Chapter III: Part 3

These village folk of ours are like old trees. Close your eyes to the visible and open them to the invisible world, and you see the young man of to-day as the stem, his father as the branch, his grandfather the greater branch. You see in the shadow rising out of the earth the ancient trunk. You think of many people, and yet it is not father and grandfather, and grandfather and great-grandfather, and so on, but one tree, the name of which is the young man leafing in the world of to-day. That man is no shoot, no seedling, he has behind him the consciousness of the vast umbrageous oak. When he says "Our Father, which art in heaven," the voice comes out of the depths of the earth, and it comes from father and grandfather, and from greybeard after greybeard standing behind one another's shoulders, innumerably.

The place to which it shall please God to call you is not a definite locality in the United States of America; the dream of wealth is dreamed inside each cottage door. Each man is intent on getting on, on realising something new. He is revolving in his mind ways of doing more business; of doing what he has more quickly, more economically; ways of "boosting," ways of buying. Our customers _buy from_ us: his customers _trade with_ him--they enter into harmony with him. Store-keepers and customers sing together like gnats over the oak trees; they make things hum. There is a feeling that whether buying or selling you are getting forward.

The British, however, put a great question-mark in front of this American life. Do those who are striving know what they want in the end of ends? Do those toiling in the wood know what is on the other side?

The late Price Collier remarked that the German thinks he has done something when he has an idea and the Frenchman when he has made an epigram; it may be inferred that the American thinks he has done something when he has made his pile. The ultimate earthly prize for "boosting" and bargaining is a vulgar solatium,--a big house, an abundant person, a few gold rings, an adorned wife, a high-power touring car. Out in those wider spaces where lagging and outdistanced competitors are not taken into your counsel you still handle business. But now it is in "graft" that you deal. You are engineering trusts, and cornering commodities, you develop political "pull," you own saloons, and have ledgers full of the bought votes of Italians and Slavs.

You are great ... sitting at the steering-wheel of this great ramshackle political and commercial machine, your coat off and your immaculate lawn sleeves tucked up above your elbows, you own to wolfish-eyed reporters that you have an enormous appetite for work and zest for life.

And yet....

What is the crown? You die in the midst of it. There is no goal, no priceless treasure that even in the death-struggle your hands grasp after.

Some of your children are going in for a life of pleasure. They go to be the envy of waiters and hotel-porters and all people waiting about for tips, but often to be the laughing-stock of the cultured. One of your sweet but simple-souled daughters is going to marry a broken-down English peer. He will not marry her for less than a million dollars. In the old store where you began business, gossiping over bacon and flour, you would have looked rather blank if some one had said that a foreigner would consent to marry your daughter only on the payment of an indemnity.

"Well," said my road-companion to me under a bush in Indiana, "the game goes to pass the time. The world is a prison-house, and a good game has been invented, commerce, and it saves us from ennui, that is the philosophy of it all. Scores of years pass like an hour over cards. Those who win are most interested and take least stock of the time--and they have invented happiness."

But I cannot believe that the American destiny leads up a cul-de-sac. We have been following out a cross-road. There is a high road somewhere that leads onward.

There are two sorts of immigrant, one that makes his pile and returns to Europe, the other who thinks America a desirable place to settle in. The second class is vastly more numerous than the first, for faith in American life is even greater than faith in America's wealth.

Quite apart from the opportunities for vulgar success America has wonderful promise. It can offer to the newcomer colonist a share in a great enterprise. It is quite clear to the sympathetic observer that something is afoot in the land which in Great Britain seems to be best known by police scandals, ugly dances, sentimental novels, and boastful, purse-conscious travellers.

The dream of Progress by which Westerners live is going to be carried forward to some realisation in America. There is a great band of workers united in the idea of making America the most pleasant and happy place to live in that the world has ever known. I refer to those working with such Americans as J. Cotton Dana, the fervent librarian; Mr. Fred Howe, who is visualising the cities of the future; the President of the City College, who has such regard not only for the cultural but for the physical well-being of young men; Jane Addams, who with such precision is diagnosing social evils; President Wilson, who promises to uproot the tree of corruption; to mention only the chief of those with whom I was brought in contact in my first experience of America.

The political struggles of America form truly a sad spectacle, but by a thousand non-political signs one is aware that there is a real passion in the breast of the individual.

