom
+companion entered. It was a frontier man in full uniform:
+Buffalo Bill hat, leather leggings, a belt accommodating a couple
+of revolvers&mdash;no baggage of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>I did not like it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hallo, stranger,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;how are you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m pretty well,&rdquo; I replied, without meaning a word of it.</p>
+
+<p>The frontier man undressed, that is to say, took off his boots,
+placed the two revolvers under his pillows and lay down.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page277" id="page277"></a>277</span> </p>
+
+<p>I liked it less and less.</p>
+
+<p>By and by, we both went to sleep. In the morning we woke up
+at the same time. He rose, dressed&mdash;that is to say, put on his
+boots, and wished me good-morning.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:377px; height:430px" src="images/img290.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">MY ROOM-MATE.</p></div>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>The hall porter came with letters for my companion, but none
+for me. I thought I should like to let that man know I had no
+money with me. So I said to him:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page278" id="page278"></a>278</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am very much disappointed. I expected some money from
+New York, and it has not come.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hope it will come,&rdquo; he replied.</p>
+
+<p>I did not like that hope.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, we met again. He undressed&mdash;you know, went
+to sleep, rose early in the morning, dressed&mdash;you know.</p>
+
+<p>The porter came again with letters for him and none for me.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, your money has not come,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see it has not. I&rsquo;m afraid I&rsquo;m going to be in a fix what to
+do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going away this morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry to part with you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The frontier man took a little piece of paper and wrote something
+on it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Take this, my friend,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;it may be useful to you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was a check for a hundred dollars.</p>
+
+<p>I could have gone down on my knees, as I refused the check
+and asked that man&rsquo;s pardon.</p></div>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I lectured in Brooklyn to-night, and am off to the
+West to-morrow morning.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:63px" src="images/img291.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page279" id="page279"></a>279</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Cincinnati&mdash;The Town&mdash;The Suburbs&mdash;A German
+City&mdash;&ldquo;Over the Rhine&rdquo;&mdash;What is a
+Good Patriot?&mdash;An Impressive Funeral&mdash;A
+Great Fire&mdash;How It Appeared to Me, and
+How It Appeared to the Newspaper Reporters.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Cincinnati</i>, <i>March</i> 7.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">My</span> arrival in Cincinnati this morning was anything
+but triumphal.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving the car, I gave my check to a cab-driver,
+who soon came to inform me that my valise was
+broken. It was a leather one, and on being thrown
+from the baggage-van on the platform, it burst open,
+and all my things were scattered about. In England
+or in France, half a dozen porters would have immediately
+come to the rescue, but here the porter
+is practically unknown. Three or four men belonging
+to the company gathered round, but, neither out
+of complaisance nor in the hope of gain, did any of
+them offer his services. They looked on, laughed, and
+enjoyed the scene. I daresay the betting was brisk as
+to whether I should succeed in putting my things
+together or not. Thanks to a leather strap I had in
+my bag, I managed to bind the portmanteau and have
+it placed on the cab that drove to the Burnet House.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page280" id="page280"></a>280</span> </p>
+
+<p>Immediately after registering my name, I went to
+buy an American trunk, that is to say, an iron-bound
+trunk, to place my things in safety. I have been told
+that trunk makers give a commission to the railway
+and transfer baggagemen who, having broken trunks,
+recommend their owners to go to such and such a
+place to buy new ones. This goes a long way toward
+explaining the way in which baggage is treated in
+America.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:418px; height:320px" src="images/img293.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">MY BROKEN VALISE.</p></div>
+
+<p>On arriving in the dining-room, I was surprised to
+see the glasses of all the guests filled with lemonade.
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; thought I, &ldquo;here is actually an hotel which
+is not like all the other hotels.&rdquo; The lemonade turned
+out to be water from the Ohio River. I could not help
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page281" id="page281"></a>281</span>
+feeling grateful for a change; any change, even that
+of the color of water. Anybody who has traveled
+a great deal in America will appreciate the
+remark.</p>
+
+<p>Cincinnati is built at the bottom of a funnel from
+which rise hundreds of chimneys vomiting fire and
+smoke. From the neighboring heights, the city looks
+like a huge furnace, and so it is, a furnace of industry
+and activity. It reminded me of Glasgow.</p>
+
+<p>If the city itself is anything but attractive, the residential
+parts are perfectly lovely. I have seen nothing
+in America that surpasses Burnet Wood, situated on
+the bordering heights of the town, scattered with
+beautiful villas, and itself a mixture of a wilderness
+and a lovely park. A kind friend drove me for three
+hours through the entire neighborhood, giving me, in
+American fashion, the history of the owner of each
+residence we passed. Here was the house of Mr. A.,
+or rather Mr. A. B. C, every American having three
+names. He came to the city twenty years ago without
+a dollar. Five years later he had five millions.
+He speculated and lost all, went to Chicago and made
+millions, which he afterward lost. Now again he has
+several millions, and so on. This is common enough in
+America. By and by, we passed the most beautiful of
+all the villas of Burnet Wood&mdash;the house of the Oil
+King, Mr. Alexander Macdonald, one of those wonderfully
+successful men, such as Scotland alone can
+boast all the world over. America has been a great
+field for the display of Scotch intelligence and industry.</p>
+
+<p>After visiting the pretty museum at Eden Park, a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page282" id="page282"></a>282</span>
+museum organized in 1880 in consequence of Mr.
+Charles W. West&rsquo;s offer to give $150,000 for that purpose,
+and already in possession of very good works of
+art and many valuable treasures, we returned to the
+city and stopped at the Public Library. Over 200,000
+volumes, representing all the branches of science and
+literature, are there, as well as a collection of all the
+newspapers of the world, placed in chronological order
+on the shelves and neatly bound. I believe that this
+collection of newspapers and that of Washington are
+the two best known. In the public reading-room,
+hundreds of people are running over the newspapers
+from Europe and all the principal cities of the United
+States. My best thanks are due to Mr. Whelpley, the
+librarian, for his kindness in conducting me all over
+this interesting place. Upstairs I was shown the
+room where the members of the Council of Education
+hold their sittings. The room was all topsy-turvey.
+Twenty-six desks and twenty-six chairs was about all
+the furniture of the room. In a corner, piled up together,
+were the cuspidores. I counted. Twenty-six.
+Right.</p>
+
+<p>After thanking my kind pilot, I returned to the
+Burnet House to read the evening papers. I read that
+the next day I was to breakfast with Mr. A., lunch
+with Mr. B., and dine with Mr. C. The <i>menu</i> was not
+published. I take it for granted that this piece of
+intelligence is quite interesting to the readers of Cincinnati.</p>
+
+<p>My evening being free, I looked at the column of
+amusements. The first did not tempt me, it was
+this:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page283" id="page283"></a>283</span> </p>
+
+<p class="center1">THE KING OF THE SWAMPS.</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p class="center"><i>The Only and the Original.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="sc">English Jack.</span><br />
+
+THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE FROG MAN.</p>
+
+<p>He makes a frog pond of his stomach by eating living frogs. An
+appetite created by life in the swamps. He is so fond of this sort
+of food that he takes the pretty creatures by the hind legs, and before
+they can say their prayers they are inside out of the cold.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:294px; height:330px" src="images/img296.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;THE KING OF THE SWAMPS.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>The next advertisement was that of a variety show,
+that most stupid form of entertainment so popular in
+America; the next was the announcement of pugilists,
+and another one that of a &ldquo;most sensational drama, in
+which &lsquo;one of the most emotional actresses&rsquo; in
+America&rdquo; was to appear, supported by &ldquo;one of the
+most powerful casts ever gathered together in the
+world.&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page284" id="page284"></a>284</span> </p>
+
+<p>The superlatives, in American advertisements, have
+long ceased to have the slightest effect upon me.</p>
+
+<p>The advertisement of another &ldquo;show&rdquo; ran thus: I
+beg to reproduce it in its entirety; indeed it would be
+a sacrilege to meddle with it.</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p class="center1">TO THE PUBLIC.</p>
+
+<p><i>My Friends and Former Patrons</i>: I have now been before
+the public for the past seventeen years, and am perhaps too well
+known to require further evidence of my character and integrity
+than my past life and record will show. Fifteen years ago I inaugurated
+the system of dispensing presents to the public, believing
+that a fair share of my profits could thus honestly be returned
+to my patrons. At the outset, and ever since, it has been my aim
+to deal honestly toward the multitude who have given me patronage.
+Since that time many imitators have undertaken to beguile
+the public, with but varying success. Many unprincipled rascals
+have also appeared upon the scene, men without talent, but far-reaching
+talons, who by specious promises have sought to swindle
+all whom they could inveigle. This class of scoundrels do not hesitate
+to make promises that they cannot and never intend to fulfill,
+and should be frowned down by all honest men. They deceive the
+public, leave a bad impression, and thus injure legitimate exhibitions.
+Every promise I make will be faithfully fulfilled, as experience
+has clearly proven that dealing uprightly with the public
+brings its sure reward. All who visit my beautiful entertainment
+may rely upon the same fair dealing which has been my life-long
+policy, and which has always honored me with crowded houses.</p>
+
+<div class="pt2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="70%" summary="Contents">
+
+<tr><td class="tcl">NEW UNIQUE PASTIMES.</td> <td class="tcl">NEW HARMLESS MIRTH.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">NEW COSTLY WONDERS.</td> <td class="tcl">NEW FAMOUS ARTISTS.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">NEW PLEASANT STUDIES.</td> <td class="tcl">NEW INNOCENT FUN.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">NEW POPULAR MUSIC.</td> <td class="tcl">NEW KNOWLEDGE.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="center1"><i>Special Notice.</i></p>
+
+<p>Ladies and Children are especially Invited to Attend this Entertainment.
+We Guarantee it to be Chaste, Pure, and as Wholesome
+and Innocent as it is Amusing and Laughable.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page285" id="page285"></a>285</span></p>
+
+<p>Finally I decided on going to see a German tragedy.
+I did not understand it, but the acting seemed to me
+good.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:312px; height:400px" src="images/img298.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">A GERMAN TRAGEDY.</p></div>
+
+<p>Like Milwaukee, Cincinnati possesses a very strong
+German element. Indeed a whole part of the city is
+entirely inhabited by a German population, and situated
+on one side of the water. When you cross the bridge
+in its direction, you are going &ldquo;over the Rhine,&rdquo; to
+use the local expression. &ldquo;To go over the Rhine&rdquo; of
+an evening means to go to one of the many German
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page286" id="page286"></a>286</span>
+<i>Brauerei</i>, and have sausages and Bavarian beer for
+supper.</p>
+
+<p>The town is a very prosperous one. The Germans
+in America are liked for their steadiness and industry.
+An American friend even told me that the Germans
+were perhaps the best patriots the United States could
+boast of.</p>
+
+<p>Patriots! The word sounded strangely to my ears.
+I may be prejudiced, but I call a good patriot a man
+who loves his own mother country. You may like the
+land of your adoption, but you love the land of your
+birth. Good patriots! I call a good brother a man
+who loves his sister, not other people&rsquo;s sisters.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans apply for their naturalization papers
+the day after they have landed. I should admire their
+patriotism much more if they waited a little longer before
+they changed their own mother for a step-mother.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>March</i> 8.</p>
+
+<p>I witnessed a most impressive ceremony this morning,
+the funeral of the American Minister Plenipotentiary
+to the Court of Berlin, whose body was brought
+from Germany to his native place a few days ago. No
+soldiers ordered to accompany the <i>cort�ge,</i> no uniforms,
+but thousands of people voluntarily doing honor to
+the remains of a talented and respected fellow-citizen
+and townsman: a truly republican ceremony in its simplicity
+and earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>The coffin was taken to the Music Hall, a new and
+beautiful building capable of accommodating thousands
+of people, and placed on the platform amid evergreens
+and the Stars and Stripes. In a few minutes,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page287" id="page287"></a>287</span>
+the hall, decorated with taste but with appropriate
+simplicity, was packed from floor to ceiling. Some
+notables and friends of the late Minister sat on the
+platform around the coffin, and the mayor, in the name
+of the inhabitants of the city, delivered a speech, a
+eulogistic funeral oration, on the deceased diplomatist.
+All parties were represented in the hall, Republicans
+and Democrats alike had come. America admits no
+party feeling, no recollection of political differences, to
+intrude upon the homage she gratefully renders to the
+memory of her illustrious dead.</p>
+
+<p>The mayor&rsquo;s speech, listened to by the crowd in respectful
+silence, was much like all the speeches delivered
+on such occasions, including the indispensable
+sentence that &ldquo;he knew he could safely affirm that the
+deceased had never made any enemies.&rdquo; When I hear
+a man spoken of, after his death, as never having
+made any enemies, as a Christian I admire him, but I
+also come to the conclusion that he must have been a
+very insignificant member of the community. But the
+phrase, I should remember, is a mere piece of flattery
+to the dead, in a country where death puts a stop to
+all enmity, political enmity especially. The same
+would be done in England, and almost everywhere.
+Not in France, however, where the dead continue to
+have implacable enemies for many years after they have
+left the lists.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was pleasantly spent visiting the
+town hall and the remarkable china manufactories,
+which turn out very pretty, quaint, and artistic pottery.
+The evening brought to the Od�on a fashionable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page288" id="page288"></a>288</span>
+and most cultivated audience. I am invited to
+pay a return visit to this city. I shall look forward to
+the pleasure of lecturing here again in April.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>March</i> 9.</p>
+
+<p>Spent a most agreeable Sunday in the hospitable
+house of M. Fredin, the French consular agent, and
+his amiable and talented wife. M. Fredin was kind
+enough to call yesterday at the Burnet House.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, I never call on the representatives of
+France in my travels abroad. If I traveled as a tourist,
+I would; but traveling as a lecturer, I should be
+afraid lest the object of my visits might be misconstrued,
+and taken as a gentle hint to patronize me.</p>
+
+<p>One day I had a good laugh with a French consul,
+in an English town where I came to lecture. On arriving
+at the hall I found a letter from this diplomatic
+compatriot, in which he expressed his surprise that I
+had not apprised him of my arrival. The next morning,
+before leaving the town, I called on him. He
+welcomed me most gracefully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why did you not let me, your consul, know that
+you were coming?&rdquo; he said to me.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Monsieur le Consul,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;suppose I
+wrote to you: &lsquo;Monsieur le Consul, I shall arrive at
+N. on Friday,&rsquo; and suppose, now, just suppose, that
+you answered me, &lsquo;Sir, I am glad to hear you will
+arrive here on Friday, but what on earth is that to
+me?&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He saw the point at once. A Frenchman always
+does.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page289" id="page289"></a>289</span> </p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>March</i> 10.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 320px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:274px; height:320px" src="images/img302.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">A VARIETY ACTOR.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>I like this land of conjuring. This morning I took
+the street car to go on the Burnet Hills. At the foot
+of the hill the car&mdash;horses, and all&mdash;enters a little house.
+The house climbs the hill vertically by means of cables.
+Arrived at the top of the mountain, the car comes out
+of the little house and goes on its way, just as if absolutely
+nothing had happened. To return to town, I
+went down the hill in
+the same fashion.
+But if the cable should
+break, you will exclaim,
+where would
+you be? Ah, there
+you are! It does
+not break. It did
+once, so now they see
+that it does not again.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening
+there was nothing to
+see except variety
+shows and wrestlers.
+There was a variety
+show which tempted
+me, the Hermann&rsquo;s Vaudevilles. I saw on the
+list of attractions the name of my friend and compatriot,
+F. Trewey, the famous shadowgraphist,
+and I concluded that if the other artistes were as
+good in their lines as he is in his, it would be well
+worth seeing. The show was very good of its kind,
+and Trewey was admirable; but the audience were
+not refined, and it was not his most subtle and artistic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page290" id="page290"></a>290</span>
+tricks that they applauded most, but the broader
+and more striking ones. After the show he and I
+went &ldquo;over the Rhine.&rdquo; You know what it means.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>March</i> 11, 9 <i>a. m.</i></p>
+
+<p>For a long time I had wished to see the wonderful
+American fire brigades at work. The wish has now
+been satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>At half-past one this morning I was roused in my
+bed by the galloping of horses and the shouts of people
+in the street. Huge tongues of fire were licking my
+window, and the heat in the room was intense. Indeed,
+all around me seemed to be in a blaze, and I
+took it for granted that the Burnet House was on fire.
+I rose and dressed quickly, put together the few valuables
+that were in my possession, and prepared to
+make for the street. I soon saw, however, that it
+was a block of houses opposite that was on fire, or
+rather the corner house of that block.</p>
+
+<p>The guests of the hotel were in the corridors ready
+for any emergency. Had there been any wind in our
+direction, the hotel was doomed. The night was calm
+and wet. As soon as we became aware that no lives
+were lost or in danger in the burning building, and
+that it would only be a question of insurance money
+to be paid by some companies, we betook ourselves to
+admire the magnificent sight. For it was a magnificent
+sight, this whole large building, the prey of
+flames coming in torrents out of every window, the
+dogged perseverance of the firemen streaming floods
+of water over the roof and through the windows, the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page291" id="page291"></a>291</span>
+salvage corps men penetrating through the flames
+into the building in the hope of receiving the next day
+a commission on all the goods and valuables saved.
+A fierce battle it was between a brute element and
+man. By three o&rsquo;clock the element was conquered,
+but only the four walls of the building remained, which
+proved to me that, with all their wonderful promptitude
+and gallantry, all firemen can do when flames
+have got firm hold on a building is to save the adjoining
+property.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:327px; height:400px" src="images/img304.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">A FIRE YARN.</p></div>
+
+<p>I listened to the different groups of people in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page292" id="page292"></a>292</span>
+hotel. Some gave advice as to how the firemen should
+set about their work, or criticised. Others related the
+big fires they had witnessed, a few indulging in the
+recital of the exploits they performed thereat. There
+are a good many Gascons among the Americans. At
+four o&rsquo;clock all danger was over, and we all retired.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:402px; height:430px" src="images/img305.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">AS WE SAW IT.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:348px; height:430px" src="images/img306.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">AS THE REPORTERS SAW IT.</p></div>
+
+<p>I was longing to read the descriptions of the fire in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page293" id="page293"></a>293</span>
+this morning&rsquo;s papers. I have now read them and am
+not at all disappointed. On the contrary, they are
+beyond my most sanguine expectations. Wonderful;
+simply perfectly wonderful! I am now trying to
+persuade myself that I really saw all that the reporters
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page294" id="page294"></a>294</span>
+saw, and that I really ran great danger last night.
+For, &ldquo;at every turn,&rdquo; it appears, &ldquo;the noble hotel
+seemed as if it must become the prey of the fierce
+element, and could only be saved by a miracle.&rdquo;
+Columns and columns of details most graphically
+given, sensational, blood-curdling. But all that is
+nothing. You should read about the panic, and the
+scenes of wild confusion in the Burnet House, when
+all the good folks, who had all dressed and were looking
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page295" id="page295"></a>295</span>
+quietly at the fire from the windows, are described
+as a crowd of people in despair: women disheveled, in
+their night-dresses, running wild, and throwing themselves
+in the arms of men to seek protection, and all
+shrieking and panic-stricken. Such a scene of confusion
+and terror you can hardly imagine. Wonderful!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:441px; height:430px" src="images/img307.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE FIREMAN.</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:121px" src="images/img308.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page296" id="page296"></a>296</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt1">A Journey if you Like&mdash;Terrible Encounter
+with an American Interviewer.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>In the train to Brushville</i>, <i>March</i> 11.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Left</span> Cincinnati this morning at ten o&rsquo;clock and
+shall not arrive at Brushville before seven o&rsquo;clock
+to-night. I am beginning to learn how to speak
+American. As I asked for my ticket this morning at
+the railroad office, the clerk said to me:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;C. H. D. or C. C. C. St. L. and St. P.?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;C. H. D.,&rdquo; I replied, with perfect assurance.</p>
+
+<p>I happened to hit on the right line for Brushville.</p>
+
+<p>By this time I know pretty well all those combinations
+of the alphabet by which the different railroad
+lines of America are designated.</p>
+
+<p>No hope of comfort or of a dinner to-day. I shall
+have to change trains three times, but none of them, I
+am grieved to hear, have parlor cars or dining cars.
+There is something democratic about uniform cars for
+all alike. I am a democrat myself, yet I have a weakness
+for the parlor cars&mdash;and the dining cars.</p>
+
+<p>At noon we stopped five minutes at a place which,
+two years ago, counted six wooden huts. To-day it
+has more than 5000 inhabitants, the electric light in
+the streets, a public library, two hotels, four churches,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page297" id="page297"></a>297</span>
+two banks, a public school, a high school, cuspidores,
+toothpicks, and all the signs of American civilization.</p>
+
+<p>I changed trains at one o&rsquo;clock at Castle Green
+Junction. No hotel in the place. I inquired where
+food could be obtained. A little wooden hut, on the
+other side of the depot, bearing the inscription
+&ldquo;Lunch Room,&rdquo; was pointed out to me. <i>Lunch</i> in
+America has not the meaning that it has in England,
+as I often experienced to my despair. The English
+are solid people. In England <i>lunch</i> means something.
+In America, it does not. However, as there was no
+<i>Beware</i> written outside, I entered the place. Several
+people were eating
+pies, fruit
+pies, pies with
+crust under, and
+crust over:
+sealed mysteries.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 370px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:322px; height:250px" src="images/img310.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">&ldquo;PEACH POY AND APPLE POY.&rdquo;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I want something
+to eat,&rdquo;
+I said to a man
+behind the
+counter, who
+was in possession
+of only one eye, and hailed from Old Oireland.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What &rsquo;d ye loike?&rdquo; replied he, winking with the
+eye that was not there.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, what have you got?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Peach poy, apricot poy, apple poy, and mince
+poy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page298" id="page298"></a>298</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And, shure, what more do you want?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I have always suspected something mysterious about
+mince pies. At home, I eat mince pies. I also
+trust my friends&rsquo; cooks. Outside, I pass. I think
+that mince pies and sausages should be made at home.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I like a little variety,&rdquo; I said to the Irishman,
+&ldquo;give me a small slice of apple pie, one of apricot pie,
+and another of peach pie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Irishman stared at me.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with the mince poy?&rdquo; he
+seemed to say.</p>
+
+<p>I could see from his eye that he resented the insult
+offered to his mince pies.</p>
+
+<p>I ate my pies and returned on the platform. I was
+told that the train was two hours behind time, and I
+should be too late to catch the last Brushville train at
+the next change.</p>
+
+<p>I walked and smoked.</p>
+
+<p>The three pies began to get acquainted with each
+other.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Brushville</i>, <i>March</i> 12.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, those pies!</p>
+
+<p>At the last change yesterday, I arrived too late.
+The last Brushville train was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The pies were there.</p>
+
+<p>A fortune I would have given for a dinner and a bed,
+which now seemed more problematic than ever.</p>
+
+<p>I went to the station-master.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Can I have a special train to take me to Brushville
+to-night?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A hundred dollars.&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page299" id="page299"></a>299</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How much for a locomotive alone?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sixty dollars.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you a freight train going to Brushville?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What will you do with it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Board it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Board it! I can&rsquo;t stop the train.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take my chance.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your life is insured?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes; for a great deal more than it is worth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll let you do it for five
+dollars.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 310px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:258px; height:250px" src="images/img312.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">ON THE ROAD TO BRUSHVILLE.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>And he looked as if he was going to enjoy the fun.
+The freight train arrived, slackened speed, and I
+boarded, with my portmanteau
+and my umbrella,
+a car loaded
+with timber. I placed
+my handbag on the
+timber&mdash;you know,
+the one I had when
+traveling in &ldquo;the
+neighborhood of Chicago&rdquo;&mdash;sat
+on it,
+opened my umbrella,
+and waved a &ldquo;tata&rdquo;
+to the station-master.</p>
+
+<p>It was raining fast,
+and I had a journey of some thirty miles to make
+at the rate of about twelve miles an hour.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, those pies! They now seemed to have resolved
+to fight it out. <i>Sacrebleu! De bleu! de bleu!</i></p>
+
+<p>A few miles from Brushville I had to get out, or
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page300" id="page300"></a>300</span>
+rather, get down, and take a ticket for Brushville on
+board a local train.</p>
+
+<p>Benumbed with cold, wet through, and famished, I
+arrived here at ten o&rsquo;clock last night. The peach pie,
+the apple pie, and the apricot pie had settled their differences
+and become on friendly and accommodating
+terms.</p>
+
+<p>I was able, on arriving at the hotel, to enjoy some
+light refreshments, which I only obtained, at that time
+of night, thanks to the manager, whom I had the pleasure
+of knowing personally.</p>
+
+<p>At eleven o&rsquo;clock I went to bed, or, to use a more
+proper expression for my Philadelphia readers, I
+retired.</p>
+
+<p>I had been &ldquo;retiring&rdquo; for about half an hour, when
+I heard a knock at the door.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s there?&rdquo; I grumbled from under the bedclothes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A representative of the Brushville <i>Express</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;I am very sorry&mdash;but I&rsquo;m asleep.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please let me in; I won&rsquo;t detain you very long.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I guess you won&rsquo;t. Now, please do not insist. I
+am tired, upset, ill, and I want rest. Come to-morrow
+morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, I can&rsquo;t do that,&rdquo; answered the voice behind
+the door; &ldquo;my paper appears in the morning, and I
+want to put in something about you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, do go away,&rdquo; I pleaded, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s a good
+fellow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I must see you,&rdquo; insisted the voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You go!&rdquo; I cried, &ldquo;you go&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; without mentioning
+any place.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page301" id="page301"></a>301</span> </p>
+
+<p>For a couple of minutes there was silence, and I
+thought the interviewer was gone. The illusion was
+sweet, but short. There was another knock, followed
+by a &ldquo;I really must see you to-night.&rdquo; Seeing that
+there would be no peace until I had let the reporter
+in, I unbolted the door, and jumped back into my&mdash;you
+know.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:450px; height:330px" src="images/img314.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE INTERVIEWER.</p></div>
+
+<p>It was pitch dark.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened; and I heard the interviewer&rsquo;s steps
+in the room. By and by, the sound of a pocket being
+searched was distinct. It was his own. A match was
+pulled out and struck; the premises examined and
+reconnoitered.</p>
+
+<p>A chandelier with three lights hung in the middle of
+the room. The reporter, speechless and solemn,
+lighted one burner, then two, then three, chose the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page302" id="page302"></a>302</span>
+most comfortable seat, and installed himself in it,
+looking at me with an air of triumph.</p>
+
+<p>I was sitting up, wild and desheveled, in my &ldquo;retiring&rdquo;
+clothes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Que voulez-vous?</i>&rdquo; I wanted to yell, my state
+of drowsiness allowing me to think only in French.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of translating this query by &ldquo;What do you
+want?&rdquo; as I should have done, if I had been in the
+complete enjoyment of my intellectual faculties, I
+shouted to him:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What will you have?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, thanks, I&rsquo;m not particular,&rdquo; he calmly replied.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have a little whisky and soda&mdash;rye whisky,
+please.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>My face must have been a study as I rang for
+whisky and soda.</p>
+
+<p>The mixture was brought&mdash;for two.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you have no objection to my smoking?&rdquo;
+coolly said the man in the room.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; I remarked; &ldquo;this is perfectly lovely;
+I enjoy it all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He pulled out his pocket-book and his pencil, crossed
+his legs, and having drawn a long whiff from his cigar,
+he said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see that you have no lecture to deliver in Brushville;
+may I ask you what you have come here for?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;what the deuce is that to you? If
+this is the kind of questions you have to ask me, you
+go&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He pocketed the rebuff, and went on undisturbed:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How are you struck with Brushville?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am struck,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;with the cheek of some of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page303" id="page303"></a>303</span>
+the inhabitants. I have driven to this hotel from
+the depot in a closed carriage, and I have seen nothing
+of your city.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The man wrote down something.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I lecture to-morrow night,&rdquo; I continued, &ldquo;before
+the students of the State University, and I have come
+here for rest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He took this down.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All this, you see, is very uninteresting; so, good-night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And I disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>The interviewer rose and came to my side.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Really, now that I am here, you may as well let
+me have a chat with you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You wretch!&rdquo; I exclaimed. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see that
+I am dying for sleep? Is there nothing sacred for
+you? Have you lost all sense of charity? Have you
+no mother? Don&rsquo;t you believe in future punishment?
+Are you a man or a demon?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me some anecdotes, some of your reminiscences
+of the road,&rdquo; said the man, with a sardonic grin.</p>
+
+<p>I made no reply. The imperturbable reporter resumed
+his seat and smoked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you gone?&rdquo; I sighed, from under the
+blankets.</p>
+
+<p>The answer came in the following words:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I understand, sir, that when you were a young
+man&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When I was <span class="sc">what</span>?&rdquo; I shouted, sitting up once
+more.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I understand, sir, that when you were <i>quite</i> a
+young man,&rdquo; repeated the interviewer, with the sentence
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page304" id="page304"></a>304</span>
+improved, &ldquo;you were an officer in the French
+army.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was,&rdquo; I murmured, in the same position.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I also understand you fought during the Franco-Prussian
+war.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I did,&rdquo; I said, resuming a horizontal position.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;May I ask you to give me some reminiscences of
+the Franco-Prussian war&mdash;just enough to fill about a
+column?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I rose and again sat up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Free citizen of the great American Republic,&rdquo;
+said I, &ldquo;beware, beware! There will be blood shed
+in this room to-night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And I seized my pillow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are not meaty,&rdquo; exclaimed the reporter.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;May I inquire what the meaning of this strange
+expression is?&rdquo; I said, frowning; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t speak
+American fluently.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It means,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;that there is very little to
+be got out of you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you going?&rdquo; I said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I guess I am.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good-night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good-night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I bolted the door, turned out the gas, and &ldquo;re-retired.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Poor fellow,&rdquo; I thought; &ldquo;perhaps he relied on me
+to supply him with material for a column. I might
+have chatted with him. After all, these reporters
+have invariably been kind to me. I might as well
+have obliged him. What is he going to do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And I dreamed that he was dismissed.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page305" id="page305"></a>305</span> </p>
+
+<p>I ought to have known better.</p>
+
+<p>This morning I opened the Brushville <i>Express</i>, and,
+to my stupefaction, saw a column about me. My
+impressions of Brushville, that I had no opportunity
+of looking at, were there. Nay, more. I would blush
+to record here the exploits I performed during the
+Franco-Prussian war, as related by my interviewer,
+especially those which took place at the battle of
+Gravelotte, where, unfortunately, I was not present.
+The whole thing was well written. The reference to
+my military services began thus: &ldquo;Last night a hero
+of the great Franco-Prussian war slept under the hospitable
+roof of Morrison Hotel, in this city.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Slept!&rdquo; This was adding insult to injury.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>This morning I had the visit of two more reporters.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you think of Brushville?&rdquo; they said;
+and, seeing that I would not answer the question, they
+volunteered information on Brushville, and talked
+loud on the subject. I have no doubt that the afternoon
+papers will publish my impressions of Brushville.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:110px; height:132px" src="images/img318.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page306" id="page306"></a>306</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXV.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">The University of Indiana&mdash;Indianapolis&mdash;The
+Veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic
+on the Spree&mdash;A Marvelous Equilibrist.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Bloomington, Ind.</i>, <i>March</i> 13.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Lectured</span> yesterday before the students of the
+University of Indiana, and visited the different
+buildings this morning. The university is situated on
+a hill in the midst of a wood, about half a mile from
+the little town of Bloomington.</p>
+
+<p>In a few days I shall be at Ann Arbor, the University
+of Michigan, the largest in America, I am told. I
+will wait till then to jot down my impressions of university
+life in this country.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>I read in the papers: &ldquo;Prince Saunders, colored,
+was hanged here (Plaquemine, Fla.) yesterday. He
+declared he had made his peace with God, and his
+sins had been forgiven. Saunders murdered Rhody
+Walker, his sweetheart, last December, a few hours
+after he had witnessed the execution of Carter Wilkinson.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>If Saunders has made his peace with God, I hope
+his executioners have made theirs with God and man.
+What an indictment against man! What an argument
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page307" id="page307"></a>307</span>
+against capital punishment! Here is a man committing
+a murder on returning from witnessing an execution.
+And there are men still to be found who declare
+that capital punishment deters men from committing
+murder!</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:325px; height:330px" src="images/img320.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">VETERANS.</p></div>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Indianapolis</i>, <i>March</i> 14.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived here yesterday afternoon. Met James Whitcomb
+Riley, the Hoosier poet. Mr. Riley is a man of
+about thirty, a genuine poet, full of pathos and humor,
+and a great reciter. No one, I imagine, could give his
+poetry as he does himself. He is a born actor, who
+holds you in suspense, and makes you cry or laugh
+just as he pleases. I remember, when two years ago
+Mr. Augustin Daly gave a farewell supper to Mr. Henry
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page308" id="page308"></a>308</span>
+Irving and Miss Ellen Terry at Delmonico&rsquo;s, Mr. Riley
+recited one of his poems at table. He gave most of us
+a big lump in our throats, and Miss Terry had tears
+rolling down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:355px; height:330px" src="images/img321.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">A GREAT BALANCING FEAT.</p></div>
+
+<p>The veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic
+are having a great field day in Indianapolis. They
+have come here to attend meetings and ask for pensions,
+so as to reduce that unmanageable surplus. Indianapolis
+is full, and the management of Denison
+House does not know which way to turn. All these
+veterans have large, broad-brimmed soft hats and are
+covered all over with badges and ribbons. Their wives
+and daughters, members of some patriotic association,
+have come with them. It is a huge picnic. The entrance
+hall is crowded all day. The spittoons have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page309" id="page309"></a>309</span>
+been replaced by tubs for the occasion. Chewing is in
+favor all over America, but the State of Indiana beats,
+in that way, everything I have seen before.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:243px; height:410px" src="images/img322.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;IN EUROPE SWAGGERING LITTLE BOYS SMOKE.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>Went to see Clara Morris in Adolphe Belot&rsquo;s &ldquo;Article
+47,&rdquo; at the Opera House, last night. Clara Morris
+is a powerful actress, but, like most actors and actresses
+who go &ldquo;starring&rdquo; through America, badly supported.
+I watched the audience with great interest. Nineteen
+mouths out of twenty were chewing&mdash;the men tobacco,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page310" id="page310"></a>310</span>
+the women gum impregnated with peppermint. All
+the jaws were going like those of so many ruminants
+grazing in a field. From the box I occupied the sight
+was most amusing.</p>
+
+<p>On returning to Denison House from the theater, I
+went to have a smoke in a quiet corner of the hall, far
+from the crowd. By and by two men, most smartly
+dressed, with diamond pins in their cravats, and flowers
+embroidered on their waistcoats, came and sat opposite
+me. I thought they had chosen the place to have a
+quiet chat together. Not so. One pushed a cuspidore
+with his foot and brought it between the two chairs.
+There, for half an hour, without saying one word to
+each other, they chewed, hawked, and spat&mdash;and had
+a good time before going to bed.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Trewey is nowhere as an equilibrist, compared to a
+gallant veteran who breakfasted at my table, this morning.
+Among the different courses brought to him
+were two boiled eggs, almost raw, poured into a tumbler
+according to the American fashion. Without
+spilling a drop, he managed to eat those eggs with the
+end of his knife. It was marvelous. I have never
+seen the like of it, even in Germany, where the knife
+trick is practiced from the tenderest age.</p>
+
+<p>In Europe, swaggering little boys smoke; here they
+chew and spit, and look at you, as if to say: &ldquo;See
+what a big man I am!&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page311" id="page311"></a>311</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Chicago (Second Visit)&mdash;Vassili Vereschagin&rsquo;s
+Exhibition&mdash;The &ldquo;Angelus&rdquo;&mdash;Wagner and
+Wagnerites&mdash;Wanderings About the Big
+City&mdash;I Sit on the Tribunal.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Chicago</i>, <i>March</i> 15.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Arrived</span> here this morning and put up at the
+Grand Pacific Hotel. My lecture to-night at the
+Central Music Hall is advertised as a <i>causerie</i>. My
+local manager informs me that many people have inquired
+at the box-office what the meaning of that
+French word is. As he does not know himself, he
+could not enlighten them, but he thinks that curiosity
+will draw a good crowd to-night.</p>
+
+<p>This puts me in mind of a little incident which took
+place about a year ago. I was to make my appearance
+before an afternoon audience in the fashionable town
+of Eastbourne. Not wishing to convey the idea of a
+serious and prosy discourse, I advised my manager to
+call the entertainment &ldquo;<i>A causerie</i>.&rdquo; The room was
+full and the affair passed off very well. But an old
+lady, who was a well-known patroness of such entertainments,
+did not put in an appearance. On being
+asked the next day why she was not present, she
+replied: &ldquo;Well, to tell you the truth, when I saw that
+they had given the entertainment a French name, I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page312" id="page312"></a>312</span>
+was afraid it might be something not quite fit for me
+to hear.&rdquo; Dear soul!</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>March</i> 16.</p>
+
+<p>My manager&rsquo;s predictions were realized last night.
+I had a large audience, one of the keenest and the most
+responsive and appreciative I have ever had. I was
+introduced by Judge Elliott Anthony, of the Superior
+Court, in a short, witty, and graceful little speech. He
+spoke of Lafayette and of the debt of gratitude America
+owes to France for the help she received at her hands
+during the War of Independence. Before taking leave
+of me, Judge Anthony kindly invited me to pay a
+visit to the Superior Court next Wednesday.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>March</i> 17.</p>
+
+<p>Dined yesterday with Mr. James W. Scott, proprietor
+of the Chicago <i>Herald</i>, one of the most flourishing
+newspapers in the United States, and in the evening
+went to see Richard Mansfield in &ldquo;Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
+Hyde.&rdquo; The play is a repulsive one, but the double
+impersonation gives the great actor a magnificent
+opportunity for the display of his histrionic powers.
+The house was crowded, though it was Sunday. The
+pick of Chicago society was not there, of course. Some
+years ago, I was told, a Sunday audience was mainly
+composed of men. To-day the women go as freely as
+the men. The &ldquo;horrible&rdquo; always has a great fascination
+for the masses, and Mansfield held his popular
+audience in a state of breathless suspense. There was
+a great deal of disappointment written on the faces
+when the light was turned down on the appearance of
+&ldquo;Mr. Hyde,&rdquo; with his horribly distorted features. A
+woman, sitting in a box next to the one I occupied,
+exclaimed, as &ldquo;Hyde&rdquo; came to explain his terrible
+secret to the doctor, in the fourth act, &ldquo;What a shame,
+they are turning down the light again!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page313" id="page313"></a>313</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:456px; height:610px" src="images/img326.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;DEAR SOUL!&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page314" id="page314"></a>314</span></p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>March</i> 18.</p>
+
+<p>Spent yesterday in recreation intellectual&mdash;and
+otherwise. I like to see everything, and I have no
+objection to entering a dime museum. I went to one
+yesterday morning, and saw a bearded lady, a calf with
+two heads, a gorilla (stuffed), a girl with no arms, and
+other freaks of nature. The bearded lady had very,
+very masculine features, but <i>honi soit qui mal y pense</i>.
+I could not help thinking of one of General Horace
+Porter&rsquo;s good stories. A school-master asks a little
+boy what his father is.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please, sir, papa told me not to tell.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, never mind, it&rsquo;s all right with me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please, sir, he is the bearded lady at the dime
+museum.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>From the museum I went to the free library in the
+City Hall. Dime museums and free libraries&mdash;such is
+America. The attendance at the free libraries increases
+rapidly every day, and the till at the dime museums
+diminishes with proportionate rapidity.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 260px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:209px; height:330px" src="images/img328.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">&ldquo;THE BEARDED LADY.&rdquo;</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>After lunch I paid a visit to the exhibition of Vassili
+Vereschagin&rsquo;s pictures. What on earth could possess
+the talented Russian artist, whose coloring is so lovely,
+to expend his labor on such subjects! Pictures like
+those, which show the horrors of a campaign in all
+their hideousness, may serve a good purpose in creating
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page315" id="page315"></a>315</span>
+a detestation of war in all who see them. Nothing
+short of such a motive in the artist could excuse the
+portrayal of such infamies. These pictures are so
+many nightmares which will certainly haunt my eyes
+and brain for days and nights to come. Battle scenes
+portrayed with a realism
+that is revolting,
+because, alas, only too
+true. The execution
+of nihilists in a dim,
+dreary, snow-covered
+waste. An execution
+of sepoys, the doomed
+rebels tied to the
+mouths of cannon
+about to be fired off.
+Scenes of torture, illustrative
+of the extent
+to which human
+suffering can be carried,
+give you cold
+shudders in every fiber
+of your body. One
+horrid canvas shows
+a deserted battlefield,
+the snow-covered
+ground littered with corpses that ravens are tearing
+and fighting for. But, perhaps worst of all, is a
+picture of a field, where, in the snow, lie the human
+remains of a company of Russian soldiers who have
+been surprised and slain by Turks. Among the bodies,
+outraged by horrible and nameless mutilations, walks
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page316" id="page316"></a>316</span>
+a priest, swinging a censer. One seems to be pursued
+by, and impregnated with, a smell of cadaverous putrefaction.
+This collection of pictures is installed in a
+place which has been used for stabling horses in, and is
+reeking with stable odors and the carbolic acid that
+has been employed to neutralize them. Your sense of
+smell is in full sympathy with your horrified sense of
+sight: both are revolted.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Now, behind the three large rooms devoted to the
+Russian artist&rsquo;s works was a small one, in which hung a
+single picture. You little guess that that picture was
+no other than Jean Francois Millet&rsquo;s &ldquo;Angelus.&rdquo;
+Millet&rsquo;s dear little &ldquo;Angelus,&rdquo; that hymn of resignation
+and peace, alongside of all this roar and carnage
+of battle! The exhibitor thought, perhaps, that a
+sedative might be needed after the strong dose of
+Vassili Vereschagin, but I imagine that no one who
+went into that little room after the others was in a
+mood to listen to Millet&rsquo;s message.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>March</i> 19.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday morning I went to see the Richmond
+Libby Prison, a four-story, huge brick building which
+has been removed here from Richmond, over a distance
+of more than a thousand miles, across the mountains
+of Pennsylvania. This is, perhaps, as the circular
+says, an unparalleled feat in the history of the
+world. The prison has been converted into a museum,
+illustrating the Civil War and African Slavery in America.
+The visit proved very interesting. In the afternoon
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page317" id="page317"></a>317</span>
+I had a drive through the beautiful parks of the
+city.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening I went to see &ldquo;Tannh�user&rdquo; at the
+Auditorium. Outside, the building looks more like a
+penitentiary than a place of amusement&mdash;a huge pile
+of masonry, built of great, rough, black-looking blocks
+of stone. Inside, it is magnificent. I do not know
+anything to compare with it for comfort, grandeur, and
+beauty. It can hold seven thousand people. The
+decorations are white and gold. The lighting is done
+by means of arc electric lights in the enormously lofty
+roof&mdash;lights which can be lowered at will. Mr. Peck
+kindly took me to see the inner workings of the stage.
+I should say &ldquo;stages,&rdquo; for there are three. The hydraulic
+machinery for raising and lowering them cost
+$200,000.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Lehmann sang grandly. I imagine that
+she is the finest lady exponent of Wagner&rsquo;s music alive.
+She not only sings the parts, but looks them. Built
+on grand lines and crowned with masses of blond
+hair, she seems, when she gives forth those volumes of
+clear tones, a Norse goddess strayed into the nineteenth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>M. Gounod describes Wagner as an astounding
+prodigy, an aberration of genius, a dreamer haunted
+by the colossal. For years I had listened to Wagner&rsquo;s
+music, and, like most of my compatriots, brought up
+on the tuneful airs of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi,
+Auber, etc., I entirely failed to appreciate the music of
+the future. All I could say in its favor was some variation
+of the sentiment once expressed by Mr. Edgar
+W. Nye (&ldquo;Bill Nye&rdquo;) who, after giving the subject
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page318" id="page318"></a>318</span>
+his mature consideration, said he came to the conclusion
+that Wagner&rsquo;s music was not so bad as it sounded.
+But I own that since I went to Bayreuth and heard
+and saw the operas as there given, I began not only to
+see that they are beautiful, but why they are beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Wagnerian opera is a poetical and musical idealization
+of speech.</p>
+
+<p>The fault that I, like many others, have fallen into,
+was that of listening to the voices instead of listening
+to the orchestra. The fact is, the voices could almost
+be dispensed with altogether. The orchestra gives
+you the beautiful poem in music, and the personages on
+the stage are really little more than illustrative puppets.
+They play about the same part in the work that
+pictures play in a book. Wagner&rsquo;s method was something
+so new, so different to all we had been accustomed
+to, that it naturally provoked much indignation
+and enmity&mdash;not because it was bad, but because it
+was new. It was the old story of the Classicists and
+Romanticists over again.</p>
+
+<p>If you wanted to write a symphony, illustrative of
+the pangs and miseries of a sufferer from toothache,
+you would, if you were a disciple of Wagner, write
+your orchestral score so that the instruments should
+convey to the listener the whole gamut of groans&mdash;the
+temporary relief, the return of the pain, the sudden
+disappearance of it on ringing the bell at the dentist&rsquo;s
+door, the final wrench of extraction gone through by
+the poor patient. On the boards you would put a
+personage who, with voice and contortions, should
+help you, as pictorial illustrations help an author.
+Such is the Wagnerian method.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page319" id="page319"></a>319</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:414px; height:330px" src="images/img332.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;A TERRIBLE WAGNERITE.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>After the play I met a terrible Wagnerite. Most
+Wagnerites are terrible. They will not admit that
+anything can be discussed, much less criticised, in the
+works of the master. They are not admirers, disciples;
+they are worshipers. To them Wagner&rsquo;s music is as
+perfect as America is to many a good-humored American.
+They will tell you that never have horses neighed
+so realistically as they do in the &ldquo;Walk�re.&rdquo; Answer
+that this is almost lowering music to the level of
+ventriloquism, and they will declare you a profane, unworthy
+to live. My Wagnerite friend told me last night
+that Wagner&rsquo;s work constantly improved till it reached
+perfection in &ldquo;Parsifal.&rdquo; &ldquo;There,&rdquo; he said, quite seriously,
+&ldquo;the music has reached such a state of perfection
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page320" id="page320"></a>320</span>
+that, in the garden scene, you can smell the violets
+and the roses.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I interrupted, &ldquo;I heard &lsquo;Parsifal&rsquo; in Bayreuth,
+and I must confess that it is, perhaps, the only
+work of Wagner&rsquo;s that I cannot understand.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have heard it thirty-four times,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and
+enjoyed it more the thirty-fourth time than I did the
+thirty-third.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; I remarked, &ldquo;perhaps it has to be heard
+fifty times before it can be thoroughly appreciated.
+In which case, you must own that life is too short to
+enable one to see an opera fifty times in order to enjoy
+it as it should really be enjoyed. I don&rsquo;t care what
+science there is about music, or what labors a musician
+should have to go through. As one of the public, I say
+that music is a recreation, and should be understood at
+once. Auber, for example, with his delightful airs,
+that three generations of men have sung on their way
+home from the opera house, has been a greater benefactor
+of the human race than Wagner. I prefer
+music written for the heart to music written for the
+mind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On hearing me mention Auber&rsquo;s name in one breath
+with Wagner&rsquo;s, the Wagnerite threw a glance of contempt
+at me that I shall never forget.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said I, to regain his good graces, &ldquo;I may
+improve yet&mdash;I will try again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, the Wagnerite is a man utterly destitute
+of humor.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>March</i> 20.</p>
+
+<p>Yesterday morning I called on Judge Elliott Anthony,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page321" id="page321"></a>321</span>
+at the Superior Court. The Judge invited me
+to sit by his side on the tribunal, and kindly explained
+to me the procedure, as the cases went on. Certainly
+kindness is not rare in Europe, but such simplicity in
+a high official is only to be met with in America.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:63px; height:120px" src="images/img334.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption"></p></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page322" id="page322"></a>322</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Ann Arbor&mdash;The University of Michigan&mdash;Detroit
+Again&mdash;The French Out of France&mdash;Oberlin
+College, Ohio&mdash;Black and White&mdash;Are
+All American Citizens Equal?</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Detroit</i>, <i>March</i> 22.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">One</span> of the most interesting and brilliant audiences
+that I have yet addressed was the large one
+which gathered in the lecture hall of the University of
+Michigan, at Ann Arbor, last night. Two thousand
+young, bright faces to gaze at from the platform is a
+sight not to be easily forgotten. I succeeded in pleasing
+them, and they simply delighted me.</p>
+
+<p>The University of Michigan is, I think, the largest
+in the United States.</p>
+
+<p>Picture to yourself one thousand young men and
+one thousand young women, in their early twenties,
+staying together in the same boarding-houses, studying
+literature, science, and the fine arts in the same class-rooms,
+living happily and in perfect harmony.</p>
+
+<p>They are not married.</p>
+
+<p>No restraint of any sort. Even in the boarding-houses
+they are allowed to meet in the sitting-rooms;
+I believe that the only restriction is that, at eight
+o&rsquo;clock in the evening, or at nine (I forget which), the
+young ladies have to retire to their private apartments.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page323" id="page323"></a>323</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; some European will exclaim, &ldquo;do the young
+ladies&rsquo; parents trust all these young men?&rdquo; They do
+much better than that, my dear friend&mdash;they trust their
+daughters.</p>
+
+<p>During eighteen years, I was told, three accidents
+happened, but three marriages happily resulted.</p>
+
+<p>The educational system of America engenders the
+high morality which undoubtedly exists throughout
+the whole of the United States, by accustoming women
+to the companionship of men from their infancy, first
+in the public schools, then in the high schools, and
+finally in the universities. It explains the social life of
+the country. It accounts for the delightful manner in
+which men treat women. It explains the influence of
+women. Receiving exactly the same education as the
+men, the women are enabled to enjoy all the intellectual
+pleasures of life. They are not inferior beings
+intended for mere housekeepers, but women destined
+to play an important part in all the stations of life.</p>
+
+<p>No praise can be too high for a system of education
+that places knowledge of the highest order at the disposal
+of every child born in America. The public
+schools are free, the high schools are free, and the
+universities,<a name="FnAnchor_4" id="FnAnchor_4" href="#Footnote_4"><span class="sp">4</span></a> through the aid that they receive from
+the United States and from the State in which they
+are, can offer their privileges, without charge for tuition,
+to all persons of either sex who are qualified by
+knowledge for admission.</p>
+
+<p>The University of Michigan comprises the Department
+of Literature, Science, and the Arts, the Department
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page324" id="page324"></a>324</span>
+of Medicine and Surgery, the Department of
+Law, the School of Pharmacy, the Hom&oelig;opathic
+Medical College, and the College of Dental Surgery.
+Each department has its special Faculty of Instruction.</p>
+
+<p>I count 118 professors on the staff of the different
+faculties.</p>
+
+<p>The library contains 70,041 volumes, 14,626 unbound
+brochures, and 514 maps and charts.</p>
+
+<p>The University also possesses beautiful laboratories,
+museums, an astronomical observatory, collections,
+workshops of all sorts, a lecture hall capable of accommodating
+over two thousand people, art studios, etc.,
+etc. Almost every school has a building of its own,
+so that the University is like a little busy town.</p>
+
+<p>No visit that I have ever paid to a public institution
+interested me so much as the short one paid to the
+University of Michigan yesterday.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Dined this evening with Mr. W. H. Brearley, editor
+of the Detroit <i>Journal</i>. Mr. Brearley thinks that the
+Americans, who received from France such a beautiful
+present as the statue of &ldquo;Liberty Enlightening the
+World,&rdquo; ought to present the mother country of General
+Lafayette with a token of her gratitude and affection,
+and he has started a national subscription to carry out
+his idea. He has already received support, moral and
+substantial. I can assure him that nothing would
+touch the hearts of the French people more than such
+a tribute of gratitude and friendship from the other
+great republic.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page325" id="page325"></a>325</span> </p>
+
+<p>In the evening I had a crowded house in the large
+lecture hall of the Young Men&rsquo;s Christian Association.</p>
+
+<p>After the lecture, I met an interesting Frenchman
+residing in Detroit.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was told a month ago, when I paid my first visit to
+Detroit, that there were twenty-five thousand French
+people living here,&rdquo; I said to him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The number is exaggerated, I believe,&rdquo; he replied,
+&ldquo;but certainly we are about twenty thousand.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose you have French societies, a French
+Club?&rdquo; I ventured.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Germans have,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but we have not.
+We have tried many times to found French clubs in
+this city, so as to establish friendly intercourse among
+our compatriots, but we have always failed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How is that?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know. They all wanted to be presidents,
+or vice-presidents. They quarreled among
+themselves.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When six Frenchmen meet to start a society,&rdquo; I
+said, &ldquo;one will be president, two vice-presidents, one
+secretary, and the other assistant-secretary. If the
+sixth cannot obtain an official position, he will resign
+and go about abusing the other five.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s just what happened.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was my turn to smile. Why should the French
+in Detroit be different from the French all over the
+world, except perhaps in their own country? A
+Frenchman out of France is like a fish out of water.
+He loses his native amiability and becomes a sort of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page326" id="page326"></a>326</span>
+suspicious person, who spends his life in thinking that
+everybody wants to tread on his corns.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When two Frenchmen meet in a foreign land,&rdquo;
+goes an old saying, &ldquo;there is one too many.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:441px; height:330px" src="images/img339.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE TWO FRENCHMEN.</p></div>
+
+<p>In Chicago there are two Frenchmen engaged in
+teaching the natives of the city &ldquo;how to speak and
+write the French language correctly.&rdquo; The people of
+Chicago maintain that the streets are too narrow to
+let these two Frenchmen pass, when they walk in opposite
+directions. And it appears that one of them
+has lately started a little French paper&mdash;to abuse the
+other in.</p>
+
+<p>I think that all the faults and weaknesses of the
+French can be accounted for by the presence of a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page327" id="page327"></a>327</span>
+defect, jealousy; and the absence of a quality,
+humor.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Oberlin, O.</i>, <i>March</i> 24.</p>
+
+<p>Have to-night given a lecture to the students of
+Oberlin College, a religious institution founded by the
+late Rev. Charles Finney, the friend of the slaves, and
+whose voice, they say, when he preached, shook the
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>The college is open to colored students; but in an
+audience of about a thousand young men and women,
+I could only discover the presence of two descendants
+of Ham.</p>
+
+<p>Originally many colored students attended at Oberlin
+College, but the number steadily decreased every
+year, and to-day there are only very few. The colored
+student is not officially &ldquo;boycotted,&rdquo; but he has probably
+discovered by this time that he is not wanted in
+Oberlin College any more than in the orchestra stalls
+of an American theater.</p>
+
+<p>The Declaration of Independence proclaims that
+&ldquo;all men are created equal,&rdquo; but I never met a man in
+America (much less still a woman) who believed this
+or who acted upon it.</p>
+
+<p>The railroad companies have special cars for colored
+people, and the saloons special bars. At Detroit, I
+was told yesterday that a respectable and wealthy
+mulatto resident, who had been refused service in one
+of the leading restaurants of the town, brought an
+action against the proprietor, but that, although there
+was no dispute of the facts, the jury unanimously decided
+against the plaintiff, who was moreover mulcted
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page328" id="page328"></a>328</span>
+in costs to a heavy amount. But all this is nothing:
+the Young Men&rsquo;s Christian Association, one of the
+most representative and influential corporations in the
+United States, refuses to admit colored youths to
+membership.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:232px; height:330px" src="images/img341.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE NEGRO.</p></div>
+
+<p>It is just possible that in a few years colored students
+will have ceased to study at Oberlin College.</p>
+
+<p>I can perfectly well understand that Jonathan
+should not care to associate too closely with the colored
+people, for, although they do not inspire me with
+repulsion, still I cannot imagine&mdash;well, I cannot understand
+for one thing how the mulatto can exist.</p>
+
+<p>But since the American has to live alongside the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page329" id="page329"></a>329</span>
+negro, would it not be worth his while to treat him
+politely and honestly, give him his due as an equal, if
+not in his eyes, at any rate in the eyes of the law?
