Chapter XXXI

_American Activity.--Expression of the Faces.--Press the
Button, S.V.P.--Marketing in the House.--Magic Tables.--The
Digestive Apparatus in Danger.--Gentlemen of Leisure.--Labour
Laws.--A Six Days' Journey to go to a Banquet.--My Manager
cuts out Work for me.--A Journalist on a Journey.--"Don't wait
dinner, am off to Europe."_

That which strikes the European most in his first walk through New York streets is the absence of stupid faces. All are not handsome, but all are intelligent-looking and full of life. The next thing that strikes him is the well-grown look of the people. Few or no deformities. He does not see one halt or hunchbacked person out of the ten thousand he may meet. With the exception of the old people, few have defective sight. Apart from the complexion, which is pale, everything seems to indicate an active, strong, healthy people. The constant crossing of races must daily tend to the improving of the Americans, physically and intellectually.

You see so many thin men and so many stout women, that you almost immediately conclude that the former live in a furnace of activity, and the latter in cotton-wool. This impression grows upon you, and soon takes the form of a conviction.

The Americans do not walk much. It is not that they are indolent. Far from it. It is because their legs will not carry them fast enough.

The faces of the men you meet look absorbed in thought. Their hats are well down on their heads. This, again, is a sign of intelligence. Do not smile. The fool perches his hat on his head, the man with a well-filled brain puts his head into its covering.

These same faces are pale, and you see many prematurely grey heads. The want of open-air exercise, the dryness of the atmosphere, the suffocating heat of the rooms, the vitiated air in the houses which seem to have windows only for the purpose of letting in a little light, easily explain this double phenomenon.

The women of every country are unanimous--in pronouncing the American men handsome; and as there are few men who do not think the American women lovely, there can be but one opinion on the subject: the American race is a good-looking one. But that which makes the charm of the men's faces is not regularity of feature; it is, as I have already said, the intelligence written on them, the wonderful, the amazing activity that animates them.

This activity you find in all stations of society, in the financial world, the literary world, the world of politics, everywhere. It is a fever with which the whole nation is smitten.

* * * * *

In the eyes of the worthy, peaceful Frenchman who has not travelled, an American is a lunatic who does nothing like other people. After all, eccentricity is but an exaggerated form of activity; but for certain people with narrow ideas, eccentricity and madness are but one and the same thing.

* * * * *

Let us take a little look at Americans at home, and see if I was wrong in calling American life pure phantasmagoria.

We will begin by the private houses.

In a well-appointed house, you will find, in a little room on the ground-floor, a plaque fitted with several buttons. You touch the first, and immediately a cab drives up to your door.[13] You touch the second, and in a minute or two, there appears a messenger from the telegraph office to take your telegram or carry a parcel or message for you to any part of the city. You touch the third, and a policeman presents himself, as if by enchantment, to know if you suspect the presence of burglars. You touch the fourth, and heigh, presto! up dashes the fire brigade, with engine, fire-escape, and the rest of their life-saving apparatus, and this in about the length of time that it took Cinderella's godmother to turn the pumpkin into a coach.

[13] If you press it twice, it is a two-horse cab that comes.

Jonathan will not stop here. Before long we shall see the architects of all first-class houses laying on, not only gas, water, the telephone and the electric light, but the opera and church service.

Already the ladies of Chicago do their marketing at home. The housekeeper goes to her telephone and rings.

"Hello!" responds the central office.

"Put me in communication with 2438"--(her butcher's number).

In another instant the bell rings.

"Hello!"

"Hello!"

"Is it the butcher?"

"Yes."

"Send me two pounds of fillet of beef, and a leg of mutton, by twelve o'clock."

"Very good! Is that all?"

"Yes."

"All right."

Upon this the lady rings again.

"Hello!" from central office, where this kind of thing goes on all day long.

"Send me 1267" (the fruiterer).

Again the bell rings.

"Hello!"

"Hello!"

"Is it the fruiterer?"

"Yes."

And the scene is repeated--and so on with the baker, the grocer, and all the lady's tradespeople.

We have all seen the wonderful labour-saving, time-saving apparatus of American invention which has suppressed the cry of "Cash here!" in most large shops in England, as well as America. To watch the ball containing your bill and coin drawn up, to see it run along one inclined groove, and return on another, bringing your change and the bill receipted, is to look on at another piece of American legerdemain.

* * * * *

There is a great effort being made now in New York, Chicago, and other towns, to find out a plan to accelerate the service in restaurants and do away with waiters. It is very simple and the Americans will not be baffled for such a small matter.

This is how the thing is to be done:

The restaurant is provided with small numbered tables. Each table is in direct communication with the kitchen by means of rails. Close at hand are a certain number of electric buttons upon which the customer sees written _beef_, _mutton_, _chop_, _vegetables_, _tart_, _etc._ He touches three, four, five buttons, according to his appetite, and the cook receives his order.