Going through the public gardens at Newark I see written up: "Citizens, this park is yours. It was planted for you, that the beauty of its flowers and the tender greenery of tree and lawn might refresh you. You will therefore take care of it...."

Going through Albany I find it placarded: "Dirt is the origin of sin; get rid of dirt, and other evils will go with it," and the whole city is having a clean-up week, all the school children formed into anti-dirt regiments making big bonfires of rubbish and burying the tomato-cans and rusty iron.

Every city in America has been stirring itself to get clean. Even in a remote little place like Clarion, Pa., I read on every lamp-post: "Let your slogan be 'Do it for Home, Sweet Home'--clean up!" and again in another place, "Develop your social conscience; you've got one, make the country beautiful." In New York I have handed me the following prayer, which has seemed to me like the breath of the new passion:

We pray for our sisters who are leaving the ancient shelter of
the home to earn their wage in the store and shop amid the press
of modern life. Grant them strength of body to bear the strain
of unremitting toil, and may no present pressure unfit them for
the holy duties of home and motherhood which the future may lay
upon them. Give them grace to cherish under the new surroundings
the old sweetness and gentleness of womanhood, and in the rough
mingling of life to keep the purity of their hearts and lives
untarnished. Save them from the terrors of utter want. Teach them
to stand by their sisters loyally, that by united action they
may better their common lot. And to us all grant wisdom and firm
determination that we may not suffer the women of our nation to be
drained of strength and hope for the enrichment of a few, lest our
homes grow poor in the wifely sweetness and motherly love which
have been the saving strength and glory of our country. If it must
be so that our women toil like men, help us still to reverence in
them the mothers of the future. If they yearn for love and the
sovereign freedom of their own home, give them in due time the
fulfilment of their sweet desires. By Mary the beloved, who bore
the world's redemption in her bosom; by the memory of our own dear
mothers who kissed our souls awake; by the little daughters who
must soon go out into that world which we are now fashioning for
others, we pray that we may deal aright by all women.

Men are praying for women, and women are working for themselves. Commercial rapacity is tempered by women's tears, and the tender stories of the shop-girl that O. Henry wrote are more read to-day than they were in the author's lifetime. The newspapers are all agog with the "vice-probes," scandals, questions of eugenics, the menace of organised capital, the woman's movement. And they are not so because vice is more prolific than in Europe, or the race more inclined to fail, or the working men and working women more tyrannised over. They are so because this generation wishes to realise something of the New Jerusalem in its own lifetime. It may be only a foolish dream, but it provides the present atmosphere of America. It discounts the despair which on the one hand prudery and on the other rag-time dancing invite. It discounts the commercial and mechanical obsession of the people. It discounts the wearisome shouting of the cynic who has money in his pocket, and makes America a place in which it is still possible for the simple immigrant to put his trust. In the light of this passion, and never forgetful of it, I view all that comes to my notice in America of to-day.

IV

INEFFACEABLE MEMORIES OF NEW YORK

First, the flood of the homeward tide at six-thirty in the evening, the thousands and tens of thousands of smartly dressed shop-girls hurrying and flocking from the lighted West to the shadowy East--their bright, hopeful, almost expectant features, their vivacity and energy even at the end of the long day. I felt the contrast with the London crowd, which is so much gloomier and wearier as it throngs into our Great Eastern terminus of Liverpool Street. New York has a stronger class of girl than London. Our shop-girls are London-bred, but your Sadie and Dulcie are the children of foreigners; they have peasant blood in them and immigrant hope. They have a zest for the life that New York can offer them after shop-hours.

The average wage of the American shop-girl is stated to be seven dollars (twenty-eight shillings) per week; the average wage in London is about ten shillings, or two and a half dollars.[1] I suppose that is another reason why our New York sisters are more cheerful. Despite the high price of food in New York there must be a comparatively broad margin left to the American girl to do what she likes with. The cult of the poor little girl of the Department Store is perhaps only a cult. For there are many women in New York more exploited than she. When the shop-girl sells herself to rich men for marriage or otherwise she does so because she has been infected by the craze for finery and wealth, is energetic and vivacious, and is morally undermined. It is not because she is worn out and ill-paid. If New York is evil it is not because New York is a failure. The city is prosperous and evil as well. The freshness and health and vigour of the rank and file of New York were amazing to one familiar with the drab and dreary procession of workers filing into the city of London at eight in the morning and away from it at the same hour in the evening.