+Would it not be worth his while to remember that the
+&ldquo;darky&rdquo; cannot be gradually disposed of like the
+Indian, for Sambo adapts himself to his surroundings,
+multiplies apace, goes to school, and knows how to
+read, write, and reckon. Reckon especially.</p>
+
+<p>It might be well to remember, too, that all the greatest,
+bloodiest revolutions the world has ever seen were
+set on foot, not to pay off hardships, but as revenge
+for injustice. &ldquo;Uncle Tom&rsquo;s Cabin&rdquo; was called a romance,
+nothing but a romance, by the aristocratic
+Southerners; but, to use the Carlylian phrase, their
+skins went to bind the hundreds of editions of that
+book. Another &ldquo;Uncle Tom&rsquo;s Cabin&rdquo; may yet appear.</p>
+
+<p>America will have &ldquo;to work her thinking machine&rdquo;
+seriously on this subject, and that before many years
+are over. If the next Presidential election is not run
+on the negro question, the succeeding one surely will
+be.</p>
+
+<hr class="foot" /><div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4" href="#FnAnchor_4"><span class="fn">4</span></a> A fee of ten dollars entitles a student to the privileges of permanent
+membership in the University.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:53px" src="images/img342.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption"></p></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page330" id="page330"></a>330</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Mr. and Mrs. Kendal in New York&mdash;Joseph
+Jefferson&mdash;Julian Hawthorne&mdash;Miss Ada
+Rehan&mdash;&ldquo;As You Like It&rdquo; at Daly&rsquo;s
+Theater.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>March</i> 28.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">The</span> New York papers this morning announce that
+the &ldquo;Society of Young Girls of Pure Character
+on the Stage&rdquo; give a lunch to Mrs. Kendal to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. and Mrs. Kendal have conquered America.
+Their tour is a triumphal march through the United
+States, a huge success artistically, financially, and
+socially.</p>
+
+<p>I am not surprised at it. I went to see them a
+few days ago in &ldquo;The Ironmaster,&rdquo; and they delighted
+me. As <i>Claire</i> Mrs. Kendal was admirable.
+She almost succeeded in making me forget Madame
+Jane Hading, who created the part at the Gymnase, in
+Paris, six years ago.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>This morning Mr. Joseph Jefferson called on me at
+the Everett House. The veteran actor, who looks
+more like a man of fifty than like one of over sixty, is
+now playing with Mr. William J. Florence in &ldquo;The
+Rivals.&rdquo; I had never seen him off the stage. I immediately
+saw that the characteristics of the actor
+were the characteristics of the man&mdash;kindness, naturalness,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page331" id="page331"></a>331</span>
+simplicity, <i>bonhomie</i>, and <i>finesse</i>. An admirable
+actor, a great artist, and a lovable man.</p>
+
+<p>At the Down-Town Club, I lunched with the son of
+Nathaniel Hawthorne&mdash;the greatest novelist that
+America has yet produced&mdash;Mr. Julian Hawthorne,
+himself a novelist of repute. Lately he has written a
+series of sensational novels in collaboration with the
+famous New York detective, Inspector Byrnes. Mr.
+Julian Hawthorne is a man of about forty-five, tall,
+well-proportioned, with an artistic-looking head
+crowned with grayish hair, that reminds a Frenchman
+of Alexandre Dumas, <i>fils</i>, and an American of Nathaniel
+Hawthorne. A charming, unaffected man, and a delightful
+<i>causeur</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>In the evening I went to Daly&rsquo;s Theater and saw
+&ldquo;As You Like It.&rdquo; That bewitching queen of actresses,
+Miss Ada Rehan, played <i>Rosalind</i>. Miss Rehan
+is so original that it would be perfectly impossible to
+compare her to any of the other great actresses of
+France and England. She is like nobody else. She
+is herself. The coaxing drawl of her musical voice,
+the vivacity of her movements, the whimsical spontaneity
+that seems to direct her acting, her tall, handsome
+figure, her beautiful, intellectual face, all tend to
+make her a unique actress. She fascinates you, and
+so gets hold of you, that when she is on the stage
+she entirely fills it. Mr. John Drew as <i>Orlando</i> and
+Mr. James Drew as <i>Touchstone</i> were admirable.</p>
+
+<p>It matters little what the play-bill announces at
+Daly&rsquo;s Theater. If I have not seen the play, I am
+sure to enjoy it; if I have seen it already, I am sure
+to enjoy it again.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page332" id="page332"></a>332</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XXXIX.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Washington&mdash;The City&mdash;Willard&rsquo;s Hotel&mdash;The
+Politicians&mdash;General Benjamin Harrison, U.
+S. President&mdash;Washington Society&mdash;Baltimore&mdash;Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Washington</i>, <i>April</i> 3.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Arrived</span> here the day before yesterday, and
+put up at Willard&rsquo;s. I prefer this huge hotel to
+the other more modern houses of the capital, because
+it is thoroughly American; because it is in its rotunda
+that every evening the leading men of all parties and
+the notables of the nation may be found; because to
+meet at Willard&rsquo;s at night is as much the regular thing
+as to perform any of the official functions of office
+during the day; because, to use the words of a guide,
+which speaks the truth, it is pleasant to live in this historical
+place, in apartments where battles have been
+planned and political parties have been born or
+doomed to death, to become familiar with surroundings
+amid which Presidents have drawn their most important
+papers and have chosen their Cabinet Ministers,
+and where the proud beauties of a century have
+held their Court.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>On the subject of Washington hotels, I was told a
+good story the other day.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page333" id="page333"></a>333</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:407px; height:430px" src="images/img346.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">EVENING AT WILLARD&rsquo;S.</p></div>
+
+<p>The most fashionable hotel of this city having outgrown
+its space, the proprietors sent a note to a lady,
+whose back yard adjoined, to say, that, contemplating
+still enlarging their hotel, they would be glad to know
+at what price she would sell her yard, and they would
+hand her the amount without any more discussion.
+The lady, in equally Yankee style, replied that she
+had been contemplating enlarging her back yard, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page334" id="page334"></a>334</span>
+was going to inquire what they would take for part of
+their hotel!</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>How beautiful this city of Washington is, with its
+wide avenues, its parks, and its buildings! That Capitol,
+in white marble, standing on elevated ground,
+against a bright blue sky, is a poem&mdash;an epic poem.</p>
+
+<p>I am never tired of looking at the expanse of cloudless
+blue that is almost constantly stretched overhead.
+The sunsets are glorious. The poorest existence would
+seem bearable under such skies. I am told they are
+better still further West. I fancy I should enjoy to
+spend some time on a farm, deep in the country, far
+from the noisy, crowded streets, but I fear I am condemned
+to see none but the busy haunts of Jonathan.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>In the evening I went to what is called a colored
+church. The place was packed with negroes of all
+shades and ages; the women, some of them very
+smartly dressed, and waving scarlet fans. In a pew
+sat a trio truly gorgeous. Mother, in black shiny
+satin, light-brown velvet mantle covered with iridescent
+beads, bonnet to match. Daughter of fifteen;
+costume of sky-blue satin, plush mantle, scarlet red,
+chinchilla fur trimmings, white hat with feathers.
+Second girl, or daughter, light-blue velvet, from top
+to toe, with large hat, apple-green and gold.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:446px; height:240px" src="images/img348.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">A GORGEOUS TRIO.</p></div>
+
+<p>Every one was intently listening to the preacher, a
+colored man, who gave them, in graphic language and
+stentorian voice, the story of the capture of the Jews
+by Cyrus, their slavery and their delivery. A low accompaniment
+of &ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; &ldquo;Hear, hear!&rdquo; &ldquo;Allelujah!&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page335" id="page335"></a>335</span>
+&ldquo;Glory!&rdquo; from the hearers, showed their approbation
+of the discourse. From time to time, there would be
+a general chuckle or laughter, and exclamations of delight
+from the happy grin-lit mouths, as, for instance,
+when the preacher described the supper of Belshazzar,
+and the appearance of the writing on the wall, in his
+own droll fashion. &ldquo;&rsquo;Let&rsquo;s have a fine supper,&rsquo; said
+Belshazzar. &lsquo;Dere&rsquo;s ole Cyrus out dere, but we&rsquo;ll
+have a good time and enjoy ourselves, and never mind
+him.&rsquo; So he went for de cups dat had come from de
+Temple of Jerusalem, and began carousin&rsquo;! Dere is
+Cyrus, all de while, marchin&rsquo; his men up de bed ob de
+river. I see him comin&rsquo;! I see him!&rdquo; Then he pictured
+the state all that wicked party got in at the
+sight of the writing nobody could read, and by this
+time the excitement of the congregation was tremendous.
+The preacher thought this a good opportunity to
+point a moral. So he proceeded: &ldquo;Now, drink is a
+poor thing; dere&rsquo;s too much of it in dis here city.&rdquo;
+Here followed a picture of certain darkies, who cut a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page336" id="page336"></a>336</span>
+dash with shiny hats and canes, and frequented bars
+and saloons. &ldquo;When folks take to drinkin&rsquo;, somefin&rsquo;s
+sure to go wrong.&rdquo; Grins and grunts of approbation
+culminated in perfect shouts of glee, as the preacher
+said: &ldquo;Ole Belshazzar and de rest of &rsquo;em forgot to
+shut de city gate, and in came Cyrus and his men.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:373px; height:340px" src="images/img349.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE PREACHER.</p></div>
+
+<p>They went nearly wild with pleasure over the story
+of the liberation of the Jews, and incidental remarks
+on their own freeing. &ldquo;Oh, let dem go,&rdquo; said their
+masters, when they found the game was up, &ldquo;dey&rsquo;ll
+soon perish and die out!&rdquo; Here the preacher laughed
+loudly, and then shouted: &ldquo;But we don&rsquo;t die out so
+easy!&rdquo; [Grins and chuckling.]</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: right; width: 320px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figright1"><img style="width:266px; height:330px" src="images/img350.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">THE OLD NEGRO.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>One old negro was very funny to watch. When
+something met with his approval, he gave off a little
+&ldquo;tchsu, tchsu!&rdquo; and writhed forward and back on his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page337" id="page337"></a>337</span>
+seat for a moment, apparently in intense enjoyment;
+then jumped off his seat, turning round once or twice;
+then he would listen
+intently again, as if
+afraid to lose a word.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see dis, I see dat,&rdquo;
+said the preacher continually.
+His listeners
+seemed to see it too.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>At ten minutes to
+twelve yesterday morning,
+I called at the
+White House. The
+President had left the
+library, but he was kind
+enough to return, and
+at twelve I had the
+honor to spend a few minutes in the company of
+General Benjamin Harrison. Two years ago I was
+received by Mr. Grover Cleveland with the same
+courtesy and the same total absence of red tape.</p>
+
+<p>The President of the United States is a man about
+fifty-five years old; short, exceedingly neat, and even
+<i>recherch�</i> in his appearance. The hair and beard are
+white, the eyes small and very keen. The face is
+severe, but lights up with a most gentle and kind
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>General Harrison is a popular president; but the
+souvenir of Mrs. Cleveland is still haunting the minds
+of the Washingtonians. They will never forget the
+most beautiful lady who ever did the honors of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page338" id="page338"></a>338</span>
+White House, and most of them look forward to the
+possibility of her returning to Washington in March,
+1893.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Washington society moves in circles and sets. The
+wife of the President and the wives and daughters of
+the Cabinet Ministers form the first set&mdash;Olympus, as
+it were. The second set is composed of the ladies
+belonging to the families of the Judges of the Supreme
+Court! The Senators come next. The Army circle
+comes fourth. The House of Representatives supplies
+the last set. Each circle, a Washington friend tells me,
+is controlled by rigid laws of etiquette. Senators&rsquo; wives
+consider themselves much superior to the wives of
+Congressmen, and the Judges&rsquo; wives consider themselves
+much above those of the Senators. But, as a
+rule, the great lion of Washington society is the British
+Minister, especially when he happens to be a real live
+English lord. All look up to him; and if a young
+titled English <i>attach�</i> wishes to marry the richest
+heiress of the capital, all he has to do is to throw the
+handkerchief, the young and the richest natives do not
+stand the ghost of a chance.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Lectured last night, in the Congregational Church,
+to a large and most fashionable audience. Senator
+Hoar took the chair, and introduced me in a short,
+neat, gracefully worded little speech. In to-day&rsquo;s
+Washington <i>Star</i>, I find the following remark:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>The lecturer was handsomely introduced by Senator Hoar, who
+combines the dignity of an Englishman, the sturdiness of a Scotchman,
+the <i>savoir faire</i> of a Frenchman, and the culture of a Bostonian.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page339" id="page339"></a>339</span></p>
+
+<p>What a strange mixture! I am trying to find where
+the compliment comes in, surely not in &ldquo;the <i>savoir
+faire</i> of a Frenchman!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Armed with a kind letter of introduction to Miss Kate
+Field, I called this morning at the office of this lady,
+who is characterized by a prominent journalist as &ldquo;the
+very brainiest woman in the United States.&rdquo; Unfortunately
+she was out of town.</p>
+
+<p>I should have liked to make the personal acquaintance
+of this brilliant, witty woman, who speaks, I am
+told, as she writes, in clear, caustic, fearless style.
+My intention was to interview her a bit. A telegram
+was sent to her in New York from her secretary, and
+her answer was wired immediately: &ldquo;Interview <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+So, instead of interviewing Miss Kate Field, I was interviewed,
+for her paper, by a young and very pretty
+lady journalist.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Baltimore</i>, <i>April</i> 4.</p>
+
+<p>I have spent the day here with some friends.</p>
+
+<p>Baltimore strikes one as a quiet, solid, somewhat
+provincial town. It is an eminently middle-class looking
+city. There is no great wealth in it, no great activity;
+but, on the other hand, there is little poverty;
+it is a well-to-do city <i>par excellence</i>. The famous Johns
+Hopkins University is here, and I am not surprised to
+learn that Baltimore is a city of culture and refinement.</p>
+
+<p>A beautiful forest, a mixture of cultivated park and
+wilderness, about a mile from the town, must be a
+source of delight to the inhabitants in summer and during
+the beautiful months of September and October.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page340" id="page340"></a>340</span> </p>
+
+<p>I was told several times that Baltimore was famous
+all over the States for its pretty women.</p>
+
+<p>They were not out to-day. And as I have not been
+invited to lecture in
+Baltimore, I must be
+content with hoping
+to be more lucky
+next time.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Philadelphia</i>, <i>April</i> 5.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 300px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:247px; height:260px" src="images/img353.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">A BALTIMORE WOMAN.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>After my lecture
+in Association Hall
+to-night, I will return
+to New York to
+spend Easter Sunday
+with my friends.
+Next Monday off
+again to the West,
+to Cincinnati again, to Chicago again, and as far as
+Madison, the State city of Wisconsin.</p>
+
+<p>By the time this tour is finished&mdash;in about three
+weeks&mdash;I shall have traveled something like thirty
+thousand miles.</p>
+
+<p>The more I think of it, the more I feel the truth of
+this statement, which I made in &ldquo;Jonathan and His
+Continent&rdquo;: To form an exact idea of what a lecture
+tour is in America, just imagine that you lecture to-night
+in London, to-morrow in Paris, then in Berlin,
+then in Vienna, then in Constantinople, then in Teheran,
+then in Bombay, and so forth. With this difference,
+that if you had to undertake the work in Europe, at the
+end of a week you would be more dead than alive.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page341" id="page341"></a>341</span> </p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:288px; height:430px" src="images/img354.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;THE GOOD, ATTENTIVE, POLITE CONDUCTOR
+OF ENGLAND.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>But here you are not caged on the railroad lines, you
+can circulate. There is no fear of cold, no fear of hunger,
+and if the good, attentive, polite railway conductors
+of England could be induced to do duty on board
+the American cars, I would anytime go to America for
+the mere pleasure of traveling.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page342" id="page342"></a>342</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XL.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt1">Easter Sunday in New York.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>April</i> 6 (<i>Easter Sunday.</i>)</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 300px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:245px; height:330px" src="images/img355.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">A BELLOWING SOPRANO.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">This</span> morning I went to Dr. Newton&rsquo;s church in
+Forty-eighth Street. He has the reputation of
+being one of the best preachers in New York, and the
+choir enjoys an equally
+great reputation. The
+church was literally
+packed until the sermon
+began, and then
+some of the strollers
+who had come to hear
+the anthems moved on.
+Dr. Newton&rsquo;s voice and
+delivery were not at all
+to my taste, so I did
+not sit out his sermon
+either. He has a big,
+unctuous voice, with
+the intonations and inflections
+of a showman
+at the fair. He has
+not the flow of ideas
+that struck me so forcibly when I heard the late
+Henry Ward Beecher in London; he has not the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page343" id="page343"></a>343</span>
+histrionic powers of Dr. Talmage, either. There was
+more show than beauty about the music, too. A bellowing,
+shrieking soprano overpowered all the other
+voices in the choir, including that of a really beautiful
+tenor that deserved to be heard.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>New York blossoms like the rose on Easter Day.
+Every woman has a new bonnet and walks abroad to
+show it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:358px; height:240px" src="images/img356.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">SOME EASTER BONNETS.</p></div>
+
+<p>There are grades in millinery as there are in society.
+The imported bonnet takes the proudest rank; it
+is the aristocrat in the world of headgear. It does
+not always come with the conqueror (in one of her
+numerous trunks), but it always comes to conquer, and
+a proud, though ephemeral triumph it enjoys, perched
+on the dainty head of a New York belle, and supplemented
+by a frock from Felix&rsquo;s or Redfern&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>It is a unique sight, Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page344" id="page344"></a>344</span>
+when all the up-town churches have emptied themselves
+of their gayly garbed worshipers.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:316px; height:360px" src="images/img357.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">KEEPING LENT.</p></div>
+
+<p>The &ldquo;four hundred&rdquo; have been keeping Lent in
+polite, if not rigorous, fashion. Who shall say what it
+has cost them in self-sacrifice to limit themselves to the
+sober, modest violet for table and bonnet decoration
+during six whole weeks? These things cannot be
+lightly judged by the profane. I have even heard of
+sweet, devout New York girls who limited themselves
+to one pound of <i>marrons glac�s</i> a week during Lent.
+Such feminine heroism deserves mention.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:462px; height:430px" src="images/img358.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">A CLUB WINDOW.</p></div>
+
+<p>And have they not been sewing flannel for the poor,
+once a week, instead of directing the manipulation of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page345" id="page345"></a>345</span>
+silk and gauze for their own fair forms, all the week
+long? Who shall gauge the self-control necessary for
+fasting such as this? But now Dorcas meetings are
+over, and dances begin again to-morrow. The Easter
+anthem has been sung, and the imported bonnet takes
+a turn on Fifth Avenue to salute and to hob-nob with
+Broadway imitations during the hour between church
+and lunch. To New Yorkers this Easter Church
+parade is as much of an institution in its way as those
+of Hyde Park during the season are to the Londoners.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page346" id="page346"></a>346</span>
+It was plain that the people sauntering leisurely on the
+broad sidewalks, the feminine portion at least, had not
+come out solely for religious exercise in church, but
+had every intention to see and to be seen, especially
+the latter. On my way down, I saw some folks who
+had not been to church, and only wanted to see, so
+stood with faces glued to the windows of the big clubs,
+looking out at the kaleidoscopic procession: old
+bachelors, I daresay, who hold the opinion that spring
+bonnets, whether imported or home-grown, ought to be
+labeled &ldquo;dangerous.&rdquo; At all events they were gazing
+as one might gaze at some coveted but out-of-reach
+fruit, and looking as if they dared not face their fascinating
+young townswomen in all the splendor of their
+new war paint. A few, perhaps, were married men,
+and this was their quiet protest against fifty-dollar
+hats and five-hundred-dollar gowns.</p>
+
+<p>The sight was beautiful and one not to be forgotten.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>In the evening I dined with Colonel Robert G.
+Ingersoll and the members of his family. I noticed
+something which struck me as novel, but as perfectly
+charming. Each man was placed at table by the side
+of his wife, including the host and hostess. This
+custom in the colonel&rsquo;s family circle (I was the only
+guest not belonging to it) is another proof that his
+theories are put into practice in his house. Dinner
+and time vanished with rapidity in that house, where
+everything breathes love and happiness.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page347" id="page347"></a>347</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLI.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">I Mount the Pulpit, and Preach on the Sabbath,
+in the State of Wisconsin&mdash;The Audience is
+Large and Appreciative; but I probably Fail
+to Please One of the Congregation.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Milwaukee</i>, <i>April</i> 21.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">To</span> a certain extent I am a believer in climatic influence,
+and am inclined to think that Sabbath
+reformers reckon without the British climate when
+they hope to ever see a Britain full of cheerful Christians.
+M. Taine, in his &ldquo;History of English Literature,&rdquo;
+ascribes the unlovable morality of Puritanism to
+the influence of the British climate. &ldquo;Pleasure being
+out of question,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;under such a sky, the Briton
+gave himself up to this forbidding virtuousness.&rdquo; In
+other words, being unable to be cheerful, he became
+moral. This is not altogether true. Many Britons are
+cheerful who don&rsquo;t look it, many Britons are not moral
+who look it.</p>
+
+<p>But how would M. Taine explain the existence of
+this same puritanic &ldquo;morality&rdquo; which can be found
+under the lovely, clear, bright sky of America? All
+over New England, and indeed in most parts of America,
+the same Kill-joy, the same gloomy, frowning
+Sabbath-keeper is flourishing, doing his utmost to blot
+the sunshine out of every recurring seventh day.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page348" id="page348"></a>348</span> </p>
+
+<p>Yet Sabbath-keeping is a Jewish institution that
+has nothing to do with Protestantism; but there have
+always been Protestants more Protestant than Martin
+Luther, and Christians more Christian than Christ.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="float: left; width: 290px;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr><td class="figleft1"><img style="width:242px; height:340px" src="images/img361.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="caption">PURITAN LACK OF CHEERFULNESS.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Luther taught that the Sabbath was to be kept, not
+because Moses commanded it, but because Nature
+teaches us the necessity
+of the seventh day&rsquo;s rest.
+He says &ldquo;If anywhere
+the day is made holy for
+the mere day&rsquo;s sake,
+then I command you to
+work on it, ride on it,
+dance on it, do anything
+that will reprove this encroachment
+on Christian
+spirit and liberty.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The old Scotch
+woman, who &ldquo;did nae
+think the betterer on&rdquo;
+the Lord for that Sabbath-day
+walk through
+the cornfield, is not a
+solitary type of Anglo-Saxon
+Christian. But it is when these Puritans judge
+other nations that they are truly great.</p>
+
+<p>Puritan lack of charity and dread of cheerfulness
+often lead Anglo-Saxon visitors to France to misjudge
+the French mode of spending Sunday. Americans, as
+well as English, err in this matter, as I had occasion
+to find out during my second visit to America.</p>
+
+<p>I had been lecturing last Saturday evening in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page349" id="page349"></a>349</span>
+pretty little town of Whitewater, in Wisconsin, and
+received an invitation from a minister to address a
+meeting that was to be held yesterday, Sunday, in the
+largest church of the place to discuss the question,
+&ldquo;How Sunday should be spent.&rdquo; I at first declined,
+on the ground that it might not be exactly in good
+taste for a foreigner to advise his hosts how to spend
+Sunday. However, when it was suggested that I
+might simply go and tell them how Sunday was spent
+in France, I accepted the task.</p>
+
+<p>The proceedings opened with prayer and an anthem;
+and a hymn in praise of the Jewish Sabbath having
+been chosen by the moderator, I thought the case
+looked bad for us French people, and that I was going
+to cut a poor figure.</p>
+
+<p>The first speaker unwittingly came to my rescue by
+making an onslaught upon the French mode of spending
+the seventh day. &ldquo;With all due respect to the
+native country of our visitor,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I am bound to
+say that on the one Sunday which I spent in Paris, I
+saw a great deal of low immorality, and I could not
+help coming to the conclusion that this was due to the
+fact of the French not being a Sabbath-keeping people.&rdquo;
+He wound up with a strong appeal to his
+townsmen to beware of any temptation to relax in
+their observance of the fourth commandment as given
+by Moses.</p>
+
+<p>I was called upon to speak next. I rose in my pew,
+but was requested to go into the rostrum.</p>
+
+<p>With alacrity I stepped forward, a little staggered,
+perhaps, at finding myself for the first time in a pulpit,
+but quite ready for the fray.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page350" id="page350"></a>350</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;to hear the remarks made by
+the speaker who has just sat down. I cannot, however,
+help thinking that if our friend had spent that
+Sunday in Paris in respectable places, he would have
+been spared the sight of any low immorality. No
+doubt Paris, like every large city in the world, has its
+black spots, and you can easily discover them, if you
+make proper inquiries as to where they are, and if you
+are properly directed. Now, let me ask, where did he
+go? I should very much like to know. Being an old
+Parisian, I have still in my mind&rsquo;s eye the numerous
+museums that are open free to the people on Sundays.
+One of the most edifying sights in the city is that of
+our peasants and workmen in their clean Sunday
+blouses enjoying themselves with their families, and
+elevating their tastes among our art treasures. Did
+our friend go there? I know there are places where
+for little money the symphonies of Beethoven and
+other great masters may be and are enjoyed by thousands
+every Sunday. Did our friend go there?
+Within easy reach of the people are such places as
+the Bois de Boulogne, the Garden of Acclimation,
+where for fifty centimes a delightful day may be spent
+among the lawns and flower-beds of that Parisian
+&ldquo;Zoo.&rdquo; Its goat cars, ostrich cars, its camel and elephant
+drives make it a paradise for children, and one
+might see whole families there on Sunday afternoons
+in the summer, the parents refreshing their bodies
+with this contact with nature and their hearts with the
+sight of the children&rsquo;s glee. Did our friend go there?
+We even have churches in Paris, churches that are
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page351" id="page351"></a>351</span>
+crammed from six o&rsquo;clock in the morning till one in
+the afternoon with worshipers who go on their knees
+to God. Now, did our friend go to church on that
+Sunday? Well, where did he go? I am quitting
+Whitewater to-morrow, and I leave it to his townspeople
+to investigate the matter. When I first visited
+New York, stories were told me of strange things to
+be seen there even on a Sunday. Who doubts, I
+repeat, that every great city has its black spots? I
+had no desire to see those of New York, there was so
+much that was better worth my time and attention.
+If our friend, our observing friend, would only have
+done in Paris as I did in New York, he would have
+seen very little low immorality.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The little encounter at Whitewater was only one
+more illustration of the strange fact that the Anglo-Saxon,
+who is so good in his own country, so constant
+in his attendance at church, is seldom to be seen in a
+sacred edifice abroad, unless, indeed, he has been led
+there by Baedeker.</p>
+
+<p>And last night, at Whitewater, I went to bed pleased
+with myself, like a man who has fought for his country.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>When I am in France, I often bore my friends with
+advice, and find, as usual, that advice is a luxurious
+gift thoroughly enjoyed by the one who gives it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know how to do these things,&rdquo; I say to
+them; &ldquo;in England or in America, they are much
+more intelligent; they do like this and like that.&rdquo;
+And my friends generally advise me to return to England
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page352" id="page352"></a>352</span>
+or America, where things are so beautifully managed.</p>
+
+<p>But, when I am out of France, the old Frenchman is
+all there, and if you pitch into my mother country, I
+stand up ready to fight at a minute&rsquo;s notice.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:77px" src="images/img365.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page353" id="page353"></a>353</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">The Origin of American Humor and Its Characteristics&mdash;The
+Sacred and the Profane&mdash;The
+Germans and American Humor&mdash;My
+Corpse Would &ldquo;Draw,&rdquo; in My Impresario&rsquo;s
+Opinion.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Madison, Wis.</i>, <i>April</i> 22.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">Have</span> been lecturing during the past fortnight in
+about twelve places, few of which possessed any
+interest whatever. One of them, however&mdash;Cincinnati&mdash;I
+was glad to see again.</p>
+
+<p>This town of Madison is the only one that has really
+struck me as being beautiful. From the hills the scenery
+is perfectly lovely, with its wooded slopes and lakes.
+Through the kindness of Governor Hoard, I have had
+a comprehensive survey of the neighborhood; for he
+has driven me in his carriage to all the prettiest spots,
+delighting me all the while with his conversation. He
+is one of those Americans whom you may often meet if
+you have a little luck: witty, humorous, hospitable,
+kind-hearted, the very personification of unaffected
+good-fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation turned on humor.</p>
+
+<p>I have always wondered what the origin of American
+humor can be; where is or was the fountain-head. You
+certainly find humor in England among the cultured
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page354" id="page354"></a>354</span>
+classes, but the class of English people who emigrate
+cannot have imported much humor into America.
+Surely Germany and Scandinavia cannot have contributed
+to the fund, either. The Scotch have dry, quiet,
+pawky, unconscious humor; but their influence can
+hardly have been great enough to implant their quaint
+native &ldquo;wut&rdquo; in American soil. Again, the Irish bull
+is droll, but scarcely humorous. The Italians, the Hungarians,
+have never yet, that I am aware of, been suspected
+of even latent humor.</p>
+
+<p>What then, can be the origin of American humor, as
+we know it, with its na�ve philosophy, its mixture of
+the sacred and the profane, its exaggeration and that
+preposterousness which so completely staggers the
+foreigner, the French and the German especially?</p>
+
+<p>The mixing of sacred with profane matter, no doubt,
+originated with the Puritans themselves, and is only
+an outcome of the cheek-by-jowl, next-door-neighbor
+fashion of addressing the Higher Powers, which is so
+common in the Scotch. Many of us have heard of the
+Scotch minister, whom his zeal for the welfare of missionaries
+moved to address Heaven in the following
+manner: &ldquo;We commend to thy care those missionaries
+whose lives are in danger in the Fiji Islands ...
+which, Thou knowest, are situated in the Pacific Ocean.&rdquo;
+And he is not far removed in our minds from the New
+England pastor, who preached on the well-known text
+of St. Paul, and having read: &ldquo;All things are possible
+to me,&rdquo; took a five-dollar bill out of his pocket, and
+placing it on the edge of the pulpit, said: &ldquo;No, Paul,
+that is going too far. I bet you five dollars that you
+can&rsquo;t&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; But continuing the reading of the text:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page355" id="page355"></a>355</span>
+&ldquo;Through Christ who strengtheneth me,&rdquo; exclaimed,
+&ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s a very different matter!&rdquo; and put back the
+five-dollar bill in his pocket.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:444px; height:430px" src="images/img368.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE MISSIONARY AND THE FIJIS.</p></div>
+
+<p>This kind of amalgamation of the sacred and profane
+is constantly confronting one in American soil,
+and has a firm foothold in American humor.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Elliott F. Shepard, proprietor of the New
+York <i>Mail and Express</i>, every morning sends to the
+editor a fresh text from the Bible for publication at the
+top of the editorials. One day that text was received,
+but somehow got lost, and by noon was still unfound.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page356" id="page356"></a>356</span>
+I was told that &ldquo;you should have heard the compositors&rsquo;
+room ring with: &lsquo;Where can that d&mdash;&mdash;d text
+be?&rsquo;&rdquo; Finally the text was wired and duly inserted.
+These men, however, did not intend any religious disrespect.
+Such a thing was probably as far from their
+minds as it was from the minds of the Puritan preachers
+of old. There are men who swear, as others pray,
+without meaning anything. One is a bad habit, the
+other a good one.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>All that na�ve philosophy, with which America
+abounds, must, I fancy, be the outcome of hardship endured
+by the pioneers of former days, and by the
+Westerner of our own times.</p>
+
+<p>The element of exaggeration, which is so characteristic
+of American humor, may be explained by the
+rapid success of the Americans and the immensity of
+the continent which they inhabit. Everything is on a
+grand scale, or suggests hugeness. Then negro humor
+is mainly exaggeration, and has no doubt added its
+quota to the compound which, as I said just now,
+completely staggers certain foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>Governor Hoard was telling me to-day that a German
+was inclined to be offended with him for saying
+that the Germans, as a rule, were unable to see through
+an American joke, and he invited Governor Hoard to
+try the effect of one upon him. The governor, thereupon
+told him the story of the tree, &ldquo;out West,&rdquo; which
+was so high that it took two men to see to the top.
+One of them saw as far as he could, then the second
+started from the place where the first stopped seeing,
+and went on. The recital did not raise the
+ghost of a smile, and Governor Hoard then said to
+the German: &ldquo;Well, you see, the joke is lost upon
+you; you can&rsquo;t see American humor.&rdquo;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page357" id="page357"></a>357</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:449px; height:610px" src="images/img370.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;THAT&rsquo;S A TAMNT LIE!&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page358" id="page358"></a>358</span> </p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, but,&rdquo; said the German, &ldquo;that is not humor,
+that&rsquo;s a <i>tamnt</i> lie!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And he is still convinced that he can see through an
+American joke.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Grand Rapids</i>, <i>April</i> 24.</p>
+
+<p>Have had to-day a lovely, sublime example of that
+preposterousness which so often characterizes American
+humor.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived here this morning from Chicago. At noon,
+the Grand Rapidite who was &ldquo;bossing the show&rdquo;
+called upon me at the Morton House, and kindly inquired
+whether there was anything he could do for
+me. Before leaving, he said: &ldquo;While I am here, I
+may as well give you the check for to-night&rsquo;s lecture.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Just as you please,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;but don&rsquo;t you call
+that risky?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I may die before the evening.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; he interrupted. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll exhibit
+your corpse; I guess there will be just as much money
+in it!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p>Grand Rapids is noted for its furniture manufactories.
+A draughtsman, who is employed to design artistic
+things for the largest of these manufactories,
+kindly showed me over the premises of his employers.
+I was not very surprised to hear that when the various
+retail houses come to make their yearly selections,
+they will not look at any models of the previous
+season, so great is the rage for novelties in every
+branch of industry in this novelty-loving America.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page359" id="page359"></a>359</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:463px; height:600px" src="images/img372.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">MY EXHIBITOR.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page360" id="page360"></a>360</span></p>
+
+<p>No sinecure, that draughtsman&rsquo;s position, I can tell
+you.</p>
+
+<p>Over in Europe, furniture is reckoned by periods.
+Here it is an affair of seasons.</p>
+
+<p>Very funny to have to order a new sideboard or
+wardrobe, &ldquo;to be sent home without delay&rdquo; for fear of
+its being out of date.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:120px; height:91px" src="images/img373.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page361" id="page361"></a>361</span></p>
+<h3>CHAPTER XLIII.</h3>
+
+<p class="tt">Good-by to America&mdash;Not &ldquo;Adieu,&rdquo; but &ldquo;Au
+Revoir&rdquo;&mdash;On Board the &ldquo;Teutonic&rdquo;&mdash;Home
+Again.</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>New York</i>, <i>April</i> 26.</p>
+
+<p class="noind"><span class="sc1">The</span> last two days have vanished rapidly in paying
+calls.</p>
+
+<p>This morning my impresario gave me a farewell
+breakfast at the Everett House. Edmund Clarence
+Stedman was there; Mark Twain, George Kennan,
+General Horace Porter, General Lloyd Bryce, Richard
+Watson Gilder, and many others sat at table, and
+joined in wishing me <i>bon voyage</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Good-by, my dear American friends, I shall carry
+away sweet recollections of you, and whether I am re-invited
+in your country or not, I will come again.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>April</i> 27.</p>
+
+<p>The saloon on board the <i>Teutonic</i> is a mass of
+floral offerings sent by friends to the passengers.
+Two huge beautiful baskets of lilies and roses are
+mine.</p>
+
+<p>The whistle is heard for the third time. The hands
+are pressed and the faces kissed, and all those who are
+not passengers leave the boat and go and take up position
+on the wharf to wave their handkerchiefs until the
+steamer is out of sight. A great many among the
+dense crowd are friendly faces familiar to me.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page362" id="page362"></a>362</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:346px; height:610px" src="images/img375.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">TWO BASKETS FOR ME.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page363" id="page363"></a>363</span></p>
+
+<p>The huge construction is set in motion, and gently
+and smoothly glides from the docks to the Hudson
+River. The sun is shining, the weather glorious.</p>
+
+<p>The faces on land get less and less distinct. For
+the last time I wave my hat.</p>
+
+<p>Hallo, what is the matter with me? Upon my
+word, I believe I am sad. I go to the library, and,
+like a child, seize a dozen sheets of note paper on
+which I write: &ldquo;Good-by.&rdquo; I will send them to New
+York from Sandy Hook.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:470px; height:291px" src="images/img376.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">THE &ldquo;TEUTONIC.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>The <i>Teutonic</i> is behaving beautifully. We pass
+Sandy Hook. The sea is perfectly calm. Then I
+think of my dear ones at home, and the happiest
+thoughts take the place of my feelings of regret at
+leaving my friends.</p>
+
+<p>My impresario, Major J. B. Pond, shares a beautiful,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page364" id="page364"></a>364</span>
+well-lighted, airy cabin with me. He is coming to
+England to engage Mr. Henry M. Stanley for a lecture
+tour in America next season.</p>
+
+<p>The company on board is large and choice. In the
+steerage a few disappointed American statesmen return
+to Europe.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:427px; height:400px" src="images/img377.jpg" alt="" />
+<p class="caption">&ldquo;A FEW DISAPPOINTED STATESMEN.&rdquo;</p></div>
+
+<p>Oh! that <i>Teutonic!</i> can any one imagine anything
+more grand, more luxurious? She is going at the rate
+of 450 miles a day. In about five days we shall be at
+Queenstown.</p>
+
+<p class="tb">.......</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page365" id="page365"></a>365</span> </p>
+
+<p class="rt"><i>Liverpool</i>, <i>May</i> 4.</p>
+
+<p>My most humble apologies are due to the Atlantic
+for libeling that ocean at the beginning of this book.
+For the last six days the sea has been perfectly calm,
+and the trip has been one of pleasure the whole time.
+Here is another crowd on the landing-stage at Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p>And now, dear reader, excuse me if I leave you.
+You were present at the friendly farewell handshakings
+on the New York side; but, on this Liverpool quay, I
+see a face that I have not looked upon for five months,
+and having a great deal to say to the owner of it, I
+will politely bow you out first.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img style="border:0; width:423px; height:400px" src="images/img378.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<hr class="art" />
+
+<div class="verd center">
+<p class="f80">Max O&rsquo;Rell&rsquo;s Impressions of America and the Americans.</p>
+<hr class="short" />
+<p><span class="f150">JONATHAN</span> AND HIS <span class="f150">CONTINENT</span></p>
+
+<p>BY</p>
+
+<p class="f120">MAX O&rsquo;RELL</p>
+
+<p><span class="sc">And</span> JACK ALLYN</p>
+
+<p><i>TRANSLATED BY MADAME PAUL BLOU�T.</i></p>
+
+<p class="sc f80">In One Elegant 12mo Volume.</p></div>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="80%" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="tcl">Extra Cloth, Gilt Top,</td> <td class="tc2">Price, $1.50.</td></tr>
+<tr><td class="tcl">Paper Binding,</td> <td class="tc2">Price, 50 cts.</td></tr>
+</table>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p class="center">WHAT THE PRESS SAYS:</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>&ldquo;We have laughed with him at our neighbors, and now if we are clever we will
+laugh with him at ourselves.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Daily Graphic, N. Y.</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One reads the book with a perpetual smile on one&rsquo;s face, punctuated every
+now and then by a loud laugh, as one follows the brilliant Frenchman through his
+six months&rsquo; tour of America. * * * He has glanced at things with the eye of
+a trained observer, and commented upon them with originality and humor. * * *
+One lays down the book with a wish that one might know its author.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Chicago
+News.</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The sensation of the spring. * * * It will tickle the American in spots
+and make him mad in spots, but it will be read, talked of, and enjoyed.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Home
+Journal, Boston.</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Undoubtedly the most interesting and sprightly book of the season. * * *
+It is rich in information.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Inter-Ocean, Chicago.</i></p></div>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+<div class="verd center">
+<p>CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY,</p>
+<p class="f80 sc">104 &amp; 106 Fourth Avenue, N. Y.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="pt2">&nbsp;</div>
+<hr class="full" />
+<div class="pt2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<p class="f80 center">&ldquo;Rarely has one sprung into so immediate a fame in two continents.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="f80 rt">&mdash;<i>Boston Home Journal.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<div class="verd center">
+<p class="f120">A NEW VOLUME BY MAX O&rsquo;RELL,</p>
+<p class="f80">AUTHOR OF</p>
+<p class="f80"><i>JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT.</i></p>
+
+<p class="f150 pt1">JACQUES BONHOMME,</p>
+<p><i>JOHN BULL ON THE CONTINENT,<br />
+and FROM MY LETTER BOX.</i></p>
+
+<p class="pt2"><b>By MAX O&rsquo;RELL,</b></p>
+<p class="f80"><i>Author of &ldquo;Jonathan and His Continent,&rdquo; &ldquo;John Bull, Jr.,&rdquo; etc., etc.</i></p>
+
+<p>1 vol., 12mo, Paper, 50 cents. Extra Cloth, 75 cents.</p></div>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>&ldquo;If any one was absurd enough to feel aggrieved at Max O&rsquo;Rell&rsquo;s amusement
+over us in &lsquo;Jonathan and His Continent,&rsquo; he may take his revenge
+in &lsquo;Jacques Bonhomme,&rsquo; wherein the light-headed Blouet laughs at his
+compatriots as well.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Springfield Republican.</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The book is full of sprightly, keen observations ... there is
+not a dull line in it from first to last, and its information is as genuine and
+accurate in the way of glimpses into the more intimate life of the people
+as it is charming in its sparkle and glow of style.&mdash;<i>Boston Evening Traveller.</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He is a keen observer and has a happy faculty of presenting the comical
+side of things, and that with unvarying good humor, apparently indifferent
+whether the joke hits himself or somebody else.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Troy Budget.</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In it is pictured the French at school, at war, in leading strings, in
+love, at work, at play, and at table, in trouble, in England, etc., etc.,&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The
+Boston Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Take it all in all, we think the most delightful book that Max O&rsquo;Rell
+has written is his last published, entitled &lsquo;Jacques Bonhomme.&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Home
+Journal, Boston.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="verd center">
+<p class="f90">NEW YORK</p>
+<p>CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY</p>
+<p class="f80 sc">104 &amp; 106 Fourth Avenue</p></div>
+
+<div class="pt2">&nbsp;</div>
+<hr class="full" />
+<div class="pt2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<div class="verd center">
+<p class="f150 sc">JOHN BULL, Jr.,</p>
+
+<p class="f80">OR</p>
+
+<p class="f120">French as She is Traduced.</p>
+
+<p>By MAX O&rsquo;RELL,</p>
+
+<p class="f80"><i>AUTHOR OF</i></p>
+<p class="f90"><i>JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="f80 pt2">With a Preface by <span class="sc">George C. Eggleston</span>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center f80">Boards, flexible; price, 50 cents. Cloth, gilt top, unique,
+$1.00.</p>
+
+<div class="quote">
+<p>&ldquo;There is not a page in this delightful little volume that
+does not sparkle.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Phila. Press.</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One expects Max O&rsquo;Rell to be distinctively funny.
+He is regarded as a French Mark Twain.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>The Beacon.</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The whole theory of education is to be extracted from
+these humorous sketches.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Baltimore American.</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A volume which is bubbling over with brightness, and
+is pervaded with wholesome common sense.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>N. Y. Com.
+Advertiser.</i></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;May be placed among those favored volumes whose
+interest is not exhausted by one perusal, but which may be
+taken up again with a renewal of the entertainment afforded
+by the first reading.&rdquo;&mdash;<i>Boston Gazette.</i></p></div>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<div class="verd center">
+<p>CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY</p>
+<p class="f80 sc">104 &amp; 106 Fourth Avenue, New York</p></div>
+
+<div class="pt2">&nbsp;</div>
+<hr class="full" />
+<div class="pt2">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Frenchman in America, by Max O'Rell
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Frenchman in America, by Max O'Rell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Frenchman in America
+       Recollections of Men and Things
+
+Author: Max O'Rell
+
+Release Date: May 5, 2010 [EBook #32261]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marius Masi, Chris Curnow and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA.
+
+
+[Illustration: Max O'Rell]
+
+
+
+
+_A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA_
+
+Recollections of Men and Things
+
+
+  BY MAX O'RELL
+
+  AUTHOR OF "JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT," "JOHN BULL, JUNIOR,"
+  "JACQUES BONHOMME," "JOHN BULL AND HIS ISLAND," ETC.
+
+
+  WITH OVER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS
+  BY E. W. KEMBLE
+
+
+           NEW YORK
+  CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
+   104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE
+
+
+
+
+     COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY
+  CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY.
+
+    _All rights reserved._
+
+  THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
+        RAHWAY, N. J.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAPTER.                                                         PAGE.
+
+  I.--Departure--The Atlantic--Demoralization of the "Boarders"--
+        Betting--The Auctioneer--An Inquisitive Yankee,                1
+
+  II.--Arrival of the Pilot--First Look at American Newspapers,       11
+
+  III.--Arrival--The Custom House--Things Look Bad--The
+        Interviewers--First Visits--Things Look Brighter--"O Vanity
+        of Vanities,"                                                 14
+
+  IV.--Impressions of American Hotels,                                25
+
+  V.--My Opening Lecture--Reflections on Audiences I Have Had--The
+        Man who Won't Smile--The One who Laughs too Soon, and Many
+        Others,                                                       37
+
+  VI.--A Connecticut Audience--Merry Meriden--A Hard Pull,            48
+
+  VII--A Tempting Offer--The Thursday Club--Bill Nye--Visit to Young
+        Ladies' Schools--The Players' Club,                           52
+
+  VIII.--The Flourishing of Coats-of-Arms in America--Reflections
+        Thereon--Forefathers Made to Order--The Phonograph at
+        Home--The Wealth of New York--Departure for Buffalo,          60
+
+  IX.--Different Ways of Advertising a Lecture--American
+        Impressarios and Their Methods,                               66
+
+  X.--Buffalo--The Niagara Falls--A Frost--Rochester to the Rescue
+        of Buffalo--Cleveland--I Meet Jonathan--Phantasmagoria,       74
+
+  XI.--A Great Admirer--Notes on Railway Traveling--Is America a
+        Free Nation?--A Pleasant Evening in New York,                 81
+
+  XII.--Notes on American Women--Comparisons--How Men Treat Women
+        and Vice Versa--Scenes and Illustrations,                     90
+
+  XIII.--More about Journalism in America--A Dinner at Delmonico's--
+        My First Appearance in an American Church,                   110
+
+  XIV.--Marcus Aurelius in America--Chairmen I Have Had--American,
+        English, and Scotch Chairmen--One who had Been to
+        Boulogne--Talkative and Silent Chairmen--A Trying Occasion--
+        The Lord is Asked to Allow the Audience to See my Points,    124
+
+  XV.--Reflections on the Typical American,                          137
+
+  XVI.--I am Asked to Express Myself Freely on America--I Meet Mrs.
+        Blank and for the First Time Hear of Mr. Blank--Beacon
+        Street Society--The Boston Clubs,                            149
+
+  XVII.--A Lively Sunday in Boston--Lecture in the Boston Theater--
+        Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes--The Booth-Modjeska Combination,   156
+
+  XVIII--St. Johnsbury--The State of Maine--New England
+        Self-control--Cold Climates and Frigid Audiences--Where is
+        the Audience?--All Drunk!--A Reminiscence of a Scotch
+        Audience on a Saturday Night,                                163
+
+  XIX.--A Lovely Ride to Canada--Quebec, a Corner of Old France
+        Strayed up and Lost in the Snow--The French Canadians--The
+        Parties in Canada--Will the Canadians become Yankees?        172
+
+  XX.--Montreal--The City--Mount Royal--Canadian Sports--Ottawa--
+        The Government--Rideau Hall,                                 182
+
+  XXI.--Toronto--The City--The Ladies--The Sports--Strange
+        Contrasts--The Canadian Schools,                             191
+
+  XXII.--West Canada--Relations between British and Indians--Return
+        to the United States--Difficulties in the Way--Encounter
+        American Custom-House Officer,                               196
+
+  XXIII.--Chicago (First Visit)--The "Neighborhood" of Chicago--The
+        with an History of Chicago--Public Servants--A Very Deaf
+        Man,                                                         203
+
+  XXIV.--St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Sister Cities--Rivalries and
+        Jealousies between Large American Cities--Minnehaha
+        Falls--Wonderful Interviewers--My Hat gets into Trouble
+        Again--Electricity in the Air--Forest Advertisements--
+        Railway Speed in America,                                    214
+
+  XXV.--Detroit--The Town--The Detroit "Free Press"--A Lady
+        Interviewer--The "Unco Guid" in Detroit--Reflections on the
+        Anglo-Saxon "Unco Guid,"                                     222
+
+  XXVI.--Milwaukee--A Well-filled Day--Reflections on the Scotch in
+        America--Chicago Criticisms,                                 236
+
+  XXVII.--The Monotony of Traveling in the States--"Manon Lescaut"
+        in America,                                                  244
+
+  XXVIII.--For the First Time I See an American Paper Abuse Me--
+        Albany to New York--A Lecture at Daly's Theater--Afternoon
+        Audiences,                                                   248
+
+  XXIX.--Wanderings Through New York--Lecture at the Harmonie Club--
+        Visit to the Century Club,                                   255
+
+  XXX.--Visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music--Rev. Dr. Talmage,    257
+
+  XXXI.--Virginia--The Hotels--The South--I will Kill a Railway
+        Conductor before I Leave America--Philadelphia--Impressions
+        of the Old City,                                             263
+
+  XXXII.--My Ideas of the State of Texas--Why I will not Go
+        There--The Story of a Frontier Man,                          274
+
+  XXXIII.--Cincinnati--The Town--The Suburbs--A German City--"Over
+        the Rhine"--What is a Good Patriot?--An Impressive
+        Funeral--A Great Fire--How It Appeared to Me, and How It
+        Appeared to the Newspaper Reporters,                         279
+
+  XXXIV.--A Journey if you Like--Terrible Encounter with an
+        American Interviewer,                                        296
+
+  XXXV.--The University of Indiana--Indianapolis--The Veterans of
+        the Grand Army of the Republic on the Spree--A Marvelous
+        Equilibrist,                                                 306
+
+  XXXVI.--Chicago (Second Visit)--Vassili Verestchagin's
+        Exhibition--The "Angelus"--Wagner and Wagnerites--
+        Wanderings About the Big City--I Sit on the Tribunal,        311
+
+  XXXVII.--Ann Arbor--The University of Michigan--Detroit
+        Again--The French Out of France--Oberlin College, Ohio--
+        Black and White--Are All American Citizens Equal?            322
+
+  XXXVIII.--Mr. and Mrs. Kendal in New York--Joseph Jefferson--
+        Julian Hawthorne--Miss Ada Rehan--"As You Like It" at
+        Daly's Theater,                                              330
+
+  XXXIX.--Washington--The City--Willard's Hotel--The Politicians--
+        General Benjamin Harrison, U. S. President--Washington
+        Society--Baltimore--Philadelphia,                            332
+
+  XL.--Easter Sunday in New York,                                    342
+
+  XLI.--I Mount the Pulpit and Preach on the Sabbath, in the State
+        of Wisconsin--The Audience is Large and Appreciative; but I
+        Probably Fail to Please One of the Congregation,             347
+
+  XLII.--The Origin of American Humor and Its Characteristics--The
+        Sacred and the Profane--The Germans and American Humor--
+        My Corpse Would "Draw," in my Impressario's Opinion,         353
+
+  XLIII.--Good-by to America--Not "Adieu," but "Au Revoir"--On
+        Board the _Teutonic_--Home Again,                            361
+
+
+
+
+A FRENCHMAN IN AMERICA.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  DEPARTURE--THE ATLANTIC--DEMORALIZATION OF THE "BOARDERS"--BETTING--THE
+  AUCTIONEER--AN INQUISITIVE YANKEE.
+
+
+     _On board the "Celtic," Christmas Week, 1889._
+
+In the order of things the _Teutonic_ was to have sailed to-day, but the
+date is the 25th of December, and few people elect to eat their
+Christmas dinner on the ocean if they can avoid it; so there are only
+twenty-five saloon passengers, and they have been committed to the brave
+little _Celtic_, while that huge floating palace, the _Teutonic_,
+remains in harbor.
+
+Little _Celtic_! Has it come to this with her and her companions, the
+_Germanic_, the _Britannic_, and the rest that were the wonders and the
+glory of the ship-building craft a few years ago? There is something
+almost sad in seeing these queens of the Atlantic dethroned, and obliged
+to rank below newer and grander ships. It was even pathetic to hear the
+remarks of the sailors, as we passed the _Germanic_ who, in her day, had
+created even more wondering admiration than the two famous armed
+cruisers lately added to the "White Star" fleet.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I know nothing more monotonous than a voyage from Liverpool to New York.
+
+Nine times out of ten--not to say ninety-nine times out of a
+hundred--the passage is bad. The Atlantic Ocean has an ugly temper; it
+has forever got its back up. Sulky, angry, and terrible by turns, it
+only takes a few days' rest out of every year, and this always occurs
+when you are not crossing.
+
+And then, the wind is invariably against you. When you go to America, it
+blows from the west; when you come back to Europe, it blows from the
+east. If the captain steers south to avoid icebergs, it is sure to begin
+to blow southerly.
+
+Doctors say that sea-sickness emanates from the brain. I can quite
+believe them. The blood rushes to your head, leaving your extremities
+cold and helpless. All the vital force flies to the brain, and your legs
+refuse to carry you. It is with sea-sickness as it is with wine. When
+people say that a certain wine goes up in the head, it means that it is
+more likely to go down to the feet.
+
+There you are, on board a huge construction that rears and kicks like a
+buck-jumper. She lifts you up bodily, and, after well shaking all your
+members in the air several seconds, lets them down higgledy-piggledy,
+leaving to Providence the business of picking them up and putting them
+together again. That is the kind of thing one has to go through about
+sixty times an hour. And there is no hope for you; nobody dies of it.
+
+[Illustration: "YOUR LEGS REFUSE TO CARRY YOU."]
+
+Under such conditions, the mental state of the boarders may easily be
+imagined. They smoke, they play cards, they pace the deck like bruin
+pacing a cage; or else they read, and forget at the second chapter all
+they have read in the first. A few presumptuous ones try to think, but
+without success. The ladies, the American ones more especially, lie on
+their deck chairs swathed in rugs and shawls like Egyptian mummies in
+their sarcophagi, and there they pass from ten to twelve hours a day
+motionless, hopeless, helpless, speechless. Some few incurables keep to
+their cabins altogether, and only show their wasted faces when it is
+time to debark. Up they come, with cross, stupefied, pallid,
+yellow-green-looking physiognomies, and seeming to say: "Speak to me, if
+you like, but don't expect me to open my eyes or answer you, and above
+all, don't shake me."
+
+Impossible to fraternize.
+
+The crossing now takes about six days and a half. By the time you have
+spent two in getting your sea legs on, and three more in reviewing, and
+being reviewed by your fellow-passengers, you will find yourself at the
+end of your troubles--and your voyage.
+
+No, people do not fraternize on board ship, during such a short passage,
+unless a rumor runs from cabin to cabin that there has been some
+accident to the machinery, or that the boat is in imminent danger. At
+the least scare of this kind, every one looks at his neighbor with eyes
+that are alarmed, but amiable, nay, even amicable. But as soon as one
+can say: "We have come off with a mere scare this time," all the facial
+traits stiffen once more, and nobody knows anybody.
+
+[Illustration: "LIKE EGYPTIAN MUMMIES."]
+
+Universal grief only will bring about universal brotherhood. We must
+wait till the Day of Judgment. When the world is passing away, oh! how
+men will forgive and love one another! What outpourings of good-will and
+affection there will be! How touching, how edifying will be the sight!
+The universal republic will be founded in the twinkling of an eye,
+distinctions of creed and class forgotten. The author will embrace the
+critic and even the publisher, the socialist open his arms to the
+capitalist. The married men will be seen "making it up" with their
+mothers-in-law, begging them to forgive and forget, and admitting that
+they had not been always quite so-so, in fact, as they might have been.
+If the Creator of all is a philosopher, or enjoys humor, how he will be
+amused to see all the various sects of Christians, who have passed their
+lives in running one another down, throw themselves into one another's
+arms. It will be a scene never to be forgotten.
+
+Yes, I repeat it, the voyage from Liverpool to New York is monotonous
+and wearisome in the extreme. It is an interval in one's existence, a
+week more or less lost, decidedly more than less.
+
+One grows gelatinous from head to foot, especially in the upper part of
+one's anatomy.
+
+In order to see to what an extent the brain softens, you only need look
+at the pastimes the poor passengers go in for.
+
+A state of demoralization prevails throughout.
+
+They bet. That is the form the disease takes.
+
+[Illustration: THE AUCTIONEER.]
+
+They bet on anything and everything. They bet that the sun will or will
+not appear next day at eleven precisely, or that rain will fall at noon.