"Steak and potatoes, tomato, salad, chocolate cream, for No. 52!... All right, ready!"

In an instant a tray bearing the lunch appears upon the table, placed there without hands. When the customer has disposed of his food, he touches the button marked _bill_. In a twinkling the bill appears on his plate, and the assuaged American settles it at the desk as he goes out. The whole thing is as simple as _bonjour_.

The American complains that it is impossible to lunch in less than ten minutes. This evil will be remedied shortly.

If you want a really striking sight, go to one of the great restaurants of Chicago or New York at lunch time. Those Americans using their knife and fork will make your head swim. At a little distance, they look as if they were all playing the dulcimer.

I lunched one day at the Astor House, near the heart of the Stock Exchange furnace of New York. I was standing at the bar making all the speed possible with my food, so as to give place to the crowd pressing behind me. All the time I heard such remarks as:

"There's one that isn't in a hurry! How much longer is he going to be? Is he going to take an hour over his grub?"

You eat too fast, my dear Jonathan, and I understand why your anti-dyspeptic pill makers cover your walls with their advertisements. You die young; and you do not live, you burn out. You rush on at express speed, in your chase after the dollar, and you have not time to look at Happiness, standing with open arms at your door. Your very evenings are not your own. Hardly have you taken upon your knees one of your lovely little ones to kiss and caress, hardly have you begun a little love-scene with your pretty wife, when, ding, ding, ding, there is the telephone going.

"Hello! Hello!"

Your wife and children would fain see the telephone thrown to the winds, for you are a gallant husband and a charming father.

The little French provincial shopkeeper, who locks his shop-door, from twelve to one o'clock, while he dines with his family, has come nearer than you to solving the problem of life, _How to be happy_. Sharper and Co. may suspend payment, without the fact interfering with his digestion. Twice a year he goes and takes up his three per cent. dividend on the Government Stock. It is petty, perhaps; but it is secure, and he can sleep upon both ears.

* * * * *

Those Americans are never still, never at rest. Even when they are sitting they must be on the move; witness the rocking-chair habit.

No repose for them: their life is perpetual motion, a frantic race.

Opposite my windows, at the Richelieu Hotel in Chicago, there was a railway station. Every ten minutes the local trains came and went. Each time the bell announced the approach of a train, I saw a crowd tear along the path of the station, and leap into the carriages, taking them by storm. By leaving their offices thirty seconds earlier, these good people might have walked comfortably to the station and saved themselves this breathless chase.

Go to the Brooklyn Bridge station, New York, about five o'clock in the afternoon. There you will see a sight very like the storming of a fort.

An American wrote me one day a note of a few lines, and thus excused himself for his brevity: "A word in haste--I have hardly time to wink." Poor fellow! only think of it, not even time to wink; it makes one giddy.

But it must be acknowledged that this feverish activity has made America what she is. Yesterday forest and swamp, to-day towns of five, ten thousand souls, with churches, free libraries, free schools, newspapers; towns where people work, think, read, pray, make fortunes, go bankrupt, etc.

Very few Americans are content to live on their private means. There is no leisure class, there are no unemployed. Rich and poor, old and young, all work. They die in harness, harnessed to the car of Mammon. A millionaire on his death-bed says to his son: "I leave you my fortune on the express condition that you work." General Daniel Butterfield expressed the feeling of most American fathers when he said on some public occasion: "If I had ten sons I would not give them a cent until they had learned to earn their own living, though I were ten times a millionaire."

Mr. Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York _Tribune_, Mr. Madill, of the Chicago _Tribune_, and several other editors I could mention, are millionaires. You will invariably find them at their desks until one in the morning. They work like simple supernumeraries.

Outside certain Anglo-maniac sets, to be found in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, no one boasts of living on his property.

In England, a man who does nothing goes by the name of _gentleman_; in Chicago he goes by the name of _loafer_.

In fifty years' time, when America has two hundred million inhabitants, perhaps she will impose her ideas upon the Old World. Then, maybe, society will have no contempt except for the ignorant and the idle.

A young man, with a very intelligent-looking face, was pointed out to me one evening, in a Chicago drawing-room.

"He is very rich," said my hostess to me softly. "For a year or two after he inherited the property he did no work, and people began to rather shun him. But he has just gone into partnership with a friend in business, and so he is quite reinstated in everyone's esteem."

I know Americans of both sexes who, rather than lead an idle life, have taken to the stage. These actors and actresses belong to good society, which admires them in public and welcomes them in private. Such things do honour to the national spirit, and raise the dramatic profession in the eyes of the public. Why should not all actresses be as respected and respectable as singers or pianists?