Then the Grand Central Station, with its vast high hall of marble, surmounted by a blue-green ceiling which, aping heaven itself, is fretted and perforated and painted to represent the clear night sky. That starry roof astonished me. It reminded me of a story I heard of G. K. Chesterton, that he lay in bed on a Sunday morning and with a crayon mounted on a long handle drew pictures on the white ceiling. It was like some dream of Chesterton's realised.

For a long time I looked at the painted roof and picked out my beloved stars and constellations,--the planets under which I like to sleep,--and then I thought, "Strange, that out in the glowing Broadway, not far away, the real stars are hidden from the gaze of New York by flashing and twinkling and changing sky-signs in manifold colour and allurement. Every night the dancing-girl is dancing in the sky, and the hand pours out the yellow beer into the foaming glass which, like the vision of the Grail, appears but to vanish; every night the steeds prance with the Greek chariot, the athletes box, the kitten plays with the reel. These are the real stars and constellations of Broadway, for Charles's Wain is never seen, neither Orion nor the chair of Cassiopeia nor the Seven Sisters. To see them you must come in here, into the Grand Central Station."

But apart from this paradox, what a station this is--a great silent temple, a place wherein to come to meditate and to pray. It is more beautiful than any of the churches of America. How much more beautiful than the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, for instance. That cathedral will be the largest church in the world when it is finished, and, vanity of vanities, how much more secular it is than the station! It is almost conceivable that after some revolution in the future, New York might change its mind and go to worship at the Grand Central Station and run its trains into the Cathedral of St. John.

Americans are proud of saying that the Woolworth Building, the Grand Central Station, the Pennsylvania Railway Station, and the New York Central Library show the New York of the future. Almost everything else will be pulled down and built to match these. They are new buildings, they are the soul of the New America finding expression. They are temples of a new religion. Americans pray more and aspire more to God in these than they do in their churches.

* * * * * * *

There stands out in my memory the East Side, and the slums which I walked night after night in quest of some idea, some redeeming feature, something that would explain them to me. I walked almost at random, taking ever the first turning to the left, the first to the right, and the first to the left again, coming ever and anon to the river and the harbour, and having to turn and change.

The East Side is more spectacular than the East End of London. The houses are so high, and there is so much more crowding, that you get into ten streets of New York what we get into a hundred streets. The New York slums are slums at the intensest. The buildings, great frames of rags and dirt, hang over the busy street below, and are wildly alive from base to summit. All day long the bedding hangs out at the windows or on the iron fire-escapes attached to the houses. Women are shouting and children are crying on the extraordinary stairs which lead from room to room and story to story in the vast honeycomb of dens. On the side-walk is a rough crowd speaking all tongues. The toy doors of the saloons swing to and fro, simple couples sit on high stools in the soda-bars and suck various kinds of "dope." Lithuanian and Polish boys are rushing after one another with toy pistols, the girls are going round and round the barber's pole, singing and playing, with hands joined. The stores are crowded, and notices tell the outsider that he can buy two quarts of Grade B milk for eleven cents, or ten State eggs for twenty-five cents. You come to streets where all the bakers' shops are "panneterias," and you know you are among the Italians. One Hundred and Thirteenth Street as it goes down from Second Avenue to First Avenue is full of Greeks and Italians, and is extraordinarily dark and wild; men of murderous aspect are prowling about, there is howling across the street from tenement to tenement. Dark, plump women stand at doorways and stare at you, and occasionally a negress in finery trapes past.

You come to little Italian theatres where the price of admission is only five cents, and find them crammed with families, so that you cannot hear _Rigoletto_ for the squalling of the babies. There are mean cinema houses where you see only worn-out and spoiled films giving broken and incoherent stories. And all the while the lights and shadows play, the Greek hawker of confectionery shouts:

"Soh-dah!"

"Can-dee!"

You continue your wanderings and you strike a nigger district. Negresses and their beaux are flirting in corners and on doorsteps. Darky boys and girls are skirling in the roadway. Smartly dressed young men, carrying canes, come giggling and pushing one another on the pavement, crying out music-hall catches--"Who was you with last night?" and the like.