+They bet that the number of miles made by the boat at twelve o'clock
+next day will terminate with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9. Each draws
+one of these numbers and pays his shilling, half-crown, or even
+sovereign. Then these numbers are put up at auction. An improvised
+auctioneer, with the gift of the gab, puts his talent at the service of
+his fellow-passengers. It is really very funny to see him swaying about
+the smoking-room table, and using all his eloquence over each number in
+turn for sale. A good auctioneer will run the bidding so smartly that
+the winner of the pool next day often pockets as much as thirty and
+forty pounds. On the eve of arrival in New York harbor, everybody knows
+that twenty-four pilots are waiting about for the advent of the liner,
+and that each boat carries her number on her sail. Accordingly,
+twenty-four numbers are rolled up and thrown into a cap, and betting
+begins again. He who has drawn the number which happens to be that of
+the pilot who takes the steamer into harbor pockets the pool.
+
+I, who have never bet on anything in my life, even bet with my traveling
+companion, when the rolling of the ship sends our portmanteaus from one
+side of the cabin to the other, that mine will arrive first.
+Intellectual faculties on board are reduced to this ebb.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The nearest approach to a gay note, in this concert of groans and
+grumblings, is struck by some humorous and good-tempered American. He
+will come and ask you the most impossible questions with an ease and
+impudence perfectly inimitable. These catechisings are all the more
+droll because they are done with a _naivete_ which completely disarms
+you. The phrase is short, without verb, reduced to its most concise
+expression. The intonation alone marks the interrogation. Here is a
+specimen.
+
+We have on board the _Celtic_ an American who is not a very shrewd
+person, for it has actually taken him five days to discover that English
+is not my native tongue. This morning (December 30) he found it out,
+and, being seated near me in the smoke-room, has just had the following
+bit of conversation with me:
+
+"Foreigner?" said he.
+
+"Foreigner," said I, replying in American.
+
+"German, I guess."
+
+"Guess again."
+
+"French?"
+
+"Pure blood."
+
+[Illustration: "GOING TO AMERICA?"]
+
+"Married?"
+
+"Married."
+
+"Going to America?"
+
+"Yes--evidently."
+
+"Pleasure trip?"
+
+"No."
+
+"On business?"
+
+"On business, yes."
+
+"What's your line?"
+
+"H'm--French goods."
+
+"Ah! what class of goods?"
+
+"_L'article de Paris._"
+
+"The what?"
+
+"The _ar-ti-cle de Pa-ris_."
+
+"Oh! yes, the _arnticle of Pahrriss_."
+
+"Exactly so. Excuse _my_ pronunciation."
+
+This floored him.
+
+"Rather impertinent, your smoke-room neighbor!" you will say.
+
+Undeceive yourself at once upon that point. It is not impertinence,
+still less an intention to offend you, that urges him to put these
+incongruous questions to you. It is the interest he takes in you. The
+American is a good fellow; good fellowship is one of his chief
+characteristic traits. Of that I became perfectly convinced during my
+last visit to the United States.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  ARRIVAL OF THE PILOT--FIRST LOOK AT AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS.
+
+
+     _Saturday, January 4, 1890._
+
+We shall arrive in New York Harbor to-night, but too late to go on
+shore. After sunset, the Custom House officers are not to be disturbed.
+We are about to land in a country where, as I remember, everything is in
+subjection to the paid servant. In the United States, he who is paid
+wages commands.
+
+We make the best of it. After having mercilessly tumbled us about for
+nine days, the wind has graciously calmed down, and our last day is
+going to be a good one, thanks be. There is a pure atmosphere. A clear
+line at the horizon divides space into two immensities, two sheets of
+blue sharply defined.
+
+Faces are smoothing out a bit. People talk, are becoming, in fact, quite
+communicative. One seems to say to another: "Why, after all, you don't
+look half as disagreeable as I thought. If I had only known that, we
+might have seen more of each other, and killed time more quickly."
+
+The pilot boat is in sight. It comes toward us, and sends off in a
+rowing-boat the pilot who will take us into port. The arrival of the
+pilot on board is not an incident. It is an event. Does he not bring the
+New York newspapers? And when you have been ten days at sea, cut off
+from the world, to read the papers of the day before is to come back to
+life again, and once more take up your place in this little planet that
+has been going on its jog-trot way during your temporary suppression.
+
+[Illustration: PILOT WITH PAPERS.]
+
+The first article which meets my eyes, as I open the New York _World_,
+is headed "High time for Mr. Nash to put a stop to it!" This is the
+paragraph:
+
+  Ten days ago, Mrs. Nash brought a boy into existence. Three days
+  afterward she presented her husband with a little girl. Yesterday the
+  lady was safely delivered of a third baby.
+
+"Mrs. Nash takes her time over it" would have been another good heading.
+
+Here we are in America. Old World ways don't obtain here. In Europe,
+Mrs. Nash would have ushered the little trio into this life in one day;
+but in Europe we are out of date, _rococo_, and if one came over to find
+the Americans doing things just as they are done on the other side, one
+might as well stay at home.
+
+I run through the papers.
+
+America, I see, is split into two camps. Two young ladies, Miss Nelly
+Bly and Miss Elizabeth Bisland, have left New York by opposite routes to
+go around the world, the former sent by the New York _World_, the latter
+by the _Cosmopolitan_. Which will be back first? is what all America is
+conjecturing upon. Bets have been made, and the betting is even. I do
+not know Miss Bly, but last time I came over I had the pleasure of
+making Miss Bisland's acquaintance. Naturally, as soon as I get on
+shore, I shall bet on Miss Bisland. You would do the same yourself,
+would you not?
+
+I pass the day reading the papers. All the bits of news, insignificant
+or not, given in the shape of crisp, lively stories, help pass the time.
+They contain little information, but much amusement. The American
+newspaper always reminds me of a shop window with all the goods ticketed
+in a marvelous style, so as to attract and tickle the eye. You cannot
+pass over anything. The leading article is scarcely known across the
+"wet spot"; the paper is a collection of bits of gossip, hearsay, news,
+scandal, the whole served _a la sauce piquante_.
+
+     _Nine o'clock._
+
+We are passing the bar, and going to anchor. New York is sparkling with
+lights, and the Brooklyn Bridge is a thing of beauty. I will enjoy the
+scene for an hour, and then turn in.
+
+We land to-morrow morning at seven.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  ARRIVAL--THE CUSTOM HOUSE--THINGS LOOK BAD--THE INTERVIEWERS--FIRST
+  VISITS--THINGS LOOK BRIGHTER--"O VANITY OF VANITIES."
+
+
+     _New York Harbor; January 5._
+
+At seven o'clock in the morning the Custom House officers came on board.
+One of them at once recognizing me, said, calling me by name, that he
+was glad to see me back, and inquired if I had not brought Madame with
+me this time. It is extraordinary the memory of many of these Americans!
+This one had seen me for a few minutes two years before, and probably
+had had to deal with two or three hundred thousand people since.
+
+All the passengers came to the saloon and made their declarations one
+after another, after which they swore in the usual form that they had
+told the truth, and signed a paper to that effect. This done, many a
+poor pilgrim innocently imagines that he has finished with the Custom
+House, and he renders thanks to Heaven that he is going to set foot on a
+soil where a man's word is not doubted. He reckons without his host. In
+spite of his declaration, sworn and signed, his trunks are opened and
+searched with all the dogged zeal of a policeman who believes he is on
+the track of a criminal, and who will only give up after perfectly
+convincing himself that the trunks do not contain the slightest dutiable
+article. Everything is taken out and examined. If there are any objects
+of apparel that appear like new ones to that scrutinizing eye, look out
+for squalls.
+
+[Illustration: CUSTOM HOUSE OFFICERS.]
+
+I must say that the officer was very kind to me. For that matter, the
+luggage of a man who travels alone, without Madame and her
+_impedimenta_, is soon examined.
+
+Before leaving the ship, I went to shake hands with Captain Parsell,
+that experienced sailor whose bright, interesting conversation, added to
+the tempting delicacies provided by the cook, made many an hour pass
+right cheerily for those who, like myself, had the good fortune to sit
+at his table. I thanked him for all the kind attentions I had received
+at his hands. I should have liked to thank all the employees of the
+"White Star" line company. Their politeness is above all praise; their
+patience perfectly angelical. Ask them twenty times a day the most
+absurd questions, such as, "Will the sea soon calm down?" "Shall we get
+into harbor on Wednesday?" "Do you think we shall be in early enough to
+land in the evening?" and so on. You find them always ready with a kind
+and encouraging answer. "The barometer is going up and the sea is going
+down," or, "We are now doing our nineteen knots an hour." Is it true, or
+not? It satisfies you, at all events. In certain cases it is so sweet to
+be deceived! Better to be left to nurse a beloved illusion than have to
+give it up for a harsh reality that you are powerless against. Every one
+is grateful to those kind sailors and stewards for the little innocent
+fibs that they are willing to load their consciences with, in order that
+they may brighten your path across the ocean a little.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Everett House. Noon._
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN PARSELL, R. M. S. "MAJESTIC."]
+
+My baggage examined, I took a cab to go to the hotel. Three dollars for
+a mile and a half. A mere trifle.
+
+[Illustration: EVERY ONE HAS THE GRIPPE.]
+
+It was pouring with rain. New York on a Sunday is never very gay. To-day
+the city seemed to me horrible: dull, dirty, and dreary. It is not the
+fault of New York altogether. I have the spleen. A horribly stormy
+passage, the stomach upside down, the heart up in the throat, the
+thought that my dear ones are three thousand miles away, all these
+things help to make everything look black. It would have needed a
+radiant sun in one of those pure blue skies that North America is so
+rich in to make life look agreeable and New York passable to-day.
+
+In ten minutes cabby set me down at the Everett House. After having
+signed the register, I went and looked up my manager, whose bureau is on
+the ground floor of the hotel.
+
+The spectacle which awaited me was appalling.
+
+There sat the unhappy Major Pond in his office, his head bowed upon his
+chest, his arms hanging limp, the very picture of despair.
+
+The country is seized with a panic. Everybody has the influenza. Every
+one does not die of it, but every one is having it. The malady is not
+called influenza over here, as it is in Europe. It is called "Grippe."
+No American escapes it. Some have _la grippe_, others have _the grippe_,
+a few, even, have _the la grippe_. Others, again, the lucky ones, think
+they have it. Those who have not had it, or do not think they have it
+yet, are expecting it. The nation is in a complete state of
+demoralization. Theaters are empty, business almost suspended, doctors
+on their backs or run off their legs.
+
+At twelve a telegram is handed to me. It is from my friend, Wilson
+Barrett, who is playing in Philadelphia. "Hearty greetings, dear friend.
+Five grains of quinine and two tablets of antipyrine a day, or you get
+_grippe_." Then came many letters by every post. "Impossible to go and
+welcome you in person. I have _la grippe_. Take every precaution." Such
+is the tenor of them all.
+
+The outlook is not bright. What to do? For a moment I have half a mind
+to call a cab and get on board the first boat bound for Europe.
+
+I go to my room, the windows of which overlook Union Square. The sky is
+somber, the street is black and deserted, the air is suffocatingly
+warm, and a very heavy rain is beating against the windows.
+
+Shade of Columbus, how I wish I were home again!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cheer up, boy, the hand-grasps of your dear New York friends will be
+sweet after the frantic grasping of stair-rails and other ship furniture
+for so many days.
+
+I will have lunch and go and pay calls.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Excuse me if I leave you for a few minutes. The interviewers are waiting
+for me downstairs in Major Pond's office. The interviewers! a gay note
+at last. The hall porter hands me their cards. They are all there:
+representatives of the _Tribune_, the _Times_, the _Sun_, the _Herald_,
+the _World_, the _Star_.
+
+What nonsense Europeans have written on the subject of interviewing in
+America, to be sure! To hear them speak, you would believe that it is
+the greatest nuisance in the world.
+
+A Frenchman writes in the _Figaro_: "I will go to America if my life can
+be insured against that terrific nuisance, interviewing."
+
+An Englishman writes to an English paper, on returning from America:
+"When the reporters called on me, I invariably refused to see them."
+
+Trash! Cant! Hypocrisy! With the exception of a king, or the prime
+minister of one of the great powers, a man is only too glad to be
+interviewed. Don't talk to me about the nuisance, tell the truth, it is
+always such a treat to hear it. I consider that interviewing is a
+compliment, a great compliment paid to the interviewed. In asking a man
+to give you his views, so as to enlighten the public on such and such a
+subject, you acknowledge that he is an important man, which is
+flattering to him; or you take him for one, which is more flattering
+still.
+
+I maintain that American interviewers are extremely courteous and
+obliging, and, as a rule, very faithful reporters of what you say to
+them.
+
+Let me say that I have a lurking doubt in my mind whether those who have
+so much to say against interviewing in America have ever been asked to
+be interviewed at all, or have even ever run such a danger.
+
+I object to interviewing as a sign of decadence in modern journalism;
+but I do not object to being interviewed, I like it; and, to prove it, I
+will go down at once, and be interviewed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Midnight._
+
+The interview with the New York reporters passed off very well. I went
+through the operation like a man.
+
+After lunch, I went to see Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, who had shown me
+a great deal of kindness during my first visit to America. I found in
+him a friend ready to welcome me.
+
+The poet and literary critic is a man of about fifty, rather below
+middle height, with a beautifully chiseled head. In every one of the
+features you can detect the artist, the man of delicate, tender, and
+refined feelings. It was a great pleasure for me to see him again. He
+has finished his "Library of American Literature," a gigantic work of
+erudite criticism and judicious compilation, which he undertook a few
+years ago in collaboration with Miss Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. These
+eleven volumes form a perfect national monument, a complete cyclopaedia
+of American literature, giving extracts from the writings of every
+American who has published anything for the last three hundred years
+(1607-1890).
+
+[Illustration: THE INTERVIEWERS.]
+
+On leaving him, I went to call on Mrs. Anna Bowman Dodd, the author of
+"Cathedral Days," "Glorinda," "The Republic of the Future," and other
+charming books, and one of the brightest conversationalists it has ever
+been my good fortune to meet. After an hour's chat with her, I had
+forgotten all about the _grippe_, and all other more or less imaginary
+miseries.
+
+I returned to the Everett House to dress, and went to the Union League
+Club to dine with General Horace Porter.
+
+The general possesses a rare and most happy combination of brilliant
+flashing Parisian wit and dry, quiet, American humor. This charming
+_causeur_ and _conteur_ tells an anecdote as nobody I know can do; he
+never misses fire. He assured me at table that the copyright bill will
+soon be passed, for, he added, "we have now a pure and pious
+Administration. At the White House they open their oysters with prayer."
+The conversation fell on American society, or, rather, on American
+Societies. The highest and lowest of these can be distinguished by the
+use of _van_. "The blue blood of America put it before their names, as
+_Van Nicken_; political society puts it after, as _Sullivan_."
+
+O VAN-ITAS VAN-ITATUM!
+
+Time passed rapidly in such delightful company.
+
+I finished the evening at the house of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. If
+there had been any cloud of gloom still left hanging about me, it would
+have vanished at the sight of his sunny face. There was a small
+gathering of some thirty people, among them Mr. Edgar Fawcett, whose
+acquaintance I was delighted to make. Conversation went on briskly with
+one and the other, and at half-past eleven I returned to the hotel
+completely cured.
+
+To-morrow morning I leave for Boston at ten o'clock to begin the lecture
+tour in that city, or, to use an Americanism, to "open the show."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a knock at the door.
+
+[Illustration: HALL PORTER.]
+
+It is the hall porter with a letter: an invitation to dine with the
+members of the Clover Club at Philadelphia on Thursday next, the 16th.
+
+I look at my list of engagements and find I am in Pittsburg on that day.
+
+
+I take a telegraph form and pen the following, which I will send to my
+friend, Major M. P. Handy, the president of this lively association:
+
+  Many thanks. Am engaged in Pittsburg on the 16th. Thank God, cannot
+  attend your dinner.
+
+I remember how those "boys" cheeked me two years ago, laughed at me, sat
+on me. That's my telegram to you, dear Cloverites, with my love.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICAN HOTELS.
+
+
+     _Boston, January 6._
+
+Arrived here this afternoon, and resumed acquaintance with American
+hotels.
+
+American hotels are all alike.
+
+Some are worse.
+
+Describe one and you have described them all.
+
+On the ground floor, a large entrance hall strewed with cuspidores for
+the men, and a side entrance provided with a triumphal arch for the
+ladies. On this floor the sexes are separated as at the public baths.
+
+[Illustration: THE SAD-EYED CLERK.]
+
+In the large hall, a counter behind which solemn clerks, whose business
+faces relax not a muscle, are ready with their book to enter your name
+and assign you a number. A small army of colored porters ready to take
+you in charge. Not a salute, not a word, not a smile of welcome. The
+negro takes your bag and makes a sign that your case is settled. You
+follow him. For the time being you lose your personality and become No.
+375, as you would in jail. Don't ask questions; theirs not to answer;
+don't ring the bell to ask for a favor, if you set any value on your
+time. All the rules of the establishment are printed and posted in your
+bedroom; you have to submit to them. No question to ask--you know
+everything. Henceforth you will have to be hungry from 7 to 9 A.M.;
+from 1 to 3 P.M.; from 6 to 8 P.M. The slightest infringement of the
+routine would stop the wheel, so don't ask if you could have a meal at
+four o'clock; you would be taken for a lunatic, or a crank (as they call
+it in America).
+
+Between meals you will be supplied with ice-water _ad libitum_.
+
+No privacy. No coffee-room, no smoking-room. No place where you can go
+and quietly sip a cup of coffee or drink a glass of beer with a cigar.
+You can have a drink at the bar, and then go and sit down in the hall
+among the crowd.
+
+Life in an American hotel is an alternation of the cellular system
+during the night and of the gregarious system during the day, an
+alternation of the penitentiary systems carried out at Philadelphia and
+at Auburn.
+
+It is not in the bedroom, either, that you must seek anything to cheer
+you. The bed is good, but only for the night. The room is perfectly
+nude. Not even "Napoleon's Farewell to his Soldiers at Fontainebleau" as
+in France, or "Strafford walking to the Scaffold" as in England. Not
+that these pictures are particularly cheerful, still they break the
+monotony of the wall paper. Here the only oases in the brown or gray
+desert are cautions.
+
+First of all, a notice that, in a cupboard near the window, you will
+find some twenty yards of coiled rope which, in case of fire, you are to
+fix to a hook outside the window. The rest is guessed. You fix the rope,
+and--you let yourself go. From a sixth, seventh, or eighth story, the
+prospect is lively. Another caution informs you of all that you must not
+do, such as your own washing in the bedroom. Another warns you that if,
+on retiring, you put your boots outside the door, you do so at your own
+risk and peril. Another is posted near the door, close to an electric
+bell. With a little care and practice, you will be able to carry out the
+instructions printed thereon. The only thing wonderful about the
+contrivance is that the servants never make mistakes.
+
+[Illustration: THE HOTEL FIRE ESCAPE.]
+
+
+  Press once         for ice-water.
+    "   twice         "  hall boy.
+    "   three times   " fireman.
+    "   four    "     " chambermaid.
+    "   five    "     " hot water.
+    "   six     "     " ink and writing materials.
+    "   seven   "     " baggage.
+    "   eight   "     " messenger.
+
+In some hotels I have seen the list carried to number twelve.
+
+Another notice tells you what the proprietor's responsibilities are, and
+at what time the meals take place. Now this last notice is the most
+important of all. Woe to you if you forget it! For if you should present
+yourself one minute after the dining-room door is closed, no human
+consideration would get it open for you. Supplications, arguments would
+be of no avail. Not even money.
+
+"What do you mean?" some old-fashioned European will exclaim. "When the
+_table d'hote_ is over, of course you cannot expect the _menu_ to be
+served to you; but surely you can order a steak or a chop."
+
+No, you cannot, not even an omelette or a piece of cold meat. If you
+arrive at one minute past three (in small towns, at one minute past two)
+you find the dining-room closed, and you must wait till six o'clock to
+see its hospitable doors open again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When you enter the dining-room, you must not believe that you can go
+and sit where you like. The chief waiter assigns you a seat, and you
+must take it. With a superb wave of the hand, he signs to you to follow
+him. He does not even turn round to see if you are behind him, following
+him in all the meanders he describes, amid the sixty, eighty, sometimes
+hundred tables that are in the room. He takes it for granted you are an
+obedient, submissive traveler who knows his duty. Altogether I traveled
+in the United States for about ten months, and I never came across an
+American so daring, so independent, as to actually take any other seat
+than the one assigned to him by that tremendous potentate, the head
+waiter. Occasionally, just to try him, I would sit down in a chair I
+took a fancy to. But he would come and fetch me, and tell me that I
+could not stay there. In Europe, the waiter asks you where you would
+like to sit. In America, you ask him where you may sit. He is a paid
+servant, therefore a master in America. He is in command, not of the
+other waiters, but of the guests. Several times, recognizing friends in
+the dining-room, I asked the man to take me to their tables (I should
+not have dared go by myself), and the permission was granted with a
+patronizing sign of the head. I have constantly seen Americans stop on
+the threshold of the dining-room door, and wait until the chief waiter
+had returned from placing a guest to come and fetch them in their turn.
+I never saw them venture alone, and take an empty seat, without the
+sanction of the waiter.
+
+[Illustration: THE HEAD MAN.]
+
+The guests feel struck with awe in that dining-room, and solemnly bolt
+their food as quickly as they can. You hear less noise in an American
+hotel dining-room containing five hundred people, than you do at a
+French _table d'hote_ accommodating fifty people, at a German one
+containing a dozen guests, or at a table where two Italians are dining
+_tete-a-tete_.
+
+[Illustration: "LOOK LIKE DUSKY PRINCES."]
+
+The head waiter, at large Northern and Western hotels, is a white man.
+In the Southern ones, he is a mulatto or a black; but white or black, he
+is always a magnificent specimen of his race. There is not a ghost of a
+savor of the serving man about him; no whiskers and shaven upper lips
+reminding you of the waiters of the Old World; but always a fine
+mustache, the twirling of which helps to give an air of _nonchalant_
+superiority to its wearer. The mulatto head-waiters in the South really
+look like dusky princes. Many of them are so handsome and carry
+themselves so superbly that you find them very impressive at first and
+would fain apologize to them. You feel as if you wanted to thank them
+for kindly condescending to concern themselves about anything so
+commonplace as your seat at table.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE IS CROWNED WITH A GIGANTIC MASS OF FRIZZLED HAIR."]
+
+In smaller hotels, the waiters are all waitresses. The "waiting" is done
+by damsels entirely--or rather by the guests of the hotel.
+
+If the Southern head waiter looks like a prince, what shall we say of
+the head-waitress in the East, the North, and the West? No term short of
+queenly will describe her stately bearing as she moves about among her
+bevy of reduced duchesses. She is evidently chosen for her appearance.
+She is "divinely tall," as well as "most divinely fair," and, as if to
+add to her importance, she is crowned with a gigantic mass of frizzled
+hair. All the waitresses have this coiffure. It is a livery, as caps are
+in the Old World; but instead of being a badge of servitude it looks,
+and is, alarmingly emancipated--so much so that, before making close
+acquaintance with my dishes, I always examine them with great care. A
+beautiful mass of hair looks lovely on the head of a woman, but _one_ in
+your soup, even if it had strayed from the tresses of your beloved one,
+would make the corners of your mouth go down, and the tip of your nose
+go up.
+
+A regally handsome woman always "goes well in the landscape," as the
+French say, and I have seen specimens of these waitresses so handsome
+and so commanding-looking that, if they cared to come over to Europe and
+play the queens in London pantomimes, I feel sure they would command
+quite exceptional prices, and draw big salaries and crowded houses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The thing which strikes me most disagreeably, in the American hotel
+dining-room, is the sight of the tremendous waste of food that goes on
+at every meal. No European, I suppose, can fail to be struck with this;
+but to a Frenchman it would naturally be most remarkable. In France,
+where, I venture to say, people live as well as anywhere else, if not
+better, there is a horror of anything like waste of good food. It is to
+me, therefore, a repulsive thing to see the wanton manner in which some
+Americans will waste at one meal enough to feed several hungry
+fellow-creatures.
+
+In the large hotels, conducted on the American plan, there are rarely
+fewer than fifty different dishes on the _menu_ at dinner-time. Every
+day, and at every meal, you may see people order three times as much of
+this food as they could under any circumstances eat, and, after picking
+it and spoiling one dish after another, send the bulk away uneaten. I am
+bound to say that this practice is not only to be observed in hotels
+where the charge is so much per day, but in those conducted on the
+European plan, that is, where you pay for every item you order. There I
+notice that people proceed in much the same wasteful fashion. It is
+evidently not a desire to have more than is paid for, but simply a bad
+and ugly habit. I hold that about five hundred hungry people could be
+fed out of the waste that is going on at such large hotels as the Palmer
+House or the Grand Pacific Hotel of Chicago--and I have no doubt that
+such five hundred hungry people could easily be found in Chicago every
+day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I think that many Europeans are prevented from going to America by an
+idea that the expense of traveling and living there is very great. This
+is quite a delusion. For my part I find that hotels are as cheap in
+America as in England at any rate, and railway traveling in Pullman cars
+is certainly cheaper than in European first-class carriages, and
+incomparably more comfortable. Put aside in America such hotels as
+Delmonico's, the Brunswick in New York; the Richelieu in Chicago; and in
+England such hotels as the Metropole, the Victoria, the Savoy; and take
+the good hotels of the country, such as the Grand Pacific at Chicago;
+the West House at Minneapolis, the Windsor at Montreal, the Cadillac at
+Detroit. I only mention those I remember as the very best. In these
+hotels, you are comfortably lodged and magnificently fed for from three
+to five dollars a day. In no good hotel of England, France, Germany,
+Italy, Switzerland, would you get the same amount of comfort, or even
+luxury, at the same price, and those who require a sitting-room get it
+for a little less than they would have to pay in a European hotel.
+
+The only very dear hotels I have come across in the United States are
+those of Virginia. There I have been charged as much as two dollars a
+day, but never in my life did I pay so dear for what I had, never in my
+life did I see so many dirty rooms or so many messes that were unfit for
+human food.
+
+But I will just say this much for the American refinement of feeling to
+be met with, even in the hotels of Virginia, even in the "lunch" rooms
+in small stations, you are supplied, at the end of each meal, with a
+bowl of water--to rinse your mouth.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  MY OPENING LECTURE--REFLECTIONS ON AUDIENCES I HAVE HAD--THE MAN WHO
+  WON'T SMILE--THE ONE WHO LAUGHS TOO SOON, AND MANY OTHERS.
+
+
+     _Boston, January 7._
+
+Began my second American tour under most favorable auspices last night,
+in the Tremont Temple. The huge hall was crowded with an audience of
+about 2500 people--a most kind, warm, keen, and appreciative audience. I
+was a little afraid of the Bostonians; I had heard so much about their
+power of criticism that I had almost come to the conclusion that it was
+next to impossible to please them. The Boston newspapers this morning
+give full reports of my lecture. All of them are kind and most
+favorable. This is a good start, and I feel hopeful.
+
+The subject of my lecture was "A National Portrait Gallery of the
+Anglo-Saxon Races," in which I delineated the English, the Scotch, and
+the American characters. Strange to say, my Scotch sketches seemed to
+tickle them most. This, however, I can explain to myself. Scotch "wut"
+is more like American humor than any kind of wit I know. There is about
+it the same dryness, the same quaintness, the same preposterousness, the
+same subtlety.
+
+[Illustration: BOSTON.]
+
+My Boston audience also seemed to enjoy my criticisms of America and the
+Americans, which disposes of the absurd belief that the Americans will
+not listen to the criticism of their country. There are Americans and
+Americans, as there is criticism and criticism. If you can speak of
+people's virtues without flattery; if you can speak of their weaknesses
+and failings with kindness and good humor, I believe you can criticise
+to your heart's content without ever fearing to give offense to
+intelligent and fair-minded people. I admire and love the Americans. How
+could they help seeing it through all the little criticisms that I
+indulged in on the platform? On the whole, I was delighted with my
+Boston audience, and, to judge from the reception they gave me, I
+believe I succeeded in pleasing them. I have three more engagements in
+Boston, so I shall have the pleasure of meeting the Bostonians again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have never been able to lecture, whether in England, in Scotland, in
+Ireland or in America, without discovering, somewhere in the hall, after
+speaking for five minutes or so, an old gentleman who will not smile. He
+was there last night, and it is evident that he is going to favor me
+with his presence every night during this second American tour. He
+generally sits near the platform, and not unfrequently on the first row.
+There is a horrible fascination about that man. You cannot get your eyes
+off him. You do your utmost to "fetch him"--you feel it to be your duty
+not to send him home empty-headed; your conscience tells you that he has
+not to please you, but that _you_ are paid to please him, and you
+struggle on. You would like to slip into his pocket the price of his
+seat and have him removed, or throw the water bottle at his face and
+make him show signs of life. As it is, you try to look the other way,
+but you know he is there, and that does not improve matters.
+
+Now this man, who will not smile, very often is not so bad as he looks.
+You imagine that you bore him to death, but you don't. You wonder how it
+is he does not go, but the fact is he actually enjoys himself--inside.
+Or, maybe, he is a professional man himself, and no conjuror has ever
+been known to laugh at another conjuror's tricks. A great American
+humorist relates that, after speaking for an hour and a half without
+succeeding in getting a smile from a certain man in the audience, he
+sent some one to inquire into the state of his mind.
+
+"Excuse me, sir, did you not enjoy the lecture that has been delivered
+to-night?"
+
+"Very much indeed," said the man, "it was a most clever and entertaining
+lecture."
+
+"But you never smiled----"
+
+"Oh, no--I'm a liar myself."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sometimes there are other reasons to explain the unsmiling man's
+attitude.
+
+One evening I had lectured in Birmingham. On the first row there sat the
+whole time an old gentleman, with his umbrella standing between his
+legs, his hands crossed on the handle, and his chin resting on his
+hands. Frowning, his mouth gaping, and his eyes perfectly vacant, he
+remained motionless, looking at me, and for an hour and twenty minutes
+seemed to say to me: "My poor fellow, you may do what you like, but you
+won't 'fetch' me to-night, I can tell you." I looked at him, I spoke to
+him, I winked at him, I aimed at him; several times even I paused so as
+to give him ample time to see a point. All was in vain. I had just
+returned, after the lecture, to the secretary's room behind the
+platform, when he entered.
+
+"Oh, that man again!" I cried, pointing to him.
+
+He advanced toward me, took my hand, and said:
+
+"Thank you very much for your excellent lecture, I have enjoyed it very
+much."
+
+"Have you?" said I.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD GENTLEMAN WHO WILL NOT SMILE.]
+
+"Would you be kind enough to give me your autograph?" And he pulled out
+of his pocket a beautiful autograph book.
+
+"Well," I said to the secretary in a whisper, "this old gentleman is
+extremely kind to ask for my autograph, for I am certain he has not
+enjoyed my lecture."
+
+"What makes you think so?"
+
+"Why, he never smiled once."
+
+"Oh, poor old gentleman," said the secretary; "he is stone deaf."
+
+Many a lecturer must have met this man.
+
+It would be unwise, when you discover that certain members of the
+audience will not laugh, to give them up at once. As long as you are on
+the platform there is hope.
+
+I was once lecturing in the chief town of a great hunting center in
+England. On the first row sat half a dozen hair-parted-in-the-middle,
+single-eye-glass young swells. They stared at me unmoved, and never
+relaxed a muscle except for yawning. It was most distressing to see how
+the poor fellows looked bored. How I did wish I could do something for
+them! I had spoken for nearly an hour when, by accident, I upset the
+tumbler on my table. The water trickled down the cloth. The young men
+laughed, roared. They were happy and enjoying themselves, and I had
+"fetched" them at last. I have never forgotten this trick, and when I
+see in the audience an apparently hopeless case, I often resort to it,
+generally with success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are other people who do not much enjoy your lecture: your own.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHAPPIES WHO WOULD NOT LAUGH.]
+
+Of course you must forgive your wife. The dear creature knows all your
+lectures by heart; she has heard your jokes hundreds of times. She comes
+to your lectures rather to see how you are going to be received than to
+listen to you. Besides, she feels that for an hour and a half you do not
+belong to her. When she comes with you to the lecture hall, you are both
+ushered into the secretary's room. Two or three minutes before it is
+time to go on the platform, it is suggested to her that it is time she
+should take her seat among the audience. She looks at the secretary and
+recognizes that for an hour and a half her husband is the property of
+this official, who is about to hand him over to the tender mercies of
+the public. As she says, "Oh, yes, I suppose I must go," she almost
+feels like shaking hands with her husband, as Mrs. Baldwin takes leave
+of the Professor before he starts on his aerial trip. But, though she
+may not laugh, her heart is with you, and she is busy watching the
+audience, ever ready to tell them, "Now, don't you think this is a very
+good point? Well, then, if you do, why don't you laugh and cheer?" She
+is part and parcel of yourself. She is not jealous of your success, for
+she is your helpmate, your kind and sound counselor, and I can assure
+you that if an audience should fail to be responsive, it would never
+enter her head to lay the blame on her husband; she would feel the most
+supreme contempt for "that stupid audience that was unable to appreciate
+you." That's all.
+
+But your other own folk! You are no hero to them. To judge the effect of
+anything, you must be placed at a certain distance, and your own folks
+are too near you.
+
+One afternoon I had given a lecture to a large and fashionable audience
+in the South of England. A near relative of mine, who lived in the
+neighborhood, was in the hall. He never smiled. I watched him from the
+beginning to the end. When the lecture was over he came to the little
+room behind the platform to take me to his house. As he entered the room
+I was settling the money matters with my _impresario_. I will let you
+into the secret. There was fifty-two pounds in the house, and my share
+was two-thirds of the gross receipts, that is about thirty-four pounds.
+My relative heard the sum. As we drove along in his dog-cart he nudged
+me and said:
+
+"Did you make thirty-four pounds this afternoon?"
+
+"Oh, did you hear?" I said. "Yes, that was my part of the takings. For a
+small town I am quite satisfied."
+
+"I should think you were!" he replied. "If you had made thirty-four
+shillings you would have been well paid for your work!"
+
+Nothing is more true to life than the want of appreciation the
+successful man encounters from relatives and also from former friends.
+Nothing is more certain than when a man has lived on terms of perfect
+equality and familiarity with a certain set of men, he can never hope to
+be anything but "plain John" to them, though by his personal efforts he
+may have obtained the applause of the public. Did he not rub shoulders
+with them for years in the same walk of life? Why these bravos? What was
+there in him more than in them? Even though they may have gone so far as
+to single him out as a "rather clever fellow," while he was one of
+theirs, still the surprise at the public appreciation is none the less
+keen, his advance toward the front an unforgivable offense, and they are
+immediately seized with a desire to rush out in the highways and
+proclaim that he is only "Jack," and not the "John" that his admirers
+think him. I remember that, in the early years of my life in England,
+when I had not the faintest idea of ever writing a book on John Bull, a
+young English friend of mine did me the honor of appreciating highly all
+my observations on British life and manners, and for years urged me hard
+and often to jot them down to make a book of. One day the book was
+finished and appeared in print. It attracted a good deal of public
+attention, but no one was more surprised than this man, who, from a kind
+friend, was promptly transformed into the most severe and unfriendly of
+my critics, and went about saying that the book and the amount of public
+attention bestowed upon it were both equally ridiculous. He has never
+spoken to me since.
+
+[Illustration: THE MAN WHO LAUGHS.]
+
+A successful man is very often charged with wishing to turn his back on
+his former friends. No accusation is more false. Nothing would please
+him more than to retain the friends of more modest times, but it is they
+who have changed their feelings. They snub him, and this man, who is in
+constant need of moral support and _pick-me-up_, cannot stand it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But let us return to the audience.
+
+The man who won't smile is not the only person who causes you some
+annoyance.
+
+There is the one who laughs too soon; who laughs before you have made
+your points, and who thinks, because you have opened your lecture with a
+joke, that everything you say afterward is a joke. There is another
+rather objectionable person; it is the one who explains your points to
+his neighbor, and makes them laugh aloud just at the moment when you
+require complete silence to fire off one of your best remarks.
+
+There is the old lady who listens to you frowning, and who does not mind
+what you are saying, but is all the time shaking for fear of what you
+are going to say next. She never laughs before she has seen other people
+laugh. Then she thinks she is safe.
+
+All these I am going to have in America again; that is clear. But I am
+now a man of experience. I have lectured in concert rooms, in lecture
+halls, in theaters, in churches, in schools. I have addressed embalmed
+Britons in English health resorts, petrified English mummies at
+hydropathic establishments, and lunatics in private asylums.
+
+I am ready for the fray.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A CONNECTICUT AUDIENCE--MERRY MERIDEN--A HARD PULL.
+
+
+     _From Meriden, January 8._
+
+A Connecticut audience was a new experience to me. Yesterday I had a
+crowded room at the Opera House in Meriden; but if you had been behind
+the scenery, when I made my appearance on the stage, you would not have
+suspected it, for not one of the audience treated me to a little
+applause. I was frozen, and so were they. For a quarter of an hour I
+proceeded very cautiously, feeling the ground, as it were, as I went on.
+By that time, the thaw set in, and they began to smile. I must say that
+they had been very attentive from the beginning, and seemed very
+interested in the lecture. Encouraged by this, I warmed too. It was
+curious to watch that audience. By twos and threes the faces lit up with
+amusement till, by and by, the house wore quite an animated aspect.
+Presently there was a laugh, then two, then laughter more general. All
+the ice was gone. Next, a bold spirit in the stalls ventured some
+applause. At his second outburst he had company. The uphill work was
+nearly over now, and I began to feel better. The infection spread up to
+the circles and the gallery, and at last there came a real good hearty
+round of applause. I had "fetched" them after all. But it was tough
+work. When once I had them in hand, I took good care not to let them go.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I visited several interesting establishments this morning. Merry Meriden
+is famous for its manufactories of electro-plated silverware.
+Unfortunately I am not yet accustomed to the heated rooms of America,
+and I could not stay in the show-rooms more than a few minutes. I should
+have thought the heat was strong enough to melt all the goods on view.
+This town looks like a bee-hive of activity, with its animated streets,
+its electric cars. Dear old Europe! With the exception of a few large
+cities, the cars are still drawn by horses, like in the time of
+Sesostris and Nebuchadnezzar.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On arriving at the station a man took hold of my bag and asked to take
+care of it until the arrival of the train. I do not know whether he
+belonged to the hotel where I spent the night, or to the railroad
+company. Whatever he was, I felt grateful for this wonderful show of
+courtesy.
+
+"I heard you last night at the Opera House," he said to me.
+
+"Why, were you at the lecture?"
+
+"Yes, sir, and I greatly enjoyed it."
+
+"Well, why didn't you laugh sooner?" I said.
+
+"I wanted to very much!"
+
+"Why didn't you?"
+
+[Illustration: "I WAS AT YOUR LECTURE LAST NIGHT."]
+
+"Well, sir, I couldn't very well laugh before the rest."
+
+"Why didn't you give the signal?"
+
+"You see, sir," he said, "we are in Connecticut."
+
+"Is laughter prohibited by the Statute Book in Connecticut?" I remarked.
+
+"No, sir, but if you all laugh at the same time, then----"
+
+"I see, nobody can tell who is the real criminal."
+
+The train arrived. I shook hands with my friend, after offering him half
+a dollar for holding my bag--which he refused--and went on board.
+
+In the parlor car, I met my kind friend Colonel Charles H. Taylor,
+editor of that very successful paper, the Boston _Globe_. We had
+luncheon together in the dining car, and time passed delightfully in his
+company till we reached the Grand Central station, New York, when we
+parted. He was kind enough to make me promise to look him up in Boston
+in a fortnight's time, when I make my second appearance in the City of
+Culture.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  A TEMPTING OFFER--THE THURSDAY CLUB--BILL NYE--VISIT TO YOUNG LADIES'
+  SCHOOLS--THE PLAYERS' CLUB.
+
+
+     _New York, January 9._
+
+On returning here, I found a most curious letter awaiting me. I must
+tell you that in Boston, last Monday, I made the following remarks in my
+lecture:
+
+"The American is, I believe, on the road to the possession of all that
+can contribute to the well-being and success of a nation, but he seems
+to me to have missed the path that leads to real happiness. To live in a
+whirl is not to live well. The little French shopkeeper who locks his
+shop-door from half-past one, so as not to be disturbed while he is
+having his dinner with his wife and family, has come nearer to solving
+the great problem of life, 'How to be happy,' than the American who
+sticks on his door: 'Gone to dinner, shall be back in five minutes.' You
+eat too fast, and I understand why your antidyspeptic pill-makers cover
+your walls, your forests even, with their advertisements."
+
+And I named the firm of pill-makers.
+
+The letter is from them. They offer me $1000 if I will repeat the
+phrase at every lecture I give during my tour in the United States.
+
+[Illustration: WHERE INDIGESTION IS MANUFACTURED.]
+
+You may imagine if I will be careful to abstain in the future.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I lectured to-night before the members of the Thursday Club--a small,
+but very select audience, gathered in the drawing-room of one of the
+members. The lecture was followed by a _conversazione_. A very pleasant
+evening.
+
+I left the house at half-past eleven. The night was beautiful. I walked
+to the hotel, along Fifth Avenue to Madison Square, and along Broadway
+to Union Square.
+
+What a contrast to the great thoroughfares of London! Thousands of
+people here returning from the theaters and enjoying their walks,
+instead of being obliged to rush into vehicles to escape the sights
+presented at night by the West End streets of London. Here you can walk
+at night with your wife and daughter, without the least fear of their
+coming into contact with flaunting vice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Excuse a reflection on a subject of a very domestic character. My
+clothes have come from the laundress with the bill.
+
+Now let me give you a sound piece of advice.
+
+When you go to America, bring with you a dozen shirts. No more. When
+these are soiled, buy a new dozen, and so on. You will thus get a supply
+of linen for many years to come, and save your washing bills in America,
+where the price of a shirt is much the same as the cost of washing it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _January 10._
+
+I was glad to see Bill Nye again. He turned up at the Everett House this
+morning. I like to gaze at his clean-shaven face, that is seldom broken
+by a smile, and to hear his long, melancholy drawl. His lank form, and
+his polished dome of thought, as he delights in calling his joke box,
+help to make him so droll on the platform. When his audience begins to
+scream with laughter, he stops, looks at them in astonishment; the
+corners of his mouth drop and an expression of sadness comes over his
+face. The effect is irresistible. They shriek for mercy. But they don't
+get it. He is accompanied by his own manager, who starts with him for
+the north to-night. This manager has no sinecure. I don't think Bill Nye
+has ever been found in a depot ready to catch a train. So the manager
+takes him to the station, puts him in the right car, gets him out of his
+sleeping berth, takes him to the hotel, sees that he is behind the
+platform a few minutes before the time announced for the beginning of
+the lecture, and generally looks after his comfort. Bill is due in Ohio
+to-morrow night, and leaves New York to-night by the Grand Central
+Depot.
+
+"Are you sure it's by the Grand Central?" he said to me.
+
+"Why, of course, corner of Forty-second Street, a five or ten minutes'
+ride from here."
+
+You should have seen the expression on his face, as he drawled away:
+
+"How--shall--I--get--there, I--wonder?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This afternoon I paid a most interesting visit to several girls'
+schools. The pupils were ordered by the head-mistress, in each case, to
+gather in the large room. There they arrived, two by two, to the sound
+of a march played on the piano by one of the under-mistresses. When
+they had all reached their respective places, two chords were struck on
+the instrument, and they all sat down with the precision of the best
+drilled Prussian regiment. Then some sang, others recited little poems,
+or epigrams--mostly at the expense of men. When, two years ago, I
+visited the Normal School for girls in the company of the President of
+the Education Board and Colonel Elliott F. Shepard, it was the
+anniversary of George Eliot's birth. The pupils, one by one, recited a
+few quotations from her works, choosing all she had written against man.
+
+When the singing and the recitations were over, the mistress requested
+me to address a few words to the young ladies. An American is used from
+infancy to deliver a speech on the least provocation. I am not. However,
+I managed to congratulate these young American girls on their charming
+appearance, and to thank them for the pleasure they had afforded me.
+Then two chords were struck on the piano and all stood up; two more
+chords, and all marched off in double file to the sound of another
+march. Not a smile, not a giggle. All these young girls, from sixteen to
+twenty, looked at me with modesty, but complete self-assurance,
+certainly with far more assurance than I dared look at them.
+
+Then the mistress asked me to go to the gymnasium. There the girls
+arrived and, as solemnly as before, went through all kinds of muscular
+exercises. They are never allowed to sit down in the class rooms more
+than two hours at a time. They have to go down to the gymnasium every
+two hours.
+
+I was perfectly amazed to see such discipline. These young girls are the
+true daughters of a great Republic: self-possessed, self-confident,
+dignified, respectful, law-abiding.
+
+I also visited the junior departments of those schools. In one of them,
+eight hundred little girls from five to ten years of age were gathered
+together, and, as in the other departments, sang and recited to me.
+These young children are taught by the girls of the Normal School, under
+the supervision of mistresses. Here teaching is learned by teaching. A
+good method. Doctors are not allowed to practice before they have
+attended patients in hospitals. Why should people be allowed to teach
+before they have attended schools as apprentice teachers?
+
+I had to give a speech to these dear little ones. I wish I had been able
+to give them a kiss instead.
+
+In my little speech I had occasion to remark that I had arrived in
+America only a week before. After I left, it appears that a little girl,
+aged about six, went to her mistress and said to her:
+
+"He's only been here a week! And how beautifully he speaks English
+already!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have been "put up" at the Players' Club by Mr. Edmund Clarence
+Stedman, and dined with him there to-night.
+
+[Illustration: "HOW BEAUTIFULLY HE SPEAKS ENGLISH."]
+
+This club is the snuggest house I know in New York. Only a few months
+old, it possesses treasures such as few clubs a hundred years old
+possess. It was a present from Mr. Edwin Booth, the greatest actor
+America has produced. He bought the house in Twentieth Street, facing
+Gramercy Park, furnished it handsomely and with the greatest taste, and
+filled it with all the artistic treasures that he has collected during
+his life: portraits of celebrated actors, most valuable old engravings,
+photographs with the originals' autographs, china, curios of all sorts,
+stage properties, such as the sword used by Macready in _Macbeth_, and
+hundreds of such beautiful and interesting souvenirs. On the second
+floor is the library, mostly composed of works connected with the drama.
+
+This club is a perfect gem.
+
+When in New York, Mr. Booth occupies a suite of rooms on the second
+floor, which he has reserved for himself; but he has handed over the
+property to the trustees of the club, who, after his death, will become
+the sole proprietors of the house and of all its priceless contents. It
+was a princely gift, worthy of the prince of actors. The members are all
+connected with literature, art, and the drama, and number about one
+hundred.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  THE FLOURISHING OF COATS-OF-ARMS IN AMERICA--REFLECTIONS THEREON--
+  FOREFATHERS MADE TO ORDER--THE PHONOGRAPH AT HOME--THE WEALTH OF NEW
+  YORK--DEPARTURE FOR BUFFALO.
+
+
+     _New York, January 11._
+
+There are in America, as in many other countries of the world, people
+who have coats-of-arms, and whose ancestors had no arms to their coats.
+
+This remark was suggested by the reading of the following paragraph in
+the New York _World_ this morning:
+
+  There is growing in this country the rotten influence of rank, pride
+  of station, contempt for labor, scorn of poverty, worship of caste,
+  such as we verily believe is growing in no country in the world. What
+  are the ideals that fill so large a part of the day and generation?
+  For the boy it is riches; for the girl the marrying of a title. The
+  ideal of this time in America is vast riches and the trappings of
+  rank. It is good that proper scorn should be expressed of such ideals.
+
+American novelists, journalists, and preachers are constantly upbraiding
+and ridiculing their countrywomen for their love of titled foreigners;
+but the society women of the great Republic only love the foreign lords
+all the more; and I have heard some of them openly express their
+contempt of a form of government whose motto is one of the clauses of
+the great Declaration of Independence: "All men are created equal." I
+really believe that if the society women of America had their own way,
+they would set up a monarchy to-morrow, in the hope of seeing an
+aristocracy established as the sequel of it.
+
+[Illustration: A TITLE.]
+
+President Garfield once said that the only real coats-of-arms in America
+were shirt-sleeves. The epigram is good, but not based on truth, as
+every epigram should be. Labor in the States is not honorable for its
+own sake, but only if it brings wealth. President Garfield's epigram
+"fetched" the crowd, no doubt, as any smart democratic or humanitarian
+utterance will anywhere, whether it be emitted from the platform, the
+stage, the pulpit, or the hustings; but if any American philosopher
+heard it, he must have smiled.
+
+A New York friend who called on me this morning, and with whom I had a
+chat on this subject, assured me that there is now such a demand in the
+States for pedigrees, heraldic insignia, mottoes, and coronets, that it
+has created a new industry. He also informed me that almost every
+American city has a college of heraldry, which will provide unbroken
+lines of ancestors, and make to order a new line of forefathers "of the
+most approved pattern, with suitable arms, etc."
+
+Addison's prosperous foundling, who ordered at the second-hand
+picture-dealer's "a complete set of ancestors," is, according to my
+friend, a typical personage to be met with in the States nowadays.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bah! after all, every country has her snobs. Why should America be an
+exception to the rule? When I think of the numberless charming people I
+have met in this country, I may as well leave it to the Europeans who
+have come in contact with American snobs to speak about them, inasmuch
+as the subject is not particularly entertaining.
+
+What amuses me much more here is the effect of democracy on what we
+Europeans would call the lower classes.
+
+A few days ago, in a hotel, I asked a porter if my trunk had arrived
+from the station and had been taken to my room.
+
+"I don't know," he said majestically; "you ask that gentleman."
+
+The gentleman pointed out to me was the negro who looks after the
+luggage in the establishment.
+
+In the papers you may read in the advertisement columns: "Washing wanted
+by a lady at such and such address."
+
+[Illustration: THE NEW YORK CABMAN.]
+
+The cabman will ask, "If you are the _man_ as wants a _gentleman_ to
+drive him to the _deepo_."
+
+During an inquiry concerning the work-house at Cambridge, Mass., a
+witness spoke of the "ladies' cells," as being all that should be
+desired.
+
+Democracy, such is thy handiwork!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I went to the Stock Exchange in Wall Street at one o'clock. I thought
+that Whitechapel, on Saturday night, was beyond competition as a scene
+of rowdyism. I have now altered this opinion. I am still wondering
+whether I was not guyed by my pilot, and whether I was not shown the
+playground of a madhouse, at the time when all the most desperate
+lunatics are let loose.
+
+After lunch I went to Falk's photograph studio to be taken, and read the
+first page of "Jonathan and His Continent," into his phonograph.
+Marvelous, this phonograph! I imagine Mr. Falk has the best collection
+of cylinders in the world. I heard a song by Patti, the piano played by
+Von Buelow, speeches, orchestras, and what not! The music is reproduced
+most faithfully. With the voice the instrument is not quite so
+successful. Instead of your own voice, you fancy you hear an imitation
+of it by Punch. All the same, it seems to me to be the wonder of the
+age.
+
+After paying a few calls, and dining quietly at the Everett House, I
+went to the Metropolitan Opera House, and saw "The Barber of Bagdad."
+Cornelius's music is Wagnerian in aim, but I did not carry away with me
+a single bar of all I heard. After all, this is perhaps the aim of
+Wagnerian music.
+
+What a sight is the Metropolitan Opera House, with its boxes full of
+lovely women, arrayed in gorgeous garments, and blazing with diamonds!
+What luxury! What wealth is gathered there!
+
+How interesting it would be to know the exact amount of wealth of which
+New York can boast! In this morning's papers I read that land on Fifth
+Avenue has lately sold for $115 a square foot. In an acre of land there
+are 43,560 square feet, which at $115 a foot would be $5,009,400 an
+acre. Just oblige me by thinking of it!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _January 12._
+
+Went to the Catholic Cathedral at eleven. A mass by Haydn was splendidly
+rendered by full orchestra and admirable chorus. The altar was a blaze
+of candles. The yellow of the lights and the plain mauve of two
+windows, one on each side of the candles, gave a most beautiful
+crocus-bed effect. I enjoyed the service.
+
+In the evening I dined with Mr. Lloyd Bryce, editor of the _North
+American Review_, at the splendid residence of his father-in-law, Mr.
+Cooper, late Mayor of New York. Mrs. Lloyd Bryce is one of the
+handsomest American women I have met, and a most charming and graceful
+hostess. I reluctantly left early so as to prepare for my night journey
+to Buffalo.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  DIFFERENT WAYS OF ADVERTISING A LECTURE--AMERICAN IMPRESARIOS AND
+  THEIR METHODS.
+
+
+     _Buffalo, January 13._
+
+When you intend to give a lecture anywhere, and you wish it to be a
+success, it is a mistake to make a mystery of it.
+
+On arriving here this morning, I found that my coming had been kept
+perfectly secret.
+
+Perhaps my impresario wishes my audience to be very select, and has sent
+only private circulars to the intelligent, well-to-do inhabitants of the
+place--or, I said to myself, perhaps the house is all sold, and he has
+no need of any further advertisements.
+
+I should very much like to know.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sometimes, however, it is a mistake to advertise a lecture too widely.
+You run the risk of getting the wrong people.
+
+A few years ago, in Dundee, a little corner gallery, placed at the end
+of the hall where I was to speak, was thrown open to the public at
+sixpence. I warned the manager that I was no attraction for the sixpenny
+public; but he insisted on having his own way.
+
+The hall was well filled, but not the little gallery, where I counted
+about a dozen people. Two of these, however, did not remain long, and,
+after the lecture, I was told that they had gone to the box-office and
+asked to have their money returned to them. "Why," they said, "it's a
+d---- swindle; it's only a man talking."
+
+The man at the box-office was a Scotchman, and it will easily be
+understood that the two sixpences remained in the hands of the
+management.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I can well remember how startled I was, two years ago, on arriving in an
+American town where I was to lecture, to see the walls covered with
+placards announcing my lecture thus: "He is coming, ah, ha!" And after I
+had arrived, new placards were stuck over the old ones: "He has arrived,
+ah, ha!"
+
+In another American town I was advertised as "the best paying platform
+celebrity in the world." In another, in the following way: "If you would
+grow fat and happy, go and hear Max O'Rell to-night."
+
+One of my Chicago lectures was advertised thus: "Laughter is restful. If
+you desire to feel as though you had a vacation for a week, do not fail
+to attend this lecture."
+
+I was once fortunate enough to deal with a local manager who, before
+sending it to the newspapers, submitted to my approbation the following
+advertisement, of which he was very proud. I don't know whether it was
+his own literary production, or whether he had borrowed it of a showman
+friend. Here it is:
+
+  TWO HOURS OF UNALLOYED FUN AND HAPPINESS
+
+  Will put two inches of solid fat even upon the ribs of the most
+  cadaverous old miser. Everybody shouts peals of laughter as the rays
+  of fun are emitted from this famous son of merry-makers.
+
+
+[Illustration: AS JOHN BULL.]
+
+I threatened to refuse to appear if the advertisement was inserted in
+the papers. This manager later gave his opinion that, as a lecturer, I
+was good, but that as a man, I was a little bit "stuck-up."
+
+When you arrive in an American town to lecture, you find the place
+flooded with your pictures, huge lithographs stuck on the walls, on the
+shop windows, in your very hotel entrance hall. Your own face stares at
+you everywhere, you are recognized by everybody. You have to put up with
+it. If you love privacy, peace, and quiet, don't go to America on a
+lecturing tour. That is what your impresario will tell you.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In each town where you go, you have a local manager to "boss the show";
+as he has to pay you a certain fee, which he guarantees, you cannot find
+fault with him for doing his best to have a large audience. He runs
+risks; you do not. Suppose, for instance, you are engaged, not by a
+society for a fee, but by a manager on sharing terms, say sixty per
+cent. of the gross receipts for you and forty for himself. Suppose his
+local expenses amount to $200; he has to bring $500 into the house
+before there is a cent for himself. You must forgive him if he goes
+about the place beating the big drum. If you do not like it, there is a
+place where you can stay--home.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An impresario once asked me if I required a piano, and if I would bring
+my own accompanist. Another wrote to ask the subject of my
+"entertainment."
+
+[Illustration: AS SANDY.]
+
+I wrote back to say that my lecture was generally found entertaining,
+but that I objected to its being called an entertainment. I added that
+the lecture was composed of four character sketches, viz., John Bull,
+Sandy, Pat, and Jonathan.
+
+[Illustration: AS PAT.]
+
+In his answer to this, he inquired whether I should change my dress four
+times during the performance, and whether it would not be a good thing
+to have a little music during the intervals.
+
+Just fancy my appearing on the platform successively dressed as John,
+Sandy, Pat, and Jonathan!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A good impresario is constantly on the look out for anything that may
+draw the attention of the public to his entertainment. Nothing is sacred
+for him. His eyes and ears are always open, all his senses on the alert.