* * * * *

Not only is work respectable in America, but in certain States it is compulsory. In the State of Missouri, for instance, any idle improvident fellow who neglects his family or, through shiftless habits, is likely to become a burden to the State, may be sold at auction to the highest bidder for a term of six months. This is a law passed twenty years ago. It provides also, that after the vagrant has worked out the purchase-money, any other sum earned by him, at a fair compensation, is to be applied by his purchaser to the payment of his debts, or the maintenance of his family. If, when he is free again, he returns to his bad habits, his fellow-townsmen take the law into their own hands. They escort him to some public place and flog him; and if that does not cure him, his wife runs the risk of seeing him one fine day hanging from some neighbouring tree. The people will tell you, as the most simple thing in the world, that by acting thus they economise the cost of a police force. Rather primitive this reason, it must be admitted; but in new societies, idleness is a crime, and the bees ought to have a right to drive the drones out of the hive.

* * * * *

Jonathan is but John Bull expanded--John Bull with plenty of elbow-room, and nothing astonishes him, nothing stops him.

Distances, he takes no account of: for him they do not exist. At the annual dinner of the Clover Club, at Philadelphia, seated opposite me was the editor of one of the large Chicago newspapers. He had come from Chicago to Philadelphia to be present at the banquet. After all, it is but a twenty-four hours' journey. That's all. I could not help making a remark on the subject to my neighbour at table.

"There's nothing at all astonishing about it," said he. "You see that bald gentleman with a long white beard over there? Well, he has come from San Francisco."

A piece of canvas-back duck, at that moment in my throat, nearly choked me.

"Excuse me," I said to my neighbour, "I have only been in America three months.... I shall get used to it--I shall get used to it."

And, indeed, it was very necessary to get used to it.

I was looking one day at the list of engagements which my manager had just sent me for the following week. To my stupefaction I read:

"Monday, New York.

"Tuesday, Youngstown (Ohio).

"Wednesday, Indianapolis."

I ran to the office of this imperturbable Yankee, and asked him:

"Is it possible that I can reach these towns, so far apart, in time to give my lectures?"

"Nothing easier," he replied, seizing the railway guide. "Your New York lecture comes off at three in the afternoon. At five, you have a train which gets to Youngstown by noon next day. There you lecture at eight. Pay your bill and send your luggage to the station before going to the Academy of Music, where you have to speak. As soon as your lecture is over, jump into a cab, and you will catch the ten o'clock train, which will set you down at Indianapolis in time for your next day's engagement."

"What! go to the train in evening dress?" I exclaimed.

"And why not? You undress in the sleeping-car, I suppose?"

"What a life!" thought I. "These Yankees beat everything."

Oh, that map of the United States! If you would have any idea of a good lecturing tour in America, just imagine yourself appearing in public one day in London, the next in Paris, the day after in Berlin, then in Vienna, St. Petersburgh, and Constantinople to finish up the week. Then take Teheran, and the chief cities in Asia, and you have a fair idea of the journeys.

* * * * *

Here is a little scene of American life. It was told me, not only without boast, but as the most natural thing in the world, by Mr. L. S. Metcalf, the editor of the _Forum_, one of the most important Reviews of New York.

Mr. Metcalf wished to have an article on the subject of the Mormons for his Review: not one of those papers written by a man who had passed through Utah, but a serious study. For several weeks he had been in correspondence with one of the elders of the Mormon Church.

"All this letter-writing does not advance matters much," thought Mr. Metcalf to himself one day; "one or two hours' conversation would settle the thing."

Two hours later he was in the train for Salt Lake City. He probably reckoned this way: "It is only five days' journey in the cars, and what is that when one sets against it a good talk in the interest of the Review?"

Mr. Metcalf set out, arrived, saw, had his chat, took the cars again, and came home.

"But," I timidly advanced, "what became of the Review during all this time?"

"Oh, it suffered nothing from my absence," said its editor; "I installed myself at the table in the library-car, where I was able to carry on my work at my ease. When we stopped at the stations, I posted my letters, and sent and received telegrams with as little difficulty as in New York."

"But could you really work easily in the train?"

"Better, much better, than at my own desk, my dear sir; there was no one to come and disturb me."

I was one day relating this conversation to an American journalist.

"You are simply wonderful, you Americans," I said to him; "you would go to the Sandwich Islands to fetch news of the king at Honolulu."

"Just so," he replied--"I have done it."

This "I have done it" was the finishing touch.

A New Yorker sets out for San Francisco, as Parisians set out for Versailles or Chartres. He takes the Liverpool steamer, just as we take the little boat for Auteuil, without any more fuss, without any more preparation. Do not ask him whether he will return by the same line. Perhaps he will take it into his head to come home by China and Australia. His own country is larger than Europe itself; and France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, even Russia,--all these names sound to his ear no more than Ohio, Pennsylvania, or any other American State.

One of my fellow-passengers, on my homeward trip in the _Germanic_, was a New Yorker, who, on the morning of the day the boat was to sail, left home without the least intention of crossing the Atlantic. Having made up his mind at noon, he telegraphed to his wife, "Don't wait dinner, am off to Europe," bought a bag and a few necessaries for the voyage, and calmly embarked at 3.30 for Europe.

American wives are used to this sort of telegrams, and think nothing of it.