You know the habitat of the Jew by the abundance of junk-shops, old-clothes shops, and offices of counsellors-at-law. It seems the Jews are very litigious, and even the poorest families go to law for their rights. You find windows full of boxing-gloves, for the Jews are great boxers in America. You find stalls and push-carts without end. And every now and then rubbish comes sailing down from a window up above. That is one of the surest signs of the Jews being installed--the pitching of cabbage-leaves and fish-bones and sausage-parings from upper windows.

What a sight was Delancey Street, with its five lines of naphtha-lit stalls, its array of tubs of fish and heaps of cranberries, its pavements slippery with scales, the air heavy with the odour of fish!

On one of the first of my nights out in the New York streets I came on a most wonderful sight. After prolonging a journey that started in the centre of the city I found myself suddenly plunging downward among dark and wretched streets. I was following out my zigzag plan, and came at last to a cul-de-sac. This was at the end of East Ninth Street. It was very dark and forbidding; there were no shops, only warehouses and yards. There were no people. I expected to find a new turning to the left, and was rather fearsome of taking it even should I find it. But at length I saw I had come to the East River. At the end of the street the water lapped against a wooden landing-stage, and there I saw a picture of wonder and mystery.

High over the glimmering water stood Brooklyn Bridge, with its long array of blazing electric torches and its procession of scores of little car-lights trickling past. The bridge hung from the high heaven by dark shadows. It was the brightest ornament of the night. I sat on an overturned barrow and looked out. Up to me and past me came stalking majestic ferry-boats, all lights and white or shadowy faces. Far away on the river lay anchored boats with red and green lights, and beyond all were the black silhouettes of the building and shipping on Long Island Shore.

* * * * * * *

It was interesting to me to participate in the Russian Easter in New York, having lived in the Protestant and Roman Catholic Easters a whole month before on the emigrant ship on the day we reached New York. I came to the diminutive Russian cathedral in East Ninety-Fifth Street on Easter Eve at midnight. I had been at a fancy-dress party in the evening, and as fortune would have it, had gone in Russian attire; that is, in a blue blouse like a Moscow workman. What was my astonishment to find myself the only person so dressed in the great throng of Russians surging in and out of the cathedral and the side street where the overflow of them talked and chattered. They were all in bowler hats, and wore collars and ties and American coats and waistcoats. They even looked askance at me for coming in a blouse; they thought I might be a Jew or a German, or a foolish spy trying to gain confidences.

I shall never forget the inside of the cathedral at one in the morning, the vociferous singing, the beshawled peasant girls, the tear-stained faces. Priest after priest came forward and praised the Orthodox Church and the Russian people, and appealed to the worshippers to remember that all over the Russian world the same service was being held, not only in the great cathedrals and monasteries, but in the village churches, in the far-away forest settlements, at the shrines in lonely Arctic islands, in the Siberian wildernesses, on the Urals, in the fastnesses of the Caucasus, on the Asian deserts, in Jerusalem itself. It was pathetic to hear the priests exhort these young men and women to remain Russians--they were all young, and they all or nearly all looked to America as their new home. On all ordinary occasions they longed to be Americans and to be called Americans; but this night a flood of feeling engulfed them, and in the New York night they set sail and looked hungrily to the East whence they came. They held tapers. They had tenderly brought their cakes, their chickens and joints of pork, to be sprinkled with holy water and blessed by the priest for their Easter _breakfast_. It was sad to surmise how few had really fasted through Lent, and yet to see how they clung to departing tradition.

Coming out of the cathedral we each received a verbose revolutionary circular printed in the Russian tongue: "Keep holy the First of May! Hail to the war of the Classes! Hurrah for Socialism! Workmen of all classes, combine!"--and so on. In Russia a person distributing such circulars would be rushed off to gaol at once. In New York it is different, and "influences" of all kinds are in full blast. I looked over the shoulders of many groups outside the cathedral on Easter Day and found them reading those New York rags, which are conceived in ignorance and dedicated to anarchism. It seems the Russian who comes to New York is at once grabbed by the existent Social-Democratic organisations, and though he go to church still, he begins to be more and more attached to revolutionism. It is strange that these organisations are directed, not against the Tsar and the officialdom of Russia, but against the Government of the United States and the commercial machine. There is no question of America being a refuge for the persecuted Russian. The latter is assured at once that America is a place of even worse tyranny than the land he has come from. But if he does not take other people's word he soon comes to that conclusion on his own account. For he finds himself and his brothers working like slaves and drinking themselves to death through sheer boredom, and he finds his sisters in the "sweat-shops" of the garment-workers, or loses them in houses of evil.