+
+One afternoon I was walking with my impresario over the beautiful
+Clifton Suspension Bridge. I was to lecture at the Victoria Hall,
+Bristol, in the evening. We leaned on the railings, and grew pensive as
+we looked at the scenery and the abyss under us.
+
+My impresario sighed.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" I said to him.
+
+[Illustration: AS JONATHAN.]
+
+"Last year," he replied, "a girl tried to commit suicide and jumped over
+this bridge; but the wind got under her skirt, made a parachute of it,
+and she descended to the bottom of the valley perfectly unhurt."
+
+[Illustration: THE WOULD-BE SUICIDE.]
+
+And he sighed again.
+
+"Well," said I, "why do you sigh?"
+
+"Ah! my dear fellow, if you could do the same this afternoon, there
+would be 'standing room only' in the Victoria Hall to-night."
+
+I left that bridge in no time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  BUFFALO--THE NIAGARA FALLS--A FROST--ROCHESTER TO THE RESCUE OF
+  BUFFALO--CLEVELAND--I MEET JONATHAN--PHANTASMAGORIA.
+
+
+     _Buffalo, January 14._
+
+This town is situated twenty-seven miles from Niagara Falls. The
+Americans say that the Buffalo people can hear the noise of the
+water-fall quite distinctly. I am quite prepared to believe it. However,
+an hour's journey by rail and then a quarter of an hour's sleigh ride
+will take you from Buffalo within sight of this, perhaps the grandest
+piece of scenery in the world. Words cannot describe it. You spend a
+couple of hours visiting every point of view. You are nailed, as it
+were, to the ground, feeling like a pigmy, awestruck in the presence of
+nature at her grandest. The snow was falling thickly, and though it made
+the view less clear, it added to the grandeur of the scene.
+
+I went down by the cable car to a level with the rapids and the place
+where poor Captain Webb was last seen alive; a presumptuous pigmy, he,
+to dare such waters as these. His widow keeps a little bazaar near the
+falls and sells souvenirs to the visitors.
+
+It was most thrilling to stand within touching distance of that great
+torrent of water, called the Niagara Falls, in distinction to the
+Horseshoe Falls, to hear the roar of it as it fell. The idea of force it
+gives one is tremendous. You stand and wonder how many ages it has been
+roaring on, what eyes besides your own have gazed awestruck at its
+mighty rushing, and wonder if the pigmies will ever do what they say
+they will; one day make those columns of water their servants to turn
+wheels at their bidding.
+
+[Illustration: SHOOTING THE RAPIDS.]
+
+We crossed the bridge over to the Canadian side, and there we had the
+whole grand panorama before our eyes.
+
+It appears that it is quite a feasible thing to run the rapids in a
+barrel. Girls have done it, and it may become the fashionable sport for
+American girls in the near future. It has been safely accomplished
+plenty of times by young fellows up for an exciting day's sport.
+
+On the Canadian shore was a pretty villa where Princess Louise stayed
+while she painted the scene. Some of the pretty houses were fringed all
+round the roofs and balconies in the loveliest way, with icicles a yard
+long, and loaded with snow. They looked most beautiful.
+
+On the way back we called at Prospect House, a charming hotel which I
+hope, if ever I go near Buffalo again, I shall put up at for a day or
+two, to see the neighborhood well.
+
+Two years ago I was lucky enough to witness a most curious sight. The
+water was frozen under the falls, and a natural bridge, formed by the
+ice, was being used by venturesome people to cross the Niagara River on.
+This occurs very seldom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have had a fizzle to-night. I almost expected it. In a hall that could
+easily have accommodated fifteen hundred people, I lectured to an
+audience of about three hundred. Fortunately they proved so intelligent,
+warm, and appreciative that I did not feel at all depressed; but my
+impresario did. However, he congratulated me on having been able to do
+justice to the _causerie_, as if I had had a bumper house.
+
+I must own that it is much easier to be a tragedian than a light
+comedian before a $200 house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Cleveland, O., January 15._
+
+The weather is so bad that I shall be unable to see anything of this
+city, which, people tell me, is very beautiful.
+
+On arriving at the Weddell House, I met a New York friend.
+
+"Well," said he, "how are you getting on? Where do you come from?"
+
+"From Buffalo," said I, pulling a long face.
+
+"What is the matter? Don't you like the Buffalo people?"
+
+"Yes; I liked those I saw. I should have liked to extend my love to a
+larger number. I had a fizzle; about three hundred people. Perhaps I
+drew all the brain of Buffalo."
+
+"How many people do you say you had in the hall?" said my friend.
+
+"About three hundred."
+
+"Then you must have drawn a good many people from Rochester, I should
+think," said he quite solemnly.
+
+In reading the Buffalo newspapers this morning, I noticed favorable
+criticisms of my lecture; but while my English was praised, so far as
+the language went, severe comments were passed on my pronunciation. In
+England, where the English language is spoken with a decent
+pronunciation, I never once read a condemnation of my pronunciation of
+the English language.
+
+I will not appear again in Buffalo until I feel much improved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "GOING TO PITTSBURG, I GUESS."]
+
+     _En route to Pittsburg, January 16._
+
+The American railway stations have special waiting rooms for
+ladies--not, as in England, places furnished with looking-glasses, where
+they can go and arrange their bonnets, etc. No, no. Places where they
+can wait for the trains, protected against the contamination of man, and
+where they are spared the sight of that eternal little round piece of
+furniture with which the floors of the whole of the United States are
+dotted.
+
+At Cleveland Station, this morning, I met Jonathan, such as he is
+represented in the comic papers of the world. A man of sixty, with long
+straight white hair falling over his shoulders; no mustache, long
+imperial beard, a razor-blade-shaped nose, small keen eyes, and high
+prominent cheek-bones, the whole smoking the traditional cigar; the
+Anglo-Saxon indianized--Jonathan. If he had had a long swallow-tail coat
+on, a waistcoat ornamented with stars, and trowsers with stripes, he
+might have sat for the cartoons of _Puck_ or _Judge_.
+
+In the car, Jonathan came and sat opposite me. A few minutes after the
+train had started, he said:
+
+"Going to Pittsburg, I guess."
+
+"Yes," I replied.
+
+"To lecture?"
+
+"Oh, you know I lecture?"
+
+"Why, certainly; I heard you in Boston ten days ago."
+
+He offered me a cigar, told me his name--I mean his three names--what he
+did, how much he earned, where he lived, how many children he had; he
+read me a poem of his own composition, invited me to go and see him, and
+entertained me for three hours and a half, telling me the history of his
+life, etc. Indeed, it was Jonathan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the Americans I have met have written a poem (pronounced _pome_).
+Now I am not generalizing. I do not say that all the Americans have
+written a poem, I say _all the Americans I have met_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Pittsburg (same day later)._
+
+I lecture here to-night under the auspices of the Press Club of the
+town. The president of the club came to meet me at the station, in order
+to show me something of the town.
+
+I like Pittsburg very much. From the top of the hill, which you reach in
+a couple of minutes by the cable car, there is a most beautiful sight to
+contemplate: one never to be forgotten.
+
+On our way to the hotel, my kind friend took me to a fire station, and
+asked the man in command of the place to go through the performance of a
+fire-call for my own edification.
+
+Now, in two words, here is the thing.
+
+You touch the fire bell in your own house. That causes the name of your
+street and the number of your house to appear in the fire station; it
+causes all the doors of the station to open outward. Wait a minute--it
+causes whips which are hanging behind the horses, to lash them and send
+them under harnesses that fall upon them and are self-adjusting; it
+causes the men, who are lying down on the first floor, to slide down an
+incline and fall on the box and steps of the cart. And off they gallop.
+It takes about two minutes to describe it as quickly as possible. It
+only takes fourteen seconds to do it. It is the nearest approach to
+phantasmagoria that I have yet seen in real life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+  A GREAT ADMIRER--NOTES ON RAILWAY TRAVELING--IS AMERICA A FREE
+  NATION?--A PLEASANT EVENING IN NEW YORK.
+
+
+     _In the vestibule train from Pittsburg to New York, January 17._
+
+This morning, before leaving the hotel in Pittsburg, I was approached by
+a young man who, after giving me his card, thanked me most earnestly for
+my lecture of last night. In fact, he nearly embraced me.
+
+"I never enjoyed myself so much in my life," he said.
+
+I grasped his hand.
+
+"I am glad," I replied, "that my humble effort pleased you so much.
+Nothing is more gratifying to a lecturer than to know he has afforded
+pleasure to his audience."
+
+"Yes," he said, "it gave me immense pleasure. You see, I am engaged to
+be married to a girl in town. All her family went to your show, and I
+had the girl at home all to myself. Oh! I had such a good time! Thank
+you so much! Do lecture here again soon."
+
+And, after wishing me a pleasant journey, he left me. I was glad to
+know I left at least one friend and admirer behind me in Pittsburg.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had a charming audience last night, a large and most appreciative one.
+I was introduced by Mr. George H. Welshons, of the Pittsburg _Times_, in
+a neat little speech, humorous and very gracefully worded. After the
+lecture, I was entertained at supper in the rooms of the Press Club, and
+thoroughly enjoyed myself with the members. As I entered the Club, I was
+amused to see two journalists, who had heard me at the lecture discourse
+on chewing, go to a corner of the room, and there get rid of their
+_wads_, before coming to shake hands with me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If you have not journeyed in a vestibule train of the Pennsylvania
+Railroad Company, you do not know what it is to travel in luxurious
+comfort. Dining saloon, drawing room, smoking room, reading room with
+writing tables, supplied with the papers and a library of books, all
+furnished with exquisite taste and luxury. The cookery is good and well
+served.
+
+The day has passed without adventures, but in comfort. We left Pittsburg
+at seven in the morning. At nine we passed Johnstown. The terrible
+calamity that befell that city two years ago was before my mind's eye;
+the town suddenly inundated, the people rushing on the bridge, and there
+caught and burnt alive. America is the country for great disasters.
+Everything here is on a huge scale. Toward noon, the country grew hilly,
+and, for an hour before we reached Harrisburg, it gave me great
+enjoyment, for in America, where there is so much sameness in the
+landscapes, it is a treat to see the mountains of Central Pennsylvania
+breaking the monotony of the huge flat stretch of land.
+
+The employees (I must be careful not to say "servants") of the
+Pennsylvania Railroad are polite and form an agreeable contrast to those
+of the other railway companies. Unhappily, the employees whom you find
+on board the Pullman cars are not in the control of the company.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The train will reach Jersey City for New York at seven to-night. I shall
+dine at my hotel.
+
+About 5.30 it occurred to me to go to the dining-room car and ask for a
+cup of tea. Before entering the car I stopped at the lavatory to wash my
+hands. Some one was using the basin. It was the conductor, the autocrat
+in charge of the dining car, a fat, sleek, chewing, surly, frowning,
+snarling cur.
+
+He turned round.
+
+"What do you want?" said he.
+
+"I should very much like to wash my hands," I timidly ventured.
+
+"You see very well I am using the basin. You go to the next car."
+
+I came to America this time with a large provision of philosophy, and
+quite determined to even enjoy such little scenes as this. So I quietly
+went to the next lavatory, returned to the dining-car, and sat down at
+one of the tables.
+
+"Will you, please, give me a cup of tea?" I said to one of the colored
+waiters.
+
+"I can't do dat, sah," said the negro. "You can have dinnah."
+
+"But I don't want _dinnah_," I replied; "I want a cup of tea."
+
+"Den you must ask dat gem'man if you can have it," said he, pointing to
+the above mentioned "gentleman."
+
+I went to him.
+
+"Excuse me," said I, "are you the nobleman who runs this show?"
+
+He frowned.
+
+"I don't want to dine; I should like to have a cup of tea."
+
+He frowned a little more, and deigned to hear my request to the end.
+
+"Can I?" I repeated.
+
+He spoke not; he brought his eyebrows still lower down, and solemnly
+shook his head.
+
+"Can't I really?" I continued.
+
+At last he spoke.
+
+"You can," quoth he, "for a dollar."
+
+And, taking the bill of fare in his hands, without wasting any more of
+his precious utterances, he pointed out to me:
+
+"Each meal one dollar."
+
+The argument was unanswerable.
+
+I went back to my own car, resumed my seat, and betook myself to
+reflection.
+
+What I cannot, for the life of me, understand is why, in a train which
+has a dining car and a kitchen, a man cannot be served with a cup of
+tea, unless he pays the price of a dinner for it, and this
+notwithstanding the fact of his having paid five dollars extra to enjoy
+the extra luxury of this famous vestibule train.
+
+[Illustration: "WELL, WHAT DO YOU WANT?"]
+
+After all, this is one out of the many illustrations one could give to
+show that whatever Jonathan is, he is not the master in his own house.
+
+The Americans are the most docile people in the world. They are the
+slaves of their servants, whether these are high officials, or the
+"reduced duchesses" of domestic service. They are so submitted to their
+lot that they seem to find it quite natural.
+
+The Americans are lions governed by bull-dogs and asses.
+
+They have given themselves a hundred thousand masters, these folks who
+laugh at monarchies, for example, and scorn the rule of a king, as if it
+were better to be bullied by a crowd than by an individual.
+
+In America, the man who pays does not command the paid. I have already
+said it; I will maintain the truth of the statement that, in America,
+the paid servant rules. Tyranny from above is bad; tyranny from below is
+worse.
+
+Of my many first impressions that have deepened into convictions, this
+is one of the firmest.
+
+When you arrive at an English railway station, all the porters seem to
+say: "Here is a customer, let us treat him well." And it is who shall
+relieve you of your luggage, or answer any questions you may be pleased
+to ask. They are glad to see you.
+
+In America, you may have a dozen parcels, not a hand will move to help
+you with them. So Jonathan is obliged to forego the luxury of hand
+baggage, so convenient for long journeys.
+
+When you arrive at an American station, the officials are all frowning
+and seem to say: "Why the deuce don't you go to Chicago by some other
+line instead of coming here to bother us?"
+
+[Illustration: ENGLISH RAILWAY STATION.]
+
+This subject reminds me of an interesting fact, told me by Mr. Chauncey
+M. Depew on board the _Teutonic_. When tram-cars were first used in the
+States, it was a long time before the drivers and conductors would
+consent to wear any kind of uniform, so great is the horror of anything
+like a badge of paid servitude. Now that they do wear some kind of
+uniform, they spend their time in standing sentry at the door of their
+dignity, and in thinking that, if they were polite, you would take their
+affable manners for servility.
+
+[Illustration: THE RAILWAY PORTER.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Everett House, New York. (Midnight.)_
+
+So many charming houses have opened their hospitable doors to me in New
+York that, when I am in this city, I have soon forgotten the little
+annoyances of a railway journey or the hardships of a lecture tour.
+
+After dining here, I went to spend the evening at the house of Mr.
+Richard Watson Gilder, the poet, and editor of the _Century Magazine_,
+that most successful of all magazines in the world. A circulation of
+nearly 300,000 copies--just think of it! But it need not excite wonder
+in any one who knows this beautiful and artistic periodical, to which
+all the leading _litterateurs_ of America lend their pens, and the best
+artists their pencils.
+
+Mrs. Richard Watson Gilder is one of the best and most genial hostesses
+in New York. At her Fridays, one meets the cream of intellectual
+society, the best known names of the American aristocracy of talent.
+
+To-night I met Mr. Frank R. Stockton, the novelist, Mr. Charles Webb,
+the humorist, Mr. Frank Millet, the painter, and his wife, and a galaxy
+of celebrities and beautiful women, all most interesting and delightful
+people to meet. Conversation went on briskly all over the rooms till
+late.
+
+The more I see of the American women, the more confirmed I become in my
+impression that they are typical; more so than the men. They are like no
+other women I know. The brilliancy of their conversation, the animation
+of their features, the absence of affectation in their manners, make
+them unique. There are no women to compare to them in a drawing-room.
+There are none with whom I feel so much at ease. Their beauty,
+physically speaking, is great; but you are still more struck by their
+intellectual beauty, the frankness of their eyes, and the naturalness of
+their bearing.
+
+I returned to the Everett House, musing all the way on the difference
+between the American women and the women of France and England. The
+theme was attractive, and, remembering that to-morrow would be an
+off-day for me, I resolved to spend it in going more fully into this
+fascinating subject with pen and ink.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+  NOTES ON AMERICAN WOMEN--COMPARISONS--HOW MEN TREAT WOMEN AND VICE
+  VERSA--SCENES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+     _New York, January 18._
+
+A man was one day complaining to a friend that he had been married
+twenty years without being able to understand his wife. "You should not
+complain of that," remarked the friend. "I have been married to my wife
+two years only, and I understand her perfectly."
+
+The leaders of thought in France have long ago proclaimed that woman was
+the only problem it was not given to man to solve. They have all tried,
+and they have all failed. They all acknowledge it--but they are trying
+still.
+
+Indeed, the interest that woman inspires in every Frenchman is never
+exhausted. Parodying Terence, he says to himself, "I am a man, and all
+that concerns woman interests me." All the French modern novels are
+studies, analytical, dissecting studies, of woman's heart.
+
+To the Anglo-Saxon mind, this may sometimes appear a trifle puerile, if
+not also ridiculous. But to understand this feeling, one must remember
+how a Frenchman is brought up.
+
+In England, boys and girls meet and play together; in America and
+Canada, they sit side by side on the same benches at school, not only as
+children of tender age, but at College and in the Universities. They get
+accustomed to each other's company; they see nothing strange in being in
+contact with one another, and this naturally tends to reduce the
+interest or curiosity one sex takes in the other. But in France they are
+apart, and the ball-room is the only place where they can meet when they
+have attained the age of twenty!
+
+Strange to reflect that young people of both sexes can meet in
+ball-rooms without exciting their parents' suspicions, and that they
+cannot do so in class-rooms!
+
+When I was a boy at school in France, I can well remember how we boys
+felt on the subject. If we heard that a young girl, say the sister of
+some school-fellow, was with her mother in the common parlor to see her
+brother, why, it created a commotion, a perfect revolution in the whole
+establishment. It was no use trying to keep us in order. We would climb
+on the top of the seats or of the tables to endeavor to see something of
+her, even if it were but the top of her hat, or a bit of her gown across
+the recreation yard at the very end of the building. It was an event.
+Many of us would even immediately get inspired and compose verses
+addressed to the unknown fair visitor. In these poetical effusions we
+would imagine the young girl carried off by some miscreant, and we would
+fly to her rescue, save her, and throw ourselves at her feet to receive
+her hand as our reward. Yes, we would get quite romantic or, in plain
+English, quite silly. We could not imagine that a woman was a reasoning
+being with whom you can talk on the topics of the day, or have an
+ordinary conversation on any ordinary subject. To us a woman was a being
+with whom you can only talk of love, or fall in love, or, maybe, for
+whom you may die of love.
+
+This manner of training young men goes a long way toward explaining the
+position of woman in France as well as her ways. It explains why a
+Frenchman and a Frenchwoman, when they converse together, seldom can
+forget that one is a man and the other a woman. It does not prove that a
+Frenchwoman must necessarily be, and is, affected in her relations with
+men; but it explains why she does not feel, as the American woman does,
+that a man and woman can enjoy a _tete-a-tete_ free from all those
+commonplace flatteries, compliments, and platitudes that
+badly-understood gallantry suggests. Many American ladies have made me
+forget, by the easiness of their manner and the charm and naturalness of
+their conversation, that I was speaking with women, and with lovely
+ones, too. This I could never have forgotten in the company of French
+ladies.
+
+On account of this feeling, and perhaps also of the difference which
+exists between the education received by a man and that received by a
+woman in France, the conversation will always be on some light topics,
+literary, artistic, dramatic, social, or other. Indeed, it would be most
+unbecoming for a man to start a very serious subject of conversation
+with a French lady to whom he had just been introduced. He would be
+taken for a pedant or a man of bad breeding.
+
+In America, men and women receive practically the same education, and
+this of course enlarges the circle of conversation between the sexes. I
+shall always remember a beautiful American girl, not more than twenty
+years of age, to whom I was once introduced in New York, as she was
+giving to a lady sitting next to her a most detailed description of the
+latest bonnet invented in Paris, and who, turning toward me, asked me
+point-blank if I had read M. Ernest Renan's "History of the People of
+Israel." I had to confess that I had not yet had time to read it. But
+she had, and she gave me, without the remotest touch of affectation or
+pedantry, a most interesting and learned analysis of that remarkable
+work. I related this incident in "Jonathan and his Continent." On
+reading it, some of my countrymen, critics and others, exclaimed: "We
+imagine the fair American girl had a pair of gold spectacles on."
+
+"No, my dear compatriots, nothing of the sort. No gold spectacles, no
+guy. It was a beautiful girl, dressed with most exquisite taste and
+care, and most charming and womanly."
+
+An American woman, however learned she may be, is a sound politician,
+and she knows that the best thing she can make of herself is a woman,
+and she remains a woman. She will always make herself as attractive as
+she possibly can. Not to please men--I believe she has a great contempt
+for them--but to please herself. If, in a French drawing-room, I were to
+remark to a lady how clever some woman in the room looked, she would
+probably closely examine that woman's dress to find out what I thought
+was wrong about it. It would probably be the same in England, but not
+in America.
+
+A Frenchwoman will seldom be jealous of another woman's cleverness. She
+will far more readily forgive her this qualification than beauty. And in
+this particular point, it is probable that the Frenchwoman resembles all
+the women in the Old World.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of all the ladies I have met, I have no hesitation in declaring that the
+American ones are the least affected. With them, I repeat it, I feel at
+ease as I do with no other women in the world.
+
+With whom but an _Americaine_ would the following little scene have been
+possible?
+
+I was in Boston. It was Friday, and knowing it to be the reception day
+of Mrs. X., an old friend of mine and my wife's, I thought I would call
+upon her early, before the crowd of visitors had begun to arrive. So I
+went to the house about half-past three in the afternoon. Mrs. X.
+received me in the drawing-room, and we were soon talking on the hundred
+and one topics that old friends have on their tongue tips. Presently the
+conversation fell on love and lovers. Mrs. X. drew her chair up a little
+nearer to the fire, put the toes of her little slippers on the fender
+stool, and with a charmingly confidential, but perfectly natural,
+manner, said:
+
+"You are married and love your wife; I am married and love my husband;
+we are both artists, let's have our say out."
+
+And we proceeded to have our say out.
+
+But all at once I noticed that about half an inch of the seam of her
+black silk bodice was unsewn. We men, when we see a lady with something
+awry in her toilette, how often do we long to say to her: "Excuse me,
+madam, but perhaps you don't know that you have a hairpin sticking out
+two inches just behind your ear," or "Pardon me, Miss, I'm a married
+man, there is something wrong there behind, just under your waist belt."
+
+Now I felt for Mrs. X., who was just going to receive a crowd of callers
+with a little rent in one of her bodice seams, and tried to persuade
+myself to be brave and tell her of it. Yet I hesitated. People take
+things so differently. The conversation went on unflagging. At last I
+could not stand it any longer.
+
+"Mrs. X.," said I, all in a breath, "you are married and love your
+husband; I am married and love my wife; we are both artists; there is a
+little bit of seam come unsewn, just there by your arm, run and get it
+sewn up!"
+
+The peals of laughter that I heard going on upstairs, while the damage
+was being repaired, proved to me that there was no resentment to be
+feared, but, on the contrary, that I had earned the gratitude of Mrs. X.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In many respects I have often been struck with the resemblance which
+exists between French and American women. When I took my first walk on
+Broadway, New York, on a fine afternoon some two years and a half ago, I
+can well remember how I exclaimed: "Why, this is Paris, and all these
+ladies are _Parisiennes_!" It struck me as being the same type of face,
+the same animation of features, the same brightness of the eyes, the
+same self-assurance, the same attractive plumpness in women over thirty.
+To my mind, I was having a walk on my own Boulevards (every Parisian
+_owns_ that place). The more I became acquainted with American ladies,
+the more forcibly this resemblance struck me. This was not a mere first
+impression. It has been, and is still, a deep conviction; so much so
+that whenever I returned to New York from a journey of some weeks in the
+heart of the country, I felt as if I was returning home.
+
+After a short time, a still closer resemblance between the women of the
+two countries will strike a Frenchman most forcibly. It is the same
+_finesse_, the same suppleness of mind, the same wonderful adaptability.
+Place a little French milliner in a good drawing-room for an hour, and
+at the end of that time she will behave, talk, and walk like any lady in
+the room. Suppose an American, married below his _status_ in society, is
+elected President of the United States, I believe, at the end of a week,
+this wife of his would do the honors of the White House with the ease
+and grace of a highborn lady.
+
+In England it is just the contrary.
+
+Of course good society is good society everywhere. The ladies of the
+English aristocracy are perfect queens; but the Englishwoman, who was
+not born a lady, will seldom become a lady, and I believe this is why
+_mesalliances_ are more scarce in England than in America, and
+especially in France. I could name many Englishmen at the head of their
+professions, who cannot produce their wives in society because these
+women have not been able to raise themselves to the level of their
+husbands' station in life. The Englishwoman, as a rule, has no faculty
+for fitting herself for a higher position than the one she was born in;
+like a rabbit, she will often taste of the cabbage she fed on. And I am
+bound to add that this is perhaps a quality, and proves the truthfulness
+of her character. She is no actress.
+
+In France, the _mesalliance_, though not relished by parents, is not
+feared so much, because they know the young woman will observe and
+study, and very soon fit herself for her new position.
+
+And while on this subject of _mesalliance_, why not try to destroy an
+absurd prejudice that exists in almost every country on the subject of
+France?
+
+It is, I believe, the firm conviction of foreigners that Frenchmen marry
+for money, that is to say, that all Frenchmen marry for money. As a
+rule, when people discuss foreign social topics, they have a wonderful
+faculty for generalization.
+
+The fact that many Frenchmen do marry for money is not to be denied, and
+the explanation of it is this: We have in France a number of men
+belonging to a class almost unknown in other countries, small
+_bourgeois_ of good breeding and genteel habits, but relatively poor,
+who occupy posts in the different Government offices. Their name is
+legion and their salary something like two thousand francs ($400). These
+men have an appearance to keep up, and, unless a wife brings them enough
+to at least double their income, they cannot marry. These young men are
+often sought after by well-to-do parents for their daughters, because
+they are steady, cultured, gentlemanly, and occupy an honorable
+position, which brings them a pension for their old age. With the wife's
+dowry, the couple can easily get along, and lead a peaceful, uneventful,
+and happy jog-trot life, which is the great aim of the majority of the
+French people.
+
+But, on the other hand, there is no country where you will see so many
+cases of _mesalliance_ as France, and this alone should dispose of the
+belief that Frenchmen marry for money. Indeed, it is a most common thing
+for a young Frenchman of good family to fall in love with a girl of a
+much lower station of life than his own, to court her, at first with
+perhaps only the idea of killing time or of starting a _liaison_, to
+soon discover that the girl is highly respectable, and to finally marry
+her. This is a most common occurrence. French parents frown on this sort
+of thing, and do their best to discourage it, of course; but rather than
+cross their son's love, they give their consent, and trust to that
+adaptability of Frenchwomen, of which I was speaking just now, to raise
+herself to her husband's level and make a wife he will never be ashamed
+of.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Frenchman is the slave of his womankind, but not in the same way as
+the American is. The Frenchman is brought up by his mother, and remains
+under her sway till she dies. When he marries, his wife leads him by the
+nose (an operation which he seems to enjoy), and when, besides, he has a
+daughter, on whom he generally dotes, this lady soon joins the other two
+in ruling this easy-going, good-humored man. As a rule, when you see a
+Frenchman, you behold a man who is kept in order by three generations
+of women: mother, wife, and daughter.
+
+The American will lavish attention and luxury on his wife and daughters,
+but he will save them the trouble of being mixed in his affairs. His
+business is his, his office is private. His womankind is the sun and
+glory of his life, whose company he will hasten to enjoy as soon as he
+can throw away the cares of his business. In France, a wife is a
+partner, a cashier who takes care of the money, even an adviser on stock
+and speculations. In the mercantile class, she is both cashier and
+bookkeeper. Enter a shop in France, Paris included, and behind "Pay
+Here," you will see Madame, smiling all over as she pockets the money
+for the purchase you have made. When I said she is a partner, I might
+safely have said that she is the active partner, and, as a rule, by far
+the shrewder of the two. She brings to bear her native suppleness, her
+fascinating little ways, her persuasive manners, and many a customer
+whom her husband was allowing to go away without a purchase, has been
+brought back by the wife, and induced to part with his cash in the shop.
+Last year I went to Paris, on my way home from Germany, to spend a few
+days visiting the Exposition. One day I entered a shop on the Boulevards
+to buy a white hat. The new-fashioned hats, the only hats which the man
+showed me, were narrow-brimmed, and I declined to buy one. I was just
+going to leave, when the wife, who, from the back parlor, had listened
+to my conversation with her husband, stepped in and said: "But, Adolphe,
+why do you let Monsieur go? Perhaps he does not care to follow the
+fashion. We have a few white broad-brimmed hats left from last year
+that we can let Monsieur have _a bon compte_. They are upstairs, go and
+fetch them." And, sure enough, there was one which fitted and pleased
+me, and I left in that shop a little sum of twenty-five francs, which
+the husband was going to let me take elsewhere, but which the wife
+managed to secure for the firm.
+
+[Illustration: MADAM IS THE CASHIER.]
+
+No one who has lived in France has failed to be struck with the
+intelligence of the women, and there exist few Frenchmen who do not
+readily admit how intellectually inferior they are to their
+countrywomen, chiefly among the middle and lower classes. And this is
+not due to any special training, for the education received by the women
+of that class is of the most limited kind; they are taught to read,
+write, and reckon, and their education is finished. Shrewdness is inborn
+in them, as well as a peculiar talent for getting a hundred cents' worth
+for every dollar they spend. How to make a house look pretty and
+attractive with small outlay; how to make a dress or turn out a bonnet
+with a few knick-knacks; how to make a savory dish out of a small
+remnant of beef, mutton, and veal; all that is a science not to be
+despised when a husband, in receipt of a four or five hundred dollar
+salary, wants to make a good dinner, and see his wife look pretty. No
+doubt the aristocratic inhabitants of Mayfair and Belgravia in London,
+and the plutocracy of New York, may think all this very small, and these
+French people very uninteresting. They can, perhaps, hardly imagine that
+such people may live on such incomes and look decent. But they do live,
+and live very happy lives, too. And I will go so far as to say that
+happiness, real happiness, is chiefly found among people of limited
+income. The husband, who perhaps for a whole year has put quietly by a
+dollar every week, so as to be able to give his dear wife a nice present
+at Christmas, gives her a far more valuable, a far better appreciated
+present, than the millionaire who orders Tiffany to send a diamond
+_riviere_ to his wife. That quiet young French couple, whom you see at
+the upper circle of a theater, and who have saved the money to enable
+them to come and hear such and such a play, are happier than the
+occupants of the boxes on the first tier. If you doubt it, take your
+opera glasses, and "look on this picture, and on this."
+
+[Illustration: THE UPPER CIRCLE.]
+
+In observing nations, I have always taken more interest in the
+"million," who differ in every country, than in the "upper ten," who are
+alike all over the world. People who have plenty of money at their
+disposal generally discover the same way of spending it, and adopt the
+same mode of living. People who have only a small income show their
+native instincts in the intelligent use of it. All these differ, and
+these only are worth studying, unless you belong to the staff of a
+"society" paper. (As a Frenchman, I am glad to say we have no "society"
+papers. England and America are the only two countries in the world
+where these official organs of Anglo-Saxon snobbery can be found, and I
+should not be surprised to hear that Australia possessed some of these
+already.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: THE SAD-EYED OCCUPANTS OF THE BOX.]
+
+The source of French happiness is to be found in the thrift of the
+women, from the best middle class to the peasantry. This thrift is also
+the source of French wealth. A nation is really wealthy when the
+fortunes are stable, however small. We have no railway kings, no oil
+kings, no silver kings, but we have no tenement houses, no Unions, no
+Work-houses. Our lower classes do not yet ape the upper class people,
+either in their habits or dress. The wife of a peasant or of a mechanic
+wears a simple snowy cap, and a serge or cotton dress. The wife of a
+shopkeeper does not wear any jewelry because she cannot afford to buy
+real stones, and her taste is too good to allow of her wearing false
+ones. She is not ashamed of her husband's occupation; she does not play
+the fine lady while he is at work. She saves him the expense of a
+cashier or of an extra clerk by helping him in his business. When the
+shutters are up, she enjoys life with him, and is the companion of his
+pleasures as well as of his hardships. Club life is unknown in France,
+except among the upper classes. Man and wife are constantly together,
+and France is a nation of Darbys and Joans. There is, I believe, no
+country where men and women go through life on such equal terms as in
+France.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In England (and here again I speak of the masses only), the man thinks
+himself a much superior being to the woman. It is the same in Germany.
+In America, I should feel inclined to believe that a woman looks down
+upon a man with a certain amount of contempt. She receives at his hands
+attentions of all sorts, but I cannot say, as I have remarked before,
+that I have ever discovered in her the slightest trace of gratitude to
+man.
+
+I have often tried to explain to myself this gentle contempt of American
+ladies for the male sex; for, contrasting it with the lovely devotion of
+Jonathan to his womankind, it is a curious enigma. Have I found the
+solution at last? Does it begin at school? In American schools, boys and
+girls, from the age of five, follow the same path to learning, and sit
+side by side on the same benches. Moreover, the girls prove themselves
+capable of keeping pace with the boys. Is it not possible that those
+girls, as they watched the performances of the boys in the study,
+learned to say, "Is that all?" While the young lords of creation, as
+they have looked on at what "those girls" can do, have been fain to
+exclaim: "Who would have thought it!" And does not this explain the two
+attitudes: the great respect of men for women, and the mild contempt of
+women for men?
+
+Very often, in New York, when I had time to saunter about, I would go up
+Broadway and wait until a car, well crammed with people, came along.
+Then I would jump on board and stand near the door. Whenever a man
+wanted to get out, he would say to me "Please," or "Excuse me," or just
+touch me lightly to warn me that I stood in his way. But the women! Oh,
+the women! why, it was simply lovely. They would just push me away with
+the tips of their fingers, and turn up such disgusted and haughty noses!
+You would have imagined it was a heap of dirty rubbish in their way.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Would you have a fair illustration of the respective positions of woman
+in France, in England, and in America?
+
+Go to a hotel, and watch the arrival of couples in the dining-room.
+
+Now don't go to the Louvre, the Grand Hotel, or the Bristol, in Paris.
+Don't go to the Savoy, the Victoria, or the Metropole, in London. Don't
+go to the Brunswick, in New York, because in all these hotels you will
+see that all behave alike. Go elsewhere and, I say, watch.
+
+In France, you will see the couples arrive together, walk abreast toward
+the table assigned to them, very often arm in arm, and smiling at each
+other--though married.
+
+[Illustration: IN FRANCE.]
+
+In England, you will see John Bull leading the way. He does not like to
+be seen eating in public, and thinks it very hard that he should not
+have the dining-room all to himself. So he enters, with his hands in
+his pockets, looking askance at everybody right and left. Then, meek and
+demure, with her eyes cast down, follows Mrs. John Bull.
+
+[Illustration: IN ENGLAND.]
+
+In America, behold the dignified, nay, the majestic entry of Mrs.
+Jonathan, a perfect queen going toward her throne, bestowing a glance on
+her subjects right and left--and Jonathan behind!
+
+[Illustration: IN AMERICA.]
+
+They say in France that Paris is the paradise of women. If so, there is
+a more blissful place than paradise; there is another word to invent to
+give an idea of the social position enjoyed by American ladies.
+
+If I had to be born again, and might choose my sex and my birthplace, I
+would shout at the top of my voice:
+
+"Oh, make me an American woman!"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  MORE ABOUT JOURNALISM IN AMERICA--A DINNER AT DELMONICO'S--MY FIRST
+  APPEARANCE IN AN AMERICAN CHURCH.
+
+
+     _New York, Sunday Night, January 19._
+
+Have been spending the whole day in reading the Sunday papers.
+
+I am never tired of reading and studying the American newspapers. The
+whole character of the nation is there: Spirit of enterprise,
+liveliness, childishness, inquisitiveness, deep interest in everything
+that is human, fun and humor, indiscretion, love of gossip, brightness.
+
+Speak of electric light, of phonographs and graphophones, if you like;
+speak of those thousand and one inventions which have come out of the
+American brain; but if you wish to mention the greatest and most
+wonderful achievement of American activity, do not hesitate for a moment
+to give the palm to American journalism; it is simply the _ne plus
+ultra_.
+
+You will find some people, even in America, who condemn its loud tone;
+others who object to its meddling with private life; others, again, who
+have something to say of its contempt for statements which are not in
+perfect accordance with strict truth. I even believe that a French
+writer, whom I do not wish to name, once said that very few statements
+to be found in an American paper were to be relied upon--beyond the
+date. People may say this and may say that about American journalism; I
+confess that I like it, simply because it will supply you with
+twelve--on Sundays with thirty--pages that are readable from the first
+line to the last. Yes, from the first line to the last, including the
+advertisements.
+
+The American journalist may be a man of letters, but, above all, he must
+possess a bright and graphic pen, and his services are not wanted if he
+cannot write a racy article or paragraph out of the most trifling
+incident. He must relate facts, if he can, but if he cannot, so much the
+worse for the facts; he must be entertaining and turn out something that
+is readable.
+
+Suppose, for example, a reporter has to send to his paper the account of
+a police-court proceeding. There is nothing more important to bring to
+the office than the case of a servant girl who has robbed her mistress
+of a pair of diamond earrings. The English reporter will bring to his
+editor something in the following style:
+
+  Mary Jane So-and-So was yesterday charged before the magistrate with
+  stealing a pair of diamond earrings from her mistress. It appears
+  [always _it appears_, that is the formula] that, last Monday, as Mrs.
+  X. went to her room to dress for dinner, she missed a pair of diamond
+  earrings, which she usually kept in a little drawer in her bedroom. On
+  questioning her maid on the subject, she received incoherent answers.
+  Suspicion that the maid was the thief arose in her mind,  and----
+
+A long paragraph in this dry style will be published in the _Times_, or
+any other London morning paper.
+
+Now, the American reporter will be required to bring something a little
+more entertaining if he hopes to be worth his salt on the staff of his
+paper, and he will probably get up an account of the case somewhat in
+the following fashion:
+
+  Mary Jane So-and-so is a pretty little brunette of some twenty
+  summers. On looking in the glass at her dainty little ears, she
+  fancied how lovely a pair of diamond earrings would look in them. So
+  one day she thought she would try on those of her mistress. How lovely
+  she looked! said the looking-glass, and the Mephistopheles that is
+  hidden in the corner of every man or woman's breast suggested that she
+  should keep them. This is how Mary Jane found herself in trouble,
+  etc., etc.
+
+The whole will read like a little story, probably entitled something
+like "Another Gretchen gone wrong through the love of jewels."
+
+The heading has to be thought of no less than the paragraph. Not a line
+is to be dull in a paper sparkling all over with eye-ticklers of all
+sorts. Oh! those delicious headings that would resuscitate the dead, and
+make them sit up in their graves!
+
+A Tennessee paper which I have now under my eyes announces the death of
+a townsman with the following heading:
+
+"At ten o'clock last night Joseph W. Nelson put on his angel plumage."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Racy, catching advertisements supplied to the trade," such is the
+announcement that I see in the same paper. I understand the origin of
+such literary productions as the following, which I cull from a Colorado
+sheet:
+
+  This morning our Saviour summoned away the jeweler William T. Sumner,
+  of our city, from his shop to another and a better world. The
+  undersigned, his widow, will weep upon his tomb, as will also his two
+  daughters, Maud and Emma, the former of whom is married, and the other
+  is open to an offer. The funeral will take place to-morrow. Signed.
+  His disconsolate widow, Mathilda Sumner.
+
+  _P. S._--This bereavement will not interrupt our business, which will
+  be carried on as usual, only our place of business will be removed
+  from Washington Street to No. 17 St. Paul Street, as our grasping
+  landlord has raised our rent.--M. S.
+
+The following advertisement probably emanates from the same firm:
+
+  PERSONAL--HIS LOVE SUDDENLY RETURNED.--Recently they had not been on
+  the best of terms, owing to a little family jar occasioned by the wife
+  insisting on being allowed to renovate his wearing apparel, and which,
+  of course, was done in a bungling manner; in order to prevent the
+  trouble, they agreed to send all their work hereafter to D., the
+  tailor, and now everything is lovely, and peace and happiness again
+  reign in their household.
+
+All this is lively. Never fail to read the advertisements of an American
+paper, or you will not have got out of it all the fun it supplies.
+
+Here are a few from the Cincinnati _Enquirer_, which tell different
+stories:
+
+  1. The young MADAME J. C. ANTONIA, just arrived from Europe, will
+  remain a short time; tells past, present, and future; tells by the
+  letters in hand who the future husband or wife will be; brings back
+  the husband or lover in so many days, and guarantees to settle family
+  troubles; can give good luck and success; ladies call at once; also
+  cures corns and bunions. Hours 10 A. M. and 9 P. M.
+
+"Also cures corns and bunions" is a poem!
+
+  2. The acquaintance desired of lady passing along Twelfth Street at
+  three o'clock Sunday afternoon, by blond gent standing at corner.
+  Address LOU K., 48, _Enquirer_ Office.
+
+  3. Will the three ladies that got on the electric car at the Zoo
+  Sunday afternoon favor three gents that got off at Court and Walnut
+  Streets with their address? Address ELECTRIC CAR, _Enquirer_ Office.
+
+  4. Will two ladies on Clark Street car, that noticed two gents in
+  front of Grand Opera House about seven last evening, please address
+  JANDS, _Enquirer_ Office.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A short time ago a man named Smith was bitten by a rattlesnake and
+treated with whisky at a New York hospital. An English paper would have
+just mentioned the fact, and have the paragraph headed: "A Remarkable
+Cure"; or, "A Man Cured of a Rattlesnake Bite by Whisky"; but a kind
+correspondent sends me the headings of this bit of intelligence in five
+New York papers. They are as follows:
+
+1. "Smith Is All Right!"
+
+2. "Whisky Does It!"
+
+3. "The Snake Routed at all Points!"
+
+4. "The Reptile is Nowhere!"
+
+5. "Drunk for Three Days and Cured."
+
+Let a batch of officials be dismissed. Do not suppose that an American
+editor will accept the news with such a heading as "Dismissal of
+Officials." The reporter will have to bring some label that will fetch
+the attention. "Massacre at the Custom House," or, "So Many Heads in the
+Basket," will do. Now, I maintain that it requires a wonderful
+imagination--something little short of genius, to be able, day after
+day, to hit on a hundred of such headings. But the American journalist
+does it.
+
+[Illustration: SMITH CURED OF RATTLESNAKE BITE.]
+
+An American paper is a collection of short stories. The Sunday edition
+of the New York _World_, the New York _Herald_, the Boston _Herald_, the
+Boston _Globe_, the Chicago _Tribune_, the Chicago _Herald_, and many
+others, is something like ten volumes of miscellaneous literature, and I
+do not know of any achievement to be compared to it.
+
+I cannot do better than compare an American paper to a large store,
+where the goods, the articles, are labeled so as to immediately strike
+the customer.
+
+A few days ago, I heard my friend, Colonel Charles H. Taylor, editor of
+the Boston _Globe_, give an interesting summary of an address on
+journalism which he is to deliver next Saturday before the members of
+the New England Club of Boston. He maintained that the proprietor of a
+newspaper has as much right to make his shop-window attractive to the
+public as any tradesman. If the colonel is of opinion that journalism is
+a trade, and the journalist a mere tradesman, I agree with him. If
+journalism is not to rank among the highest and noblest of professions,
+and is to be nothing more than a commercial enterprise, I agree with
+him.
+
+Now, if we study the evolution of journalism for the last forty or fifty
+years, we shall see that daily journalism, especially in a democracy,
+has become a commercial enterprise, and that journalism, as it was
+understood forty years ago, has become to-day monthly journalism. The
+dailies have now no other object than to give the news--the latest--just
+as a tradesman that would succeed must give you the latest fashion in
+any kind of business. The people of a democracy like America are
+educated in politics. They think for themselves, and care but little for
+the opinions of such and such a journalist on any question of public
+interest. They want news, not literary essays on news. When I hear some
+Americans say that they object to their daily journalism, I answer that
+journalists are like other people who supply the public--they keep the
+article that is wanted.
+
+A free country possesses the government it deserves, and the journalism
+it wants. A people active and busy as the Americans are, want a
+journalism that will keep their interest awake and amuse them; and they
+naturally get it. The average American, for example, cares not a pin for
+what his representatives say or do in Washington; but he likes to be
+acquainted with what is going on in Europe, and that is why the American
+journalist will give him a far more detailed account of what is going on
+in the Palace at Westminster than of what is being said in the Capitol.
+
+In France, journalism is personal. On any great question of the day,
+domestic or foreign, the Frenchman will want to read the opinion of John
+Lemoinne in the _Journal des Debats_, or the opinion of Edouard Lockroy
+in the _Rappel_, or maybe that of Paul de Cassagnac or Henri Rochefort.
+Every Frenchman is more or less led by the editor of the newspaper which
+he patronizes. But the Frenchman is only a democrat in name and
+aspirations, not in fact. France made the mistake of establishing a
+republic before she made republicans of her sons. A French journalist
+signs his articles, and is a leader of public opinion, so much so that
+every successful journalist in France has been, is now, and ever will
+be, elected a representative of the people.
+
+In America, as in England, the journalist has no personality outside the
+literary classes. Who, among the masses, knows the names of Bennett,
+Dana, Whitelaw Reid, Medill, Childs, in the United States? Who, in
+England, knows the names of Lawson, Mudford, Robinson, and other editors
+of the great dailies? If it had not been for his trial and imprisonment,
+Mr. W. T. Stead himself, though a most brilliant journalist, would
+never have seen his name on anybody's lips.
+
+A leading article in an American or an English newspaper will attract no
+notice at home. It will only be quoted on the European Continent.
+
+It is the monthly and the weekly papers and magazines that now play the
+part of the dailies of bygone days. An article in the _Spectator_ or
+_Saturday Review_, or especially in one of the great monthly magazines,
+will be quoted all over the land, and I believe that this relatively new
+journalism, which is read only by the cultured, has now for ever taken
+the place of the old one.
+
+In a country where everybody reads, men as well as women; in a country
+where nobody takes much interest in politics outside of the State and
+the city in which he lives, the journalist has to turn out every day all
+the news he can gather, and present them to the reader in the most
+readable form. Formerly daily journalism was a branch of literature; now
+it is a news store, and is so not only in America. The English press
+shows signs of the same tendency, and so does the Parisian press. Take
+the London _Pall Mall Gazette_ and _Star_, and the Paris _Figaro_, as
+illustrations of what I advance.
+
+As democracy makes progress in England, journalism will become more and
+more American, although the English reporter will have some trouble in
+succeeding to compete with his American _confrere_ in humor and
+liveliness.
+
+Under the guidance of political leaders, the newspapers of Continental
+Europe direct public opinion. In a democracy, the newspapers follow
+public opinion and cater to the public taste; they are the servants of
+the people. The American says to his journalists: "I don't care a pin
+for your opinions on such a question. Give me the news and I will
+comment on it myself. Only don't forget that I am an overworked man, and
+that before, or after, my fourteen hours' work, I want to be
+entertained."
+
+So, as I have said elsewhere, the American journalist must be spicy,
+lively, and bright. He must know how, not merely to report, but to
+relate in a racy, catching style, an accident, a trial, a conflagration,
+and be able to make up an article of one or two columns upon the most
+insignificant incident. He must be interesting, readable. His eyes and
+ears must be always open, every one of his five senses on the alert, for
+he must keep ahead in this wild race for news. He must be a good
+conversationalist on most subjects, so as to bring back from his
+interviews with different people a good store of materials. He must be a
+man of courage, to brave rebuffs. He must be a philosopher, to pocket
+abuse cheerfully.
+
+He must be a man of honor, to inspire confidence in the people he has to
+deal with. Personally I can say this of him, that wherever I have begged
+him, for instance, to kindly abstain from mentioning this or that which
+might have been said in conversation with him, I have invariably found
+that he kept his word.
+
+But if the matter is of public interest, he is, before and above all,
+the servant of the public; so, never challenge his spirit of enterprise,
+or he will leave no stone unturned until he has found out your secret
+and exhibited it in public.
+
+I do not think that American journalism needs an apology.
+
+It is the natural outcome of circumstances and the democratic times we
+live in. The Theatre-Francais is not now, under a Republic, and probably
+never again will be, what it was when it was placed under the patronage
+and supervision of the French Court. Democracy is the form of government
+least of all calculated to foster literature and the fine arts. To that
+purpose, Monarchy, with its Court and its fashionable society, is the
+best. This is no reason to prefer a monarchy to a republic. Liberty,
+like any other luxury, has to be paid for.
+
+Journalism cannot be now what it was when papers were read by people of
+culture. In a democracy, the stage and journalism have to please the
+masses of the people. As the people become better and better educated,
+the stage and journalism will rise with them. What the people want, I
+repeat it, is news, and journals are properly called _news_ papers.
+
+Speaking of American journalism, no man need use apologetic language.
+
+Not when the proprietor of an American paper will not hesitate to spend
+thousands of dollars to provide his readers with the minutest details
+about some great European event.
+
+Not when an American paper will, at its own expense, send Henry M.
+Stanley to Africa in search of Livingstone.
+
+Not so long as the American press is vigilant, and keeps its thousand
+eyes open on the interests of the American people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Midnight._
+
+Dined this evening with Richard Mansfield at Delmonico's. I sat between
+Mr. Charles A. Dana, the first of American journalists, and General
+Horace Porter, and had what my American friends would call "a mighty
+elegant time." The host was delightful, the dinner excellent, the wine
+"extra dry," the speeches quite the reverse. "Speeches" is rather a big
+word for what took place at dessert. Every one supplied an anecdote, a
+story, a reminiscence, and contributed to the general entertainment of
+the guests.
+
+The Americans have too much humor to spoil their dinners with toasts to
+the President, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the army, the
+navy, the militia, the volunteers, and the reserved forces.
+
+I once heard Mr. Chauncey M. Depew referring to the volunteers, at some
+English public dinner, as "men invincible--in peace, and invisible--in
+war." After dinner I remarked to an English peer:
+
+"You have heard to-night the great New York after-dinner speaker; what
+do you think of his speech?"
+
+"Well," he said, "it was witty; but I think his remark about our
+volunteers was not in very good taste."
+
+I remained composed, and did not burst.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Newburgh, N. Y., January 21._
+
+I lectured in Melrose, near Boston, last night, and had the
+satisfaction of pleasing a Massachusetts audience for the second time.
+After the lecture, I had supper with Mr. Nat Goodwin, a very good actor,
+who is now playing in Boston in a new play by Mr. Steele Mackaye. Mr.
+Nat Goodwin told many good stories at supper. He can entertain his
+friends in private as well as he can the public.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To-night I have appeared in a church, in Newburgh. The minister, who
+took the chair, had the good sense to refrain from opening the lecture
+with prayer. There are many who have not the tact necessary to see that
+praying before a humorous lecture is almost as irreverent as praying
+before a glass of grog. It is as an artist, however, that I resent that
+prayer. After the audience have said _Amen_, it takes them a full
+quarter of an hour to realize that the lecture is not a sermon; that
+they are in a church, but not at church; and the whole time their minds
+are in that undecided state, all your points fall flat and miss fire.
+Even without the preliminary prayer, I dislike lecturing in a church.
+The very atmosphere of a church is against the success of a light,
+humorous lecture, and many a point, which would bring down the house in
+a theater, will be received only with smiles in a lecture hall, and in
+respectful silence in a church. An audience is greatly influenced by
+surroundings.
+
+Now, I must say that the interior of an American church, with its lines
+of benches, its galleries, and its platform, does not inspire in one
+such religious feelings as the interior of a European Catholic church.
+In many American towns, the church is let for meetings, concerts,
+exhibitions, bazaars, etc., and so far as you can see, there is nothing
+to distinguish it from an ordinary lecture hall.
+
+Yet it is a church, and both lecturer and audience feel it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+  MARCUS AURELIUS IN AMERICA--CHAIRMEN I HAVE HAD--AMERICAN, ENGLISH,
+  AND SCOTCH CHAIRMEN--ONE WHO HAD BEEN TO BOULOGNE--TALKATIVE AND
+  SILENT CHAIRMEN--A TRYING OCCASION--THE LORD IS ASKED TO ALLOW THE
+  AUDIENCE TO SEE MY POINTS.
+
+
+     _New York, January 22._
+
+There are indeed very few Americans who have not either tact or a sense
+of humor. They make the best of chairmen. They know that the audience
+have not come to hear them, and that all that is required of them is to
+introduce the lecturer in very few words, and to give him a good start.
+Who is the lecturer that would not appreciate, nay, love, such a
+chairman as Dr. R. S. MacArthur, who introduced me yesterday to a New
+York audience in the following manner?
+
+"Ladies and Gentlemen," said he, "the story goes that, last summer, a
+party of Americans staying in Rome paid a visit to the famous
+Spithoever's bookshop in the Piazza di Spagna. Now Spithoever is the most
+learned of bibliophiles. You must go thither if you need artistic and
+archaeological works of the profoundest research and erudition. But one
+of the ladies in this tourists' party only wanted the lively travels in
+America of Max O'Rell, and she asked for the book at Spithoever's. There
+came in a deep guttural voice--an Anglo-German voice--from a spectacled
+clerk behind a desk, to this purport: 'Marcus Aurelius vos neffer in te
+Unided Shtaates!' But, ladies and gentlemen, he is now, and here he is."
+
+With such an introduction, I was immediately in touch with my audience.
+
+What a change after English chairmen!
+
+A few days before lecturing in any English town, under the auspices of a
+Literary Society or Mechanics' Institute, the lecturer generally
+receives from the secretary a letter running somewhat as follow:
+
+
+  DEAR SIR:
+
+  I have much pleasure in informing you that our Mr. Blank, one of our
+  vice-presidents and a well-known resident here, will take the chair at
+  your lecture.
+
+Translated into plain English, this reads:
+
+  My poor fellow, I am much grieved to have to inform you that a
+  chairman will be inflicted upon you on the occasion of your lecture
+  before the members of our Society.
+
+In my few years' lecturing experience, I have come across all sorts and
+conditions of chairmen, but I can recollect very few that "have helped
+me." Now, what is the office, the duty, of a chairman on such occasions?
+He is supposed to introduce the lecturer to the audience. For this he
+needs to be able to make a neat speech. He has to tell the audience who
+the lecturer is, in case they should not know it, which is seldom the
+case. I was once introduced to an audience who knew me, by a chairman
+who, I don't think, had ever heard of me in his life. Before going on
+the platform he asked me whether I had written anything, next whether I
+was an Irishman or a Frenchman, etc.
+
+[Illustration: "MARCUS AURELIUS VOS NEFFER IN TE UNIDED SHTAATES!"]
+
+Sometimes the chairman is nervous; he hems and haws, cannot find the
+words he wants, and only succeeds in fidgeting the audience. Sometimes,
+on the other hand, he is a wit. There is danger again. I was once
+introduced to a New York audience by General Horace Porter. Those of my
+readers who know the delightful general and have heard him deliver one
+of those little gems of speeches in his own inimitable manner, will
+agree with me that certainly there was danger in that; and they will not
+be surprised when I tell them that after his delightfully witty and
+graceful little introduction, I felt as if the best part of the show was
+over.
+
+Sometimes the chair has to be offered to a magnate of the neighborhood,
+though he may be noted for his long, prosy orations--which annoy the
+public; or to a very popular man in the locality who gets all the
+applause--which annoys the lecturer.
+
+"Brevity is the soul of wit," should be the motto of chairmen, and I
+sympathize with a friend of mine who says that chairmen, like little
+boys and girls, should be seen and not heard.
+
+Of those chairmen who can and do speak, the Scotch ones are generally
+good. They have a knack of starting the evening with some droll Scotch
+anecdote, told with that piquant and picturesque accent of theirs, and
+of putting the audience in a good humor. Occasionally they will also
+make _apropos_ and equally droll little speeches at the close. One
+evening, in talking of America, I had mentioned the fact that American
+banquets were very lively, and that I thought the fact of Americans
+being able to keep up such a flow of wit for so many hours, was perhaps
+due to their drinking Apollinaris water instead of stronger things after
+dessert. At the end of the lecture, the chairman rose and said he had
+greatly enjoyed it, but that he must take exception to one statement the
+lecturer had made, for he thought it "fery deeficult to be wutty on
+Apollinaris watter."
+
+Another kind of chairman is the one who kills your finish, and stops all
+the possibility of your being called back for applause, by coming
+forward, the very instant the last words are out of your mouth, to
+inform the audience that the next lecture will be given by Mr.