* * * * * * *

I shall long remember the Night Court on Sixth Avenue, and several occasions when I entered there after midnight and found the same shrewd, tireless Irish judge nonchalantly fining and sentencing negresses and white girls found in the streets under suspicious circumstances. Many a poor Russian girl was brought forward, and called upon to defend herself against the allegations of the soulless spies and secret agents of the American Police. I listened to their sobs and cries, their protests of innocence, their promises of repentance, till I was ready to rise in Court and rave aloud and shriek, and be pounced upon by the great fat pompous usher who represses even the expression on your features. "Why," I wanted to cry aloud, "it is America that ought to be tried, and not these innocent victims of America--they are the evidence of America's guilt and not the committers of her crimes!" But I was fixed in silence, like the reporters doing their jobs in the front bench, and the unmoved, hard-faced attendants and police by whom the order of the Court was kept.

Then, not far along the same road in which the Night Court stands, I came one evening into a wax-work show of venereal disease. It was quite by chance I went in, for there was nothing outside to indicate what was within. Only the spirit of adventure, which prompted me to go in and look round wherever I saw an open door, betrayed me to this chamber of horrors. There I saw, in pink and white and red, the human body in the loathsome inflammation and corruption of the city's disease. Chief of all I remember the queen of the establishment, a hypnotic-seeming corpse of wax, lying full-length in a shroud in a glass case. Just enough of the linen was held aside to show or suggest the terrible cause of her decease. The show was no more than a doctor's advertisement, and it was open in the name of science, but it was an unforgettable vision of death at the heart of this great city pulsating with life.

* * * * * * *

Then the splendour of Broadway, the great White Way, "calling moths from leagues, from hundreds of leagues," as O. Henry wrote. What a city of enchantment and wonder New York must seem to the traveller from some dreary Russian or Siberian town, if seen aright. It is a thrilling spectacle. Now that I have looked at it I say to myself, "Fancy any man having lived and died in this era without having seen it!" Five hundred years ago the island was dark and empty, with the serene stars shining over it; but now the creatures of the earth have found it and built this city on it, lit by a myriad lights. Thousands of years hence it will be dark again belike, and empty, and uninhabited, and once more the serene stars will shine over the island.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] In Russia the average wage of the shop-girl is 12 roubles a month (_i.e._, 1½ dollars, or 6s. a week), but then she is a humble creature and lives simply.

V

THE AMERICAN ROAD

Out in the country was a different America. The maples were all red, the first blush of the dawn of summer. In the gardens the ficacia was shooting her yellow arrows, in the woods the American dogwood tree was covered with white blossoms like thousands of little dolls' nightcaps. Down at Caldwell, New Jersey, I picked many violets and anemones--large blue fragrant violets. The bride's veil was in lovely wisps and armfuls of white. The unfolding oak turned all rose, like the peach tree in bloom. Each morning when I awakened and went out into the woods I found something new had happened overnight,--thus I discovered the sycamore in leaf, fringing and fanning, and then the veils which the naked birch trees were wearing. The birches began to look like maidens doing their hair. The fern fronds and azalea buds opened their hands. The chestnut tree lit up her many candles. The shaggy hickory, the tree giant whose bark hangs in rags and clots, had looked quite dead, but with the coming of May it was seen to be awaking tenderly. In the glades the little columbines put on their pink bonnets. Only the pines and cedars were dark and changeless, as if grown old in sin beside the tender innocence of the birches.

It is very pleasant living in the half-country--living, that is, in the outer suburbs of the great American city or in the ordinary suburbs of the small city. New York has very little corresponding to our Walthamstow, Enfield, Catford, Ilford, Camberwell, and all those dreary congested parishes that lie eight to ten miles from the centre of London. The American suburbs are garden cities without being called so. Each house is detached from its neighbour, there is a stretch of greenest lawn in front of it, there is a verandah on which are fixed hammocks and porch-swings, there are flower-beds, blossoming shrubs, the shade of maples and cherry trees. There are no railings or fences, and the people on the verandah look down their lawn to the road and take stock of all the people passing to and fro.