+So-and-So, or to make a statement of the Society's financial position,
+concluding by appealing to the members to induce their friends to join.
+
+Then there is the chairman who does not know what you are going to talk
+about, but thinks it his duty to give the audience a kind of summary of
+what he imagines the lecture is going to be. He is terrible. But he is
+nothing to the one who, when the lecture is over, will persist in
+summing it up, and explaining your own jokes, especially the ones he has
+not quite seen through. This is the dullest, the saddest chairman yet
+invented.
+
+Some modest chairmen apologize for standing between the lecturer and the
+audience, and declare they cannot speak, but do. Others promise to speak
+a minute only, but don't.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHAIRMAN.]
+
+"What shall I speak about?" said a chairman to me one day, after I had
+been introduced to him in the little back room behind the platform.
+
+"If you will oblige me, sir," I replied, "kindly speak about--one
+minute."
+
+Once I was introduced to the audience as the promoter of good feelings
+between France and England.
+
+"Sometimes," said the chairman, "we see clouds of misunderstanding arise
+between the French--between the English--between the two. The lecturer
+of this evening makes it his business to disperse these clouds--these
+clouds--to--to---- But I will not detain you any longer. His name is
+familiar to all of us. I'm sure he needs no introduction to this
+audience. We all know him. I have much pleasure in introducing to you
+Mr.--Mosshiay--Mr. ----" Then he looked at me in despair.
+
+It was evident he had forgotten my name.
+
+"Max O'Rell is, I believe, what you are driving at," I whispered to him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most objectionable chairmen in England are, perhaps, local men
+holding civic honors. Accustomed to deliver themselves of a speech
+whenever and wherever they get a chance, aldermen, town councilors,
+members of local boards, and school boards, never miss an opportunity of
+getting upon a platform to address a good crowd. Not long ago, I was
+introduced to an audience in a large English city by a candidate for
+civic honors. The election of the town council was to take place a
+fortnight afterward, and this gentleman profited by the occasion to air
+all his grievances against the sitting council, and to assure the
+citizens that if they would only elect him, there were bright days in
+store for them and their city. This was the gist of the matter. The
+speech lasted twenty minutes.
+
+[Illustration: "HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE YOUR NAME?"]
+
+Once the chair was taken by an alderman in a Lancashire city, and the
+hall was crowded. "What a fine house!" I remarked to the chairman as we
+sat down on the platform.
+
+"Very fine indeed," he said; "everybody in the town knew I was going to
+take the chair."
+
+I was sorry I had spoken.
+
+More than once, when announced to deliver a lecture on France and the
+French, I have been introduced by a chairman who, having spent his
+holidays in that country once or twice, opened the evening's proceedings
+by himself delivering a lecture on France. I have felt very tempted to
+imitate a _confrere_, and say to the audience: "Ladies and Gentlemen, as
+one lecture on France is enough for an evening, perhaps you would rather
+I spoke about something else now." The _confrere_ I have just mentioned
+was to deliver a lecture on Charles Dickens one evening. The chairman
+knew something of Charles Dickens and, for quite a quarter of an hour,
+spoke on the great English novelist, giving anecdotes, extracts of his
+writings, etc. When the lecturer rose, he said: "Ladies and Gentlemen,
+two lectures on Charles Dickens are perhaps more than you expected to
+hear to-night. You have just heard a lecture on Charles Dickens. I am
+now going to give you one on Charles Kingsley."
+
+Sometimes I get a little amusement, however (as in the country town of
+X.), out of the usual proceedings of the society before whose members I
+am engaged to appear. At X., the audience being assembled and the time
+up, I was told to go on the platform alone and, being there, to
+immediately sit down. So I went on, and sat down. Some one in the room
+then rose and proposed that Mr. N. should take the chair. Mr. N., it
+appeared, had been to Boulogne (_to B'long_), and was particularly
+fitted to introduce a Frenchman. In a speech of about five minutes
+duration, all Mr. N.'s qualifications for the post of chairman that
+evening were duly set forth. Then some one else rose and seconded the
+proposition, re-enumerating most of these qualifications. Mr. N. then
+marched up the hall, ascended the platform, and proceeded to return
+thanks for the kind manner in which he had been proposed for the chair
+and for the enthusiasm (a few friends had applauded) with which the
+audience had sanctioned the choice. He said it was true that he had been
+in France, and that he greatly admired the country and the people, and
+he was glad to have this opportunity to say so before a Frenchman. Then
+he related some of his traveling impressions in France. A few people
+coughed, two or three more bold stamped their feet, but he took no heed
+and, for ten minutes, he gave the audience the benefit of the
+information he had gathered in Boulogne. These preliminaries over, I
+gave my lecture, after which Mr. N. called upon a member of the audience
+to propose a vote of thanks to the lecturer "for the most amusing and
+interesting discourse, etc."
+
+Now a paid lecturer wants his check when his work is over, and although
+a vote of thanks, when it is spontaneous, is a compliment which he
+greatly appreciates, he is more likely to feel awkwardness than pleasure
+when it is a mere red-tape formality. The vote of thanks, on this
+particular occasion, was proposed in due form. Then it was seconded by
+some one who repeated two or three of my points and spoiled them. By
+this time I began to enter into the fun of the thing, and, after having
+returned thanks for the vote of thanks and sat down, I stepped forward
+again, filled with a mild resolve to have the last word:
+
+"Ladies and Gentlemen," I said, "I have now much pleasure in proposing
+that a hearty vote of thanks be given Mr. N. for the able manner in
+which he has filled the chair. I am proud to have been introduced to you
+by an Englishman who knows my country so well." I went again through the
+list of Mr. N.'s qualifications, not forgetting the trip to Boulogne and
+the impressions it had left on him. Somebody rose and seconded this. Mr.
+N. delivered a speech to thank the audience once more, and then those
+who had survived went home.
+
+Some Nonconformist societies will engage a light or humorous lecturer,
+put him in their chapel, and open his mouth with prayer. Prayer is good,
+but I would as soon think of saying grace before dancing as of beginning
+my lecture with a prayer. This kind of experience has been mine several
+times. A truly trying experience it was, on the first occasion, to be
+accompanied to the platform by the minister, who, motioning me to sit
+down, advanced to the front, lowered his head, and said in solemn
+accents: "Let us pray." After I got started, it took me fully ten
+minutes to make the people realize that they were not at church. This
+experience I have had in America as well as in England. Another
+experience in this line was still worse, for the prayer was supplemented
+by the singing of a hymn of ten or twelve verses. You may easily imagine
+that my first remark fell dead flat.
+
+I have been introduced to audiences as Mossoo, Meshoe, and Mounzeer
+O'Reel, and other British adaptations of our word _Monsieur_, and found
+it very difficult to bear with equanimity a chairman who maltreated a
+name which I had taken some care to keep correctly spelt before the
+public. Yet this man is charming when compared with the one who, in the
+midst of his introductory remarks, turns to you, and in a stage whisper
+perfectly audible all over the hall, asks: "How do you pronounce your
+name?"
+
+Passing over chairman chatty and chairman terse, chairman eloquent and
+chairman the reverse, I feel decidedly most kindly toward the silent
+chairman. He is very rare, but he does exist and, when met with, is
+exceedingly precious. Why he exists, in some English Institutes, I have
+always been at a loss to imagine. Whether he comes on to see that the
+lecturer does not run off before his time is up, or with the water
+bottle, which is the only portable thing on the platform generally;
+whether he is a successor to some venerable deaf and dumb founder of his
+Society; or whether he goes on with the lecturer to give a lesson in
+modesty to the public, as who should say: "I could speak an if I would,
+but I forbear." Be his _raison d'etre_ what it may, we all love him. To
+the nervous novice he is a kind of quiet support, to the old stager he
+is as a picture unto the eye and as music unto the ear.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here I pause. I want to collect my thoughts. Does my memory serve me? Am
+I dreaming, or worse still, am I on the point of inventing? No, I could
+not invent such a story, it is beyond my power.
+
+I was once lecturing to the students of a religious college in America.
+Before I began, a professor stepped forward, and offered a prayer, in
+which he asked the Lord to allow the audience to see my points.
+
+Now, I duly feel the weight of responsibility attaching to such a
+statement, and in justice to myself I can do no less than give the
+reader the petition just as it fell on my astonished ears:
+
+"Lord, Thou knowest that we work hard for Thee, and that recreation is
+necessary in order that we may work with renewed vigor. We have to-night
+with us a gentleman from France [excuse my recording a compliment too
+flattering], whose criticisms are witty and refined, _but subtle_, and
+we pray Thee to so prepare our minds that we may thoroughly understand
+and enjoy them."
+
+"_But subtle!_"
+
+I am still wondering whether my lectures are so subtle as to need
+praying over, or whether that audience was so dull that they needed
+praying for.
+
+Whichever it was, the prayer was heard, for the audience proved warm,
+keen, and thoroughly appreciative.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+REFLECTIONS ON THE TYPICAL AMERICAN.
+
+
+     _New York, January 23._
+
+I was asked to-day by the editor of the _North American Review_ to write
+an article on the typical American.
+
+The typical American!
+
+In the eyes of my beloved compatriots, the typical American is a man
+with hair falling over his shoulders, wearing a sombrero, a red shirt,
+leather leggings, a pair of revolvers in his belt, spending his life on
+horseback, and able to shoot a fly off the tip of your nose without for
+a moment endangering your olfactory organ; and, since Buffalo Bill has
+been exhibiting his Indians and cowboys to the Parisians, this
+impression has become a deep conviction.
+
+I shall never forget the astonishment I caused to my mother when I first
+broke the news to her that I wanted to go to America. My mother had
+practically never left a lovely little provincial town of France. Her
+face expressed perfect bewilderment.
+
+"You don't mean to say you want to go to America?" she said. "What for?"
+
+"I am invited to give lectures there."
+
+"Lectures? in what language?"
+
+"Well, mother, I will try my best in English."
+
+"Do they speak English out there?"
+
+"H'm--pretty well, I think."
+
+We did not go any further on the subject that time. Probably the good
+mother thought of the time when the Californian gold-fields attracted
+all the scum of Europe, and, no doubt, she thought that it was strange
+for a man who had a decent position in Europe, to go and "seek fortune"
+in America.
+
+Later on, however, after returning to England, I wrote to her that I had
+made up my mind to go.
+
+Her answer was full of gentle reproaches, and of sorrow at seeing that
+she had lost all her influence over her son. She signed herself "always
+your loving mother," and indulged in a postscript. Madame de Sevigne
+said that the gist of a woman's letter was to be found in the
+postscript.
+
+My mother's was this:
+
+"P.S.--I shall not tell any one in the town that you have gone to
+America."
+
+This explains why I still dare show my face in my little native town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The typical American!
+
+First of all, does he exist? I do not think so. As I have said
+elsewhere, there are Americans in plenty, but _the_ American has not
+made his appearance yet. The type existed a hundred years ago in New
+England. He is there still; but he is not now a national type, he is
+only a local one.
+
+[Illustration: THE TYPICAL AMERICAN.]
+
+I was talking one day with two eminent Americans on the subject of the
+typical American, real or imaginary. One of them was of opinion that he
+was a taciturn being; the other, on the contrary, maintained that he was
+talkative. How is a foreigner to dare decide, where two eminent natives
+find it impossible to agree?
+
+In speaking of the typical American, let us understand each other. All
+the civilized nations of the earth are alike in one respect; they are
+all composed of two kinds of men, those that are gentlemen, and those
+that are not. America is no exception to this rule. Fifth Avenue does
+not differ from Belgravia and Mayfair. A gentleman is everywhere a
+gentleman. As a type, he belongs to no particular country, he is
+universal.
+
+When the writer of some "society" paper, English or American, reproaches
+a sociologist for writing about the masses instead of the classes,
+suggesting that "he probably never frequented the best society of the
+nation he describes," that writer writes himself down an ass.
+
+In the matters of feeling, conduct, taste, culture, I have never
+discovered the least difference between a gentleman from America and a
+gentleman from France, England, Russia, or any other country of
+Europe--including Germany. So, if we want to find a typical American, it
+is not in good society that we must search for him, but among the mass
+of the population.
+
+Well, it is just here that our search will break down. We shall come
+across all sorts and conditions of Americans, but not one that is really
+typical.
+
+[Illustration: THE AMERICAN OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.]
+
+A little while ago, the _Century Magazine_ published specimens of
+composite photography. First, there was the portrait of one person, then
+that of this same face with another superposed, then another containing
+three faces blended, and so on up to eight or nine. On the last page the
+result was shown. I can only compare the typical American to the last of
+those. This appears to me the process of evolution through which the
+American type is now going. What it will be when this process of
+evolution is over, no one, I imagine, can tell. The evolution will be
+complete when immigration shall have ceased, and all the different types
+have been well mixed and assimilated. While the process of assimilation
+is still going on, the result is suspended, and the type is incomplete.
+
+But, meanwhile, are there not certain characteristic traits to be found
+throughout almost all America? That is a question much easier to answer.
+
+Is it necessary to repeat that I put aside good society and confine
+myself merely to the people?
+
+Nations are like individuals: when they are young, they have the
+qualities and the defects of children. The characteristic trait of
+childhood is curiosity. It is also that of the American. I have never
+been in Australia, but I should expect to find this trait in the
+Australian.
+
+Look at American journalism. What does it live on? Scandal and gossip.
+Let a writer, an artist, or any one else become popular in the States,
+and the papers will immediately tell the public at what time he rises
+and what he takes for breakfast. When any one of the least importance
+arrives in America, he is quickly beset by a band of reporters who ask
+him a host of preposterous questions and examine him minutely from head
+to foot, in order to tell the public next day whether he wears laced,
+buttoned, or elastic boots, enlighten them as to the cut of his coat and
+the color of his trowsers, and let them know if he parts his hair in the
+middle or not.
+
+[Illustration: CURIOSITY IN AUSTRALIA.]
+
+Every time I went into a new town to lecture I was interviewed, and the
+next day, besides an account of the lecture, there was invariably a
+paragraph somewhat in this style:
+
+  The lecturer is a man of about forty, whose cranium is getting visible
+  through his hair. He wears a double eye-glass, with which he plays
+  while talking to his audience. His handkerchief was black-bordered. He
+  wore the regulation patent leather shoes, and his shirt front was
+  fastened with a single stud. He spoke without effort or pretension,
+  and often with his hands in his pockets, etc.
+
+A few days ago, on reading the morning papers in a town where I had
+lectured the night before, I found, in one of them, about twenty lines
+consecrated to my lecture, and half a column to my hat.
+
+I must tell you that this hat was brown, and all the hats in America are
+black. If you wear anything that is not exactly like what Americans
+wear, you are gazed at as if you were a curious animal. The Americans
+are as great _badauds_ as the Parisians. In London, you may go down
+Regent Street or Piccadilly got up as a Swiss admiral, a Polish general,
+or even a Highlander, and nobody will take the trouble to look at you.
+But, in America, you have only to put on a brown hat or a pair of light
+trowsers, and you will become the object of a curiosity which will not
+fail very promptly to bore you, if you are fond of tranquility, and like
+to go about unremarked.
+
+I was so fond of that poor brown hat, too! It was an incomparably
+obliging hat. It took any shape, and adapted itself to any
+circumstances. It even went into my pocket on occasions. I had bought it
+at Lincoln & Bennett's, if you please. But I had to give it up. To my
+great regret, I saw that it was imperative: its popularity bid fair to
+make me jealous. Twenty lines about me, and half a column about that
+hat! It was time to come to some determination. It was not to be put up
+with any longer. So I took it up tenderly, smoothed it with care, and
+laid it in a neat box which was then posted to the chief editor of the
+paper with the following note:
+
+
+  DEAR SIR:
+
+  I see by your estimable paper that my hat has attracted a good deal of
+  public attention during its short sojourn in your city. I am even
+  tempted to think that it has attracted more of it than my lecture. I
+  send you the interesting headgear, and beg you will accept it as a
+  souvenir of my visit, and with my respectful compliments.
+
+A citizen of the Great Republic knows how to take a joke. The worthy
+editor inserted my letter in the next number of his paper, and informed
+his readers that my hat fitted him to a nicety, and that he was going to
+have it dyed and wear it. He further said, "Max O'Rell evidently thinks
+the song, 'Where did you get that hat?' was specially written to annoy
+him," and went on to the effect that "Max O'Rell is not the only man who
+does not care to tell where he got his hat."
+
+Do not run away with the idea that such nonsense as this has no interest
+for the American public. It has.
+
+American reporters have asked me, with the most serious face in the
+world, whether I worked in the morning, afternoon, or evening, and what
+color paper I used (_sic_). One actually asked me whether it was true
+that M. Jules Claretie used white paper to write his novels on, and blue
+paper for his newspaper articles. Not having the honor of a personal
+acquaintance with the director of the Comedie-Francaise, I had to
+confess my inability to gratify my amiable interlocutor.
+
+Look at the advertisements in the newspapers. There you have the
+bootmaker, the hatter, the traveling quack, publishing their portraits
+at the head of their advertisements. Why are those portraits there, if
+it be not to satisfy the curiosity of customers?
+
+The mass of personalities, each more trumpery than the other, those
+details of people's private life, and all the gossip daily served up in
+the newspapers, are they not proof enough that curiosity is a
+characteristic trait of the American?
+
+This curiosity, which often shows itself in the most impossible
+questions, gives immense amusement to Europeans. Unhappily, it amuses
+them at the expense of well-bred Americans--people who are as innocent
+of it as the members of the stiffest aristocracy in the world could be.
+The English, especially, persist in not distinguishing Americans who are
+gentlemen from Americans who are not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And even that easy-going American _bourgeois_, with his childish but
+good-humored nature, they often fail to do justice to. They too often
+look at his curiosity as impertinence and ill-breeding, and will not
+admit that, in nine cases out of ten, the freedom he uses with you is
+but a show of good feeling, an act of good-fellowship.
+
+Take, for instance, the following little story:
+
+An American is seated in a railway carriage, and opposite him is a lady
+in deep mourning, and looking a picture of sadness; a veritable _mater
+dolorosa_.
+
+"Lost a father?" begins the worthy fellow.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"A mother, maybe?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Ah! a child then?"
+
+"No, sir; I have lost my husband."
+
+"Your husband! Ah! Left you comfortable?"
+
+The lady, rather offended, retires to the other end of the car, and cuts
+short the conversation.
+
+"Rather stuck up, this woman," remarks the good Yankee to his neighbor.
+
+The intention was good, if the way of showing it was not. He had but
+wanted to show the poor lady the interest he took in her.
+
+After having seen you two or three times, the American will suppress
+"Mr." and address you by your name without any handle to it. Do not say
+that this is ill placed familiarity; it is meant as an act of
+good-fellowship, and should be received by you as such.
+
+If you are stiff, proud, and stuck-up, for goodness' sake, never go to
+America; you will never get on there. On the contrary, take over a stock
+of simple, affable manners and a good temper, and you will be treated as
+a friend everywhere, feted, and well looked after.
+
+In fact, try to deserve a certificate of good-fellowship, such as the
+Clover Club, of Philadelphia, awards to those who can sit at its
+hospitable table without taking affront at the little railleries leveled
+at them by the members of that lively association. With people of
+refinement who have humor, you can indulge in a joke at their expense.
+So says La Bruyere. Every visitor to America, who wants to bring back a
+pleasant recollection of his stay there, should lay this to heart.
+
+Such are the impressions that I formed of the American during my first
+trip to his country, and the more I think over the matter, the more sure
+I am that they were correct. Curiosity is his chief little failing, and
+good-fellowship his most prominent quality. This is the theme I will
+develop and send to the Editor of the _North American Review_. I will
+profit by having a couple of days to spend in New York to install myself
+in a cosy corner of that cosiest of clubs, the "Players," and there
+write it.
+
+It seems that, in the same number of this magazine, the same subject is
+to be treated by Mr. Andrew Lang. He has never seen Jonathan at home,
+and it will be interesting to see what impressions he has formed of him
+abroad. In the hands of such a graceful writer, the "typical American"
+is sure to be treated in a pleasant and interesting manner.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+  I AM ASKED TO EXPRESS MYSELF FREELY ON AMERICA--I MEET MRS. BLANK AND
+  FOR THE FIRST TIME HEAR OF MR. BLANK--BEACON STREET SOCIETY--THE
+  BOSTON CLUBS.
+
+
+     _Boston, January 25._
+
+It amuses me to notice how the Americans to whom I have the pleasure of
+being introduced, refrain from asking me what I think of America. But
+they invariably inquire if the impressions of my first visit are
+confirmed.
+
+This afternoon, at an "At Home," I met a lady from New York, who asked
+me a most extraordinary question.
+
+"I have read 'Jonathan and His Continent,'" she said to me. "I suppose
+that is a book of impressions written for publication. But now, tell me
+_en confidence_, what do you think of us?"
+
+"Is there anything in that book," I replied, "which can make you suppose
+that it is not the faithful expression of what the author thinks of
+America and the Americans?"
+
+"Well," she said, "it is so complimentary, taken altogether, that I must
+confess I had a lurking suspicion of your having purposely flattered us
+and indulged our national weakness for hearing ourselves praised, so as
+to make sure of a warm reception for your book."
+
+"No doubt," I replied, "by writing a flattering book on any country, you
+would greatly increase your chance of a large sale in that country; but,
+on the other hand, you may write an abusive book on any country and
+score a great success among that nation's neighbors. For my part, I have
+always gone my own quiet way, philosophizing rather than opinionating,
+and when I write, it is not with the aim of pleasing any particular
+public. I note down what I see, say what I think, and people may read me
+or not, just as they please. But I think I may boast, however, that my
+pen is never bitter, and I do not care to criticise unless I feel a
+certain amount of sympathy with the subject of my criticism. If I felt
+that I could only honestly say hard things of people, I would always
+abstain altogether."
+
+"Now," said my fair questioner, "how is it that you have so little to
+say about our Fifth Avenue folks? Is it because you have seen very
+little of them, or is it because you could only have said hard things of
+them?"
+
+"On the contrary," I replied; "I saw a good deal of them, but what I saw
+showed me that to describe them would be only to describe polite
+society, as it exists in London and elsewhere. Society gossip is not in
+my line; boudoir and club smoking-room scandal has no charm for me.
+Fifth Avenue resembles too much Mayfair and Belgravia to make criticism
+of it worth attempting."
+
+I knew this answer would have the effect of putting me into the lady's
+good graces at once, and I was not disappointed. She accorded to me her
+sweetest smile, as I bowed to her to go and be introduced to another
+lady by the mistress of the house.
+
+[Illustration: FIFTH AVENUE FOLK.]
+
+The next lady was a Bostonian. I had to explain to her why I had not
+spoken of Beacon Street people, using the same argument as in the case
+of Fifth Avenue society, and with the same success.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the same "At Home," I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Blank, whom I
+had met many times in London and Paris.
+
+She is one of the crowd of pretty and clever women whom America sends to
+brighten up European society, and who reappear in London and Paris with
+the regularity of the swallows. You meet them everywhere, and conclude
+that they must be married, since they are styled Mrs. and not Miss. But
+whether they are wives, widows, or _divorcees_, you rarely think of
+inquiring, and you may enjoy their friendship for years without knowing
+whether they have a living lord or not.
+
+[Illustration: A TELEPHONE AND TICKER.]
+
+Mrs. Blank, as I say, is a most fascinating specimen of America's
+daughters, and to-day I find that Mr. Blank is also very much alive, but
+that the companions of his joys and sorrows are the telephone and the
+ticker; in fact it is thanks to his devotion to these that the wife of
+his bosom is able to adorn European society during every recurring
+season.
+
+American women have such love for freedom and are so cool-headed that
+their visits to Europe could not arouse suspicion even in the most
+malicious. But, nevertheless, I am glad to have heard of Mr. Blank,
+because it is comfortable to have one's mind at rest on these subjects.
+Up to now, whenever I had been asked, as sometimes happened, though
+seldom: "Who is Mr. Blank, and where is he?" I had always answered:
+"Last puzzle out!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lunched to-day in the beautiful Algonquin Club, as the guest of Colonel
+Charles H. Taylor, and met the editors of the other Boston papers, among
+whom was John Boyle O'Reilly,[1] the lovely poet, and the delightful
+man. The general conversation turned on two subjects most interesting to
+me, viz., American journalism, and American politics. All these
+gentlemen seemed to agree that the American people take an interest in
+local politics only, but not in imperial politics, and this explains why
+the papers of the smaller towns give detailed accounts of what is going
+on in the houses of legislature of both city and State, but do not
+concern themselves about what is going on in Washington. I had come to
+that conclusion myself, seeing that the great papers of New York,
+Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago devoted columns to the sayings and doings
+of the political world in London and Paris, and seldom a paragraph to
+the sittings of Congress in Washington.
+
+In the morning, before lunch, I had called on Mr. John Holmes, the
+editor of the Boston _Herald_, and there met a talented lady who writes
+under the _nom de plume_ of "Max Eliot," and with whom I had a
+delightful half-hour's chat.
+
+I have had to-day the pleasure of meeting the editors of all the Boston
+newspapers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening, I dined with the members of the New England Club, who
+meet every month to listen, at dessert, to some interesting debate or
+lecture. The wine is supplied by bets. You bet, for instance, that the
+sun will shine on the following Friday at half-past two. If you lose,
+you are one of those who will have to supply one, two, or three bottles
+of champagne at the next dinner, and so on. This evening the lecture, or
+rather the short address, was given by Colonel Charles H. Taylor on the
+history of American journalism. I was particularly interested to hear
+the history of the foundation of the New York _Herald_, by James Gordon
+Bennett, and that of the New York _World_, by Mr. Pulitzer, a Hungarian
+emigrant, who, some years ago, arrived in the States, unable to speak
+English, became jack-of-all-trades, then a reporter on a German paper,
+proprietor of a Western paper, and then bought the _World_, which is now
+one of the best paying concerns in the whole of the United States. This
+man, who, to maintain himself, not in health, but just alive, is obliged
+to be constantly traveling, directs the paper by telegraph from
+Australia, from Japan, from London, or wherever he happens to be. It is
+nothing short of marvelous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I finished the evening in the St. Botolph Club, and I may say that I
+have to-day spent one of the most delightful days of my life, with those
+charming and highly cultured Bostonians, who, a New York witty friend of
+mine declares, "are educated beyond their intellects."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNORE:
+
+  [1] J. B. O'Reilly died in 1890.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+  A LIVELY SUNDAY IN BOSTON--LECTURE IN THE BOSTON THEATER--DR. OLIVER
+  WENDELL HOLMES--THE BOOTH-MODJESKA COMBINATION.
+
+
+     _Boston, January 26._
+
+"Max Eliot" devotes a charming and most flattering article to me in this
+morning's _Herald_, embodying the conversation we had together yesterday
+in the Boston _Herald's_ office. Many thanks, Max.
+
+A reception was given to me this afternoon by Citizen George Francis
+Train, and I met many artists, journalists, and a galaxy of charming
+women.
+
+The Citizen is pronounced to be the greatest crank on earth. I found him
+decidedly eccentric, but entertaining, witty, and a first-rate
+_raconteur_. He shakes hands with you in the Chinese fashion--he shakes
+his own. He has taken a solemn oath that his body shall never come in
+contact with the body of any one.
+
+A charming programme of music and recitations was gone through.
+
+The invitation cards issued for the occasion speak for themselves.
+
+[Illustration: THE CITIZEN SHAKES HANDS.]
+
+
+  CITIZEN
+       GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN'S
+             RECEPTION
+                        To
+                          CITOYEN MAX O'RELL.
+
+  P.S.--"Demons" have checkmated "Psychos"! Invitations canceled! "Hub"
+  Boycotts Sunday Receptions! Boston half century behind New York and
+  Europe's Elite Society. (Ancient Athens still Ancient!) Regrets and
+  Regards! Good-by, Tremont! (The Proprietors not to blame.)
+
+  _Vide_ some of his "Apothegmic Works"! (Reviewed in Pulitzer's New
+  York _World_ and Cosmos Press!)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  John Bull et Son Ile! Les Filles de John Bull! Les Chers Voisins!
+  L'Ami Macdonald! John Bull, Junior! Jonathan et Son Continent!
+  L'Eloquence Francaise! etc.
+
+     YOU ARE INVITED TO MEET
+
+  this distinguished French Traveler, Author, and Lecturer (From the
+  land of Lafayette, Rochambeau, and De Grasse),
+
+     AT MY SIXTH "POP-CORN RECEPTION"!
+
+  SUNDAY, JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH, From 2 to 7 P. M.
+               (Tremont House!)
+
+  _Private Banquet Hall!_      _Fifty "Notables"!_
+
+  Talent from Dozen Operas and Theaters! All Stars! No Airs! No "Wall
+  Flowers"! No Amens! No Selahs! But "MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB OF GOOD
+  FELLOWSHIP"! No Boredom! No Formality! (Dress as you like!) No
+  Programme! (Pianos! Cellos! Guitars! Mandolins! Banjos! Violins!
+  Harmonicas! Zithers!) Opera, Theater and Press Represented!
+
+  Succeeding Receptions: To Steele Mackaye! Nat Goodwin! Count Zubof
+  (St. Petersburg)! Prima Donna Clementina De Vere (Italy)! Albany Press
+  Club! (Duly announced printed invitations!)
+
+     GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN,
+           Tremont House for Winter!
+
+  Psychic Press thanks for friendly notices of Sunday Musicales!
+
+It will be seen from the "P. S." that the reception could not be held at
+the Tremont House; but the plucky Citizen did not allow himself to be
+beaten, and the reception took place at the house of a friend.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening I lectured in the Boston Theater to a beautiful audience.
+
+If there is a horrible fascination about "the man who won't smile," as I
+mentioned in a foregoing chapter, there is a lovely fascination about
+the lady who seems to enjoy your lecture thoroughly. You watch the
+effects of your remarks on her face, and her bright, intellectual eyes
+keep you in good form the whole evening; in fact, you give the lecture
+to her. I perhaps never felt the influence of that face more powerfully
+than to-night. I had spoken for a few minutes, when Madame Modjeska,
+accompanied by her husband, arrived and took a seat on the first row of
+the orchestra stalls. To be able to entertain the great _tragedienne_
+became my sole aim, and as soon as I perceived that I was successful, I
+felt perfectly proud and happy. I lectured to her the whole evening. Her
+laughter and applause encouraged me, her beautiful, intellectual face
+cheered me up, and I was able to introduce a little more acting and
+by-play than usual.
+
+I had had the pleasure of making Madame Modjeska's acquaintance two
+years ago, during my first visit to the United States, and it was a
+great pleasure to be able to renew it after the lecture.
+
+I will go and see her _Ophelia_ to-morrow night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _January 27._
+
+Spent the whole morning wandering about Boston, and visiting a few
+interesting places. Beacon Street, the public gardens, and Commonwealth
+Avenue are among the finest thoroughfares I know. What enormous wealth
+is contained in those miles of huge mansions!
+
+The more I see Boston, the more it strikes me as a great English city.
+It has a character of its own, as no other American city has, excepting
+perhaps Washington and Philadelphia. The solidity of the buildings, the
+parks, the quietness of the women's dresses, the absence of the twang in
+most of the voices, all remind you of England.
+
+After lunch I called on Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The "Autocrat of the
+Breakfast Table" is now over eighty, but he is as young as ever, and
+will die with a kind smile on his face and a merry twinkle in his eyes.
+I know no more delightful talker than this delightful man. You may say
+of him that every time he talks he says something. When he asked me what
+it was I had found most interesting in America, I wished I could have
+answered: "Why, my dear doctor, to see and to hear such a man as you, to
+be sure!" But the doctor is so simple, so unaffected, that I felt an
+answer of that kind, though perfectly sincere, would not have been one
+calculated to please him. The articles "Over the Tea Cups," which he
+writes every month for the _Atlantic Monthly_, and which will soon
+appear in book form, are as bright, witty, humorous, and philosophic as
+anything he ever wrote. Long may he live to delight his native land!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening I went to see Mr. Edwin Booth and Madame Modjeska in
+"Hamlet." By far the two greatest tragedians of America in Shakespeare's
+greatest tragedy. I expected great things. I had seen Mounet-Sully in
+the part, Henry Irving, Wilson Barrett; and I remembered the witty
+French _quatrain_, published on the occasion of Mounet-Sully attempting
+the part:
+
+  Sans Fechter ni Riviere
+  Le cas etait hasardeux;
+  Jamais, non jamais sur terre,
+  On n'a fait d'Hamlet sans eux.
+
+I had seen Mr. Booth three times before. As _Brutus_, I thought he was
+excellent. As _Richelieu_ he was certainly magnificent; as _Iago_
+ideally superb.
+
+His _Hamlet_ was a revelation to me. After seeing the raving _Hamlet_ of
+Mounet-Sully, the somber _Hamlet_ of Irving, and the dreamy _Hamlet_ of
+Wilson Barrett, I saw this evening _Hamlet_ the philosopher, the
+rhetorician.
+
+Mr. Booth is too old to play _Hamlet_ as he does, that is to say,
+without any attempt at making-up. He puts on a black wig, and that is
+all, absolutely all. It is, however, a most remarkable, subtle piece of
+acting in his hands.
+
+Madame Modjeska was beautiful as _Ophelia_. No _tragedienne_ that I have
+ever seen weeps more naturally. In all sad situations she makes the
+chords of one's heart vibrate, and that without any trick or artifice,
+but simply by the modulations of her singularly sympathetic voice and
+such like natural means.
+
+It is very seldom that you can see in America, outside of New York, more
+than one very good actor or actress playing together. So you may imagine
+the success of such a combination as Booth-Modjeska.
+
+Every night the theater is packed from floor to ceiling, although the
+prices of admission are doubled.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+  ST. JOHNSBURY--THE STATE OF MAINE--NEW ENGLAND SELF-CONTROL--COLD
+  CLIMATES AND FRIGID AUDIENCES--WHERE IS THE AUDIENCE?--ALL DRUNK!--A
+  REMINISCENCE OF A SCOTCH AUDIENCE ON A SATURDAY NIGHT.
+
+
+     _St. Johnsbury (Vt.), January 28._
+
+ST. Johnsbury is a charming little town perched on the top of a
+mountain, from which a lovely scene of hills and woods can be enjoyed.
+The whole country is covered with snow, and as I looked at it in the
+evening by the electric light, the effect was very beautiful. The town
+has only six thousand inhabitants, eleven hundred of whom came to hear
+my lecture to-night. Which is the European town of six thousand
+inhabitants that would supply an audience of eleven hundred people to a
+literary _causerie_?
+
+St. Johnsbury has a dozen churches, a public library of 15,000 volumes,
+with a reading-room beautifully fitted with desks and perfectly adapted
+for study. A museum, a Young Men's Christian Association, with
+gymnasium, school-rooms, reading-rooms, play-rooms, and a lecture hall
+capable of accommodating over 1000 people. Who, after that, would
+consider himself an exile if he had to live in St. Johnsbury? There is
+more intellectual life in it than in any French town outside of Paris
+and about a dozen more large cities.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Portsea, January 30._
+
+I have been in the State of Maine for two days; a strange State to be
+in, let me tell you.
+
+After addressing the Connecticut audience in Meriden a few days ago, I
+thought I had had the experience of the most frigid audience that could
+possibly be gathered together. Last Tuesday night, at Portsea, I was
+undeceived.
+
+Half-way between St. Johnsbury and Portsea, the day before yesterday, I
+was told that the train would be very late, and would not arrive at
+Portsea before half-past eight. My lecture in that city was to begin at
+eight. The only thing to do was to send a telegram to the manager of the
+lecture. At the next station I sent the following:
+
+"Train late. If possible, keep audience waiting half an hour. Will dress
+on board."
+
+I dressed in the state-room of the parlor-car. At forty minutes past
+eight the train arrived at Portsea. I immediately jumped into a cab and
+drove to the City Hall, where the lecture was to take place. The
+building was lighted, but, as I ascended the stairs, there was not a
+person to be seen or a sound to be heard. "The place is deserted," I
+thought; "and if anybody came to hear me, they have all gone."
+
+I opened the door of the private room behind the platform and there
+found the manager, who expressed his delight to see me. I excused
+myself, and was going to enter into a detailed explanation when he
+interrupted:
+
+[Illustration: I TIP-TOED OUT.]
+
+"Oh, that's all right."
+
+"What do you mean?" said I. "Have you got an audience there, on the
+other side of that door?"
+
+"Why, we have got fifteen hundred people."
+
+"There?" said I, pointing to the door.
+
+"Yes, on the other side of that door."
+
+"But I can't hear a sound."
+
+"I guess you can't. But that's all right; they are there."
+
+"I suppose," I said, "I had better apologize to them for keeping them
+waiting three-quarters of an hour."
+
+"Well, just as you please," said the manager. "I wouldn't."
+
+"Wouldn't you?"
+
+"No; I guess they would have waited another half-hour without showing
+any sign of impatience."
+
+I opened the door trembling. My desk was far, far away. My manager was
+right; the audience was there. I stepped on the platform, shut the door
+after me, making as little noise as I could, and, walking on tiptoe so
+as to wake up as few people as possible, proceeded toward the table. Not
+one person applauded. A few people looked up unconcernedly, as if to
+say, "I guess that's the show." The rest seemed asleep, although their
+eyes were open.
+
+Arrived at the desk, I faced the audience, and ventured a little joke,
+which fell dead flat.
+
+I began to realize the treat that was in store for me that night.
+
+I tried another little joke, and--missed fire.
+
+"Never mind, old fellow," I said to myself; "it's two hundred and fifty
+dollars; go ahead."
+
+And I went on.
+
+I saw a few people smile, but not one laughed, although I noticed that a
+good many were holding their handkerchiefs over their mouths, probably
+to stifle any attempt at such a frivolous thing as laughter. The eyes of
+the audience, which I always watch, showed signs of interest, and nobody
+left the hall until the conclusion of the lecture. When I had finished,
+I made a small bow, when certainly fifty people applauded. I imagined
+they were glad it was all over.
+
+"Well," I said to the manager, when I had returned to the little back
+room, "I suppose we must call this a failure."
+
+"A failure!" said he; "it's nothing of the sort. Why, I have never seen
+them so enthusiastic in my life!"
+
+I went to the hotel, and tried to forget the audience I had just had by
+recalling to my mind a joyous evening in Scotland. This happened about a
+year ago, in a mining town in the neighborhood of Glasgow, where I had
+been invited to lecture, on a Saturday night, to the members of a
+popular--very popular--Institute.
+
+[Illustration: I AM ESCORTED TO THE HALL.]
+
+I arrived at the station from Glasgow at half-past seven, and there
+found the secretary and the treasurer of the Institute, who had been
+kind enough to come and meet me. We shook hands. They gave me a few
+words of welcome. I thought my friends looked a little bit queer. They
+proposed that we should walk to the lecture hall. The secretary took my
+right arm, the treasurer took my left, and, abreast, the three of us
+proceeded toward the hall. They did not take me to that place; _I_ took
+them, holding them fast all the way--the treasurer especially.
+
+We arrived in good time, although we stopped once for light refreshment.
+At eight punctually, I entered the hall, preceded by the president, and
+followed by the members of the committee. The president introduced me in
+a most queer, incoherent speech. I rose, and was vociferously cheered.
+When silence was restored, I said in a calm, almost solemn manner:
+"Ladies and Gentlemen." This was the signal for more cheering and
+whistling. In France whistling means hissing, and I began to feel
+uneasy, but soon I bore in mind that whistling, in the North of Great
+Britain, was used to express the highest pitch of enthusiasm.
+
+So I went on.
+
+The audience laughed at everything I said, and even before I said it. I
+had never addressed such keen people. They seemed so anxious to laugh
+and cheer in the right place that they laughed and cheered all the
+time--so much so that in an hour and twenty minutes, I had only got
+through half my lecture, which I had to bring to a speedy conclusion.
+
+The president rose and proposed a vote of thanks in another most queer
+speech, which was a new occasion for cheering.
+
+When we had retired in the committee room, I said to the secretary:
+"What's the matter with the president? Is he quite right?" I added,
+touching my forehead.
+
+"Oh!" said the secretary, striking his chest as proudly as possible, "he
+is drunk--and so am I."
+
+[Illustration: "HE'S DRUNK, AND SO AM I."]
+
+The explanation of the whole strange evening dawned upon me. Of course
+they were drunk, and so was the audience.
+
+That night, I believe I was the only sober person on the premises.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yesterday, I had an interesting chat with a native of the State of Maine
+on the subject of my lecture at Portsea.
+
+"You are perfectly wrong," he said to me, "in supposing that your
+lecture was not appreciated. I was present, and I can assure you that
+the attentive silence in which they listened to you from beginning to
+end is the proof that they appreciated you. You would also be wrong in
+supposing that they do not appreciate humor. On the contrary, they are
+very keen of it, and I believe that the old New Englander was the father
+of American humor, through the solemn manner in which he told comic
+things, and the comic manner in which he told the most serious ones.
+Yes, they are keen of humor, and their apparent want of appreciation is
+only due to reserve, to self-control."
+
+And, as an illustration of it, my friend told me the following anecdote
+which, I have no doubt, a good many Americans have heard before:
+
+Mark Twain had lectured to a Maine audience without raising a single
+laugh in his listeners, when, at the close, he was thanked by a
+gentleman who came to him in the green-room, to tell him how hugely
+every one had enjoyed his amusing stories. When the lecturer expressed
+his surprise at this announcement, as the audience had not laughed, the
+gentleman added:
+
+"Yes, we never were so amused in our lives, and if you had gone on five
+minutes more, upon my word I don't think we could have held out any
+longer."
+
+Such is New England self-control.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+  A LOVELY RIDE TO CANADA--QUEBEC, A CORNER OF OLD FRANCE STRAYED UP AND
+  LOST IN THE SNOW--THE FRENCH CANADIANS--THE PARTIES IN CANADA--WILL
+  THE CANADIANS BECOME YANKEES?
+
+
+     _Montreal, February 1._
+
+The ride from the State of Maine to Montreal is very picturesque, even
+in the winter. It offers you four or five hours of Alpine scenery
+through the American Switzerland. The White Mountains, commanded by
+Mount Washington, are, for a distance of about forty miles, as wild and
+imposing as anything the real Switzerland can supply the tourist.
+Gorges, precipices, torrents, nothing is wanting.
+
+Nearly the whole time we journeyed across pine forests, coming, now and
+then, across saw mills, and little towns looking like bee-hives of
+activity. Now there was an opening, and frozen rivers, covered with
+snow, formed, with the fields, a huge uniform mass of dazzling
+whiteness. The effect, under a pure blue sky and in a perfectly clear
+atmosphere, was very beautiful. Now the country became hilly again. On
+the slopes, right down to the bottom of the valley, we saw Berlin Falls,
+bathing its feet in the river. The yellow houses with their red roofs
+and gables, rest the eyes from that long stretch of blue and white. How
+beautiful this town and its surroundings must be in the fall, when Dame
+Nature in America puts on her cloak of gold and scarlet! All the country
+on the line we traveled is engaged in the lumber trade.
+
+For once I had an amiable conductor in the parlor car; even more than
+amiable--quite friendly and familiar. He put his arms on my shoulders
+and got quite patronizing. I did not mind that a bit. I hate anonymous
+landscapes, and he explained and named everything to me. My innocence of
+American things in general touched him. He was a great treat after those
+"ill-licked bears" that you so often come across in the American cars.
+He went further than that: he kindly recommended me to the Canadian
+custom-house officers, when we arrived at the frontier, and the
+examination of my trunk and valise did not last half a minute.
+
+[Illustration: THE AMIABLE CONDUCTOR.]
+
+Altogether, the long journey passed rapidly and agreeably. We were only
+two people in the parlor car, and my traveling companion proved a very
+pleasant man. First, I did not care for the look of him. He had a new
+silk hat on, a multicolored satin cravat with a huge diamond pin fixed
+in it; a waistcoat covered with silk embroidery work, green, blue, and
+pink; a coat with silk facings, patent-leather boots. Altogether, he was
+rather dressed for a garden party (in more than doubtful taste) than for
+a fifteen hours' railway journey. But in America the cars are so
+luxurious and kept so warm that traveling dresses are not known in the
+country. Ulsters, cloaks, rugs, garments made of tweed and rough
+materials, all these things are unnecessary and therefore unknown. I
+soon found out, however, that this quaintly got-up man was interesting
+to speak to. He knew every bit of the country we passed, and, being
+easily drawn out, he poured into my ears information that was as rapid
+as it was valuable. He was well read and had been to Europe several
+times. He spoke of France with great enthusiasm, which enrolled my
+sympathy, and he had enjoyed my lecture, which, you may imagine, secured
+for his intelligence and his good taste my boundless admiration. When we
+arrived at Montreal, we were a pair of friends.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I begin my Canadian tour here on Monday and then shall go West. I was in
+Quebec two years ago; but the dear old place is not on my list this
+time. No words could express my regret. I shall never forget my feelings
+on landing under the great cliff on which stands the citadel, and on
+driving, bumped along in a sleigh over the half-thawed snow, in the
+street that lies under the fortress, and on through the other quaint
+winding steep streets, and again under the majestic archways to the
+upper town, where I was set down at the door of the Florence, a quiet,
+delightful little hotel that the visitor to Quebec should not fail to
+stop at, if he like home comforts and care to enjoy magnificent scenery
+from his window. It seemed as though I was in France, in my dear old
+Brittany. It looked like St. Malo strayed up here and lost in the snow.
+The illusion became complete when I saw the gray houses, heard the
+people talk with the Breton intonation, and saw over the shops Langlois,
+Maillard, Clouet, and all the names familiar to my childhood. But why
+say "illusion"? It was a fact: I was in France. These folks have given
+their faith to England, but, as the Canadian poet says, they have kept
+their hearts for France. Not only their hearts, but their manners and
+their language. Oh, there was such pleasure in it all! The lovely
+weather, the beautiful scenery, the kind welcome given to me, the
+delight of seeing these children of Old France, more than three thousand
+miles from home, happy and thriving--a feast for the eyes, a feast for
+the heart. And the drive to Montmorency Falls in the sleigh, gliding
+smoothly along on the hard snow! And the sleighs laden with wood for the
+Quebec folks, the carmen stimulating their horses with a _hue la_ or
+_hue donc_! And the return to the Florence, where a good dinner served
+in a private room awaited us! And that polite, quiet, attentive French
+girl who waited on us, the antipodes of the young Yankee lady who makes
+you sorry that breakfasting and dining are necessary, in some American
+hotels, and whose waiting is like taking sand and vinegar with your
+food!
+
+The mere spanking along through the cold, brisk air, when you are well
+muffled in furs is exhilarating, especially when the sun is shining in
+a cloudless blue sky. The beautiful scenery at Quebec was, besides, a
+feast for eyes tired with the monotonous flatness of America. The old
+city is on a perfect mountain, and as we came bumping down its side in
+our sleigh over the roads which were there in a perfect state of
+sherbet, there was a lovely picture spread out in front of us. In the
+distance the bluest mountains I ever saw (to paint them one must use
+pure cobalt); away to the right the frozen St. Lawrence and the Isle of
+Orleans, all snow-covered, of course, but yet distinguishable from the
+farm lands of Jacques Bonhomme, whose cosy, clean cottages we soon began
+to pass. The long, ribbon-like strips of farm were indicated by the tops
+of the fences peeping through the snow, and told us of French thrift and
+prosperity.
+
+[Illustration: "THAT QUIET, ATTENTIVE FRENCH GIRL."]
+
+Yes, it was all delightful. When I left Quebec I felt as much regret as
+I do every time that I leave my little native town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have been told that the works of Voltaire are prohibited in Quebec,
+not so much because they are irreligious as because they were written by
+a man who, after the loss of Quebec to the French Crown, exclaimed: "Let
+us not be concerned about the loss of a few acres of snow." The memory
+of Voltaire is execrated, and for having made a flattering reference to
+him on the platform in Montreal two years ago, I was near being
+"boycotted" by the French population.
+
+The French Canadians take very little interest in politics--I mean in
+outside politics. They are steady, industrious, saving, peaceful, and so
+long as the English leave them alone, in the safe enjoyment of their
+belongings, they will not give them cause for any anxiety. Among the
+French Canadians there is no desire for annexation to the United States.
+Indeed, during the War of Independence, Canada was saved to the English
+Crown by the French Canadians, not because the latter loved the English,
+but because they hated the Yankees. When Lafayette took it for granted
+that the French Canadians would rally round his flag, he made a great
+mistake; they would have, if compelled to fight, used their bullets
+against the Americans. If they had their own way, the French in Canada
+would set up a little country of their own under the rule of the
+Catholic Church, a little corner of France two hundred years old.
+
+The education of the lower classes is at a very low stage; thirty per
+cent. of the children of school age in Quebec do not attend school. The
+English dare not introduce gratuitous and compulsory education. They
+have an understanding with the Catholic Church, which insists upon
+exercising entire control over public education. The Quebec schools are
+little more than branches of the confessional box. The English shut
+their eyes, for part of the understanding with the Church is that the
+latter will keep loyalty to the English Crown alive among her submissive
+flock.
+
+The tyranny exercised by the Catholic Church may easily be imagined from
+the following newspaper extract:
+
+  A well-to-do butcher of Montreal attended the Catholic Church at Ile
+  Perrault last Sunday. He was suffering at the time with acute cramps,
+  and when that part of the service arrived during which the
+  congregation kneel, he found himself unable to do more than assume a
+  reclining devotional position, with one knee on the floor. His action
+  was noticed, and the church-warden, in concert with others, had him
+  brought before the court charged with an act of irreverence, and he
+  was fined $8 and costs.
+
+Such a judgment does not only expose the tyranny of the Catholic Church,
+but the complicity of the English, who uphold Romanism in the Province
+of Quebec as they uphold Buddhism in India, so as not to endanger the
+security of their possessions.
+
+The French Canadians are multiplying so rapidly that in a very few years
+the Province of Quebec will be as French as the town of Quebec itself.
+Every day they push their advance from east to west. They generally
+marry very young. When a lad is seen in the company of a girl, he is
+asked by the priest if he is courting that girl. In which case he is
+bidden to go straightway to the altar, and these young couples rear
+families of twelve and fifteen children, none of whom leave the country.
+The English have to make room for them.
+
+[Illustration: AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PRIEST.]
+
+The average attendance in Catholic churches on Sundays in Montreal is
+111,483; in the sixty churches that belong to the different Protestant
+denominations, the average attendance is 34,428. The former number has
+been steadily increasing, the latter steadily decreasing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What is the future reserved to French Canada, and indeed to the whole
+Dominion?
+
+There are only two political parties, Liberals and Conservatives, but I
+find the population divided into four camps: Those in favor of Canada,
+an independent nation; those in favor of the political union of Canada
+and the United States; those in favor of Canada going into Imperial
+Federation, and those in favor of Canada remaining an English colony, or
+in other words, in favor of the actual state of things.
+
+Of course the French Canadians are dead against going into Imperial
+Federation, which would simply crush them, and Canadian "society" is in
+favor of remaining English. The other Canadians seem pretty equally
+divided.
+
+It must be said that the annexation idea has been making rapid progress
+of late years, among prominent men as well as among the people. The
+Americans will never fire one shot to have the idea realized. If ever
+the union becomes an accomplished fact, it will become so with the
+assent of all parties. The task will be made easy through Canada and the
+United States having the same legislature. The local and provincial
+governments are the same in the Canadian towns and provinces as they are
+in the American towns and States--a House of Representatives, a Senate,
+and a Governor, with this difference, this great difference, to the
+present advantage of Canada: whereas every four years the Americans
+elect a new master, who appoints a ministry responsible to himself
+alone, the Canadians have a ministry responsible to their parliament,
+that is, to themselves. The representation of the American people at
+Washington is democratic, but the government is autocratic. In Canada,
+both legislature and executive are democratic, as in England, that
+greatest and truest of all democracies.
+
+The change in Canada would have to be made on the American plan.
+
+With the exception of Quebec and parts of Montreal, Canada is built like
+America; the country has the same aspect, the currency is the same.
+Suppress the Governor-General in Ottawa, who is there to remind Canada
+that she is a dependency of the English Crown, strew the country with
+more cuspidores, and you have part of Jonathan's big farm.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+  MONTREAL--THE CITY--MOUNT ROYAL--CANADIAN SPORTS--OTTAWA--THE
+  GOVERNMENT--RIDEAU HALL.
+
+
+     _Montreal, February 2._
+
+Montreal is a large and well-built city, containing many buildings of
+importance, mostly churches, of which about thirty are Roman Catholic,
+and over sixty are devoted to Protestant worship, in all its branches
+and variations, from the Anglican church to the Salvation Army.
+
+I arrived at a station situated on a level with the St. Lawrence River.
+From it, we mounted in an omnibus up, up, up, through narrow streets
+full of shops with Breton or Norman names over them, as in Quebec; on
+through broader ones, where the shops grew larger and the names became
+more frequently English; on, on, till I thought Montreal had no end,
+and, at last alighted on a great square, and found myself at the door of
+the Windsor Hotel, an enormous and fine construction, which has proved
+the most comfortable, and, in every respect the best hotel I have yet
+stopped at on the great American continent. It is about a quarter of a
+mile from my bedroom to the dining-hall, which could, I believe,
+accommodate nearly a thousand guests.
+
+My first visit was to an afternoon "At Home," given by the St. George's
+Club, who have a club-house high up on Mount Royal. It was a ladies'
+day, and there was music, dancing, etc. We went in a sleigh up the very
+steep hill, much to my astonishment. I should have thought the thing
+practically impossible. On our way we passed a toboggan slide down the
+side of Mount Royal. It took my breath away to think of coming down it
+at the rate of over a mile a minute. The view from the club-house was
+splendid, taking in a great sweep of snow-covered country, the city and
+the frozen St. Lawrence. There are daily races on the river, and last
+year they ran tram-cars on it.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD GENTLEMAN AND THE TOBOGGAN SLIDE.]
+
+It was odd to hear the phrase, "after the flood." When I came to inquire
+into it, I learned that when the St. Lawrence ice breaks up, the lower
+city is flooded, and this is yearly spoken of as "the flood."
+
+I drove back from the club with my manager and two English gentlemen,
+who are here on a visit. As we passed the toboggan slide, my manager
+told me of an old gentleman over sixty, who delights in those breathless
+passages down the side of Mount Royal. One may see him out there "at
+it," as early as ten in the morning. Plenty of people, however, try one
+ride and never ask for another. One gentleman my manager told me of,
+after having tried it, expressed pretty well the feelings of many
+others. He said, "I wouldn't do it again for two thousand dollars, but I
+wouldn't have missed it for three." I asked one of the two Englishmen
+who accompanied us, whether he had had a try. He was a quiet, solemn,
+middle-aged Englishman. "Well," he said, "yes, I have. It had to be
+done, and I did it."
+
+[Illustration: A SNOWSHOER.]
+
+Last night I was most interested in watching the members of the Snowshoe
+Club start from the Windsor, on a kind of a picnic over the country.
+Their costumes were very picturesque; a short tunic of woolen material
+fastened round the waist by a belt, a sort of woolen nightcap, with
+tassel falling on the shoulder, thick woolen stockings, and
+knickerbockers.
+
+In Russia and the northern parts of the United States, the people say:
+"It's too cold to go out." In Canada, they say: "It's very cold, let's
+all go out." Only rain keeps them indoors. In the coldest weather, with
+a temperature of many degrees below zero, you have great difficulty in
+finding a closed carriage. All, or nearly all, are open sleighs. The
+driver wraps you up in furs, and as you go, gliding on the snow, your
+face is whipped by the cold air, you feel glowing all over with warmth,
+and altogether the sensation is delightful.
+
+This morning, Joseph Howarth, the talented American actor, breakfasted
+with me and a few friends. Last night, I went to see him play in Steele
+Mackaye's "Paul Kauvar." Canada has no actors worth mentioning, and the
+people here depend on American artists for all their entertainments. It
+is wonderful how the feeling of independence engenders and develops the
+activity of the mind in a country. Art and literature want a home of
+their own, and do not flourish in other people's houses. Canada has
+produced nothing in literature: the only two poets she can boast are
+French, Louis Frechette and Octave Cremazie. It is not because Canada
+has no time for brain productions. America is just as busy as she is,
+felling forests and reclaiming the land; but free America, only a
+hundred years old as a nation, possesses already a list of historians,
+novelists, poets, and essayists, that would do honor to any nation in
+the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _February 4._
+
+I had capital houses in the Queen's Hall last night and to-night.
+
+The Canadian audiences are more demonstrative than the American ones,
+and certainly quite as keen and appreciative. When you arrive on the
+platform they are glad to see you, and they let you know it; a fact
+which in America, in New England especially, you have to find out for
+yourself.
+
+Montreal possesses a very wealthy and fashionable community, and what
+strikes me most, coming as I do from the United States, is the stylish
+simplicity of the women. I am told that Canadian women in their tastes
+and ways have always been far more English than American, and that the
+fashions have grown more and more simple since Princess Louise gave the
+example of always dressing quietly when occupying Rideau Hall in Ottawa.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Ottawa, February 5._
+
+One of the finest sights I have yet seen in this country was from the
+bridge on my way from the station to the Russell this morning. On the
+right the waterfalls, on the left, on the top of a high and almost
+perpendicular rock, the Houses of Parliament, a grand pile of buildings
+in gray stone, standing out clear against a cloudless, intense blue sky.
+The Russell is one of those huge babylonian hotels so common on the
+American continent, where unfortunately the cookery is not on a level
+with the architectural pretensions; but most of the leading Canadian
+politicians are boarding here while Parliament is sitting, and I am
+interested to see them.
+
+After visiting the beautiful library and other parts of the government
+buildings, I had the good luck to hear, in the House of Representatives,
+a debate between Mr. Chapleau, a minister and one of the leaders of the
+Conservatives now in office, and Mr. Laurier, one of the chiefs of the
+Opposition. Both gentlemen are French. It was a fight between a tribune
+and a scholar; between a short, thickset, long-maned lion, and a tall,
+slender, delicate fox.
+
+[Illustration: "THE RADIANT, LOVELY CANADIENNE."]
+
+After lunch, I went to Rideau Hall, the residence of the
+Governor-General, Lord Stanley of Preston. The executive mansion stands
+in a pretty park well wooded with firs, a mile out of the town. His
+Excellency was out, but his aid-de-camp, to whom I had a letter of
+introduction, most kindly showed me over the place. Nothing can be more
+simple and unpretentious than the interior of Rideau Hall. It is
+furnished like any comfortable little provincial hotel patronized by the
+gentry of the neighborhood. The panels of the drawing-room were painted
+by Princess Louise, when she occupied the house with the Marquis of
+Lorne some eight or ten years ago. This is the only touch of luxury
+about the place. In the time of Lord Dufferin, a ball-room and a tennis
+court were added to the building, and these are among the many souvenirs
+of his popular rule. As a diplomatist, as a viceroy, and as an
+ambassador, history will one day record that this noble son of Erin
+never made a mistake.
+
+In the evening, I lectured in the Opera House to a large audience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Kingston, February 6._
+
+This morning, at the Russell, I was called at the telephone. It was His
+Excellency, who was asking me to lunch at Rideau Hall. I felt sorry to
+be obliged to leave Ottawa, and thus forego so tempting an invitation.
+
+Kingston is a pretty little town on the border of Lake Ontario,
+possessing a university, a penitentiary, and a lunatic asylum, in
+neither of which I made my appearance to-night. But as soon as I had
+started speaking on the platform of the Town Hall, I began to think the
+doors of the lunatic asylum had been carelessly left open that night,
+for close under the window behind the platform, there began a noise
+which was like Bedlam let loose. Bedlam with trumpets and other
+instruments of torture. It was impossible to go on with the lecture, so
+I stopped. On inquiry, the unearthly din was found to proceed from a
+detachment of the Salvation Army outside the building. After some
+parleying, they consented to move on and storm some other citadel.
+
+But it was a stormy evening, and peace was not yet.
+
+[Illustration: A SALVATIONIST.]
+
+As soon as I had fairly restarted, a person in the audience began to
+show signs of disapproval, and twice or thrice he gave vent to his
+disapproval rather loudly.
+
+I was not surprised to learn, at the close of the evening, that this
+individual had come in with a free pass. He had been admitted on the
+strength of his being announced to give a "show" of some sort himself a
+week later in the hall.
+
+If a man is inattentive or creates a disturbance at any performance, you
+may take it for granted that his ticket was given to him. He never paid
+for it.
+
+To-morrow I go to Toronto, where I am to give two lectures. I had not
+time to see that city properly on my last visit to Canada, and all my
+friends prophesy that I shall have a good time.
+
+So does the advance booking, I understand.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+  TORONTO--THE CITY--THE LADIES--THE SPORTS--STRANGE CONTRASTS--THE
+  CANADIAN SCHOOLS.
+
+
+     _Toronto, February 9._
+
+Have passed three very pleasant days in this city, and had two beautiful
+audiences in the Pavilion.
+
+Toronto is a thoroughly American city in appearance, but only in
+appearance, for I find the inhabitants British in heart, in tastes, and
+habits. When I say that it is an American city, I mean to say that
+Toronto is a large area, covered with blocks of parallelograms and dirty
+streets, overspread with tangles of telegraph and telephone wires. The
+hotels are perfectly American in every respect.
+
+The suburbs are exceedingly pretty. Here once more are fine villas
+standing in large gardens, a sight rarely seen near an American city. It
+reminds me of England. I admire many buildings, the University[2]
+especially.
+
+English-looking, too, are the rosy faces of the Toronto ladies whom I
+passed in my drive. How charming they are with the peach-like bloom that
+their outdoor exercise gives them!
+
+I should like to be able to describe, as it deserves, the sight of
+these Canadian women in their sleighs, as the horses fly along with
+bells merrily jingling, the coachman in his curly black dogskin and huge
+busby on his head. Furs float over the back of the sleigh, and, in it,
+muffled up to the chin in sumptuous skins and also capped in furs, sits
+the radiant, lovely Canadienne, the milk and roses of her complexion
+enhanced by the proximity of the dark furs. As they skim past over the
+white snow, under a glorious sunlit blue sky, I can call to mind no
+prettier sight, no more beautiful picture, to be seen on this huge
+continent, so far as I have got yet.
+
+One cannot help being struck, on coming here from the United States, at
+the number of lady pedestrians in the streets. They are not merely
+shopping, I am assured, nor going straight from one point to another of
+the town, but taking their constitutional walks in true English fashion.
+My impresario took me in the afternoon to a club for ladies and
+gentlemen, and there I had the, to me, novel sight of a game of hockey.
+On a large frozen pond there was a party of young people engaged in this
+graceful and invigorating game, and not far off was a group of little
+girls and boys imitating their elders very sensibly and, as it seemed to
+me, successfully. The clear, healthy complexion of the Canadian women is
+easy to account for, when one sees how deep-rooted, even after
+transplantation, is the good British love of exercise in the open air.
+
+Last evening I was taken to a ball, and was able to see more of the
+Canadian ladies than is possible in furs, and on further acquaintance I
+found them as delightful in manners as in appearance; English in their
+coloring and in their simplicity of dress, American in their natural
+bearing and in their frankness of speech.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: A HOCKEY PLAYER.]
+
+Churches, churches, everywhere. In my drive this afternoon, I counted
+twenty-eight in a quarter of an hour. They are of all denominations,
+Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, etc., etc. The
+Canadians must be still more religious--I mean still more
+church-going--than the English.
+
+From seven in the evening on Saturday, all the taverns are closed, and
+remain closed throughout Sunday. In England the Bible has to compete
+with the gin bottle, but here the Bible has all its own way on Sundays.
+Neither tram-car, omnibus, cab, nor hired carriage of any description is
+to be seen abroad. Scotland itself is outdone completely; the land of
+John Knox has to take a back seat.
+
+The walls of this city of churches and chapels are at the present moment
+covered with huge coarse posters announcing in loud colors the arrival
+of a company of performing women. Of these posters, one represents
+Cleopatra in a bark drawn through the water by nude female slaves.
+Another shows a cavalcade of women dressed in little more than a
+fig-leaf. Yet another represents the booking-office of the theater
+stormed by a crowd of _blase_-looking, single eye-glassed old _beaux_,
+grinning with pleasure in anticipation of the show within. Another
+poster displays the charms of the proprietress of the undertaking. You
+must not, however, imagine any harm of the performers whose attractions
+are so liberally placarded. They are taken to their cars in the depot
+immediately after the performance and locked up; there is an
+announcement to that effect. These placards are merely eye-ticklers. But
+this mixture of churches, strict sabbatarianism, and posters of this
+kind, is part of the eternal history of the Anglo-Saxon race--violent
+contrast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aschool inspector has kindly shown me several schools in the town.
+
+The children of rich and poor alike are educated together in the public
+schools, from which they get promoted to the high schools. All these
+schools are free. Boys and girls sit on the same benches and receive the
+same education, as in the United States. This enables the women in the
+New World to compete with men for all the posts that we Europeans
+consider the monopoly of man; it also enables them to enjoy all the
+intellectual pleasures of life. If it does not prevent them, as it has
+yet to be proved that it does, from being good wives and mothers, the
+educational system of the New World is much superior to the European
+one. It is essentially democratic. Europe will have to adopt it.
+
+Society in the Old World will not stand long on its present basis. There
+will always be rich and poor, but every child that is born will require
+to be given a chance, and, according as he avails himself of it or not,
+will be successful or a failure. But give him a chance, and the greatest
+and most real grievance of mankind in the present day will be removed.
+
+Every child that is born in America, whether in the United States or in
+Canada, has that chance.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+  [2] Destroyed by fire three days after I left Toronto.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+  WEST CANADA--RELATIONS BETWEEN BRITISH AND INDIANS--RETURN TO THE
+  UNITED STATES--DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY--ENCOUNTER WITH AN AMERICAN
+  CUSTOM-HOUSE OFFICER.
+
+
+     _In the train from Canada to Chicago, February 15._
+
+Lectured in Bowmanville, Ont., on the 12th, in Brantford on the 13th,
+and in Sarnia on the 14th, and am now on my way to Chicago, to go from
+there to Wisconsin and Minnesota.
+
+From Brantford I drove to the Indian Reservation, a few miles from the
+town. This visit explained to me why the English are so successful with
+their colonies: they have inborn in them the instinct of diplomacy and
+government.
+
+Whereas the Americans often swindle, starve, and shoot the Indians, the
+English keep them in comfort. England makes paupers and lazy drunkards
+of them, and they quietly and gradually disappear. She supplies them
+with bread, food, Bibles, and fire-water, and they become so lazy that
+they will not even take the trouble to sow the land of their
+reservations. Having a dinner supplied to them, they give up hunting,
+riding, and all their native sports, and become enervated. They go to
+school and die of attacks of civilization. England gives them money to
+celebrate their national fetes and rejoicings, and the good Indians
+shout at the top of their voices, _God save the Queen!_ that is--_God
+save our pensions!_
+
+[Illustration: THE BRITISH INDIAN.]
+
+England, or Great Britain, or again, if you prefer, Greater Britain,
+goes further than that. In Brantford, in the middle of a large square,
+you can see the statue of the Indian chief Brant, erected to his memory
+by public subscriptions collected among the British Canadians.
+
+Here lies the secret of John Bull's success as a colonizer. To erect a
+statue to an Indian chief is a stroke of genius.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What has struck me as most American in Canada is, perhaps, journalism.
+
+Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec possess excellent newspapers, and
+every little town can boast one or two journals.
+
+The tone of these papers is thoroughly American in its liveliness--I had
+almost said, in its loudness. All are readable and most cleverly edited.
+Each paragraph is preceded by a neat and attractive heading. As in the
+American papers, the editorials, or leading articles, are of secondary
+importance. The main portion of the publication is devoted to news,
+interviews, stories, gossip, jokes, anecdotes, etc.
+
+The Montreal papers are read by everybody in the Province of Quebec, and
+the Toronto papers in the Province of Ontario, so that the newspapers
+published in small towns are content with giving all the news of the
+locality. Each of these has a "society" column. Nothing is more amusing
+than to read of the society doings in these little towns. "Miss Brown is
+visiting Miss Smith." "Miss Smith had tea with Miss Robinson yesterday."
+When Miss Brown, or Miss Smith, or Miss Robinson has given a party, the
+names of all the guests are inserted as well as what they had for
+dinner, or for supper, as the case may be. So I take it for granted that
+when anybody gives a party, a ball, a dinner, a reporter receives an
+invitation to describe the party in the next issue of the paper.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At nine o'clock this evening, I left Sarnia, on the frontier of Canada,
+to cross the river and pass into the United States. The train left the
+town, and, on arriving on the bank of the River St. Clair, was divided
+into two sections which were run on board the ferry-boat and made the
+crossing side by side. The passage across the river occupied about
+twenty minutes. On arriving at the other bank, at Port Huron, in the
+State of Michigan, the train left the boat in the same fashion as it had
+gone on board, the two parts were coupled together, and the journey on
+_terra firma_ was smoothly resumed.
+
+There is something fascinating about crossing a river at night, and I
+had promised myself some agreeable moments on board the ferry-boat, from
+which I should be able to see Port Huron lit up with twinkling lights. I
+was also curious to watch the train boarding the boat. But, alas, I had
+reckoned without my host. Instead of star-gazing and _reverie_, there
+was in store for me a "bad quarter of an hour."
+
+No sooner had the train boarded the ferry-boat than there came to the
+door of the parlor car a surly-looking, ill-mannered creature, who
+roughly bade me come to the baggage van, in the other section of the
+train, and open my trunks for him to inspect.
+
+As soon as I had complied, he went down on his knees among my baggage,
+and it was plain to see that he meant business.
+
+The first thing he took out was a suit of clothes, which he threw on the
+dirty floor of the van.
+
+"Have these been worn?" he said.
+
+"They have," I replied.
+
+Then he took out a blue jacket which I used to cross the Atlantic.
+
+[Illustration: "HAVE YOU WORN THIS?"]
+
+"Have you worn this?"
+
+"Yes, for the last two years."
+
+"Is that all?" he said, with a low sardonic grin.
+
+My trunk was the only one he had to examine, as I was the only passenger
+in the parlor car; and I saw that he meant to annoy me, which, I
+imagined, he could do with perfect impunity.
+
+The best thing, in fact, the only thing to do was to take the
+misadventure good-humoredly.
+
+He took out my linen and examined it in detail.
+
+"Have these shirts all been worn?"
+
+"Well, I guess they have. But how is it that you, an official of the
+government, seem to ignore the law of your own country? Don't you know
+that if all these articles are for my own private use, they are not
+dutiable, whether new or not?"
+
+The man did not answer.
+
+He took out more linen, which he put on the floor, and spreading open a
+pair of unmentionables, he asked again:
+
+"Have you worn this? It looks quite new."
+
+I nodded affirmatively.
+
+He then took out a pair of socks.
+
+"Have you worn these?"
+
+"I don't know," I said. "Have a sniff at them."
+
+He continued his examination, and was about to throw my evening suit on
+the floor. I had up to now been _almost_ amused at the proceedings, but
+I felt my good-humor was going, and the lion began to wag its tail. I
+took the man by the arm, and looking at him sternly, I said:
+
+"Now, you put this carefully on the top of some other clothes."
+
+He looked at me and complied.
+
+By this time all the contents of my large trunk were spread on the
+floor.
+
+He got up on his feet and said:
+
+"Have I looked everywhere?"
+
+"No," I said, "you haven't. Do you know how the famous Regent diamond,
+worn by the last kings of France on their crowns, was smuggled into
+French territory?"
+
+[Illustration: THE CONTENTS.]
+
+The creature looked at me with an air of impudence.
+
+"No, I don't," he replied.
+
+I explained to him, and added:
+
+"You have not looked _there_."
+
+The lion, that lies dormant at the bottom of the quietest man, was
+fairly roused in me, and on the least provocation, I would have given
+this man a first-class hiding.
+
+He went away, wondering whether I had insulted him or not, and left me
+in the van to repack my trunk as best I could, an operation which, I
+understand, it was his duty to perform himself.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+  CHICAGO (FIRST VISIT)--THE "NEIGHBORHOOD" OF CHICAGO--THE HISTORY OF
+  CHICAGO--PUBLIC SERVANTS--A VERY DEAF MAN.
+
+
+     _Chicago, February 17._
+
+Oh! a lecturing tour in America!
+
+I am here on my way to St. Paul and Minneapolis.
+
+Just before leaving New York, I saw in a comic paper that Bismarck must
+really now be considered as a great man, because, since his departure
+from office, there had been no rumor of his having applied to Major Pond
+to get up a lecturing tour for him in the United States.
+
+It was not news to me that there are plenty of people in America who
+laugh at the European author's trick of going to the American platform
+as soon as he has made a little name for himself in his own country. The
+laugh finds an echo in England, especially from some journalists who
+have never been asked to go, and from a few men who, having done one
+tour, think it wise not to repeat the experience. For my part, when I
+consider that Emerson, Holmes, Mark Twain, have been lecturers, that
+Dickens, Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Sala, Stanley, Archdeacon Farrar,
+and many more, all have made their bow to American audiences, I fail to
+discover anything very derogatory in the proceeding.
+
+[Illustration: A PIG SQUEALING.]
+
+Besides, I feel bound to say that there is nothing in a lecturing tour
+in America, even in a highly successful one, that can excite the envy of
+the most jealous "failure" in the world. Such work is about the hardest
+that a man, used to the comforts of this life, can undertake. Actors, at
+all events, stop a week, sometimes a fortnight, in the cities they
+visit; but a lecturer is on the road every day, happy when he has not to
+start at night.
+
+No words can picture the monotony of journeys through an immense
+continent, the sameness of which strikes you as almost unbearable.
+Everything is made on one pattern. All the towns are alike. To be in a
+railroad car for ten or twelve hours day after day can hardly be called
+luxury, or even comfort. To have one's poor brain matter thus shaken in
+the cranium is terrible, especially when the cranium is not quite full.
+Constant traveling softens the brain, liquefies it, churns it,
+evaporates it, and it runs out of you through all the cracks of your
+head. I own that traveling is comfortable in America, even luxurious;
+but the best fare becomes monotonous and unpalatable when the dose is
+repeated every day.
+
+To-morrow night I lecture in Minneapolis. The next night I am in
+Detroit. Distance about seven hundred miles.
+
+"Can I manage it?" said I to my impresario, when he showed me my route.
+
+"Why, certn'ly," he replied; "if you catch a train after your lecture, I
+guess you will arrive in time for your lecture in Detroit the next day."
+
+These remarks, in America, are made without a smile.
+
+On arriving at Chicago this morning, I found awaiting me at the Grand
+Pacific Hotel, a letter from my impresario. Here is the purport of it:
+
+  I know you have with you a trunk and a small portmanteau. I would
+  advise you to leave your trunk at the Grand Pacific, and to take with
+  you only the portmanteau, while you are in the neighborhood of
+  Chicago. You will thus save trouble, expense, etc.
+
+On looking at my route, I found that the "neighborhood of Chicago"
+included St. Paul, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland,
+Cincinnati, Indianapolis: something like a little two-thousand-mile tour
+"in the neighborhood of Chicago," to be done in about one week.
+
+When I confided my troubles to my American friends, I got little
+sympathy from them.
+
+"That's quite right," they would say; "we call the neighborhood of a
+city any place which, by starting after dinner, you can reach at about
+breakfast time the next day. You dine, you go on board the car, you
+have a smoke, you go to bed, you sleep, you wake up, you dress--and
+there you are. Do you see?"
+
+After all you may be of this opinion, if you do not reckon sleeping
+time. But I do reckon it, when I have to spend the night in a closed
+box, six feet long, and three feet wide, and about two feet high, and
+especially when the operation has to be repeated three or four times a
+week.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And the long weary days that are not spent in traveling, how can they be
+passed, even tolerably, in an American city, where the lonely lecturer
+knows nobody, and where there is absolutely nothing to be seen beyond
+the hotels and the dry-goods stores? Worse still: he sometimes has the
+good luck to make the acquaintance of some charming people: but he has
+hardly had time to fix their features in his memory, when he has to go,
+probably never to see them again.
+
+The lecturer speaks for an hour and a half on the platform every
+evening, the rest of his time is exclusively devoted to keeping silence.
+Poor fellow! how grateful he is to the hotel clerk who sometimes--alas,
+very seldom--will chat with him for a few minutes. As a rule the hotel
+clerk is a mute, who assigns a room to you, or hands you the letters
+waiting for you in the box corresponding to your number. His mouth is
+closed. He may have seen you for half a minute only; he will remember
+you. Even in a hotel accommodating over a thousand guests, he will know
+you, he will know the number of your room, but he won't speak. He is not
+the only American that won't speak. Every man in America who is
+attending to some duty of other, has his mouth closed. I have tried the
+railroad conductor, and found him mute. I have had a shot at the porter
+in the Pullman car, and found him mute. I have endeavored to draw out
+the janitors of the halls where I was to speak in the evening, and I
+have failed. Even the negroes won't speak. You would imagine that
+speaking was prohibited by the statute-book. When my lecture was over, I
+returned to the hotel, and like a culprit crept to bed.
+
+[Illustration: THE SLEEPING CAR.]
+
+[Illustration: THE JANITOR.]
+
+How I do love New York! It is not that it possesses a single building
+that I really care for; it is because it contains scores and scores of
+delightful people, brilliant, affable, hospitable, warm-hearted friends,
+who were kind enough to welcome me when I returned from a tour, and in
+whose company I could break up the cobwebs that had had time to form in
+the corners of my mouth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The history of Chicago can be written in a few lines. So can the history
+of the whole of America.
+
+In about 1830 a man called Benjamin Harris, with his family, moved to
+Chicago, or Fort Dearborn, as it was then called. Not more than half a
+dozen whites, all of whom were Indian traders, had preceded them. In
+1832 they had a child, the first white female born in Chicago--now
+married, called Mrs. S. A. Holmes, and the mother of fourteen children.
+In 1871 Chicago had over 100,000 inhabitants, and was burned to the
+ground. To-day Chicago has over 1,200,000 inhabitants, and in ten years'
+time will have two millions.
+
+The activity in Chicago is perfectly amazing. And I don't mean
+commercial activity only. Compare the following statistics: In the great
+reading rooms of the British Museum, there was an average of 620 readers
+daily during the year 1888. In the reading-room of the Chicago Public
+Library, there was an average of 1569 each day in the same year.
+Considering that the population of London is nearly five times that of
+Chicago, it shows that the reading public is ten times more numerous in
+Chicago than in London.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is a never failing source of amusement to watch the ways of public
+servants in this country.
+
+I went to pay a visit to a public museum this afternoon.
+
+In Europe, the keepers, that is to say, the servants of the public, have
+cautions posted in the museums, in which "the public are requested not
+to touch." In France, they are "begged," which is perhaps a more
+suitable expression, as the museums, after all, belong to the public.
+
+In America, the notice is "Hands off!" This is short and to the point.
+The servants of the public allow you to enter the museums, charge you
+twenty-five cents, and warn you to behave well. "Hands off" struck me as
+rather off-handed.
+
+[Illustration: THE "BRUSH-UP."]
+
+I really admire the independence of all the servants in this country.
+You may give them a tip, you will not run the risk of making them
+servile or even polite.
+
+The railway conductor says "ticket!" The word _please_ does not belong
+to his vocabulary any more than the words "thank you." He says "ticket"
+and frowns. You show it to him. He looks at it suspiciously, and gives
+it back to you with a haughty air that seems to say: "I hope you will
+behave properly while you are in my car."
+
+The tip in America is not _de rigueur_ as in Europe. The cabman charges
+you so much, and expects nothing more. He would lose his dignity by
+accepting a tip (many run the risk). He will often ask you for more than
+you owe him; but this is the act of a sharp man of business, not the act
+of a servant. In doing so, he does not derogate from his character.
+
+The negro is the only servant who smiles in America, the only one who is
+sometimes polite and attentive, and the only one who speaks English with
+a pleasant accent.
+
+The negro porter in the sleeping cars has seldom failed to thank me for
+the twenty-five or fifty cent piece I always give him after he has
+brushed--or rather, swept--my clothes with his little broom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few minutes ago, as I was packing my valise for a journey to St. Paul
+and Minneapolis to-night, the porter brought in a card. The name was
+unknown to me; but the porter having said that it was the card of a
+gentleman who was most anxious to speak to me, I said, "Very well, bring
+him here."
+
+The gentleman entered the room, saluted me, shook hands, and said:
+
+"I hope I am not intruding."
+
+"Well," said I, "I must ask you not to detain me long, because I am off
+in a few minutes."
+
+"I understand, sir, that some time ago you were engaged in teaching the
+French language in one of the great public schools of England."
+
+"I was, sir," I replied.
+
+"Well, I have a son whom I wish to speak French properly, and I have
+come to ask for your views on the subject. In other words, will you be
+good enough to tell me what are the best methods for teaching this
+language? Only excuse me, I am very deaf."
+
+[Illustration: LEFT.]
+
+He pulled out of his back pocket two yards of gutta-percha tube, and,
+applying one end to his ear and placing the other against my mouth, he
+said, "Go ahead."
+
+"Really?" I shouted through the tube. "Now please shut your eyes;
+nothing is better for increasing the power of hearing."
+
+The man shut his eyes and turned his head sideways, so as to have the
+listening ear in front of me. I took my valise and ran to the elevator
+as fast as I could.
+
+That man may still be waiting for aught I know and care.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before leaving the hotel, I made the acquaintance of Mr. George Kennan,
+the Russian traveler. His articles on Russia and Siberia, published in
+the _Century Magazine_, attracted a great deal of public attention, and
+people everywhere throng to hear him relate his terrible experiences on
+the platform. He has two hundred lectures to give this season. He struck
+me as a most remarkable man--simple, unaffected in his manner, with
+unflinching resolution written on his face; a man in earnest, you can
+see. I am delighted to find that I shall have the pleasure of meeting
+him again in New York in the middle of April. He looks tired. He, too,
+is lecturing in the "neighborhood of Chicago," and is off now to the
+night train for Cincinnati.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+  ST. PAUL AND MINNEAPOLIS, THE SISTER CITIES--RIVALRIES AND JEALOUSIES
+  BETWEEN LARGE AMERICAN CITIES--MINNEHAHA FALLS--WONDERFUL
+  INTERVIEWERS--MY HAT GETS INTO TROUBLE AGAIN--ELECTRICITY IN THE
+  AIR--FOREST ADVERTISEMENTS--RAILWAY SPEED IN AMERICA.
+
+
+     _St. Paul, Minn., February 20._
+
+Arrived at St. Paul the day before yesterday to pay a professional visit
+to the two great sister cities of the north of America.
+
+Sister cities! Yes, they are near enough to shake hands and kiss each
+other, but I am afraid they avail themselves of their proximity to
+scratch each other's faces.
+
+If you open Bouillet's famous Dictionary of History and Geography
+(edition 1880), you will find in it neither St. Paul nor Minneapolis. I
+was told yesterday that in 1834 there was one white inhabitant in
+Minneapolis. To-day the two cities have about 200,000 inhabitants each.
+Where is the dictionary of geography that can keep pace with such
+wonderful phantasmagoric growth? The two cities are separated by a
+distance of about nine miles, but they are every day growing up toward
+each other, and to-morrow they will practically have become one.
+
+Nothing is more amusing than the jealousies which exist between the
+different large cities of the United States, and when these rival places
+are close to each other, the feeling of jealousy is so intensified as to
+become highly entertaining.
+
+St. Paul charges Minneapolis with copying into the census names from
+tombstones, and it is affirmed that young men living in either one of
+the cities will marry girls belonging to the other so as to decrease its
+population by one. The story goes that once a preacher having announced,
+in a Minneapolis church, that he had taken the text of his sermon from
+St. Paul, the congregation walked out _en masse_.
+
+New York despises Philadelphia, and pokes fun at Boston. On the other
+hand, Boston hates Chicago, and _vice versa_. St. Louis has only
+contempt for Chicago, and both cities laugh heartily at Detroit and
+Milwaukee. San Francisco and Denver are left alone in their prosperity.
+They are so far away from the east and north of America, that the
+feeling they inspire is only one of indifference.
+
+"Philadelphia is a city of homes, not of lodging-houses," once said a
+Philadelphian to a New Yorker; "and it spreads over a far greater area
+than New York, with less than half the inhabitants." "Ah," replied the
+New Yorker, "that's because it has been so much sat upon."
+
+"You are a city of commerce," said a Bostonian to a New York wit;
+"Boston is a city of culture." "Yes," replied the New Yorker. "You
+spell culture with a big C, and God with a small g."
+
+Of course St. Paul and Minneapolis accuse each other of counting their
+respective citizens twice over. All that is diverting in the highest
+degree. This feeling does not exist only between the rival cities of the
+New World, it exists in the Old. Ask a Glasgow man what he thinks of
+Edinburgh, and an Edinburgh man what he thinks of Glasgow!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On account of the intense cold (nearly thirty degrees below zero), I
+have not been able to see much either of St. Paul or of Minneapolis, and
+I am unable to please or vex either of these cities by pointing out
+their beauties and defects. Both are large and substantially built, with
+large churches, schools, banks, stores, and all the temples that modern
+Christians erect to Jehovah and Mammon. I may say that the Ryan Hotel at
+St. Paul and the West House at Minneapolis are among the very best
+hotels I have come across in America, the latter especially. When I have
+added that, the day before yesterday, I had an immense audience in the
+People's Church at St. Paul, and that to-night I have had a crowded
+house at the Grand Opera House in Minneapolis, it is hardly necessary
+for me to say that I shall have enjoyed myself in the two great towns,
+and that I shall carry away with me a delightful recollection of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon after arriving in Minneapolis yesterday, I went to see the
+Minnehaha Falls, immortalized by Longfellow. The motor line gave me an
+idea of rapid transit. I returned to the West House for lunch and spent
+the afternoon writing. Many interviewers called.
+
+[Illustration: "WHAT YEARLY INCOME DOES YOUR BOOKS AND LECTURES BRING
+IN?"]
+
+The first who came sat down in my room and point-blank asked me my views
+on contagious diseases. Seeing that I was not disposed to talk on the
+subject, he asked me to discourse on republics and the prospects of
+General Boulanger. In fact, anything for copy.
+
+The second one, after asking me where I came from and where I was going,
+inquired whether I had exhausted the Anglo-Saxons and whether I should
+write on other nations. After I had satisfied him, he asked me what
+yearly income my books and lectures brought in.
+
+Another wanted to know why I had not brought my wife with me, how many
+children I had, how old they were, and other details as wonderfully
+interesting to the public. By and by I saw he was jotting down a
+description of my appearance, and the different clothes I had on! "I
+will unpack this trunk," I said, "and spread all its contents on the
+floor. Perhaps you would be glad to have a look at my things." He
+smiled: "Don't trouble any more," he said; "I am very much obliged to
+you for your courtesy."
+
+This morning, on opening the papers, I see that my hat is getting into
+trouble again. I thought that, after getting rid of my brown hat and
+sending it to the editor in the town where it had created such a
+sensation, peace was secured. Not a bit. In the Minneapolis _Journal_ I
+read the following:
+
+  The attractive personality of the man [allow me to record this for the
+  sake of what follows], heightened by his neglige sack coat and vest,
+  with a background of yellowish plaid trowsers, occasional glimpses of
+  which were revealed from beneath the folds of a heavy ulster, which
+  swept the floor [I was sitting of course] and was trimmed with fur
+  collar and cuffs. And then that hat! On the table, carelessly thrown
+  amid a pile of correspondence, was his nondescript headgear. One of
+  those half-sombreros affected by the wild Western cowboy when on dress
+  parade, an impossible combination of dark-blue and bottle-green.
+
+Fancy treating in this off-handed way a $7.50 soft black felt hat bought
+of the best hatter in New York! No, nothing is sacred for those
+interviewers. Dark-blue and bottle-green! Why, did that man imagine that
+I wore my hat inside out so as to show the silk lining?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The air here is perfectly wonderful, dry and full of electricity. If
+your fingers come into contact with anything metallic, like the
+hot-water pipes, the chandeliers, the stopper of your washing basin,
+they draw a spark, sharp and vivid. One of the reporters who called
+here, and to whom I mentioned the fact, was able to light my gas with
+his finger, by merely obtaining an electric spark on the top of the
+burner. When he said he could thus light the gas, I thought he was
+joking.
+
+I had observed this phenomenon before. In Ottawa, for instance.
+
+Whether this air makes you live too quickly, I do not know; but it is
+most bracing and healthy. I have never felt so well and hearty in my
+life as in these cold, dry climates.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was all the more flattered to have such a large and fashionable
+audience at the Grand Opera House to-night, that my _causerie_ was not
+given under the auspices of any society, or as one of any course of
+lectures.
+
+I lecture in Detroit the day after to-morrow. I shall have to leave
+Minneapolis to-morrow morning at six o'clock for Chicago, which I shall
+reach at ten in the evening. Then I shall have to run to the Michigan
+Central Station to catch the night train to Detroit at eleven.
+Altogether, twenty-three hours of railway traveling--745 miles.
+
+And still in "the neighborhood of Chicago!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: AN ADVERTISEMENT.]
+
+     _In the train to Chicago, February 21._
+
+Have just passed a wonderful advertisement. Here, in the midst of a
+forest, I have seen a huge wide board nailed on two trees, parallel to
+the railway line. On it was written, round a daub supposed to represent
+one of the loveliest English ladies: "If you would be as lovely as the
+beautiful Lady de Gray, use Gray perfumes."
+
+_Soyez donc belle_, to be used as an advertisement in the forests of
+Minnesota!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "I RETURNED THANKS."]
+
+My lectures have never been criticised in more kind, flattering, and
+eulogistic terms than in the St. Paul and the Minneapolis papers, which
+I am reading on my way to Chicago. I find newspaper reading a great
+source of amusement in the trains. First of all because these papers
+always are light reading, and also because reading is a possibility in a
+well lighted carriage going only at a moderate speed. Eating is
+comfortable, and even writing is possible _en route_. With the exception
+of a few trains, such as are run from New York to Boston, Chicago, and
+half a dozen other important cities, railway traveling is slower in
+America than in England and France; but I have never found fault with
+the speed of an American train. On the contrary, I have always felt
+grateful to the driver for running slowly. And every time that the car
+reached the other side of some of the many rotten wooden bridges on
+which the train had to pass, I returned thanks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+  DETROIT--THE TOWN--THE DETROIT "FREE PRESS"--A LADY INTERVIEWER--THE
+  "UNCO GUID" IN DETROIT--REFLECTIONS ON THE ANGLO-SAXON "UNCO GUID."
+
+
+     _Detroit, February 22._
+
+Am delighted with Detroit. It possesses beautiful streets, avenues, and
+walks, and a fine square in the middle of which stands a remarkably fine
+monument. I am also grateful to this city for breaking the monotony of
+the eternal parallelograms with which the whole of the United States are
+built. My national vanity almost suggests to me that this town owes its
+gracefulness to its French origin. There are still, I am told, about
+25,000 French people settled in Detroit.
+
+I have had to-night, in the Church of Our Father, a crowded and most
+brilliant audience, whose keenness, intelligence, and kindness were very
+flattering.
+
+I was interviewed, both by a lady and a gentleman, for the Detroit _Free
+Press_, that most witty of American newspapers. The charming young lady
+interviewer came to talk on social topics, I remarked that she was armed
+with a copy of "Jonathan and his Continent," and I came to the
+conclusion that she would probably ask for a few explanations about that
+book. I was not mistaken. She took exception, she informed me, to many
+statements concerning the American girl in the book. I made a point to
+prove to her that all was right, and all was truth, and I think I
+persuaded her to abandon the prosecution.
+
+[Illustration: THE LADY INTERVIEWER.]
+
+To tell the truth, now the real truth, mind you, I am rather tired of
+hearing about the American girl. The more I see of her the more I am
+getting convinced that she is--like the other girls in the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A friend, who came to have a chat with me after this lecture, has told
+me that the influential people of the city are signing a petition to the
+custodians of the museum calling upon them to drape all the nude
+statues, and intimating their intention of boycotting the institution,
+if the Venuses and Apollos are not forthwith provided with tuckers and
+togas.
+
+It is a well-known fact in the history of the world, that young
+communities have no taste for fine art--they have no time to cultivate
+it. If I had gone to Oklahoma, I should not have expected to find any
+art feeling at all; but that in a city like Detroit, where there is such
+evidence of intellectual life and high culture among the inhabitants, a
+party should be found numerous and strong enough to issue such a heathen
+dictate as this seems scarcely credible. I am inclined to think it must
+be a joke. That the "unco guid" should flourish under the gloomy sky of
+Great Britain I understand, but under the bright blue sky of America, in
+that bracing atmosphere, I cannot.
+
+It is most curious that there should be people who, when confronted
+with some glorious masterpiece of sculpture, should not see the poetry,
+the beauty of the human form divine. This is beyond me, and beyond any
+educated Frenchman.
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAPED STATUES.]
+
+Does the "unco guid" exist in America, then? I should have thought that
+these people, of the earth earthy, were not found out of England and
+Scotland.
+
+When I was in America two years ago, I heard that an English author of
+some repute, talking one day with Mr. Richard Watson Gilder about the
+Venus of Milo, had remarked that, as he looked at her beautiful form, he
+longed to put his arms around her and kiss her. Mr. Gilder, who, as a
+poet, as an artist, has felt only respect mingled with his admiration of
+the matchless divinity, replied: "I hope she would have grown a pair of
+arms for the occasion, so as to have slapped your face."
+
+It is not so much the thing that offends the "unco guid"; it is the
+name, the reflection, the idea. Unhealthy-minded himself, he dreads a
+taint where there is none, and imagines in others a corruption which
+exists only in himself.
+
+Yet the One, whom he would fain call Master, but whose teachings he is
+slow in following, said: "Woe be to them by whom offense cometh." But
+the "unco guid" is a Christian failure, a _parvenu_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _parvenu_ is a person who makes strenuous efforts to persuade other
+people that he is entitled to the position he occupies.
+
+There are _parvenus_ in religion, as there are _parvenus_ in the
+aristocracy, in society, in literature, in the fine arts, etc.
+
+The worst type of the French _parvenu_ is the one whose father was a
+worthy, hard-working man called _Dubois_ or _Dumont_, and who, at his
+father's death, dubs himself _du Bois_ or _du Mont_, becomes a
+clericalist and the stanchest monarchist, and runs down the great
+Revolution which made one of his grand-parents a man. M. _du Bois_ or
+_du Mont_ outdoes the genuine nobleman, who needs make no noise to
+attract attention to a name which everybody knows, and which, in spite
+of what may be said on the subject, often recalls the memory of some
+glorious event in the past.
+
+[Illustration: THE PARVENU.]
+
+The worst type of Anglo-Saxon _parvenu_ is probably the "unco guid," or
+religious _parvenu_.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon "unco guid" is seldom to be found among Roman Catholics;
+that is, among the followers of the most ancient Christian religion. He
+is to be found among the followers of the newest forms of
+"Christianity." This is quite natural. He has to try to eclipse his
+fellow-Christians by his piety, in order to show that the new religion
+to which he belongs was a necessary invention.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon "unco guid" is easily recognized. He is dark (all bigots
+and fanatics are). He is dressed in black, shiny broadcloth raiment. A
+wide-brimmed felt hat covers his head. He walks with light, short,
+jaunty steps, his head a little inclined on one side. He never carries a
+stick, which might give a rather fast appearance to his turn-out. He
+invariably carries an umbrella, even in the brightest weather, as being
+more respectable--and this umbrella he never rolls, for he would avoid
+looking in the distance as if he had a stick. He casts right and left
+little grimaces that are so many forced smiles of self-satisfaction.
+"Try to be as good as I am," he seems to say to all who happen to look
+at him, "and you will be as happy." And he "smiles, and smiles, and
+smiles."
+
+He has a small soul, a small heart, and a small brain.
+
+As a rule, he is a well-to-do person. It pays better to have a narrow
+mind than to have broad sympathies.
+
+He drinks tea, but prefers cocoa, as being a more virtuous beverage.
+
+He is perfectly destitute of humor, and is the most inartistic creature
+in the world. Everything suggests to him either profanity or indecency.
+The "Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character," by Dean Ramsay,
+would strike him as profane, and if placed in the Musee du Louvre,
+before the Venus of Milo, he would see nothing but a woman who has next
+to no clothes on.
+
+His distorted mind makes him take everything in ill part. His hands get
+pricked on every thorn that he comes across on the road, and he misses
+all the roses.
+
+If I were not a Christian, the following story, which is not as often
+told as it should be, would have converted me long ago:
+
+  Jesus arrived one evening at the gates of a certain city, and he sent
+  his disciples forward to prepare supper, while he himself, intent on
+  doing good, walked through the streets into the marketplace. And he
+  saw at the corner of the market some people gathered together, looking
+  at an object on the ground; and he drew near to see what it might be.
+  It was a dead dog, with a halter round his neck, by which he appeared
+  to have been dragged through the dirt; and a viler, a more abject, a
+  more unclean thing, never met the eyes of man. And those who stood by
+  looked on with abhorrence. "Faugh!" said one, stopping his nose, "it
+  pollutes the air." "How long," said another, "shall this foul beast
+  offend our sight?" "Look at his torn hide," said a third; "one could
+  not even cut a shoe out of it!" "And his ears," said a fourth, "all
+  draggled and bleeding!" "No doubt," said a fifth, "he has been hanged
+  for thieving!" And Jesus heard them, and looking down compassionately
+  on the dead creature, he said: "Pearls are not equal to the whiteness
+  of his teeth!"
+
+If I understand the Gospel, the gist of its teachings is contained in
+the foregoing little story. Love and forgiveness: finding something to
+pity and admire even in a dead dog. Such is the religion of Christ.
+
+The "Christianity" of the "unco guid" is as like this religion as are
+the teachings of the Old Testament.
+
+Something to condemn, the discovery of wickedness in the most innocent,
+and often elevating, recreations, such is the favorite occupation of the
+Anglo-Saxon "unco guid." Music is licentious, laughter wicked, dancing
+immoral, statuary almost criminal, and, by and by, the "Society for the
+Suggestion of Indecency," which is placed under his immediate patronage
+and supervision, will find fault with our going out in the streets, on
+the plea that under our garments we carry our nudity.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon "unco guid" is the successor of the Pharisee. In reading
+Christ's description of the latter, you are immediately struck with the
+likeness. The modern "unco guid" "loves to pray standing in the churches
+and chapels and in the corners of the streets, that he may be seen of
+men." "He uses vain repetitions, for he thinks that he shall be heard
+for his much speaking." "When he fasts, he is of sad countenance; for he
+disfigures his face, that he may appear unto men to fast." There is not
+one feature of the portrait that does not fit in exactly.
+
+The Jewish "unco guid" crucified Christ. The Anglo-Saxon one would
+crucify Him again if He should return to earth and interfere with the
+prosperous business firms that make use of His name.
+
+The "unco guid's" Christianity consists in extolling his virtues and
+ignoring other people's. He spends his time in "pulling motes out of
+people's eyes," but cannot see clearly to do it, "owing to the beams
+that are in his own." He overwhelms you, he crushes you, with his
+virtue, and one of the greatest treats is to catch him tripping, a
+chance which you may occasionally have, especially when you meet him on
+the Continent of Europe.
+
+The Anglo-Saxon "unco guid" calls himself a Christian, but the precepts
+of the Gospel are the very opposite of those he practices. The gentle,
+merciful, forgiving, Man-God of the Gospel has not for him the charms
+and attractions of the Jehovah who commanded the cowardly, ungrateful,
+and bloodthirsty people of his choice to treat their women as slaves,
+and to exterminate their enemies, sparing neither old men, women, nor
+children. This cruel, revengeful, implacable deity is far more to the
+Anglo-Saxon "unco guid's" liking than the Saviour who bade His disciples
+love their enemies and put up their swords in the presence of his
+persecutors. The "unco guid" is not a Christian, he is a Jew in all but
+name. And I will say this much for him, that the Commandments given on
+Mount Sinai are much easier to follow than the Sermon on the Mount. It
+is easier not to commit murder than to hold out your right cheek after
+your left one has been slapped. It is easier not to steal than to run
+after the man who has robbed us, in order to offer him what he has not
+taken. It is easier to honor our parents than to love our enemies.
+
+The teachings of the Gospel are trying to human nature. There is no
+religion more difficult to follow; and this is why, in spite of its
+beautiful, but too lofty, precepts, there is no religion in the world
+that can boast so many hypocrites--so many followers who pretend that
+they follow their religion, but who do not, and very probably cannot.
+
+Being unable to love man, as he is bidden in the Gospel, the "unco guid"
+loves God, as he is bidden in the Old Testament. He loves God in the
+abstract. He tells Him so in endless prayers and litanies.
+
+For him Christianity consists in discussing theological questions,
+whether a minister shall preach with or without a white surplice on, and
+in singing hymns more or less out of tune.
+
+As if God could be loved to the exclusion of man! You love God, after
+all, as you love anybody else, not by professions of love, but by deeds.
+
+When he prays, the "unco guid" buries his face in his hands or in his
+hat. He screws up his face, and the more fervent the prayer is (or the
+more people are looking at him), the more grimaces he makes. Heinrich
+Heine, on coming out of an English church, said that "a blaspheming
+Frenchman must be a more pleasing object in the sight of God than many a
+praying Englishman." He had, no doubt, been looking at the "unco guid."
+
+If you do not hold the same religious views as he does, you are a wicked
+man, an atheist. He alone has the truth. Being engaged in a discussion
+with an "unco guid" one day, I told him that if God had given me hands
+to handle, surely He had given me a little brain to think. "You are
+right," he quickly interrupted; "but, with the hands that God gave you
+you can commit a good action, and you can also commit murder."
+Therefore, because I did not think as he did, I was the criminal, for,
+of course, he was the righteous man. For all those who, like myself,
+believe in a future life, there is, I believe, a great treat in store:
+the sight of the face he will make, when his place is assigned to him in
+the next world. _Qui mourra, verra._
+
+Anglo-Saxon land is governed by the "unco guid." Good society cordially
+despises him; the aristocracy of Anglo-Saxon intelligence--philosophers,
+scientists, men of letters, artists--simply loathe him; but all have to
+bow to his rule, and submit their works to his most incompetent
+criticism, and all are afraid of him.
+
+[Illustration: THE POOR MAN'S SABBATH.]
+
+In a moment of wounded national pride, Sydney Smith once exclaimed:
+"What a pity it is we have no amusements in England except vice and
+religion!" The same exclamation might be uttered to-day, and the cause
+laid at the Anglo-Saxon "unco guid's" door. It is he who is responsible
+for the degradation of the British lower classes, by refusing to enable
+them to elevate their minds on Sundays at the sight of the masterpieces
+of art which are contained in the museums, or at the sound of the
+symphonies of Beethoven and Mozart, which might be given to the people
+at reduced prices on that day. The poor people must choose between vice
+and religion, and as the wretches know they are not wanted in the
+churches, they go to the taverns.
+
+It is this same "unco guid" who is responsible for the state of the
+streets in the large cities of Great Britain by refusing to allow vice
+to be regulated. If you were to add the amount of immorality to be found
+in the streets of Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and the other capitals of
+Europe, no fair-minded Englishman "who knows" would contradict me, if I
+said that the total thus obtained would be much below the amount
+supplied by London alone; but the "unco guid" stays at home of an
+evening, advises you to do the same, and ignoring, or pretending to
+ignore, what is going on round his own house, he prays for the
+conversion--of the French.
+
+The "unco guid" thinks that his own future safety is assured, so he
+prays for his neighbors'. He reminds one of certain Scots, who inhabit
+two small islands on the west coast of Scotland. Their piety is really
+most touching. Every Sunday in their churches, they commend to God's
+care "the puir inhabitants of the two adjacent islands of Britain and
+Ireland."
+
+A few weeks ago, there appeared in a Liverpool paper a letter, signed "A
+Lover of Reverence," in which this anonymous person complained of a
+certain lecturer, who had indulged in profane remarks. "I was not
+present myself," he or she said, "but have heard of what took place,"
+etc. You see, this person was not present, but as a good "Christian," he
+hastened to judge. However, this is nothing. In the letter, I read:
+"Fortunately, there are in Liverpool, a few Christians, like myself,
+always on the watch, and ever looking after our Maker's honor."
+
+Fortunate Liverpool! What a proud position for the Almighty, to be
+placed in Liverpool under the protection of the "Lover of Reverence!"
+
+Probably this "unco guid" and myself would not agree on the definition
+of the word _profanity_, for, if I had written and published such a
+letter, I would consider myself guilty, not only of profanity, but of
+blasphemy.
+
+If the "unco guid" is the best product of Christianity, Christianity
+must be pronounced a ghastly failure, and I should feel inclined to
+exclaim, with the late Dean Milman, "If all this is Christianity, it is
+high time we should try something else--say the religion of Christ, for
+instance."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+  MILWAUKEE--A WELL-FILLED DAY--REFLECTIONS ON THE SCOTCH IN
+  AMERICA--CHICAGO CRITICISMS.
+
+
+     _Milwaukee, February 25._
+
+Arrived here from Detroit yesterday. Milwaukee is a city of over two
+hundred thousand inhabitants, a very large proportion of whom are
+Germans, who have come here to settle down, and wish good luck to the
+_Vaterland_, at the respectful distance of five thousand miles.
+
+At the station I was met by Mr. John L. Mitchell, the railway king, and
+by a compatriot of mine, M. A. de Guerville, a young enthusiast who has
+made up his mind to check the German invasion of Milwaukee, and has
+succeeded in starting a French society, composed of the leading
+inhabitants of the city. On arriving, I found a heavy but delightful
+programme to go through during the day: a lunch to be given me by the
+ladies at Milwaukee College at one o'clock; a reception by the French
+Club at Mrs. John L. Mitchell's house at four; a dinner at six; my
+lecture at eight, and a reception and a supper by the Press Club at
+half-past ten; the rest of the evening to be spent as circumstances
+would allow or suggest. I was to be the guest of Mr. Mitchell at his
+magnificent house in town.
+
+[Illustration: A CITIZEN OF MILWAUKEE.]
+
+"Good," I said, "let us begin."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Went through the whole programme. The reception by the French Club, in
+the beautiful Moorish-looking rooms of Mrs. John L. Mitchell's superb
+mansion, was a great success. I was amazed to meet so many
+French-speaking people, and much amused to see my young compatriot go
+from one group to another, to satisfy himself that all the members of
+the club were speaking French; for I must tell you that, among the
+statutes of the club, there is one that imposes a fine of ten cents on
+any member caught in the act of speaking English at the gatherings of
+the association.
+
+The lecture was a great success. The New Plymouth Church[3] was packed,
+and the audience extremely warm and appreciative. The supper offered to
+me by the Press Club proved most enjoyable. And yet, that was not all.
+At one o'clock the Press Club repaired to a perfect German _Brauerei_,
+where we spent an hour in Bavaria, drinking excellent Bavarian beer
+while chatting, telling stories, etc.
+
+I will omit to mention at what time we returned home, so as not to tell
+tales about my kind host.
+
+In spite of the late hours we kept last night, breakfast was punctually
+served at eight this morning. First course, porridge. Thanks to the
+kind, thoroughly Scotch hospitality of Mr. John L. Mitchell and his
+charming family, thanks to the many friends and sympathizers I met
+here, I shall carry away a most pleasant recollection of this large and
+beautiful city. I shall leave Milwaukee with much regret. Indeed, the
+worst feature of a thick lecturing tour is to feel, almost every day,
+that you leave behind friends whom you may never see again.
+
+I lecture at the Central Music Hall, Chicago, this evening; but Chicago
+is reached from here in two hours and a half, and I will go as late in
+the day as I can.
+
+No more beds for me now, until I reach Albany, in three days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The railway king in Wisconsin is a Scotchman. I was not surprised to
+hear it. The iron king in Pennsylvania is a Scotchman, Mr. Andrew
+Carnegie. The oil king of Ohio is a Scotchman, Mr. Alexander Macdonald.
+The silver king of California is a Scotchman, Mr. Mackay. The
+dry-goods-store king of New York--he is dead now--was a Scotchman, Mr.
+Stewart. It is just the same in Canada, just the same in Australia, and
+all over the English-speaking world. The Scotch are successful
+everywhere, and the new countries offer them fields for their industry,
+their perseverance, and their shrewdness. There you see them landowners,
+directors of companies, at the head of all the great enterprises. In the
+lower stations of life, thanks to their frugality and saving habits, you
+find them thriving everywhere. You go to the manufactory, you are told
+that the foremen are Scotch.
+
+I have, perhaps, a better illustration still.
+
+[Illustration: TALES OF OLD SCOTLAND.]
+
+If you travel in Canada, either by the Grand Trunk or the Canadian
+Pacific, you will meet in the last parlor car, near the stove, a man
+whose duty consists in seeing that, all along the line, the workmen are
+at their posts, digging, repairing, etc. These workmen are all day
+exposed to the Canadian temperature, and often have to work knee-deep in
+the snow. Well, you will find that the man with small, keen eyes, who
+is able to do his work in the railroad car, warming himself comfortably
+by the stove, is invariably a Scotchman. There is only one berth with a
+stove in the whole business; it is he who has got it. Many times I have
+had a chat with that Scotchman on the subject of old Scotland. Many
+times I have sat with him in the little smoking-room of the parlor car,
+listening to the history of his life, or, maybe, a few good Scotch
+anecdotes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _In the train from Chicago to Cleveland_, _February 26_.
+
+I arrived in Chicago at five o'clock in the afternoon yesterday, dined,
+dressed, and lectured at the Music Hall under the auspices of the Drexel
+free Kindergarten. There was a large audience, and all passed off very
+well. After the lecture, I went to the Grand Pacific Hotel, changed
+clothes, and went on board the sleeping car bound for Cleveland, O.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The criticisms of my lecture in this morning's Chicago papers are
+lively.
+
+The _Herald_ calls me:
+
+  A dapper little Frenchman. Five feet eleven in height, and two hundred
+  pounds in weight!
+
+The _Times_ says:
+
+  That splendid trinity of the American peerage, the colonel, the judge,
+  and the professor, turned out in full force at Central Music Hall last
+  night. The lecturer is a magician who serves up your many little
+  defects, peculiar to the auditors' own country, on a silver salver, so
+  artistically garnished that one forgets the sarcasm in admiration of
+  the sauce.
+
+[Illustration: A CELEBRATED EXECUTIONER.]
+
+The _Tribune_ is quite as complimentary and quite as lively:
+
+  His satire is as keen as the blade of the celebrated executioner who
+  could cut a man's head off, and the unlucky person not know it until a
+  pinch of snuff would cause a sneeze, and the decapitated head would,
+  much to its surprise, find itself rolling over in the dust.
+
+And after a good breakfast at Toledo station, I enjoyed an hour poring
+over the Chicago papers.
+
+I lecture in Cleveland to-night, and am still in "the neighborhood of
+Chicago."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+  [3] Very strange, that church with its stalls, galleries, and
+    boxes--a perfect theater. From the platform it was interesting to
+    watch the immense throng, packing the place from floor to ceiling, in
+    front, on the sides, behind, everywhere.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+THE MONOTONY OF TRAVELING IN THE STATES--"MANON LESCAUT" IN AMERICA.
+
+
+     _In the train from Cleveland to Albany, February 27._
+
+Am getting tired and ill. I am not bed-ridden, but am fairly well rid of
+a bed. I have lately spent as many nights in railway cars as in hotel
+beds.
+
+Am on my way to Albany, just outside "the neighborhood of Chicago." I
+lecture in that place to-night, and shall get to New York to-morrow.
+
+I am suffering from the monotony of life. My greatest objection to
+America (indeed I do not believe I have any other) is the sameness of
+everything. I understand the Americans who run away to Europe every year
+to see an old church, a wall covered with moss and ivy, some good
+old-fashioned peasantry not dressed like the rest of the world.
+
+What strikes a European most, in his rambles through America, is the
+absence of the picturesque. The country is monotonous, and eternally the
+same. Burned-up fields, stumps of trees, forests, wooden houses all
+built on the same pattern. All the stations you pass are alike. All the
+towns are alike. To say that an American town is ten times larger than
+another simply means that it has ten times more blocks of houses. All
+the streets are alike, with the same telegraph poles, the same "Indian"
+as a sign for tobacconists, the same red, white, and blue pole as a sign
+for barbers. All the hotels are the same, all the _menus_ are the same,
+all the plates and dishes the same--why, all the ink-stands are the
+same. All the people are dressed in the same way. When you meet an
+American with all his beard, you want to shake his hands and thank him
+for not shaving it, as ninety-nine out of every hundred Americans do. Of
+course I have not seen California, the Rocky Mountains, and many other
+parts of America where the scenery is very beautiful; but I think my
+remarks can apply to those States most likely to be visited by a
+lecturer, that is, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin,
+Minnesota, and others, during the winter months, after the Indian
+summer, and before the renewal of verdure in May.
+
+[Illustration: "THE SAME 'INDIAN.'"]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After breakfast, that indefatigable man of business, that intolerable
+bore, who incessantly bangs the doors and brings his stock-in-trade to
+the cars, came and whispered in my ears:
+
+"New book--just out--a forbidden book!"
+
+"A forbidden book! What is that?" I inquired.
+
+He showed it to me. It was "Manon Lescaut."