Working men and women live a long way out, and are content to spend an hour or an hour and a half a day in trains and cars if only to be quite free of the city when work is over.

Twelve miles of garden city is very wearisome to the pedestrian; but he tramps them gaily when he remembers that the country is ahead, and that he has not simply to retrace his footsteps to a town-dwelling which for the time being he calls home.

I set off for Chicago in the beginning of May--not in a Pullman car, but on my own feet; for in order to understand America it is necessary to go to America, and the only way she can be graciously approached is humbly, on one's feet. I travelled just in the same way as I have done the last four years in Russia--viz. with a knapsack on my back, a staff in my hand, and a stout pair of boots on my feet. I carried my pot, I had matches, and I reckoned to buy my own provisions as I went along, and to cook what was necessary over my own fire by the side of the road. At night I proposed to sleep at farmhouses in cold weather, and under the stars when it was warm. I was ready in mind and body for whatever might happen to me. If the farmers proved to be inhospitable, and would not take me in on cold or rainy nights, I would quite cheerfully tramp on till I came to a hotel, or a barn, or a cave, or a bridge, or any place where man, the wanderer, could reasonably find shelter from the elements.

I took the road with great spirits. There is something unusually invigorating in the American air. It is marvellously healthy and strength-giving, this virginal land. Every tree and shrub seems to have a full grasp of life, and outbreathes a robust joy. It is as if the earth itself had greater supplies of unexhausted strength than Europe has--as if, indeed, it were a newer world, and had spent less of the primeval potencies and energies bequeathed to this planet at her birth. How different from tranquil and melancholy Russia!

America is more spacious in New York State than in New York City. The landscape is so broad that could Atlas have held it up, you feel he must have had fine arms. Your eyes, but lately imprisoned so closely by unscalable sky-scrapers, run wild in freedom to traverse the long valleys and forested ridges, waking the imagination to realise the country of the Indians. There is a vast sky over you. The men and women on the road have time to talk to you, and the farmer ambling along in his buggy is interested to give you a lift and ask after your life and your fortunes; and when he puts you down, and you thank him, he answers in an old-fashioned way:

"You're welcome; hand on my heart."

In the city no one has a word to say to you, but in the country every one is curious. It is more neighbourly to be curious and to ask questions. I rejoiced in every scrap of talk, even in such triviality as my chat with Otto Friedrichs, a workman, who hailed me at East Berne.

"Are you an Amarikan?"

"No."

"Sprechen Sie deutsch, mein Herr?"

"No; I'm English."

"That bag on your back is made in Germany."

"Very likely," said I; "I bought it in London."

"You running avay in case dere should be ze war, eh?"

"Well, it would be safer here, even for you."

"What you think of our Kaiser?"

"Fine man," said I.

"Some say ze Kaiser is too English to make ze war. But do you know wat I read in ze newspaper? Der Kaiser cut his hand by accident, zen he hold up his finger--so, viz ze blood on it, and he say, 'Dat is my las' blood of English tropp,' and he ... the blood away."

Not knowing the word for "flicked" Otto told me in dumb show with his fingers.

"Last drop of English blood, eh?" said I.

"Yes."

"So he's quite German now, and ready to fight."

As I sat at the side of the road every passer-by was interested in my fire and my pot. They pitied me when they saw me trudging along the road, and when I told them I was tramping to Chicago they commonly exclaimed:

"Gee! I wouldn't do that for ten thousand dollars."

But when they saw me cooking my meals they stopped and looked at me wistfully--that was their weakness; a hankering, not after the wilderness, but for the manna there. They addressed to me such non-pertinent remarks as:

"So that's how you fix it."

"I say, you'll get burned up."

"Are yer making yer coffee?"

There was a great doubt as to my business, as the following interlocutions will suggest. In Russia I should be asked:

"Where are you going?"

"To Kieff," I might answer.

"To pray," the Russian would conclude. But in America I was most commonly taken to be a pedlar.

"Whar you going?"

"Chicago," I answered.

"Peddling?"