+
+[Illustration: "NEW BOOK JUST OUT--A FORBIDDEN BOOK!"]
+
+Is it possible? That literary and artistic _chef-d'oeuvre_, which has
+been the original type of "Paul et Virginie" and "Atala"; that touching
+drama, which the prince of critics, Jules Janin, declared would be
+sufficient to save contemporary literature from complete oblivion,
+dragged in the mire, clothed in a dirty coarse English garb! and
+advertised as a forbidden book! Three generations of French people have
+wept over the pathetic story. Here it is now, stripped of its unique
+style and literary beauty, sold to the American public as an improper
+book--a libel by translation on a genius. British authors have
+complained for years that their books were stolen in America. They have
+suffered in pockets, it is true, but their reputation has spread through
+an immense continent. What is their complaint compared to that of the
+French authors who have the misfortune to see their works translated
+into American? It is not only their pockets that suffer, but their
+reputation. The poor French author is at the mercy of incapable and
+malicious translators hired at starvation wages by the American pirate
+publisher. He is liable to a species of defamation ten times worse than
+robbery.
+
+And as I looked at that copy of "Manon Lescaut," I almost felt grateful
+that Prevost was dead.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+  FOR THE FIRST TIME I SEE AN AMERICAN PAPER ABUSE ME--ALBANY TO NEW
+  YORK--A LECTURE AT DALY'S THEATER--AFTERNOON AUDIENCES.
+
+
+     _New York, February 23._
+
+The American press has always been very good to me. Fairness one has a
+right to expect, but kindness is an extra that is not always thrown in,
+and therefore the uniform amiability of the American press toward me
+could not fail to strike me most agreeably.
+
+Up to yesterday I had not seen a single unkind notice or article, but in
+the Albany _Express_ of yesterday morning I read:
+
+  This evening the people of Albany are asked to listen to a lecture by
+  Max O'Rell, who was in this country two years ago, and was treated
+  with distinguished courtesy. When he went home he published a book
+  filled with deliberate misstatements and willful exaggerations of the
+  traits of the American people.
+
+This paper "has reason," as the French say. My book contained one
+misstatement, at all events, and that was that "all Americans have a
+great sense of humor." You may say that the French are a witty people,
+but that does not mean that France contains no fools. It is rather
+painful to have to explain such things, but I do so for the benefit of
+that editor and with apologies to the general reader.
+
+In spite of this diverting little "par," I had an immense audience last
+night in Harmanus Bleecker Hall, a new and magnificent construction in
+Albany, excellent, no doubt, for music, but hardly adapted for lecturing
+in, on account of its long and narrow shape.
+
+[Illustration: RIP VAN WINKLE.]
+
+I should have liked to stay longer in Albany, which struck me as being a
+remarkably beautiful place, but having to lecture in New York this
+afternoon, I took the vestibule train early this morning for New York.
+This journey is exceedingly picturesque along the Hudson River,
+traveling as you do between two ranges of wooded hills, dotted over with
+beautiful habitations, and now and then passing a little town bathing
+its feet in the water. In the distance one gets good views of the
+Catskill Mountains, immortalized by Washington Irving in "Rip Van
+Winkle."
+
+On boarding the train, the first thing I did was to read the news of
+yesterday. Imagine my amusement, on opening the Albany _Express_ to read
+the following extract from the report of my lecture:
+
+  He has an agreeable but not a strong voice. This was the only point
+  that could be criticised in his lecture, which consisted of many
+  clever sketches of the humorous side of the character of different
+  Anglo-Saxon nations. His humor is keen. He evidently is a great
+  admirer of America and Americans, only bringing into ridicule some of
+  their most conspicuously objectionable traits.... His lecture was
+  entertaining, clever, witty and thoroughly enjoyable.
+
+The most amusing part of all this is that the American sketches which I
+introduced into my lecture last night, and which seemed to have struck
+the Albany _Express_ so agreeably, were all extracts from the book
+"filled with deliberate misstatements and willful exaggerations of the
+traits of the American people." Well, after all, there is humor,
+unconscious humor, in the Albany _Express_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Arrived at the Grand Central Station in New York at noon, I gave up my
+check to a transfer man, but learned to my chagrin that the vestibule
+train from Albany had carried no baggage, and that my things would only
+arrive by the next train at about three o'clock. Pleasant news for a
+man who was due to address an audience at three!
+
+[Illustration: "A LITTLE BIT STIFF."]
+
+There was only one way out of the difficulty. Off I went post-haste to a
+ready-made tailor's, who sold me a complete fit-out from head to foot. I
+did not examine the cut and fit of each garment very minutely, but went
+off satisfied that I was presenting a neat and respectable appearance.
+Before going on the stage, however, I discovered that the sleeves of the
+new coat, though perfectly smooth and well-behaved so long as the arms
+inside them were bent at the elbow, developed a remarkable cross-twist
+as soon as I let my arms hang straight down.
+
+By means of holding it firm with the middle finger, I managed to keep
+the recalcitrant sleeve in position, and the affair passed off very
+well. Only my friends remarked, after the lecture, that they thought I
+looked a little bit stiff, especially when making my bow to the
+audience.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My lecture at Daly's Theater this afternoon was given under the auspices
+of the Bethlehem Day Nursery, and I am thankful to think that this most
+interesting association is a little richer to-day than it was yesterday.
+For an afternoon audience it was remarkably warm and responsive.
+
+I have many times lectured to afternoon audiences, but have not, as a
+rule, enjoyed it. Afternoon "shows" are a mistake. Do not ask me why;
+but think of those you have ever been to, and see if you have a lively
+recollection of them. There is a time for everything. Fancy playing the
+guitar under your lady love's window by daylight, for instance!
+
+Afternoon audiences are kid-gloved ones. There is but a sprinkling of
+men, and so the applause, when it comes, is a feeble affair, more
+chilling almost than silence. In some fashionable towns it is bad form
+to applaud at all in the afternoon. I have a vivid recollection of the
+effect produced one afternoon in Cheltenham by the vigorous applause of
+a sympathizing friend of mine, sitting in the reserved seats. How all
+the other reserved seats craned their necks in credulous astonishment to
+get a view of this innovator, this outer barbarian! He was new to the
+wondrous ways of the _Chillitonians_. In the same audience was a lady,
+Irish and very charming, as I found out on later acquaintance, who
+showed her appreciation from time to time by clapping the tips of her
+fingers together noiselessly, while her glance said: "I should very much
+like to applaud, but you know I can't do it; we are in Cheltenham, and
+such a thing is bad form, especially in the afternoon."
+
+[Illustration: THE GOUTY MAN.]
+
+Afternoon audiences in the southern health resorts of England are
+probably the least inspiriting and inspiring of all. There are the sick,
+the lame, the halt. Some of them are very interesting people, but a
+large proportion appear to be suffering more from the boredom of life
+than any other complaint, and look as if it would do them good to
+follow out the well-known advice, "Live on sixpence a day, and earn it."
+It is hard work entertaining people who have done everything, seen
+everything, tasted everything, been everywhere--people whose sole aim is
+to kill time. A fair sprinkling are gouty. They spend most of their
+waking hours in a bath-chair. As a listener, the gouty man is sometimes
+decidedly funny. He gives signs of life from time to time by a vigorous
+slap on his thigh and a vicious looking kick. Before I began to know
+him, I used to wonder whether it was my discourse producing some effect
+upon him.
+
+I am not afraid of meeting these people in America. Few people are bored
+here, all are happy to live, and all work and are busy. American men die
+of brain fever, but seldom of the gout. If an American saw that he must
+spend his life wheeled in a bath-chair, he would reflect that rivers are
+numerous in America, and he would go and take a plunge into one of them.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+  WANDERINGS THROUGH NEW YORK--LECTURE AT THE HARMONIE CLUB--VISIT TO
+  THE CENTURY CLUB.
+
+
+     _New York, March 1._
+
+The more I see New York, the more I like it.
+
+After lunch I had a drive through Central Park and Riverside Park, along
+the Hudson, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I returned to the Everett House
+through Fifth Avenue. I have never seen Central Park in summer, but I
+can realize how beautiful it must be when the trees are clothed. To have
+such a park in the heart of the city is perfectly marvelous. It is true
+that, with the exception of the superb Catholic Cathedral, Fifth Avenue
+has no monument worth mentioning, but the succession of stately mansions
+is a pleasant picture to the eye. What a pity this cathedral cannot
+stand in a square in front of some long thoroughfare, it would have a
+splendid effect. I know this was out of the question. Built as New York
+is, the cathedral could only take the place of a block. It simply
+represents so many numbers between Fiftieth and Fifty-first streets on
+Fifth Avenue.
+
+In the Park I saw statues of Shakespeare, Walter Scott, and Robert
+Burns. I should have liked to see those of Longfellow, Nathaniel
+Hawthorne, and many other celebrities of the land. Washington, Franklin,
+and Lincoln are practically the only Americans whose statues you see all
+over the country. They play here the part that Wellington and Nelson
+play in England. After all, the "bosses" and the local politicians who
+run the towns probably never heard of Longfellow, Bryant, Poe, etc.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At four o'clock, Mr. Thomas Nast, the celebrated caricaturist, called. I
+was delighted to make his acquaintance, and found him a most charming
+man.
+
+I dined with General Horace Porter and a few other friends at the Union
+League Club. The witty general was in his best vein.
+
+At eight o'clock I lectured at the Harmonie Club, and had a large and
+most appreciative audience, composed of the pick of the Israelite
+community in New York.
+
+After the lecture I attended one of the "Saturdays" at the Century Club,
+and met Mr. Kendal, who, with his talented wife, is having a triumphant
+progress through the United States.
+
+There is no gathering in the world where you can see so many beautiful,
+intelligent faces as at the Century Club. There you see gathered
+together the cleverest men of a nation whose chief characteristic is
+cleverness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+VISIT TO THE BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC--REV. DR. TALMAGE.
+
+
+     _New York, March 2._
+
+Went to hear Dr. T. de Witt Talmage this morning at the Academy of
+Music, Brooklyn.
+
+What an actor America has lost by Dr. Talmage choosing the pulpit in
+preference to the stage!
+
+The Academy of Music was crowded. Standing-room only. For an
+old-fashioned European, to see a theater, with its boxes, stalls,
+galleries, open for divine service was a strange sight; but we had not
+gone very far into the service before it became plain to me that there
+was nothing divine about it. The crowd had come there, not to worship
+God, but to hear Mr. Talmage.
+
+At the door the programme was distributed. It consisted of six hymns to
+be interluded with prayers by the doctor. Between the fifth and sixth,
+he delivered the lecture, or the sermon, if you insist on the name, and
+during the sixth there was the collection, that hinge on which the whole
+service turns in Protestant places of worship.
+
+I took a seat and awaited with the rest the entrance of Dr. Talmage.
+There was subdued conversation going on all around, just as there would
+be at a theater or concert: in fact, throughout the whole of the
+proceedings, there was no sign of a silent lifting up of the spirit in
+worship. Not a person in that strange congregation, went on his or her
+knees to pray. Most of them put one hand in front of the face, and this
+was as near as they got that morning to an attitude of devotion. Except
+for this, and the fact that they did not applaud, there was absolutely
+no difference between them and any other theater audience I ever saw.
+
+[Illustration: THE LEADER OF THE CHOIR.]
+
+The monotonous hymns were accompanied by a _cornet-a-piston_, which lent
+a certain amount of life to them, but very little religious harmony.
+That cornet was the key-note of the whole performance. The hymns,
+composed, I believe, for Dr. Talmage's flock, are not of high literary
+value. "General" Booth would probably hesitate to include such in the
+_repertoire_ of the Salvation Army. Judge of them for yourself. Here
+are three illustrations culled from the programme:
+
+      Sing, O sing, ye heirs of glory!
+      Shout your triumphs as you go:
+      Zion's gates will open for you,
+      You shall find an entrance through.
+
+    'Tis the promise of God, full salvation to give
+    Unto him who on Jesus, his Son, will believe.
+
+  Though the pathway be lonely, and dangerous too, (_sic_)
+  Surely Jesus is able to carry me thro'.
+
+This is poetry such as you find inside Christmas crackers.
+
+Another hymn began:
+
+  One more day's work for Jesus,
+  One less of life for me!
+
+I could not help thinking that there would be good employment for a
+prophet of God, with a stout whip, in the congregations of the so-called
+faithful of to-day. I have heard them by hundreds shouting at the top of
+their voices:
+
+  O Paradise, O Paradise!
+    'Tis weary waiting here;
+  I long to be where Jesus is,
+    To feel, to see him near.
+  O Paradise, O Paradise!
+    I greatly long to see
+  The special place my dearest Lord,
+    In love, prepares for me!
+
+Knowing something of those people outside the church doors, I have often
+thought what an edifying sight it would be if the Lord deigned to listen
+and take a few of them at their word. If the fearless Christ were here
+on earth again, what crowds of cheats and humbugs he would drive out of
+the Temple! And foremost, I fancy, would go the people who, instead of
+thanking their Maker who allows the blessed sun to shine, the birds to
+sing, and the flowers to grow for them here, howl and whine lies about
+longing for the joy of moving on to the better world, to the "special
+place" that is prepared for them. If there be a better world, it will be
+too good for hypocrites.
+
+After hymn the fifth, Dr. Talmage takes the floor. The audience settled
+in their seats in evident anticipation of a good time, and it was soon
+clear to me that the discourse was not to be dull at any rate. But I
+waited in vain for a great thought, a lofty idea, or refined language.
+There came none. Nothing but commonplaces given out with tricks of voice
+and the gestures of a consummate actor. The modulations of the voice
+have been studied with care, no single platform trick was missing.
+
+The doctor comes on the stage, which is about forty feet wide. He begins
+slowly. The flow of language is great, and he is never at a loss for a
+word. Motionless, in his lowest tones, he puts a question to us. Nobody
+replies, of course. Thereupon he paces wildly up and down the whole
+length of the stage. Then, bringing up in full view of his auditors, he
+stares at them, crosses his arms, gives a double and tremendous stamp on
+the boards, and in a terrific voice he repeats the question, and answers
+it. The desired effect is produced: he never misses fire.
+
+Being an old stager of several years' standing myself, I admire him
+professionally. Nobody is edified, nobody is regenerated, nobody is
+improved, but all are entertained. It is not a divine service, but it is
+a clever performance, and the Americans never fail to patronize a clever
+performance. All styles go down with them. They will give a hearing to
+everybody but the bore, especially on Sundays, when other forms of
+entertainment are out of the running.
+
+[Illustration: THE DESIRED EFFECT.]
+
+It is not only the Brooklyn public that are treated to the discourses of
+Dr. Talmage, but the whole of America. He syndicates his sermons, and
+they are published in Monday's newspapers in all quarters of America. I
+have also seen them reproduced in the Australian papers.
+
+The delivery of these orations by Dr. Talmage is so superior to the
+matter they are made of, that to read them is slow indeed compared to
+hearing them.
+
+At the back of the programme was a flaring advertisement of Dr.
+Talmage's paper, called:
+
+  CHRISTIAN HERALD AND SIGNS OF OUR TIMES.
+
+  A live, undenominational, illustrated Christian paper, with a weekly
+  circulation of fifty thousand copies, and rapidly increasing. Every
+  State of the Union, every Province of Canada, and every country in the
+  world is represented on its enormous subscription list. Address your
+  subscription to Mr. N., treasurer, etc.
+
+"Signs of our times," indeed!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+  VIRGINIA--THE HOTELS--THE SOUTH--I WILL KILL A RAILWAY CONDUCTOR
+  BEFORE I LEAVE AMERICA--PHILADELPHIA--IMPRESSIONS OF THE OLD CITY.
+
+
+     _Petersburg, Va., March 3._
+
+Left New York last night and arrived here at noon. No change in the
+scenery. The same burnt-up fields, the same placards all over the land.
+The roofs of houses, the trees in the forests, the fences in the fields,
+all announce to the world the magic properties of castor oil, aperients,
+and liver pills.
+
+[Illustration: MY SUPPER.]
+
+A little village inn in the bottom of old Brittany is a palace of
+comfort compared to the best hotel of a Virginia town. I feel wretched.
+My bedroom is so dirty that I shall not dare to undress to-night. I have
+just had lunch: a piece of tough dried-up beef, custard pie, and a glass
+of filthy water, the whole served by an old negro on an old, ragged,
+dirty table-cloth.
+
+Petersburg, which awakes so many souvenirs of the War of Secession, is a
+pretty town scattered with beautiful villas. It strikes one as a
+provincial town. To me, coming from the busy North, it looks asleep. The
+South has not yet recovered from its disasters of thirty years ago. That
+is what struck me most, when, two years ago, I went through Virginia,
+Carolina, and Georgia.
+
+Now and then American eccentricity reveals itself. I have just seen a
+church built on the model of a Greek temple, and surmounted with a
+pointed spire lately added. Just imagine to yourself Julius Caesar with
+his toga and buskin on, and having a chimney-top hat on his head.
+
+The streets seemed deserted, dead.
+
+To my surprise, the Opera House was crowded to-night. The audience was
+fashionable and appreciative, but very cool, almost as cool as in
+Connecticut and Maine.
+
+Heaven be praised! a gentleman invited me to have supper at a club after
+the lecture.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 4._
+
+I am sore all over. I spent the night on the bed, outside, in my day
+clothes, and am bruised all over. I have pains in my gums too. Oh, that
+piece of beef yesterday! I am off to Philadelphia. My bill at the hotel
+amounts to $1.50. Never did I pay so much through the nose for what I
+had through the mouth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+     _Philadelphia, March 4._
+
+Before I return to Europe I will kill a railway conductor.
+
+[Illustration: "IMAGINE JULIUS CAESAR WITH A BIG HAT."]
+
+From Petersburg to Richmond I was the only occupant of the parlor car.
+It was bitterly cold. The conductor of the train came in the smoke-room,
+and took a seat. I suppose it was his right, although I doubt it, for he
+was not the conductor attached to the parlor car. He opened the window.
+The cold, icy air fell on my legs, or (to use a more proper expression,
+as I am writing in Philadelphia) on my lower limbs. I said nothing, but
+rose and closed the window. The fellow frowned, rose, and opened the
+window again.
+
+"Excuse me," I said; "I thought that perhaps you had come here to look
+after my comfort. If you have not I will look after it myself." And I
+rose and closed the window.
+
+"I want the window open," said the conductor, and he prepared to re-open
+it, giving me a mute, impudent scowl.
+
+I was fairly roused. Nature has gifted me with a biceps and a grip of
+remarkable power. I seized the man by the collar of his coat.
+
+"As true as I am alive," I exclaimed, "if you open this window, I will
+pitch you out of it." And I prepared for war. The cur sneaked away and
+made an exit compared to which a whipped hound's would be majestic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am at the Bellevue, a delightful hotel. My friend Wilson Barrett is
+here, and I have come to spend the day with him. He is playing every
+night to crowded houses, and after each performance he has to make a
+speech. This is his third visit to Philadelphia. During the first visit,
+he tells me that the audience wanted a speech after each act.
+
+It is always interesting to compare notes with a friend who has been
+over the same ground as yourself. So I was eager to hear Mr. Wilson
+Barrett's impressions of his long tour in the States.
+
+Several points we both agreed perfectly upon at once; the charming
+geniality and good-fellowship of the best Americans, the brilliancy and
+naturalness of the ladies, the wonderful intelligence and activity of
+the people, and the wearing monotony of life on the road.
+
+[Illustration: THE WHIPPED CONDUCTOR.]
+
+After the scene in the train, I was interested, too, to find that the
+train conductors--those mute, magnificent monarchs of the railroad--had
+awakened in Mr. Barrett much the same feeling as in myself. We Europeans
+are used to a form of obedience or, at least, deference from our paid
+servants, and the arrogant attitude of the American wage-earner first
+amazes, and then enrages us--when we have not enough humor, or
+good-humor, to get some amusement out it. It is so novel to be
+tyrannized over by people whom you pay to attend to your comfort! The
+American keeps his temper under the process, for he is the best-humored
+fellow in the world. Besides, a small squabble is no more in his line
+than a small anything else. It is not worth his while. The Westerner may
+pull out a pistol and shoot you if you annoy him, but neither he nor the
+Eastern man will wrangle for mastery.
+
+[Illustration: A BOSS.]
+
+If such was not the case, do you believe for a moment that the Americans
+would submit to the rule of the "Rings," the "Leaders," and the
+"Bosses"?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I like Philadelphia, with its magnificent park, its beautiful houses
+that look like homes. It is not brand new, like the rest of America.
+
+My friend, Mr. J. M. Stoddart, editor of _Lippincott's Magazine_, has
+kindly chaperoned me all the day.
+
+I visited in detail the State House, Independence Square. These words
+evoke sentiments of patriotism in the hearts of the Americans. Here was
+the bell that "proclaimed liberty throughout the Colonies" so loudly
+that it split. It was on the 8th of July, 1776, that the bell was rung,
+as the public reading of the Declaration of Independence took place in
+the State House on that day, and there were great rejoicings. John
+Adams, writing to Samuel Chase on the 9th of July, said: "The bell rang
+all day, and almost all night."
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD LIBERTY BELL.]
+
+It is recorded by one writer that, on the 4th of July, when the motion
+to adopt the declaration passed the majority of the Assembly, although
+not signed by all the delegates, the old bell-ringer awaited anxiously,
+with trembling hope, the signing. He kept saying: "They'll never do it,
+they'll never do it!" but his eyes expanded, and his grasp grew firm
+when the voice of a blue-eyed youth reached his ears in shouts of
+triumph as he flew up the stairs of the tower, shouting: "Ring, grandpa,
+ring; they've signed!"
+
+What a day this old "Liberty Bell" reminds you of!
+
+There, in the Independence Hall, the delegates were gathered. Benjamin
+Harrison, the ancestor of the present occupier of the White House,
+seized John Hancock, upon whose head a price was set, in his arms, and
+placing him in the presidential chair, said: "We will show Mother
+Britain how little we care for her, by making our president a
+Massachusetts man, whom she has excluded from pardon by public
+proclamation," and, says Mr. Chauncey M. Depew in one of his beautiful
+orations, when they were signing the Declaration, and the slender
+Elbridge Gerry uttered the grim pleasantry, "We must hang together, or
+surely we will hang separately," the portly Harrison responded with more
+daring humor, "It will be all over with me in a moment, but you will be
+kicking in the air half an hour after I am gone."
+
+[Illustration: THE INKSTAND.]
+
+The National Museum is the auxiliary chamber to Independence Hall, and
+there you find many most interesting relics of Colonial and
+Revolutionary days: the silver inkstand used in signing the famous
+Declaration; Hancock's chair; the little table upon which the document
+was signed, and hundreds of souvenirs piously preserved by generations
+of grateful Americans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is said that Philadelphia has produced only two successful men, Mr.
+Wanamaker, the great dry-goods-store man, now a member of President
+Benjamin Harrison's Cabinet, and Mr. George W. Childs, proprietor of the
+Philadelphia _Public Ledger_, one of the most important and successful
+newspapers in the United States.
+
+I went to Mr. Wanamaker's dry-goods-store, an establishment strongly
+reminding you of the Paris _Bon Marche_, or Mr. Whiteley's warehouses in
+London.
+
+By far the most interesting visit was that which I paid to Mr. George W.
+Childs in his study at the _Public Ledger's_ offices. It would require a
+whole volume to describe in detail all the treasures that Mr. Childs has
+accumulated: curios of all kinds, rare books, manuscripts and
+autographs, portraits, china, relics from the celebrities of the world,
+etc. Mr. Childs, like the Prussians during their unwelcome visit to
+France in 1870, has a strong _penchant_ for clocks. Indeed his
+collection is the most remarkable in existence. His study is a beautiful
+_sanctum sanctorum_; it is also a museum that not only the richest lover
+of art would be proud to possess, but that any nation would be too glad
+to acquire, if it could be acquired; but Mr. Childs is a very wealthy
+man, and he means to keep it, and, I understand, to hand it over to his
+successor in the ownership of the _Public Ledger_.
+
+Mr. George W. Childs is a man of about fifty years of age, short and
+plump, with a most kind and amiable face. His munificence and
+philanthropy are well known and, as I understand his character, I
+believe he would not think much of my gratitude to him for the kindness
+he showed me if I dwelt on them in these pages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thanks to my kind friends, every minute has been occupied visiting some
+interesting place, or meeting some interesting people. I shall lecture
+here next month, and shall look forward to the pleasure of being in
+Philadelphia again.
+
+[Illustration: WHEN IRELAND IS FREE.]
+
+At the Union League Club I met Mr. Rufus E. Shapley, who kindly gave me
+a copy of his clever and witty political satire, "Solid for Mulhooly,"
+illustrated by Mr. Thomas Nast. I should advise any one who would
+understand how Jonathan is ruled municipally, to peruse this little
+book. It gives the history of Pat's rise from the Irish cabin in
+Connaught to the City Hall of the large American cities.
+
+"When one man," says Mr. Shapley, "owns and dominates four wards or
+counties, he becomes a leader. Half a dozen such leaders combined
+constitute what is called a Ring. When one leader is powerful enough to
+bring three or four such leaders under his yoke, he becomes a Boss; and
+a Boss wields a power almost as absolute, while it lasts, as that of the
+Czar of Russia or the King of Zululand."
+
+Extracts from this book would not do it justice. It should be read in
+its entirety. I read it with all the more pleasure that, in "Jonathan
+and His Continent," I ventured to say: "The English are always wondering
+why Americans all seem to be in favor of Home Rule, and ready to back up
+the cause with their dollars. Why? I will tell you. Because they are in
+hopes that, when the Irish recover the possession of Ireland, they will
+all go home."
+
+A foreigner who criticises a nation is happy to see his opinions shared
+by the natives.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+  MY IDEAS OF THE STATE OF TEXAS--WHY I WILL NOT GO THERE--THE STORY OF
+  A FRONTIER MAN.
+
+
+     _New York, March 5._
+
+Have had cold audiences in Maine and Connecticut; and indifferent ones
+in several cities, while I have been warmly received in many others. It
+seems that, if I went to Texas, I might get it hot.
+
+I have received to-day a Texas paper containing a short editorial marked
+at the four corners in blue pencil. Impossible not to see it. The
+editorial abuses me from the first line to the last. When there appears
+in a paper an article, or even only a short paragraph, abusing you, you
+never run the risk of not seeing it. There always is, somewhere, a kind
+friend who will post it to you. He thinks you may be getting a little
+conceited, and he forwards the article to you, that you may use it as
+wholesome physic. It does him good, and does you no harm.
+
+The article in question begins by charging me with having turned America
+and the Americans into ridicule, goes on wondering that the Americans
+can receive me so well everywhere, and, after pitching into me right and
+left, winds up by warning me that, if I should go to Texas, I might for
+a change meet with a hot reception.
+
+A shot, perhaps.
+
+A shot in Texas! No, no, no.
+
+I won't go to Texas. I should strongly object to being shot anywhere,
+but especially in Texas, where the event would attract so little public
+attention.
+
+[Illustration: "A SHOT IN TEXAS."]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet, I should have liked to go to Texas, for was it not from that State
+that, after the publication of "Jonathan and His Continent," I received
+the two following letters, which I have kept among my treasures?
+
+
+  DEAR SIR:
+
+  I have read your book on America and greatly enjoyed it. Please to
+  send me your autograph. I enclose a ten-cent piece. The postage will
+  cost you five cents. Don't trouble about the change.
+
+
+  MY DEAR SIR:
+
+  I have an album containing the photographs of many well-known people
+  from Europe as well as from America. I should much like to add yours
+  to the number. If you will send it to me, I will send you mine and
+  that of my wife in return.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And I also imagine that there must be in Texas a delightful
+primitiveness of manners and good-fellowship.
+
+A friend once related to me the following reminiscence:
+
+  I arrived one evening in a little Texas town, and asked for a bedroom
+  at the hotel.
+
+  There was no bedroom to be had, but only a bed in a double-bedded
+  room.
+
+  "Will that suit you?" said the clerk.
+
+  "Well, I don't know," I said hesitatingly. "Who is the other?"
+
+  "Oh, that's all right," said the clerk, "you may set your mind at rest
+  on that subject."
+
+  "Very well," I replied, "I will take that bed."
+
+  At about ten o'clock, as I was preparing to go to bed, my bedroom
+  companion entered. It was a frontier man in full uniform: Buffalo Bill
+  hat, leather leggings, a belt accommodating a couple of revolvers--no
+  baggage of any kind.
+
+  I did not like it.
+
+  "Hallo, stranger," said the man, "how are you?"
+
+  "I'm pretty well," I replied, without meaning a word of it.
+
+  The frontier man undressed, that is to say, took off his boots, placed
+  the two revolvers under his pillows and lay down.
+
+  I liked it less and less.
+
+  By and by, we both went to sleep. In the morning we woke up at the
+  same time. He rose, dressed--that is to say, put on his boots, and
+  wished me good-morning.
+
+[Illustration: MY ROOM-MATE.]
+
+  The hall porter came with letters for my companion, but none for me. I
+  thought I should like to let that man know I had no money with me. So
+  I said to him:
+
+  "I am very much disappointed. I expected some money from New York, and
+  it has not come."
+
+  "I hope it will come," he replied.
+
+  I did not like that hope.
+
+  In the evening, we met again. He undressed--you know, went to sleep,
+  rose early in the morning, dressed--you know.
+
+  The porter came again with letters for him and none for me.
+
+  "Well, your money has not come," he said.
+
+  "I see it has not. I'm afraid I'm going to be in a fix what to do."
+
+  "I'm going away this morning."
+
+  "Are you?" I said. "I'm sorry to part with you."
+
+  The frontier man took a little piece of paper and wrote something on
+  it.
+
+  "Take this, my friend," he said; "it may be useful to you."
+
+  It was a check for a hundred dollars.
+
+  I could have gone down on my knees, as I refused the check and asked
+  that man's pardon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I lectured in Brooklyn to-night, and am off to the West to-morrow
+morning.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+  CINCINNATI--THE TOWN--THE SUBURBS--A GERMAN CITY--"OVER THE
+  RHINE"--WHAT IS A GOOD PATRIOT?--AN IMPRESSIVE FUNERAL--A GREAT
+  FIRE--HOW IT APPEARED TO ME, AND HOW IT APPEARED TO THE NEWSPAPER
+  REPORTERS.
+
+
+     _Cincinnati, March 7._
+
+My arrival in Cincinnati this morning was anything but triumphal.
+
+On leaving the car, I gave my check to a cab-driver, who soon came to
+inform me that my valise was broken. It was a leather one, and on being
+thrown from the baggage-van on the platform, it burst open, and all my
+things were scattered about. In England or in France, half a dozen
+porters would have immediately come to the rescue, but here the porter
+is practically unknown. Three or four men belonging to the company
+gathered round, but, neither out of complaisance nor in the hope of
+gain, did any of them offer his services. They looked on, laughed, and
+enjoyed the scene. I daresay the betting was brisk as to whether I
+should succeed in putting my things together or not. Thanks to a leather
+strap I had in my bag, I managed to bind the portmanteau and have it
+placed on the cab that drove to the Burnet House.
+
+Immediately after registering my name, I went to buy an American trunk,
+that is to say, an iron-bound trunk, to place my things in safety. I
+have been told that trunk makers give a commission to the railway and
+transfer baggagemen who, having broken trunks, recommend their owners to
+go to such and such a place to buy new ones. This goes a long way toward
+explaining the way in which baggage is treated in America.
+
+[Illustration: MY BROKEN VALISE.]
+
+On arriving in the dining-room, I was surprised to see the glasses of
+all the guests filled with lemonade. "Why," thought I, "here is actually
+an hotel which is not like all the other hotels." The lemonade turned
+out to be water from the Ohio River. I could not help feeling grateful
+for a change; any change, even that of the color of water. Anybody who
+has traveled a great deal in America will appreciate the remark.
+
+Cincinnati is built at the bottom of a funnel from which rise hundreds
+of chimneys vomiting fire and smoke. From the neighboring heights, the
+city looks like a huge furnace, and so it is, a furnace of industry and
+activity. It reminded me of Glasgow.
+
+If the city itself is anything but attractive, the residential parts are
+perfectly lovely. I have seen nothing in America that surpasses Burnet
+Wood, situated on the bordering heights of the town, scattered with
+beautiful villas, and itself a mixture of a wilderness and a lovely
+park. A kind friend drove me for three hours through the entire
+neighborhood, giving me, in American fashion, the history of the owner
+of each residence we passed. Here was the house of Mr. A., or rather Mr.
+A. B. C, every American having three names. He came to the city twenty
+years ago without a dollar. Five years later he had five millions. He
+speculated and lost all, went to Chicago and made millions, which he
+afterward lost. Now again he has several millions, and so on. This is
+common enough in America. By and by, we passed the most beautiful of all
+the villas of Burnet Wood--the house of the Oil King, Mr. Alexander
+Macdonald, one of those wonderfully successful men, such as Scotland
+alone can boast all the world over. America has been a great field for
+the display of Scotch intelligence and industry.
+
+After visiting the pretty museum at Eden Park, a museum organized in
+1880 in consequence of Mr. Charles W. West's offer to give $150,000 for
+that purpose, and already in possession of very good works of art and
+many valuable treasures, we returned to the city and stopped at the
+Public Library. Over 200,000 volumes, representing all the branches of
+science and literature, are there, as well as a collection of all the
+newspapers of the world, placed in chronological order on the shelves
+and neatly bound. I believe that this collection of newspapers and that
+of Washington are the two best known. In the public reading-room,
+hundreds of people are running over the newspapers from Europe and all
+the principal cities of the United States. My best thanks are due to Mr.
+Whelpley, the librarian, for his kindness in conducting me all over this
+interesting place. Upstairs I was shown the room where the members of
+the Council of Education hold their sittings. The room was all
+topsy-turvey. Twenty-six desks and twenty-six chairs was about all the
+furniture of the room. In a corner, piled up together, were the
+cuspidores. I counted. Twenty-six. Right.
+
+After thanking my kind pilot, I returned to the Burnet House to read the
+evening papers. I read that the next day I was to breakfast with Mr. A.,
+lunch with Mr. B., and dine with Mr. C. The _menu_ was not published. I
+take it for granted that this piece of intelligence is quite interesting
+to the readers of Cincinnati.
+
+My evening being free, I looked at the column of amusements. The first
+did not tempt me, it was this:
+
+      THE KING OF THE SWAMPS.
+
+   _The Only and the Original._
+
+           ENGLISH JACK.
+  THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE FROG MAN.
+
+  He makes a frog pond of his stomach by eating living frogs. An
+  appetite created by life in the swamps. He is so fond of this sort of
+  food that he takes the pretty creatures by the hind legs, and before
+  they can say their prayers they are inside out of the cold.
+
+[Illustration: "THE KING OF THE SWAMPS."]
+
+The next advertisement was that of a variety show, that most stupid form
+of entertainment so popular in America; the next was the announcement of
+pugilists, and another one that of a "most sensational drama, in which
+'one of the most emotional actresses' in America" was to appear,
+supported by "one of the most powerful casts ever gathered together in
+the world."
+
+The superlatives, in American advertisements, have long ceased to have
+the slightest effect upon me.
+
+The advertisement of another "show" ran thus: I beg to reproduce it in
+its entirety; indeed it would be a sacrilege to meddle with it.
+
+  TO THE PUBLIC.
+
+  _My Friends and Former Patrons_: I have now been before the public for
+  the past seventeen years, and am perhaps too well known to require
+  further evidence of my character and integrity than my past life and
+  record will show. Fifteen years ago I inaugurated the system of
+  dispensing presents to the public, believing that a fair share of my
+  profits could thus honestly be returned to my patrons. At the outset,
+  and ever since, it has been my aim to deal honestly toward the
+  multitude who have given me patronage. Since that time many imitators
+  have undertaken to beguile the public, with but varying success. Many
+  unprincipled rascals have also appeared upon the scene, men without
+  talent, but far-reaching talons, who by specious promises have sought
+  to swindle all whom they could inveigle. This class of scoundrels do
+  not hesitate to make promises that they cannot and never intend to
+  fulfill, and should be frowned down by all honest men. They deceive
+  the public, leave a bad impression, and thus injure legitimate
+  exhibitions. Every promise I make will be faithfully fulfilled, as
+  experience has clearly proven that dealing uprightly with the public
+  brings its sure reward. All who visit my beautiful entertainment may
+  rely upon the same fair dealing which has been my life-long policy,
+  and which has always honored me with crowded houses.
+
+    NEW UNIQUE PASTIMES.      NEW HARMLESS MIRTH.
+    NEW COSTLY WONDERS.       NEW FAMOUS ARTISTS.
+    NEW PLEASANT STUDIES.     NEW INNOCENT FUN.
+    NEW POPULAR MUSIC.        NEW KNOWLEDGE.
+
+     _Special Notice._
+
+  Ladies and Children are especially Invited to Attend this
+  Entertainment. We Guarantee it to be Chaste, Pure, and as Wholesome
+  and Innocent as it is Amusing and Laughable.
+
+Finally I decided on going to see a German tragedy. I did not understand
+it, but the acting seemed to me good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: A GERMAN TRAGEDY.]
+
+Like Milwaukee, Cincinnati possesses a very strong German element.
+Indeed a whole part of the city is entirely inhabited by a German
+population, and situated on one side of the water. When you cross the
+bridge in its direction, you are going "over the Rhine," to use the
+local expression. "To go over the Rhine" of an evening means to go to
+one of the many German _Brauerei_, and have sausages and Bavarian beer
+for supper.
+
+The town is a very prosperous one. The Germans in America are liked for
+their steadiness and industry. An American friend even told me that the
+Germans were perhaps the best patriots the United States could boast of.
+
+Patriots! The word sounded strangely to my ears. I may be prejudiced,
+but I call a good patriot a man who loves his own mother country. You
+may like the land of your adoption, but you love the land of your birth.
+Good patriots! I call a good brother a man who loves his sister, not
+other people's sisters.
+
+The Germans apply for their naturalization papers the day after they
+have landed. I should admire their patriotism much more if they waited a
+little longer before they changed their own mother for a step-mother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 8._
+
+I witnessed a most impressive ceremony this morning, the funeral of the
+American Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Berlin, whose body was
+brought from Germany to his native place a few days ago. No soldiers
+ordered to accompany the _cortege,_ no uniforms, but thousands of people
+voluntarily doing honor to the remains of a talented and respected
+fellow-citizen and townsman: a truly republican ceremony in its
+simplicity and earnestness.
+
+The coffin was taken to the Music Hall, a new and beautiful building
+capable of accommodating thousands of people, and placed on the platform
+amid evergreens and the Stars and Stripes. In a few minutes, the hall,
+decorated with taste but with appropriate simplicity, was packed from
+floor to ceiling. Some notables and friends of the late Minister sat on
+the platform around the coffin, and the mayor, in the name of the
+inhabitants of the city, delivered a speech, a eulogistic funeral
+oration, on the deceased diplomatist. All parties were represented in
+the hall, Republicans and Democrats alike had come. America admits no
+party feeling, no recollection of political differences, to intrude upon
+the homage she gratefully renders to the memory of her illustrious dead.
+
+The mayor's speech, listened to by the crowd in respectful silence, was
+much like all the speeches delivered on such occasions, including the
+indispensable sentence that "he knew he could safely affirm that the
+deceased had never made any enemies." When I hear a man spoken of, after
+his death, as never having made any enemies, as a Christian I admire
+him, but I also come to the conclusion that he must have been a very
+insignificant member of the community. But the phrase, I should
+remember, is a mere piece of flattery to the dead, in a country where
+death puts a stop to all enmity, political enmity especially. The same
+would be done in England, and almost everywhere. Not in France, however,
+where the dead continue to have implacable enemies for many years after
+they have left the lists.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The afternoon was pleasantly spent visiting the town hall and the
+remarkable china manufactories, which turn out very pretty, quaint, and
+artistic pottery. The evening brought to the Odeon a fashionable and
+most cultivated audience. I am invited to pay a return visit to this
+city. I shall look forward to the pleasure of lecturing here again in
+April.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 9._
+
+Spent a most agreeable Sunday in the hospitable house of M. Fredin, the
+French consular agent, and his amiable and talented wife. M. Fredin was
+kind enough to call yesterday at the Burnet House.
+
+As a rule, I never call on the representatives of France in my travels
+abroad. If I traveled as a tourist, I would; but traveling as a
+lecturer, I should be afraid lest the object of my visits might be
+misconstrued, and taken as a gentle hint to patronize me.
+
+One day I had a good laugh with a French consul, in an English town
+where I came to lecture. On arriving at the hall I found a letter from
+this diplomatic compatriot, in which he expressed his surprise that I
+had not apprised him of my arrival. The next morning, before leaving the
+town, I called on him. He welcomed me most gracefully.
+
+"Why did you not let me, your consul, know that you were coming?" he
+said to me.
+
+"Well, Monsieur le Consul," I replied, "suppose I wrote to you:
+'Monsieur le Consul, I shall arrive at N. on Friday,' and suppose, now,
+just suppose, that you answered me, 'Sir, I am glad to hear you will
+arrive here on Friday, but what on earth is that to me?'"
+
+He saw the point at once. A Frenchman always does.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 10._
+
+I like this land of conjuring. This morning I took the street car to go
+on the Burnet Hills. At the foot of the hill the car--horses, and
+all--enters a little house. The house climbs the hill vertically by
+means of cables. Arrived at the top of the mountain, the car comes out
+of the little house and goes on its way, just as if absolutely nothing
+had happened. To return to town, I went down the hill in the same
+fashion. But if the cable should break, you will exclaim, where would
+you be? Ah, there you are! It does not break. It did once, so now they
+see that it does not again.
+
+[Illustration: A VARIETY ACTOR.]
+
+In the evening there was nothing to see except variety shows and
+wrestlers. There was a variety show which tempted me, the Hermann's
+Vaudevilles. I saw on the list of attractions the name of my friend and
+compatriot, F. Trewey, the famous shadowgraphist, and I concluded that
+if the other artistes were as good in their lines as he is in his, it
+would be well worth seeing. The show was very good of its kind, and
+Trewey was admirable; but the audience were not refined, and it was not
+his most subtle and artistic tricks that they applauded most, but the
+broader and more striking ones. After the show he and I went "over the
+Rhine." You know what it means.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 11, 9 a. m._
+
+For a long time I had wished to see the wonderful American fire brigades
+at work. The wish has now been satisfied.
+
+At half-past one this morning I was roused in my bed by the galloping of
+horses and the shouts of people in the street. Huge tongues of fire were
+licking my window, and the heat in the room was intense. Indeed, all
+around me seemed to be in a blaze, and I took it for granted that the
+Burnet House was on fire. I rose and dressed quickly, put together the
+few valuables that were in my possession, and prepared to make for the
+street. I soon saw, however, that it was a block of houses opposite that
+was on fire, or rather the corner house of that block.
+
+The guests of the hotel were in the corridors ready for any emergency.
+Had there been any wind in our direction, the hotel was doomed. The
+night was calm and wet. As soon as we became aware that no lives were
+lost or in danger in the burning building, and that it would only be a
+question of insurance money to be paid by some companies, we betook
+ourselves to admire the magnificent sight. For it was a magnificent
+sight, this whole large building, the prey of flames coming in torrents
+out of every window, the dogged perseverance of the firemen streaming
+floods of water over the roof and through the windows, the salvage
+corps men penetrating through the flames into the building in the hope
+of receiving the next day a commission on all the goods and valuables
+saved. A fierce battle it was between a brute element and man. By three
+o'clock the element was conquered, but only the four walls of the
+building remained, which proved to me that, with all their wonderful
+promptitude and gallantry, all firemen can do when flames have got firm
+hold on a building is to save the adjoining property.
+
+[Illustration: A FIRE YARN.]
+
+I listened to the different groups of people in the hotel. Some gave
+advice as to how the firemen should set about their work, or criticised.
+Others related the big fires they had witnessed, a few indulging in the
+recital of the exploits they performed thereat. There are a good many
+Gascons among the Americans. At four o'clock all danger was over, and we
+all retired.
+
+[Illustration: AS WE SAW IT.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: AS THE REPORTERS SAW IT.]
+
+I was longing to read the descriptions of the fire in this morning's
+papers. I have now read them and am not at all disappointed. On the
+contrary, they are beyond my most sanguine expectations. Wonderful;
+simply perfectly wonderful! I am now trying to persuade myself that I
+really saw all that the reporters saw, and that I really ran great
+danger last night. For, "at every turn," it appears, "the noble hotel
+seemed as if it must become the prey of the fierce element, and could
+only be saved by a miracle." Columns and columns of details most
+graphically given, sensational, blood-curdling. But all that is nothing.
+You should read about the panic, and the scenes of wild confusion in the
+Burnet House, when all the good folks, who had all dressed and were
+looking quietly at the fire from the windows, are described as a crowd
+of people in despair: women disheveled, in their night-dresses, running
+wild, and throwing themselves in the arms of men to seek protection, and
+all shrieking and panic-stricken. Such a scene of confusion and terror
+you can hardly imagine. Wonderful!
+
+[Illustration: THE FIREMAN.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+A JOURNEY IF YOU LIKE--TERRIBLE ENCOUNTER WITH AN AMERICAN INTERVIEWER.
+
+
+     _In the train to Brushville, March 11._
+
+Left Cincinnati this morning at ten o'clock and shall not arrive at
+Brushville before seven o'clock to-night. I am beginning to learn how to
+speak American. As I asked for my ticket this morning at the railroad
+office, the clerk said to me:
+
+"C. H. D. or C. C. C. St. L. and St. P.?"
+
+"C. H. D.," I replied, with perfect assurance.
+
+I happened to hit on the right line for Brushville.
+
+By this time I know pretty well all those combinations of the alphabet
+by which the different railroad lines of America are designated.
+
+No hope of comfort or of a dinner to-day. I shall have to change trains
+three times, but none of them, I am grieved to hear, have parlor cars or
+dining cars. There is something democratic about uniform cars for all
+alike. I am a democrat myself, yet I have a weakness for the parlor
+cars--and the dining cars.
+
+At noon we stopped five minutes at a place which, two years ago, counted
+six wooden huts. To-day it has more than 5000 inhabitants, the electric
+light in the streets, a public library, two hotels, four churches, two
+banks, a public school, a high school, cuspidores, toothpicks, and all
+the signs of American civilization.
+
+I changed trains at one o'clock at Castle Green Junction. No hotel in
+the place. I inquired where food could be obtained. A little wooden hut,
+on the other side of the depot, bearing the inscription "Lunch Room,"
+was pointed out to me. _Lunch_ in America has not the meaning that it
+has in England, as I often experienced to my despair. The English are
+solid people. In England _lunch_ means something. In America, it does
+not. However, as there was no _Beware_ written outside, I entered the
+place. Several people were eating pies, fruit pies, pies with crust
+under, and crust over: sealed mysteries.
+
+[Illustration: "PEACH POY AND APPLE POY."]
+
+"I want something to eat," I said to a man behind the counter, who was
+in possession of only one eye, and hailed from Old Oireland.
+
+"What 'd ye loike?" replied he, winking with the eye that was not there.
+
+"Well, what have you got?"
+
+"Peach poy, apricot poy, apple poy, and mince poy."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"And, shure, what more do you want?"
+
+I have always suspected something mysterious about mince pies. At home,
+I eat mince pies. I also trust my friends' cooks. Outside, I pass. I
+think that mince pies and sausages should be made at home.
+
+"I like a little variety," I said to the Irishman, "give me a small
+slice of apple pie, one of apricot pie, and another of peach pie."
+
+The Irishman stared at me.
+
+"What's the matter with the mince poy?" he seemed to say.
+
+I could see from his eye that he resented the insult offered to his
+mince pies.
+
+I ate my pies and returned on the platform. I was told that the train
+was two hours behind time, and I should be too late to catch the last
+Brushville train at the next change.
+
+I walked and smoked.
+
+The three pies began to get acquainted with each other.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Brushville, March 12._
+
+Oh, those pies!
+
+At the last change yesterday, I arrived too late. The last Brushville
+train was gone.
+
+The pies were there.
+
+A fortune I would have given for a dinner and a bed, which now seemed
+more problematic than ever.
+
+I went to the station-master.
+
+"Can I have a special train to take me to Brushville to-night?"
+
+"A hundred dollars."
+
+"How much for a locomotive alone?"
+
+"Sixty dollars."
+
+"Have you a freight train going to Brushville?"
+
+"What will you do with it?"
+
+"Board it."
+
+"Board it! I can't stop the train."
+
+"I'll take my chance."
+
+"Your life is insured?"
+
+"Yes; for a great deal more than it is worth."
+
+"Very well," he said, "I'll let you do it for five dollars."
+
+[Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO BRUSHVILLE.]
+
+And he looked as if he was going to enjoy the fun. The freight train
+arrived, slackened speed, and I boarded, with my portmanteau and my
+umbrella, a car loaded with timber. I placed my handbag on the
+timber--you know, the one I had when traveling in "the neighborhood of
+Chicago"--sat on it, opened my umbrella, and waved a "tata" to the
+station-master.
+
+It was raining fast, and I had a journey of some thirty miles to make at
+the rate of about twelve miles an hour.
+
+Oh, those pies! They now seemed to have resolved to fight it out.
+_Sacrebleu! De bleu! de bleu!_
+
+A few miles from Brushville I had to get out, or rather, get down, and
+take a ticket for Brushville on board a local train.
+
+Benumbed with cold, wet through, and famished, I arrived here at ten
+o'clock last night. The peach pie, the apple pie, and the apricot pie
+had settled their differences and become on friendly and accommodating
+terms.
+
+I was able, on arriving at the hotel, to enjoy some light refreshments,
+which I only obtained, at that time of night, thanks to the manager,
+whom I had the pleasure of knowing personally.
+
+At eleven o'clock I went to bed, or, to use a more proper expression for
+my Philadelphia readers, I retired.
+
+I had been "retiring" for about half an hour, when I heard a knock at
+the door.
+
+"Who's there?" I grumbled from under the bedclothes.
+
+"A representative of the Brushville _Express_."
+
+"Oh," said I, "I am very sorry--but I'm asleep."
+
+"Please let me in; I won't detain you very long."
+
+"I guess you won't. Now, please do not insist. I am tired, upset, ill,
+and I want rest. Come to-morrow morning."
+
+"No, I can't do that," answered the voice behind the door; "my paper
+appears in the morning, and I want to put in something about you."
+
+"Now, do go away," I pleaded, "there's a good fellow."
+
+"I must see you," insisted the voice.
+
+"You go!" I cried, "you go----" without mentioning any place.
+
+For a couple of minutes there was silence, and I thought the interviewer
+was gone. The illusion was sweet, but short. There was another knock,
+followed by a "I really must see you to-night." Seeing that there would
+be no peace until I had let the reporter in, I unbolted the door, and
+jumped back into my--you know.
+
+[Illustration: THE INTERVIEWER.]
+
+It was pitch dark.
+
+The door opened; and I heard the interviewer's steps in the room. By and
+by, the sound of a pocket being searched was distinct. It was his own. A
+match was pulled out and struck; the premises examined and
+reconnoitered.
+
+A chandelier with three lights hung in the middle of the room. The
+reporter, speechless and solemn, lighted one burner, then two, then
+three, chose the most comfortable seat, and installed himself in it,
+looking at me with an air of triumph.
+
+I was sitting up, wild and desheveled, in my "retiring" clothes.
+
+"_Que voulez-vous?_" I wanted to yell, my state of drowsiness allowing
+me to think only in French.
+
+Instead of translating this query by "What do you want?" as I should
+have done, if I had been in the complete enjoyment of my intellectual
+faculties, I shouted to him:
+
+"What will you have?"
+
+"Oh, thanks, I'm not particular," he calmly replied. "I'll have a little
+whisky and soda--rye whisky, please."
+
+My face must have been a study as I rang for whisky and soda.
+
+The mixture was brought--for two.
+
+"I suppose you have no objection to my smoking?" coolly said the man in
+the room.
+
+"Not at all," I remarked; "this is perfectly lovely; I enjoy it all."
+
+He pulled out his pocket-book and his pencil, crossed his legs, and
+having drawn a long whiff from his cigar, he said:
+
+"I see that you have no lecture to deliver in Brushville; may I ask you
+what you have come here for?"
+
+"Now," said I, "what the deuce is that to you? If this is the kind of
+questions you have to ask me, you go----"
+
+He pocketed the rebuff, and went on undisturbed:
+
+"How are you struck with Brushville?"
+
+"I am struck," said I, "with the cheek of some of the inhabitants. I
+have driven to this hotel from the depot in a closed carriage, and I
+have seen nothing of your city."
+
+The man wrote down something.
+
+"I lecture to-morrow night," I continued, "before the students of the
+State University, and I have come here for rest."
+
+He took this down.
+
+"All this, you see, is very uninteresting; so, good-night."
+
+And I disappeared.
+
+The interviewer rose and came to my side.
+
+"Really, now that I am here, you may as well let me have a chat with
+you."
+
+"You wretch!" I exclaimed. "Don't you see that I am dying for sleep? Is
+there nothing sacred for you? Have you lost all sense of charity? Have
+you no mother? Don't you believe in future punishment? Are you a man or
+a demon?"
+
+"Tell me some anecdotes, some of your reminiscences of the road," said
+the man, with a sardonic grin.
+
+I made no reply. The imperturbable reporter resumed his seat and smoked.
+
+"Are you gone?" I sighed, from under the blankets.
+
+The answer came in the following words:
+
+"I understand, sir, that when you were a young man----"
+
+"When I was WHAT?" I shouted, sitting up once more.
+
+"I understand, sir, that when you were _quite_ a young man," repeated
+the interviewer, with the sentence improved, "you were an officer in
+the French army."
+
+"I was," I murmured, in the same position.
+
+"I also understand you fought during the Franco-Prussian war."
+
+"I did," I said, resuming a horizontal position.
+
+"May I ask you to give me some reminiscences of the Franco-Prussian
+war--just enough to fill about a column?"
+
+I rose and again sat up.
+
+"Free citizen of the great American Republic," said I, "beware, beware!
+There will be blood shed in this room to-night."
+
+And I seized my pillow.
+
+"You are not meaty," exclaimed the reporter.
+
+"May I inquire what the meaning of this strange expression is?" I said,
+frowning; "I don't speak American fluently."
+
+"It means," he replied, "that there is very little to be got out of
+you."
+
+"Are you going?" I said, smiling.
+
+"Well, I guess I am."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+I bolted the door, turned out the gas, and "re-retired."
+
+"Poor fellow," I thought; "perhaps he relied on me to supply him with
+material for a column. I might have chatted with him. After all, these
+reporters have invariably been kind to me. I might as well have obliged
+him. What is he going to do?"
+
+And I dreamed that he was dismissed.
+
+I ought to have known better.
+
+This morning I opened the Brushville _Express_, and, to my stupefaction,
+saw a column about me. My impressions of Brushville, that I had no
+opportunity of looking at, were there. Nay, more. I would blush to
+record here the exploits I performed during the Franco-Prussian war, as
+related by my interviewer, especially those which took place at the
+battle of Gravelotte, where, unfortunately, I was not present. The whole
+thing was well written. The reference to my military services began
+thus: "Last night a hero of the great Franco-Prussian war slept under
+the hospitable roof of Morrison Hotel, in this city."
+
+"Slept!" This was adding insult to injury.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This morning I had the visit of two more reporters.
+
+"What do you think of Brushville?" they said; and, seeing that I would
+not answer the question, they volunteered information on Brushville, and
+talked loud on the subject. I have no doubt that the afternoon papers
+will publish my impressions of Brushville.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+  THE UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA--INDIANAPOLIS--THE VETERANS OF THE GRAND
+  ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC ON THE SPREE--A MARVELOUS EQUILIBRIST.
+
+
+     _Bloomington, Ind., March 13._
+
+Lectured yesterday before the students of the University of Indiana, and
+visited the different buildings this morning. The university is situated
+on a hill in the midst of a wood, about half a mile from the little town
+of Bloomington.
+
+In a few days I shall be at Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan, the
+largest in America, I am told. I will wait till then to jot down my
+impressions of university life in this country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I read in the papers: "Prince Saunders, colored, was hanged here
+(Plaquemine, Fla.) yesterday. He declared he had made his peace with
+God, and his sins had been forgiven. Saunders murdered Rhody Walker, his
+sweetheart, last December, a few hours after he had witnessed the
+execution of Carter Wilkinson."
+
+If Saunders has made his peace with God, I hope his executioners have
+made theirs with God and man. What an indictment against man! What an
+argument against capital punishment! Here is a man committing a murder
+on returning from witnessing an execution. And there are men still to be
+found who declare that capital punishment deters men from committing
+murder!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: VETERANS.]
+
+     _Indianapolis, March 14._
+
+Arrived here yesterday afternoon. Met James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier
+poet. Mr. Riley is a man of about thirty, a genuine poet, full of pathos
+and humor, and a great reciter. No one, I imagine, could give his poetry
+as he does himself. He is a born actor, who holds you in suspense, and
+makes you cry or laugh just as he pleases. I remember, when two years
+ago Mr. Augustin Daly gave a farewell supper to Mr. Henry Irving and
+Miss Ellen Terry at Delmonico's, Mr. Riley recited one of his poems at
+table. He gave most of us a big lump in our throats, and Miss Terry had
+tears rolling down her cheeks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: A GREAT BALANCING FEAT.]
+
+The veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic are having a great field
+day in Indianapolis. They have come here to attend meetings and ask for
+pensions, so as to reduce that unmanageable surplus. Indianapolis is
+full, and the management of Denison House does not know which way to
+turn. All these veterans have large, broad-brimmed soft hats and are
+covered all over with badges and ribbons. Their wives and daughters,
+members of some patriotic association, have come with them. It is a huge
+picnic. The entrance hall is crowded all day. The spittoons have been
+replaced by tubs for the occasion. Chewing is in favor all over America,
+but the State of Indiana beats, in that way, everything I have seen
+before.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "IN EUROPE SWAGGERING LITTLE BOYS SMOKE."]
+
+Went to see Clara Morris in Adolphe Belot's "Article 47," at the Opera
+House, last night. Clara Morris is a powerful actress, but, like most
+actors and actresses who go "starring" through America, badly supported.
+I watched the audience with great interest. Nineteen mouths out of
+twenty were chewing--the men tobacco, the women gum impregnated with
+peppermint. All the jaws were going like those of so many ruminants
+grazing in a field. From the box I occupied the sight was most amusing.
+
+On returning to Denison House from the theater, I went to have a smoke
+in a quiet corner of the hall, far from the crowd. By and by two men,
+most smartly dressed, with diamond pins in their cravats, and flowers
+embroidered on their waistcoats, came and sat opposite me. I thought
+they had chosen the place to have a quiet chat together. Not so. One
+pushed a cuspidore with his foot and brought it between the two chairs.
+There, for half an hour, without saying one word to each other, they
+chewed, hawked, and spat--and had a good time before going to bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Trewey is nowhere as an equilibrist, compared to a gallant veteran who
+breakfasted at my table, this morning. Among the different courses
+brought to him were two boiled eggs, almost raw, poured into a tumbler
+according to the American fashion. Without spilling a drop, he managed
+to eat those eggs with the end of his knife. It was marvelous. I have
+never seen the like of it, even in Germany, where the knife trick is
+practiced from the tenderest age.
+
+In Europe, swaggering little boys smoke; here they chew and spit, and
+look at you, as if to say: "See what a big man I am!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+  CHICAGO (SECOND VISIT)--VASSILI VERESCHAGIN'S EXHIBITION--THE
+  "ANGELUS"--WAGNER AND WAGNERITES--WANDERINGS ABOUT THE BIG CITY--I SIT
+  ON THE TRIBUNAL.
+
+
+     _Chicago, March 15._
+
+Arrived here this morning and put up at the Grand Pacific Hotel. My
+lecture to-night at the Central Music Hall is advertised as a
+_causerie_. My local manager informs me that many people have inquired
+at the box-office what the meaning of that French word is. As he does
+not know himself, he could not enlighten them, but he thinks that
+curiosity will draw a good crowd to-night.
+
+This puts me in mind of a little incident which took place about a year
+ago. I was to make my appearance before an afternoon audience in the
+fashionable town of Eastbourne. Not wishing to convey the idea of a
+serious and prosy discourse, I advised my manager to call the
+entertainment "_A causerie_." The room was full and the affair passed
+off very well. But an old lady, who was a well-known patroness of such
+entertainments, did not put in an appearance. On being asked the next
+day why she was not present, she replied: "Well, to tell you the truth,
+when I saw that they had given the entertainment a French name, I was
+afraid it might be something not quite fit for me to hear." Dear soul!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 16._
+
+My manager's predictions were realized last night. I had a large
+audience, one of the keenest and the most responsive and appreciative I
+have ever had. I was introduced by Judge Elliott Anthony, of the
+Superior Court, in a short, witty, and graceful little speech. He spoke
+of Lafayette and of the debt of gratitude America owes to France for the
+help she received at her hands during the War of Independence. Before
+taking leave of me, Judge Anthony kindly invited me to pay a visit to
+the Superior Court next Wednesday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 17._
+
+Dined yesterday with Mr. James W. Scott, proprietor of the Chicago
+_Herald_, one of the most flourishing newspapers in the United States,
+and in the evening went to see Richard Mansfield in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
+Hyde." The play is a repulsive one, but the double impersonation gives
+the great actor a magnificent opportunity for the display of his
+histrionic powers. The house was crowded, though it was Sunday. The pick
+of Chicago society was not there, of course. Some years ago, I was told,
+a Sunday audience was mainly composed of men. To-day the women go as
+freely as the men. The "horrible" always has a great fascination for the
+masses, and Mansfield held his popular audience in a state of breathless
+suspense. There was a great deal of disappointment written on the faces
+when the light was turned down on the appearance of "Mr. Hyde," with his
+horribly distorted features. A woman, sitting in a box next to the one I
+occupied, exclaimed, as "Hyde" came to explain his terrible secret to
+the doctor, in the fourth act, "What a shame, they are turning down the
+light again!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "DEAR SOUL!"]
+
+     _March 18._
+
+Spent yesterday in recreation intellectual--and otherwise. I like to see
+everything, and I have no objection to entering a dime museum. I went to
+one yesterday morning, and saw a bearded lady, a calf with two heads, a
+gorilla (stuffed), a girl with no arms, and other freaks of nature. The
+bearded lady had very, very masculine features, but _honi soit qui mal y
+pense_. I could not help thinking of one of General Horace Porter's good
+stories. A school-master asks a little boy what his father is.
+
+"Please, sir, papa told me not to tell."
+
+"Oh, never mind, it's all right with me."
+
+"Please, sir, he is the bearded lady at the dime museum."
+
+From the museum I went to the free library in the City Hall. Dime
+museums and free libraries--such is America. The attendance at the free
+libraries increases rapidly every day, and the till at the dime museums
+diminishes with proportionate rapidity.
+
+[Illustration: "THE BEARDED LADY."]
+
+After lunch I paid a visit to the exhibition of Vassili Vereschagin's
+pictures. What on earth could possess the talented Russian artist, whose
+coloring is so lovely, to expend his labor on such subjects! Pictures
+like those, which show the horrors of a campaign in all their
+hideousness, may serve a good purpose in creating  a detestation of war
+in all who see them. Nothing short of such a motive in the artist could
+excuse the portrayal of such infamies. These pictures are so many
+nightmares which will certainly haunt my eyes and brain for days and
+nights to come. Battle scenes portrayed with a realism that is
+revolting, because, alas, only too true. The execution of nihilists in a
+dim, dreary, snow-covered waste. An execution of sepoys, the doomed
+rebels tied to the mouths of cannon about to be fired off. Scenes of
+torture, illustrative of the extent to which human suffering can be
+carried, give you cold shudders in every fiber of your body. One horrid
+canvas shows a deserted battlefield, the snow-covered ground littered
+with corpses that ravens are tearing and fighting for. But, perhaps
+worst of all, is a picture of a field, where, in the snow, lie the human
+remains of a company of Russian soldiers who have been surprised and
+slain by Turks. Among the bodies, outraged by horrible and nameless
+mutilations, walks a priest, swinging a censer. One seems to be pursued
+by, and impregnated with, a smell of cadaverous putrefaction. This
+collection of pictures is installed in a place which has been used for
+stabling horses in, and is reeking with stable odors and the carbolic
+acid that has been employed to neutralize them. Your sense of smell is
+in full sympathy with your horrified sense of sight: both are revolted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, behind the three large rooms devoted to the Russian artist's works
+was a small one, in which hung a single picture. You little guess that
+that picture was no other than Jean Francois Millet's "Angelus."
+Millet's dear little "Angelus," that hymn of resignation and peace,
+alongside of all this roar and carnage of battle! The exhibitor thought,
+perhaps, that a sedative might be needed after the strong dose of
+Vassili Vereschagin, but I imagine that no one who went into that little
+room after the others was in a mood to listen to Millet's message.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 19._
+
+Yesterday morning I went to see the Richmond Libby Prison, a four-story,
+huge brick building which has been removed here from Richmond, over a
+distance of more than a thousand miles, across the mountains of
+Pennsylvania. This is, perhaps, as the circular says, an unparalleled
+feat in the history of the world. The prison has been converted into a
+museum, illustrating the Civil War and African Slavery in America. The
+visit proved very interesting. In the afternoon I had a drive through
+the beautiful parks of the city.
+
+In the evening I went to see "Tannhaeuser" at the Auditorium. Outside,
+the building looks more like a penitentiary than a place of amusement--a
+huge pile of masonry, built of great, rough, black-looking blocks of
+stone. Inside, it is magnificent. I do not know anything to compare with
+it for comfort, grandeur, and beauty. It can hold seven thousand people.
+The decorations are white and gold. The lighting is done by means of arc
+electric lights in the enormously lofty roof--lights which can be
+lowered at will. Mr. Peck kindly took me to see the inner workings of
+the stage. I should say "stages," for there are three. The hydraulic
+machinery for raising and lowering them cost $200,000.
+
+Madame Lehmann sang grandly. I imagine that she is the finest lady
+exponent of Wagner's music alive. She not only sings the parts, but
+looks them. Built on grand lines and crowned with masses of blond hair,
+she seems, when she gives forth those volumes of clear tones, a Norse
+goddess strayed into the nineteenth century.
+
+M. Gounod describes Wagner as an astounding prodigy, an aberration of
+genius, a dreamer haunted by the colossal. For years I had listened to
+Wagner's music, and, like most of my compatriots, brought up on the
+tuneful airs of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, Auber, etc., I
+entirely failed to appreciate the music of the future. All I could say
+in its favor was some variation of the sentiment once expressed by Mr.
+Edgar W. Nye ("Bill Nye") who, after giving the subject his mature
+consideration, said he came to the conclusion that Wagner's music was
+not so bad as it sounded. But I own that since I went to Bayreuth and
+heard and saw the operas as there given, I began not only to see that
+they are beautiful, but why they are beautiful.
+
+Wagnerian opera is a poetical and musical idealization of speech.
+
+The fault that I, like many others, have fallen into, was that of
+listening to the voices instead of listening to the orchestra. The fact
+is, the voices could almost be dispensed with altogether. The orchestra
+gives you the beautiful poem in music, and the personages on the stage
+are really little more than illustrative puppets. They play about the
+same part in the work that pictures play in a book. Wagner's method was
+something so new, so different to all we had been accustomed to, that it
+naturally provoked much indignation and enmity--not because it was bad,
+but because it was new. It was the old story of the Classicists and
+Romanticists over again.
+
+If you wanted to write a symphony, illustrative of the pangs and
+miseries of a sufferer from toothache, you would, if you were a disciple
+of Wagner, write your orchestral score so that the instruments should
+convey to the listener the whole gamut of groans--the temporary relief,
+the return of the pain, the sudden disappearance of it on ringing the
+bell at the dentist's door, the final wrench of extraction gone through
+by the poor patient. On the boards you would put a personage who, with
+voice and contortions, should help you, as pictorial illustrations help
+an author. Such is the Wagnerian method.
+
+[Illustration: "A TERRIBLE WAGNERITE."]
+
+After the play I met a terrible Wagnerite. Most Wagnerites are terrible.
+They will not admit that anything can be discussed, much less
+criticised, in the works of the master. They are not admirers,
+disciples; they are worshipers. To them Wagner's music is as perfect as
+America is to many a good-humored American. They will tell you that
+never have horses neighed so realistically as they do in the "Walkuere."
+Answer that this is almost lowering music to the level of ventriloquism,
+and they will declare you a profane, unworthy to live. My Wagnerite
+friend told me last night that Wagner's work constantly improved till it
+reached perfection in "Parsifal." "There," he said, quite seriously,
+"the music has reached such a state of perfection that, in the garden
+scene, you can smell the violets and the roses."
+
+"Well," I interrupted, "I heard 'Parsifal' in Bayreuth, and I must
+confess that it is, perhaps, the only work of Wagner's that I cannot
+understand."
+
+"I have heard it thirty-four times," he said, "and enjoyed it more the
+thirty-fourth time than I did the thirty-third."
+
+"Then," I remarked, "perhaps it has to be heard fifty times before it
+can be thoroughly appreciated. In which case, you must own that life is
+too short to enable one to see an opera fifty times in order to enjoy it
+as it should really be enjoyed. I don't care what science there is about
+music, or what labors a musician should have to go through. As one of
+the public, I say that music is a recreation, and should be understood
+at once. Auber, for example, with his delightful airs, that three
+generations of men have sung on their way home from the opera house, has
+been a greater benefactor of the human race than Wagner. I prefer music
+written for the heart to music written for the mind."
+
+On hearing me mention Auber's name in one breath with Wagner's, the
+Wagnerite threw a glance of contempt at me that I shall never forget.
+
+"Well," said I, to regain his good graces, "I may improve yet--I will
+try again."
+
+As a rule, the Wagnerite is a man utterly destitute of humor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _March 20._
+
+Yesterday morning I called on Judge Elliott Anthony, at the Superior
+Court. The Judge invited me to sit by his side on the tribunal, and
+kindly explained to me the procedure, as the cases went on. Certainly
+kindness is not rare in Europe, but such simplicity in a high official
+is only to be met with in America.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+  ANN ARBOR--THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN--DETROIT AGAIN--THE FRENCH OUT
+  OF FRANCE--OBERLIN COLLEGE, OHIO--BLACK AND WHITE--ARE ALL AMERICAN
+  CITIZENS EQUAL?
+
+
+     _Detroit, March 22._
+
+ONE of the most interesting and brilliant audiences that I have yet
+addressed was the large one which gathered in the lecture hall of the
+University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, last night. Two thousand young,
+bright faces to gaze at from the platform is a sight not to be easily
+forgotten. I succeeded in pleasing them, and they simply delighted me.
+
+The University of Michigan is, I think, the largest in the United
+States.
+
+Picture to yourself one thousand young men and one thousand young women,
+in their early twenties, staying together in the same boarding-houses,
+studying literature, science, and the fine arts in the same class-rooms,
+living happily and in perfect harmony.
+
+They are not married.
+
+No restraint of any sort. Even in the boarding-houses they are allowed
+to meet in the sitting-rooms; I believe that the only restriction is
+that, at eight o'clock in the evening, or at nine (I forget which), the
+young ladies have to retire to their private apartments.
+
+"But," some European will exclaim, "do the young ladies' parents trust
+all these young men?" They do much better than that, my dear
+friend--they trust their daughters.
+
+During eighteen years, I was told, three accidents happened, but three
+marriages happily resulted.
+
+The educational system of America engenders the high morality which
+undoubtedly exists throughout the whole of the United States, by
+accustoming women to the companionship of men from their infancy, first
+in the public schools, then in the high schools, and finally in the
+universities. It explains the social life of the country. It accounts
+for the delightful manner in which men treat women. It explains the
+influence of women. Receiving exactly the same education as the men, the
+women are enabled to enjoy all the intellectual pleasures of life. They
+are not inferior beings intended for mere housekeepers, but women
+destined to play an important part in all the stations of life.
+
+No praise can be too high for a system of education that places
+knowledge of the highest order at the disposal of every child born in
+America. The public schools are free, the high schools are free, and the
+universities,[4] through the aid that they receive from the United
+States and from the State in which they are, can offer their privileges,
+without charge for tuition, to all persons of either sex who are
+qualified by knowledge for admission.
+
+The University of Michigan comprises the Department of Literature,
+Science, and the Arts, the Department of Medicine and Surgery, the
+Department of Law, the School of Pharmacy, the Homoeopathic Medical
+College, and the College of Dental Surgery. Each department has its
+special Faculty of Instruction.
+
+I count 118 professors on the staff of the different faculties.
+
+The library contains 70,041 volumes, 14,626 unbound brochures, and 514
+maps and charts.
+
+The University also possesses beautiful laboratories, museums, an
+astronomical observatory, collections, workshops of all sorts, a lecture
+hall capable of accommodating over two thousand people, art studios,
+etc., etc. Almost every school has a building of its own, so that the
+University is like a little busy town.
+
+No visit that I have ever paid to a public institution interested me so
+much as the short one paid to the University of Michigan yesterday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dined this evening with Mr. W. H. Brearley, editor of the Detroit
+_Journal_. Mr. Brearley thinks that the Americans, who received from
+France such a beautiful present as the statue of "Liberty Enlightening
+the World," ought to present the mother country of General Lafayette
+with a token of her gratitude and affection, and he has started a
+national subscription to carry out his idea. He has already received
+support, moral and substantial. I can assure him that nothing would
+touch the hearts of the French people more than such a tribute of
+gratitude and friendship from the other great republic.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening I had a crowded house in the large lecture hall of the
+Young Men's Christian Association.
+
+After the lecture, I met an interesting Frenchman residing in Detroit.
+
+"I was told a month ago, when I paid my first visit to Detroit, that
+there were twenty-five thousand French people living here," I said to
+him.
+
+"The number is exaggerated, I believe," he replied, "but certainly we
+are about twenty thousand."
+
+"I suppose you have French societies, a French Club?" I ventured.
+
+He smiled.
+
+"The Germans have," he said, "but we have not. We have tried many times
+to found French clubs in this city, so as to establish friendly
+intercourse among our compatriots, but we have always failed."
+
+"How is that?" I asked.
+
+"Well, I don't know. They all wanted to be presidents, or
+vice-presidents. They quarreled among themselves."
+
+"When six Frenchmen meet to start a society," I said, "one will be
+president, two vice-presidents, one secretary, and the other
+assistant-secretary. If the sixth cannot obtain an official position, he
+will resign and go about abusing the other five."
+
+"That's just what happened."
+
+It was my turn to smile. Why should the French in Detroit be different
+from the French all over the world, except perhaps in their own country?
+A Frenchman out of France is like a fish out of water. He loses his
+native amiability and becomes a sort of suspicious person, who spends
+his life in thinking that everybody wants to tread on his corns.
+
+"When two Frenchmen meet in a foreign land," goes an old saying, "there
+is one too many."
+
+[Illustration: THE TWO FRENCHMEN.]
+
+In Chicago there are two Frenchmen engaged in teaching the natives of
+the city "how to speak and write the French language correctly." The
+people of Chicago maintain that the streets are too narrow to let these
+two Frenchmen pass, when they walk in opposite directions. And it
+appears that one of them has lately started a little French paper--to
+abuse the other in.
+
+I think that all the faults and weaknesses of the French can be
+accounted for by the presence of a defect, jealousy; and the absence of
+a quality, humor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Oberlin, O., March 24._
+
+Have to-night given a lecture to the students of Oberlin College, a
+religious institution founded by the late Rev. Charles Finney, the
+friend of the slaves, and whose voice, they say, when he preached, shook
+the earth.
+
+The college is open to colored students; but in an audience of about a
+thousand young men and women, I could only discover the presence of two
+descendants of Ham.
+
+Originally many colored students attended at Oberlin College, but the
+number steadily decreased every year, and to-day there are only very
+few. The colored student is not officially "boycotted," but he has
+probably discovered by this time that he is not wanted in Oberlin
+College any more than in the orchestra stalls of an American theater.
+
+The Declaration of Independence proclaims that "all men are created
+equal," but I never met a man in America (much less still a woman) who
+believed this or who acted upon it.
+
+The railroad companies have special cars for colored people, and the
+saloons special bars. At Detroit, I was told yesterday that a
+respectable and wealthy mulatto resident, who had been refused service
+in one of the leading restaurants of the town, brought an action against
+the proprietor, but that, although there was no dispute of the facts,
+the jury unanimously decided against the plaintiff, who was moreover
+mulcted in costs to a heavy amount. But all this is nothing: the Young
+Men's Christian Association, one of the most representative and
+influential corporations in the United States, refuses to admit colored
+youths to membership.
+
+[Illustration: THE NEGRO.]
+
+It is just possible that in a few years colored students will have
+ceased to study at Oberlin College.
+
+I can perfectly well understand that Jonathan should not care to
+associate too closely with the colored people, for, although they do not
+inspire me with repulsion, still I cannot imagine--well, I cannot
+understand for one thing how the mulatto can exist.
+
+But since the American has to live alongside the negro, would it not be
+worth his while to treat him politely and honestly, give him his due as
+an equal, if not in his eyes, at any rate in the eyes of the law? Would
+it not be worth his while to remember that the "darky" cannot be
+gradually disposed of like the Indian, for Sambo adapts himself to his
+surroundings, multiplies apace, goes to school, and knows how to read,
+write, and reckon. Reckon especially.
+
+It might be well to remember, too, that all the greatest, bloodiest
+revolutions the world has ever seen were set on foot, not to pay off
+hardships, but as revenge for injustice. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was called
+a romance, nothing but a romance, by the aristocratic Southerners; but,
+to use the Carlylian phrase, their skins went to bind the hundreds of
+editions of that book. Another "Uncle Tom's Cabin" may yet appear.
+
+America will have "to work her thinking machine" seriously on this
+subject, and that before many years are over. If the next Presidential
+election is not run on the negro question, the succeeding one surely
+will be.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+  [4] A fee of ten dollars entitles a student to the privileges of
+    permanent membership in the University.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+  MR. AND MRS. KENDAL IN NEW YORK--JOSEPH JEFFERSON--JULIAN
+  HAWTHORNE--MISS ADA REHAN--"AS YOU LIKE IT" AT DALY'S THEATER.
+
+
+     _New York, March 28._
+
+The New York papers this morning announce that the "Society of Young
+Girls of Pure Character on the Stage" give a lunch to Mrs. Kendal
+to-morrow.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Kendal have conquered America. Their tour is a triumphal
+march through the United States, a huge success artistically,
+financially, and socially.
+
+I am not surprised at it. I went to see them a few days ago in "The
+Ironmaster," and they delighted me. As _Claire_ Mrs. Kendal was
+admirable. She almost succeeded in making me forget Madame Jane Hading,
+who created the part at the Gymnase, in Paris, six years ago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This morning Mr. Joseph Jefferson called on me at the Everett House. The
+veteran actor, who looks more like a man of fifty than like one of over
+sixty, is now playing with Mr. William J. Florence in "The Rivals." I
+had never seen him off the stage. I immediately saw that the
+characteristics of the actor were the characteristics of the
+man--kindness, naturalness, simplicity, _bonhomie_, and _finesse_. An
+admirable actor, a great artist, and a lovable man.
+
+At the Down-Town Club, I lunched with the son of Nathaniel
+Hawthorne--the greatest novelist that America has yet produced--Mr.
+Julian Hawthorne, himself a novelist of repute. Lately he has written a
+series of sensational novels in collaboration with the famous New York
+detective, Inspector Byrnes. Mr. Julian Hawthorne is a man of about
+forty-five, tall, well-proportioned, with an artistic-looking head
+crowned with grayish hair, that reminds a Frenchman of Alexandre Dumas,
+_fils_, and an American of Nathaniel Hawthorne. A charming, unaffected
+man, and a delightful _causeur_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening I went to Daly's Theater and saw "As You Like It." That
+bewitching queen of actresses, Miss Ada Rehan, played _Rosalind_. Miss
+Rehan is so original that it would be perfectly impossible to compare
+her to any of the other great actresses of France and England. She is
+like nobody else. She is herself. The coaxing drawl of her musical
+voice, the vivacity of her movements, the whimsical spontaneity that
+seems to direct her acting, her tall, handsome figure, her beautiful,
+intellectual face, all tend to make her a unique actress. She fascinates
+you, and so gets hold of you, that when she is on the stage she entirely
+fills it. Mr. John Drew as _Orlando_ and Mr. James Drew as _Touchstone_
+were admirable.
+
+It matters little what the play-bill announces at Daly's Theater. If I
+have not seen the play, I am sure to enjoy it; if I have seen it
+already, I am sure to enjoy it again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+  WASHINGTON--THE CITY--WILLARD'S HOTEL--THE POLITICIANS--GENERAL
+  BENJAMIN HARRISON, U. S. PRESIDENT--WASHINGTON
+  SOCIETY--BALTIMORE--PHILADELPHIA.
+
+
+     _Washington, April 3._
+
+Arrived here the day before yesterday, and put up at Willard's. I prefer
+this huge hotel to the other more modern houses of the capital, because
+it is thoroughly American; because it is in its rotunda that every
+evening the leading men of all parties and the notables of the nation
+may be found; because to meet at Willard's at night is as much the
+regular thing as to perform any of the official functions of office
+during the day; because, to use the words of a guide, which speaks the
+truth, it is pleasant to live in this historical place, in apartments
+where battles have been planned and political parties have been born or
+doomed to death, to become familiar with surroundings amid which
+Presidents have drawn their most important papers and have chosen their
+Cabinet Ministers, and where the proud beauties of a century have held
+their Court.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the subject of Washington hotels, I was told a good story the other
+day.
+
+[Illustration: EVENING AT WILLARD'S.]
+
+The most fashionable hotel of this city having outgrown its space, the
+proprietors sent a note to a lady, whose back yard adjoined, to say,
+that, contemplating still enlarging their hotel, they would be glad to
+know at what price she would sell her yard, and they would hand her the
+amount without any more discussion. The lady, in equally Yankee style,
+replied that she had been contemplating enlarging her back yard, and
+was going to inquire what they would take for part of their hotel!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How beautiful this city of Washington is, with its wide avenues, its
+parks, and its buildings! That Capitol, in white marble, standing on
+elevated ground, against a bright blue sky, is a poem--an epic poem.
+
+I am never tired of looking at the expanse of cloudless blue that is
+almost constantly stretched overhead. The sunsets are glorious. The
+poorest existence would seem bearable under such skies. I am told they
+are better still further West. I fancy I should enjoy to spend some time
+on a farm, deep in the country, far from the noisy, crowded streets, but
+I fear I am condemned to see none but the busy haunts of Jonathan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening I went to what is called a colored church. The place was
+packed with negroes of all shades and ages; the women, some of them very
+smartly dressed, and waving scarlet fans. In a pew sat a trio truly
+gorgeous. Mother, in black shiny satin, light-brown velvet mantle
+covered with iridescent beads, bonnet to match. Daughter of fifteen;
+costume of sky-blue satin, plush mantle, scarlet red, chinchilla fur
+trimmings, white hat with feathers. Second girl, or daughter, light-blue
+velvet, from top to toe, with large hat, apple-green and gold.
+
+[Illustration: A GORGEOUS TRIO.]
+
+Every one was intently listening to the preacher, a colored man, who
+gave them, in graphic language and stentorian voice, the story of the
+capture of the Jews by Cyrus, their slavery and their delivery. A low
+accompaniment of "Yes!" "Hear, hear!" "Allelujah!" "Glory!" from the
+hearers, showed their approbation of the discourse. From time to time,
+there would be a general chuckle or laughter, and exclamations of
+delight from the happy grin-lit mouths, as, for instance, when the
+preacher described the supper of Belshazzar, and the appearance of the
+writing on the wall, in his own droll fashion. "'Let's have a fine
+supper,' said Belshazzar. 'Dere's ole Cyrus out dere, but we'll have a
+good time and enjoy ourselves, and never mind him.' So he went for de
+cups dat had come from de Temple of Jerusalem, and began carousin'! Dere
+is Cyrus, all de while, marchin' his men up de bed ob de river. I see
+him comin'! I see him!" Then he pictured the state all that wicked party
+got in at the sight of the writing nobody could read, and by this time
+the excitement of the congregation was tremendous. The preacher thought
+this a good opportunity to point a moral. So he proceeded: "Now, drink
+is a poor thing; dere's too much of it in dis here city." Here followed
+a picture of certain darkies, who cut a dash with shiny hats and canes,
+and frequented bars and saloons. "When folks take to drinkin', somefin's
+sure to go wrong." Grins and grunts of approbation culminated in perfect
+shouts of glee, as the preacher said: "Ole Belshazzar and de rest of 'em
+forgot to shut de city gate, and in came Cyrus and his men."
+
+[Illustration: THE PREACHER.]
+
+They went nearly wild with pleasure over the story of the liberation of
+the Jews, and incidental remarks on their own freeing. "Oh, let dem go,"
+said their masters, when they found the game was up, "dey'll soon perish
+and die out!" Here the preacher laughed loudly, and then shouted: "But
+we don't die out so easy!" [Grins and chuckling.]
+
+One old negro was very funny to watch. When something met with his
+approval, he gave off a little "tchsu, tchsu!" and writhed forward and
+back on his seat for a moment, apparently in intense enjoyment; then
+jumped off his seat, turning round once or twice; then he would listen
+intently again, as if afraid to lose a word.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD NEGRO.]
+
+"I see dis, I see dat," said the preacher continually. His listeners
+seemed to see it too.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At ten minutes to twelve yesterday morning, I called at the White House.
+The President had left the library, but he was kind enough to return,
+and at twelve I had the honor to spend a few minutes in the company of
+General Benjamin Harrison. Two years ago I was received by Mr. Grover
+Cleveland with the same courtesy and the same total absence of red tape.
+
+The President of the United States is a man about fifty-five years old;
+short, exceedingly neat, and even _recherche_ in his appearance. The
+hair and beard are white, the eyes small and very keen. The face is
+severe, but lights up with a most gentle and kind smile.
+
+General Harrison is a popular president; but the souvenir of Mrs.
+Cleveland is still haunting the minds of the Washingtonians. They will
+never forget the most beautiful lady who ever did the honors of the
+White House, and most of them look forward to the possibility of her
+returning to Washington in March, 1893.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Washington society moves in circles and sets. The wife of the President
+and the wives and daughters of the Cabinet Ministers form the first
+set--Olympus, as it were. The second set is composed of the ladies
+belonging to the families of the Judges of the Supreme Court! The
+Senators come next. The Army circle comes fourth. The House of
+Representatives supplies the last set. Each circle, a Washington friend
+tells me, is controlled by rigid laws of etiquette. Senators' wives
+consider themselves much superior to the wives of Congressmen, and the
+Judges' wives consider themselves much above those of the Senators. But,
+as a rule, the great lion of Washington society is the British Minister,
+especially when he happens to be a real live English lord. All look up
+to him; and if a young titled English _attache_ wishes to marry the
+richest heiress of the capital, all he has to do is to throw the
+handkerchief, the young and the richest natives do not stand the ghost
+of a chance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lectured last night, in the Congregational Church, to a large and most
+fashionable audience. Senator Hoar took the chair, and introduced me in
+a short, neat, gracefully worded little speech. In to-day's Washington
+_Star_, I find the following remark:
+
+  The lecturer was handsomely introduced by Senator Hoar, who combines
+  the dignity of an Englishman, the sturdiness of a Scotchman, the
+  _savoir faire_ of a Frenchman, and the culture of a Bostonian.
+
+
+What a strange mixture! I am trying to find where the compliment comes
+in, surely not in "the _savoir faire_ of a Frenchman!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Armed with a kind letter of introduction to Miss Kate Field, I called
+this morning at the office of this lady, who is characterized by a
+prominent journalist as "the very brainiest woman in the United States."
+Unfortunately she was out of town.
+
+I should have liked to make the personal acquaintance of this brilliant,
+witty woman, who speaks, I am told, as she writes, in clear, caustic,
+fearless style. My intention was to interview her a bit. A telegram was
+sent to her in New York from her secretary, and her answer was wired
+immediately: "Interview _him_." So, instead of interviewing Miss Kate
+Field, I was interviewed, for her paper, by a young and very pretty lady
+journalist.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Baltimore, April 4._
+
+I have spent the day here with some friends.
+
+Baltimore strikes one as a quiet, solid, somewhat provincial town. It is
+an eminently middle-class looking city. There is no great wealth in it,
+no great activity; but, on the other hand, there is little poverty; it
+is a well-to-do city _par excellence_. The famous Johns Hopkins
+University is here, and I am not surprised to learn that Baltimore is a
+city of culture and refinement.
+
+A beautiful forest, a mixture of cultivated park and wilderness, about a
+mile from the town, must be a source of delight to the inhabitants in
+summer and during the beautiful months of September and October.
+
+I was told several times that Baltimore was famous all over the States
+for its pretty women.
+
+They were not out to-day. And as I have not been invited to lecture in
+Baltimore, I must be content with hoping to be more lucky next time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Philadelphia, April 5._
+
+After my lecture in Association Hall to-night, I will return to New York
+to spend Easter Sunday with my friends. Next Monday off again to the
+West, to Cincinnati again, to Chicago again, and as far as Madison, the
+State city of Wisconsin.
+
+[Illustration: A BALTIMORE WOMAN.]
+
+By the time this tour is finished--in about three weeks--I shall have
+traveled something like thirty thousand miles.
+
+The more I think of it, the more I feel the truth of this statement,
+which I made in "Jonathan and His Continent": To form an exact idea of
+what a lecture tour is in America, just imagine that you lecture
+to-night in London, to-morrow in Paris, then in Berlin, then in Vienna,
+then in Constantinople, then in Teheran, then in Bombay, and so forth.
+With this difference, that if you had to undertake the work in Europe,
+at the end of a week you would be more dead than alive.
+
+[Illustration: "THE GOOD, ATTENTIVE, POLITE CONDUCTOR OF ENGLAND."]
+
+But here you are not caged on the railroad lines, you can circulate.
+There is no fear of cold, no fear of hunger, and if the good, attentive,
+polite railway conductors of England could be induced to do duty on
+board the American cars, I would anytime go to America for the mere
+pleasure of traveling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+EASTER SUNDAY IN NEW YORK.
+
+
+     _New York, April 6 (Easter Sunday.)_
+
+[Illustration: A BELLOWING SOPRANO.]
+
+This morning I went to Dr. Newton's church in Forty-eighth Street. He
+has the reputation of being one of the best preachers in New York, and
+the choir enjoys an equally great reputation. The church was literally
+packed until the sermon began, and then some of the strollers who had
+come to hear the anthems moved on. Dr. Newton's voice and delivery were
+not at all to my taste, so I did not sit out his sermon either. He has a
+big, unctuous voice, with the intonations and inflections of a showman
+at the fair. He has not the flow of ideas that struck me so forcibly
+when I heard the late Henry Ward Beecher in London; he has not the
+histrionic powers of Dr. Talmage, either. There was more show than
+beauty about the music, too. A bellowing, shrieking soprano overpowered
+all the other voices in the choir, including that of a really beautiful
+tenor that deserved to be heard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+New York blossoms like the rose on Easter Day. Every woman has a new
+bonnet and walks abroad to show it.
+
+[Illustration: SOME EASTER BONNETS.]
+
+There are grades in millinery as there are in society. The imported
+bonnet takes the proudest rank; it is the aristocrat in the world of
+headgear. It does not always come with the conqueror (in one of her
+numerous trunks), but it always comes to conquer, and a proud, though
+ephemeral triumph it enjoys, perched on the dainty head of a New York
+belle, and supplemented by a frock from Felix's or Redfern's.
+
+It is a unique sight, Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday, when all the
+up-town churches have emptied themselves of their gayly garbed
+worshipers.
+
+[Illustration: KEEPING LENT.]
+
+The "four hundred" have been keeping Lent in polite, if not rigorous,
+fashion. Who shall say what it has cost them in self-sacrifice to limit
+themselves to the sober, modest violet for table and bonnet decoration
+during six whole weeks? These things cannot be lightly judged by the
+profane. I have even heard of sweet, devout New York girls who limited
+themselves to one pound of _marrons glaces_ a week during Lent. Such
+feminine heroism deserves mention.
+
+[Illustration: A CLUB WINDOW.]
+
+And have they not been sewing flannel for the poor, once a week, instead
+of directing the manipulation of silk and gauze for their own fair
+forms, all the week long? Who shall gauge the self-control necessary for
+fasting such as this? But now Dorcas meetings are over, and dances begin
+again to-morrow. The Easter anthem has been sung, and the imported
+bonnet takes a turn on Fifth Avenue to salute and to hob-nob with
+Broadway imitations during the hour between church and lunch. To New
+Yorkers this Easter Church parade is as much of an institution in its
+way as those of Hyde Park during the season are to the Londoners. It
+was plain that the people sauntering leisurely on the broad sidewalks,
+the feminine portion at least, had not come out solely for religious
+exercise in church, but had every intention to see and to be seen,
+especially the latter. On my way down, I saw some folks who had not been
+to church, and only wanted to see, so stood with faces glued to the
+windows of the big clubs, looking out at the kaleidoscopic procession:
+old bachelors, I daresay, who hold the opinion that spring bonnets,
+whether imported or home-grown, ought to be labeled "dangerous." At all
+events they were gazing as one might gaze at some coveted but
+out-of-reach fruit, and looking as if they dared not face their
+fascinating young townswomen in all the splendor of their new war paint.
+A few, perhaps, were married men, and this was their quiet protest
+against fifty-dollar hats and five-hundred-dollar gowns.
+
+The sight was beautiful and one not to be forgotten.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the evening I dined with Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll and the members
+of his family. I noticed something which struck me as novel, but as
+perfectly charming. Each man was placed at table by the side of his
+wife, including the host and hostess. This custom in the colonel's
+family circle (I was the only guest not belonging to it) is another
+proof that his theories are put into practice in his house. Dinner and
+time vanished with rapidity in that house, where everything breathes
+love and happiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+  I MOUNT THE PULPIT, AND PREACH ON THE SABBATH, IN THE STATE OF
+  WISCONSIN--THE AUDIENCE IS LARGE AND APPRECIATIVE; BUT I PROBABLY FAIL
+  TO PLEASE ONE OF THE CONGREGATION.
+
+
+     _Milwaukee, April 21._
+
+To a certain extent I am a believer in climatic influence, and am
+inclined to think that Sabbath reformers reckon without the British
+climate when they hope to ever see a Britain full of cheerful
+Christians. M. Taine, in his "History of English Literature," ascribes
+the unlovable morality of Puritanism to the influence of the British
+climate. "Pleasure being out of question," he says, "under such a sky,
+the Briton gave himself up to this forbidding virtuousness." In other
+words, being unable to be cheerful, he became moral. This is not
+altogether true. Many Britons are cheerful who don't look it, many
+Britons are not moral who look it.
+
+But how would M. Taine explain the existence of this same puritanic
+"morality" which can be found under the lovely, clear, bright sky of
+America? All over New England, and indeed in most parts of America, the
+same Kill-joy, the same gloomy, frowning Sabbath-keeper is flourishing,
+doing his utmost to blot the sunshine out of every recurring seventh
+day.
+
+Yet Sabbath-keeping is a Jewish institution that has nothing to do with
+Protestantism; but there have always been Protestants more Protestant
+than Martin Luther, and Christians more Christian than Christ.
+
+[Illustration: PURITAN LACK OF CHEERFULNESS.]
+
+Luther taught that the Sabbath was to be kept, not because Moses
+commanded it, but because Nature teaches us the necessity of the seventh
+day's rest. He says "If anywhere the day is made holy for the mere day's
+sake, then I command you to work on it, ride on it, dance on it, do
+anything that will reprove this encroachment on Christian spirit and
+liberty."
+
+The old Scotch woman, who "did nae think the betterer on" the Lord for
+that Sabbath-day walk through the cornfield, is not a solitary type of
+Anglo-Saxon Christian. But it is when these Puritans judge other nations
+that they are truly great.
+
+Puritan lack of charity and dread of cheerfulness often lead Anglo-Saxon
+visitors to France to misjudge the French mode of spending Sunday.
+Americans, as well as English, err in this matter, as I had occasion to
+find out during my second visit to America.
+
+I had been lecturing last Saturday evening in the pretty little town of
+Whitewater, in Wisconsin, and received an invitation from a minister to
+address a meeting that was to be held yesterday, Sunday, in the largest
+church of the place to discuss the question, "How Sunday should be
+spent." I at first declined, on the ground that it might not be exactly
+in good taste for a foreigner to advise his hosts how to spend Sunday.
+However, when it was suggested that I might simply go and tell them how
+Sunday was spent in France, I accepted the task.
+
+The proceedings opened with prayer and an anthem; and a hymn in praise
+of the Jewish Sabbath having been chosen by the moderator, I thought the
+case looked bad for us French people, and that I was going to cut a poor
+figure.
+
+The first speaker unwittingly came to my rescue by making an onslaught
+upon the French mode of spending the seventh day. "With all due respect
+to the native country of our visitor," said he, "I am bound to say that
+on the one Sunday which I spent in Paris, I saw a great deal of low
+immorality, and I could not help coming to the conclusion that this was
+due to the fact of the French not being a Sabbath-keeping people." He
+wound up with a strong appeal to his townsmen to beware of any
+temptation to relax in their observance of the fourth commandment as
+given by Moses.
+
+I was called upon to speak next. I rose in my pew, but was requested to
+go into the rostrum.
+
+With alacrity I stepped forward, a little staggered, perhaps, at finding
+myself for the first time in a pulpit, but quite ready for the fray.
+
+"I am sorry," said I, "to hear the remarks made by the speaker who has
+just sat down. I cannot, however, help thinking that if our friend had
+spent that Sunday in Paris in respectable places, he would have been
+spared the sight of any low immorality. No doubt Paris, like every large
+city in the world, has its black spots, and you can easily discover
+them, if you make proper inquiries as to where they are, and if you are
+properly directed. Now, let me ask, where did he go? I should very much
+like to know. Being an old Parisian, I have still in my mind's eye the
+numerous museums that are open free to the people on Sundays. One of the
+most edifying sights in the city is that of our peasants and workmen in
+their clean Sunday blouses enjoying themselves with their families, and
+elevating their tastes among our art treasures. Did our friend go there?
+I know there are places where for little money the symphonies of
+Beethoven and other great masters may be and are enjoyed by thousands
+every Sunday. Did our friend go there? Within easy reach of the people
+are such places as the Bois de Boulogne, the Garden of Acclimation,
+where for fifty centimes a delightful day may be spent among the lawns
+and flower-beds of that Parisian "Zoo." Its goat cars, ostrich cars, its
+camel and elephant drives make it a paradise for children, and one might
+see whole families there on Sunday afternoons in the summer, the parents
+refreshing their bodies with this contact with nature and their hearts
+with the sight of the children's glee. Did our friend go there? We even
+have churches in Paris, churches that are crammed from six o'clock in
+the morning till one in the afternoon with worshipers who go on their
+knees to God. Now, did our friend go to church on that Sunday? Well,
+where did he go? I am quitting Whitewater to-morrow, and I leave it to
+his townspeople to investigate the matter. When I first visited New
+York, stories were told me of strange things to be seen there even on a
+Sunday. Who doubts, I repeat, that every great city has its black spots?
+I had no desire to see those of New York, there was so much that was
+better worth my time and attention. If our friend, our observing friend,
+would only have done in Paris as I did in New York, he would have seen
+very little low immorality."
+
+The little encounter at Whitewater was only one more illustration of the
+strange fact that the Anglo-Saxon, who is so good in his own country, so
+constant in his attendance at church, is seldom to be seen in a sacred
+edifice abroad, unless, indeed, he has been led there by Baedeker.
+
+And last night, at Whitewater, I went to bed pleased with myself, like a
+man who has fought for his country.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I am in France, I often bore my friends with advice, and find, as
+usual, that advice is a luxurious gift thoroughly enjoyed by the one who
+gives it.
+
+"You don't know how to do these things," I say to them; "in England or
+in America, they are much more intelligent; they do like this and like
+that." And my friends generally advise me to return to England or
+America, where things are so beautifully managed.
+
+But, when I am out of France, the old Frenchman is all there, and if you
+pitch into my mother country, I stand up ready to fight at a minute's
+notice.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+  THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN HUMOR AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS--THE SACRED AND
+  THE PROFANE--THE GERMANS AND AMERICAN HUMOR--MY CORPSE WOULD "DRAW,"
+  IN MY IMPRESARIO'S OPINION.
+
+
+     _Madison, Wis., April 22._
+
+Have been lecturing during the past fortnight in about twelve places,
+few of which possessed any interest whatever. One of them,
+however--Cincinnati--I was glad to see again.
+
+This town of Madison is the only one that has really struck me as being
+beautiful. From the hills the scenery is perfectly lovely, with its
+wooded slopes and lakes. Through the kindness of Governor Hoard, I have
+had a comprehensive survey of the neighborhood; for he has driven me in
+his carriage to all the prettiest spots, delighting me all the while
+with his conversation. He is one of those Americans whom you may often
+meet if you have a little luck: witty, humorous, hospitable,
+kind-hearted, the very personification of unaffected good-fellowship.
+
+The conversation turned on humor.
+
+I have always wondered what the origin of American humor can be; where
+is or was the fountain-head. You certainly find humor in England among
+the cultured classes, but the class of English people who emigrate
+cannot have imported much humor into America. Surely Germany and
+Scandinavia cannot have contributed to the fund, either. The Scotch have
+dry, quiet, pawky, unconscious humor; but their influence can hardly
+have been great enough to implant their quaint native "wut" in American
+soil. Again, the Irish bull is droll, but scarcely humorous. The
+Italians, the Hungarians, have never yet, that I am aware of, been
+suspected of even latent humor.
+
+What then, can be the origin of American humor, as we know it, with its
+naive philosophy, its mixture of the sacred and the profane, its
+exaggeration and that preposterousness which so completely staggers the
+foreigner, the French and the German especially?
+
+The mixing of sacred with profane matter, no doubt, originated with the
+Puritans themselves, and is only an outcome of the cheek-by-jowl,
+next-door-neighbor fashion of addressing the Higher Powers, which is so
+common in the Scotch. Many of us have heard of the Scotch minister, whom
+his zeal for the welfare of missionaries moved to address Heaven in the
+following manner: "We commend to thy care those missionaries whose lives
+are in danger in the Fiji Islands ... which, Thou knowest, are situated
+in the Pacific Ocean." And he is not far removed in our minds from the
+New England pastor, who preached on the well-known text of St. Paul, and
+having read: "All things are possible to me," took a five-dollar bill
+out of his pocket, and placing it on the edge of the pulpit, said: "No,
+Paul, that is going too far. I bet you five dollars that you can't----"
+But continuing the reading of the text: "Through Christ who
+strengtheneth me," exclaimed, "Ah, that's a very different matter!" and
+put back the five-dollar bill in his pocket.
+
+[Illustration: THE MISSIONARY AND THE FIJIS.]
+
+This kind of amalgamation of the sacred and profane is constantly
+confronting one in American soil, and has a firm foothold in American
+humor.
+
+Colonel Elliott F. Shepard, proprietor of the New York _Mail and
+Express_, every morning sends to the editor a fresh text from the Bible
+for publication at the top of the editorials. One day that text was
+received, but somehow got lost, and by noon was still unfound. I was
+told that "you should have heard the compositors' room ring with: 'Where
+can that d----d text be?'" Finally the text was wired and duly inserted.
+These men, however, did not intend any religious disrespect. Such a
+thing was probably as far from their minds as it was from the minds of
+the Puritan preachers of old. There are men who swear, as others pray,
+without meaning anything. One is a bad habit, the other a good one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All that naive philosophy, with which America abounds, must, I fancy, be
+the outcome of hardship endured by the pioneers of former days, and by
+the Westerner of our own times.
+
+The element of exaggeration, which is so characteristic of American
+humor, may be explained by the rapid success of the Americans and the
+immensity of the continent which they inhabit. Everything is on a grand
+scale, or suggests hugeness. Then negro humor is mainly exaggeration,
+and has no doubt added its quota to the compound which, as I said just
+now, completely staggers certain foreigners.
+
+Governor Hoard was telling me to-day that a German was inclined to be
+offended with him for saying that the Germans, as a rule, were unable to
+see through an American joke, and he invited Governor Hoard to try the
+effect of one upon him. The governor, thereupon told him the story of
+the tree, "out West," which was so high that it took two men to see to
+the top. One of them saw as far as he could, then the second started
+from the place where the first stopped seeing, and went on. The recital
+did not raise the ghost of a smile, and Governor Hoard then said to the
+German: "Well, you see, the joke is lost upon you; you can't see
+American humor."
+
+[Illustration: "THAT'S A TAMNT LIE!"]
+
+"Oh, but," said the German, "that is not humor, that's a _tamnt_ lie!"
+
+And he is still convinced that he can see through an American joke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Grand Rapids, April 24._
+
+Have had to-day a lovely, sublime example of that preposterousness which
+so often characterizes American humor.
+
+Arrived here this morning from Chicago. At noon, the Grand Rapidite who
+was "bossing the show" called upon me at the Morton House, and kindly
+inquired whether there was anything he could do for me. Before leaving,
+he said: "While I am here, I may as well give you the check for
+to-night's lecture."
+
+"Just as you please," I said; "but don't you call that risky?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, I may die before the evening."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," he interrupted. "I'll exhibit your corpse; I
+guess there will be just as much money in it!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Grand Rapids is noted for its furniture manufactories. A draughtsman,
+who is employed to design artistic things for the largest of these
+manufactories, kindly showed me over the premises of his employers. I
+was not very surprised to hear that when the various retail houses come
+to make their yearly selections, they will not look at any models of the
+previous season, so great is the rage for novelties in every branch of
+industry in this novelty-loving America.
+
+[Illustration: MY EXHIBITOR.]
+
+No sinecure, that draughtsman's position, I can tell you.
+
+Over in Europe, furniture is reckoned by periods. Here it is an affair
+of seasons.
+
+Very funny to have to order a new sideboard or wardrobe, "to be sent
+home without delay" for fear of its being out of date.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+  GOOD-BY TO AMERICA--NOT "ADIEU," BUT "AU REVOIR"--ON BOARD THE
+  "TEUTONIC"--HOME AGAIN.
+
+
+     _New York, April 26._
+
+THE last two days have vanished rapidly in paying calls.
+
+This morning my impresario gave me a farewell breakfast at the Everett
+House. Edmund Clarence Stedman was there; Mark Twain, George Kennan,
+General Horace Porter, General Lloyd Bryce, Richard Watson Gilder, and
+many others sat at table, and joined in wishing me _bon voyage_.
+
+Good-by, my dear American friends, I shall carry away sweet
+recollections of you, and whether I am re-invited in your country or
+not, I will come again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _April 27._
+
+The saloon on board the _Teutonic_ is a mass of floral offerings sent by
+friends to the passengers. Two huge beautiful baskets of lilies and
+roses are mine.
+
+The whistle is heard for the third time. The hands are pressed and the
+faces kissed, and all those who are not passengers leave the boat and go
+and take up position on the wharf to wave their handkerchiefs until the
+steamer is out of sight. A great many among the dense crowd are friendly
+faces familiar to me.
+
+[Illustration: TWO BASKETS FOR ME.]
+
+The huge construction is set in motion, and gently and smoothly glides
+from the docks to the Hudson River. The sun is shining, the weather
+glorious.
+
+The faces on land get less and less distinct. For the last time I wave
+my hat.
+
+Hallo, what is the matter with me? Upon my word, I believe I am sad. I
+go to the library, and, like a child, seize a dozen sheets of note paper
+on which I write: "Good-by." I will send them to New York from Sandy
+Hook.
+
+[Illustration: THE "TEUTONIC."]
+
+The _Teutonic_ is behaving beautifully. We pass Sandy Hook. The sea is
+perfectly calm. Then I think of my dear ones at home, and the happiest
+thoughts take the place of my feelings of regret at leaving my friends.
+
+My impresario, Major J. B. Pond, shares a beautiful, well-lighted, airy
+cabin with me. He is coming to England to engage Mr. Henry M. Stanley
+for a lecture tour in America next season.
+
+The company on board is large and choice. In the steerage a few
+disappointed American statesmen return to Europe.
+
+[Illustration: "A FEW DISAPPOINTED STATESMEN."]
+
+Oh! that _Teutonic!_ can any one imagine anything more grand, more
+luxurious? She is going at the rate of 450 miles a day. In about five
+days we shall be at Queenstown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     _Liverpool, May 4._
+
+My most humble apologies are due to the Atlantic for libeling that ocean
+at the beginning of this book. For the last six days the sea has been
+perfectly calm, and the trip has been one of pleasure the whole time.
+Here is another crowd on the landing-stage at Liverpool.
+
+And now, dear reader, excuse me if I leave you. You were present at the
+friendly farewell handshakings on the New York side; but, on this
+Liverpool quay, I see a face that I have not looked upon for five
+months, and having a great deal to say to the owner of it, I will
+politely bow you out first.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  Max O'Rell's Impressions of America and the Americans.
+
+
+  JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT
+
+             BY
+
+         MAX O'RELL
+       AND JACK ALLYN
+
+  _TRANSLATED BY MADAME PAUL BLOUET._
+
+  IN ONE ELEGANT 12MO VOLUME.
+
+  Extra Cloth, Gilt Top,      Price, $1.50.
+  Paper Binding,                "   50 cts.
+
+
+  WHAT THE PRESS SAYS:
+
+"We have laughed with him at our neighbors, and now if we are clever we
+will laugh with him at ourselves."--_Daily Graphic, N. Y._
+
+"One reads the book with a perpetual smile on one's face, punctuated
+every now and then by a loud laugh, as one follows the brilliant
+Frenchman through his six months' tour of America. * * * He has glanced
+at things with the eye of a trained observer, and commented upon them
+with originality and humor. * * * One lays down the book with a wish
+that one might know its author."--_Chicago News._
+
+"The sensation of the spring. * * * It will tickle the American in spots
+and make him mad in spots, but it will be read, talked of, and
+enjoyed."--_Home Journal, Boston._
+
+"Undoubtedly the most interesting and sprightly book of the season. * *
+* It is rich in information."--_Inter-Ocean, Chicago._
+
+
+    CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY,
+  104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+"Rarely has one sprung into so immediate a fame in two
+continents."--_Boston Home Journal._
+
+
+   A NEW VOLUME BY MAX O'RELL,
+            AUTHOR OF
+  _JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT._
+
+        JACQUES BONHOMME,
+  _JOHN BULL ON THE CONTINENT,
+    and FROM MY LETTER BOX._
+
+        By MAX O'RELL,
+  _Author of "Jonathan and His Continent," "John Bull, Jr.," etc., etc._
+
+  1 vol., 12mo, Paper, 50 cents. Extra Cloth, 75 cents.
+
+
+"If any one was absurd enough to feel aggrieved at Max O'Rell's
+amusement over us in 'Jonathan and His Continent,' he may take his
+revenge in 'Jacques Bonhomme,' wherein the light-headed Blouet laughs at
+his compatriots as well."--_The Springfield Republican._
+
+"The book is full of sprightly, keen observations ... there is not a
+dull line in it from first to last, and its information is as genuine
+and accurate in the way of glimpses into the more intimate life of the
+people as it is charming in its sparkle and glow of style.--_Boston
+Evening Traveller._
+
+"He is a keen observer and has a happy faculty of presenting the comical
+side of things, and that with unvarying good humor, apparently
+indifferent whether the joke hits himself or somebody else."--_The Troy
+Budget._
+
+"In it is pictured the French at school, at war, in leading strings, in
+love, at work, at play, and at table, in trouble, in England, etc.,
+etc.,"--_The Boston Times._
+
+"Take it all in all, we think the most delightful book that Max O'Rell
+has written is his last published, entitled 'Jacques Bonhomme.'"--_Home
+Journal, Boston._
+
+
+           NEW YORK
+  CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
+    104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE
+
+
+
+
+        JOHN BULL, JR.,
+
+              OR
+
+  French as She is Traduced.
+
+        By MAX O'RELL,
+
+         _AUTHOR OF
+  JONATHAN AND HIS CONTINENT_.
+
+  With a Preface by GEORGE C. EGGLESTON.
+
+  Boards, flexible; price, 50 cents. Cloth, gilt top, unique, $1.00.
+
+
+"There is not a page in this delightful little volume that does not
+sparkle."--_Phila. Press._
+
+"One expects Max O'Rell to be distinctively funny. He is regarded as a
+French Mark Twain."--_The Beacon._
+
+"The whole theory of education is to be extracted from these humorous
+sketches."--_Baltimore American._
+
+"A volume which is bubbling over with brightness, and is pervaded with
+wholesome common sense."--_N. Y. Com. Advertiser._
+
+"May be placed among those favored volumes whose interest is not
+exhausted by one perusal, but which may be taken up again with a renewal
+of the entertainment afforded by the first reading."--_Boston Gazette._
+
+
+     CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
+  104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Frenchman in America, by Max O'Rell
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author	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-14 19:57:18 -0700
committer	Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org>	2025-10-14 19:57:18 -0700
commit	3a45335c41c08ebf83708c19e2aac9a5c4b88092 (patch)
tree	40642227b93d9dedd4814f9555e7e217b970ff0d