It astonished me to be taken for a pedlar. But I was almost as commonly taken to be walking for a wager. I was walking under certain conditions. I must not take a lift. I must keep up thirty miles a day. I was walking to Chicago on a bet. Some one had betted some one else I wouldn't do it in a certain time. I took only a dollar in my pocket and was supporting myself by my work. I lectured in schoolhouses, mended spades, would lend a hand in the hayfield. Or I was walking to advertise a certain sort of boot. Or I was walking on a certain sort of diet to advertise somebody's patent food. I was repairer of village telephones. I was hawking toothpicks, which I very cunningly made in my fire at the side of the road. I was a tramping juggler, and would give a show in the town next night.

Every one thought I accomplished a prodigious number of miles a day. At least a hundred times I was called upon to state what was my average "hike" for the day. Some were sympathetic and explained that they would like to do the same, to camp out, it was the only way to see America. A girl in a baker's shop told me she had long wanted to tramp to Chicago and sleep out every night, but could get no friend to accompany her. Jews slapped me on the back and told me I was doing fine. Especially I remember a young man who walked by my side through the streets of Wilkes Barre. He told me his average per day had been forty-five miles.

"How long did you keep that up?" I asked.

"A week, we went to Washington."

"That's going some," said I.

"How far do you usually go?" asked he.

"Oh, five or six miles when the weather's fine," said I.

"Yer kiddin us!"

I was told that I wasn't the only person on the road. The great Weston was behind me, patriarch of "hikers," aged seventy-five. He wore ice under his hat and was walking from New York to St. Paul at twenty-five miles a day, and was accompanied by an automobile full of liquid food. Far ahead of me was a woman in high-heeled boots tramping from New York to San Francisco. She carried only a small handbag, walked with incredible rapidity, and was proving for newspaper that it was just as easy to walk in Vienna boots as in any other. Several weeks before me a cripple had passed, wheeling a wheelbarrow full of picture-post-cards of himself, which he sold at a nickel each, thereby supporting himself. He was going from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, but had five years to do it in.

For all and sundry upon the road I had a ready smile and a greeting; almost every one replied to me at least as heartily, and many were ready to talk at length. Some, however, to whom I gave greeting either took me for a disreputable tramp or felt themselves too important in the sight of the Lord. When I said, "How d'ye do?" or "Good morning" they simply stared at me as if I were a cow that had mooed. In my whole journey I encountered no hostility whatever. Only once or twice I would hear a woman in a car say truculently to her husband, "There goes Weary Willie."

I had pleasant encounters innumerable, and many a talk with children. I felt that as I was in search for the emerging American, the American of to-morrow and the day after, I ought to take the children I met rather seriously. It was surprising to me that the grown-ups upon the road said to me always, "How-do?" but the children said, "Hullo." The children always spoke as if they had met me before, or as if they were dying for me to stop and talk to them and tell them all about the road, and who I was and what I was doing.

At a little place called Clarkville I had a breakfast party. Perhaps I had better begin at the beginning. It had been a hard frosty night, and I slept in a barn on two planks beside an old rusty reaping-machine. At five in the morning I made my first fire of the day, and I shared a pot of hot tea with a disreputable tramp, who had come to warm himself at the blaze. By seven o'clock I had walked into the next village, about five miles on, and I was ready for a second breakfast. My first had been for the purpose of getting warm; now I was hungry for something to eat.

It was a beautiful morning; on each side of the road were orchards in full bloom, the gnarled and angular apple trees were showing themselves lovely in myriad outbreaking of blossom, and there were thousands of dandelions in the rank green grass beneath them. The sides of the roadway and the banks of the village stream were deep in grass and clover, and every hollow of the world seemed brimming with sunshine. The sun had been radiant, and he stood over a shoulder of the Catskills and poured warmth on the whole Western world.

On the bank of the stream I spread out my things, emptying out of my pack, pots, cups, provisions, books, paper, pen, and ink. I gathered wisps of last year's weeds, and on a convenient spot started my little fire. I had just put eggs in to boil when the first of my party arrived. This was little Charles van Wie and his friend. Charles was hired to come early to the school-house and light the fire, so that the school would be warm by the time the teacher and the other boys and girls arrived. I did not know that I had pitched my camp just between the village and the school, on the way all the children would have to come. In America the school-house is always some distance from the village--this is so that mothers may not come running in and out every minute, and it is a good arrangement for other reasons. It gives every little boy and girl a walk, and the chance of having upon occasion extraordinary adventures.

Charles and his friend set to work to gather sticks for me, and saved me the trouble of rushing every now and then for fuel to keep up the fire. Then they hurried away to the school-house, but promised, excitedly, to come back as soon as they could.

Charles returned and asked me where I was going to, and what was my name and where I'd come from. I told him, and he took out a pocket-book and pencil and wrote all down.

Then other boys came and watched me make my coffee. The boys--they were all under twelve--had bunches of white lilac fixed in their coats. I sat and ate my food and chattered.

"Is the lilac for your teacher?" I asked of a boy.

"I guess _not_," he replied.

There was a look of disgust on his face.

"Is your teacher strict?"

"Some."

The boys all sat or sprawled on the grass and chaffed one another.

One of them was wearing a badge in his buttonhole, a white enamelled button, on which was printed very distinctly:

Every
D A M
Booster.

But the DAM, when you looked at it closely, turned out to be "Dayton's Adding Machines."

"What does 'booster' mean?" I asked.

"A feller that makes a job go," it was explained to me.

After breakfast I took a photograph of them sitting in the grass. They were much pleased.

"If Skinny Atlas had been here he'd have broke the camera," said one of them.

An extremely fat boy came into view and approached our party. The others all cried at him "Skinny Atlas," so I asked:

"Is that a nickname? Is his surname Atlas?"

"No," they replied, "his surname is Higgins. But he's so darned fat that we call him Skinny Atlas. We have a saying, 'Put a nickel in the slot and up comes Skinny Atlas.'"

Accordingly all the boys cried out, "Put a nickel in the slot and up comes Skinny Atlas."

The fat boy, wearing a big straw sun-bonnet, came up and walloped several little boys. There was some horseplay round the embers of my fire, but Charles van Wie set an example by giving warning--

"Next person who pushes me I baste."

But it was getting late, and three little girls who had been hovering shyly at a distance cried out that it was time for the boys to go in.

The school had only fifteen pupils, boys and girls together, and they were all in one class, and they learned "the three R's," physiology, and the geography of the county they lived in.

The making of an American citizen is a simple matter in the country. And little Charles van Wie would make one of the best that are turned out, I should think.

Later on in the morning I went along to the school-house and peeped in at the window. There they all were, under the stern sway of a little school-mistress. But they didn't see me.

How useful to the tramp is the custom of hanging in the school-room a map of the county or of the state in which the children live. Often when I have wanted to know where I was I have clambered to the school-house window and consulted the map on the wall.

Once more to the road. The American high-road differs considerably from any way in Europe. Every farm-house has a white letter-box on a post outside its main entrance, and the farmer posts his letter and hoists a metal flag as a signal to the peripatetic postman that there are letters to collect. There are no thatched cottages; the homesteads stand back from the road, they are always of wood, and have shady verandahs and cosily furnished front rooms. The fields on each side of the road are protected by six-inch mesh steel netting, turned out by some great factory in Pittsburg I suppose. There are very few country guide-posts, and in New York State those there are come rather as a reward to you after you have guessed right. They are put up at a distance from the cross-roads. The pointers of the guide-posts are of tin. The telephone cones are of green glass, the poles are mostly chestnut, are not straight, and rot quickly. There are many advertisements by the way, and as you approach a town of importance they are as thick as fungi. They are not written for tramps to jeer at, but as hints to rich motorists. Still one necessarily smiles at:

CLOTHE YOUR WHOLE FAMILY ON CREDIT
$1 A WEEK.

or

DUTCHESS TROUSERS. TEN CENTS A BUTTON.
A DOLLAR A RIP.

A great portion of the State of Indiana seems to be devoted to Dutchess trousers, and I often wonder whether the company had to pay many indemnities to customers.

One sorry feature of country advertising was the number of notices scrawled in black with charcoal or painted in tar. In Europe picnickers write their names or the names of their sweethearts on the rocks and the walls and palings, but in America they write their trade, the thing they sell, and the price a pound, what O. Henry would call their especial sort of "graft."

Then "rrrrrrr! rhrhrh--whaup--ssh!" the automobile appears on the horizon, passes you, and is gone. I have no prejudice against automobilists; they were very hospitable to me, and carried me many miles. If I had accepted all the lifts offered me I should have been in Chicago in a week, instead of taking two months on the journey. But the farmers curse them. On one Sunday late in June I counted everything that passed me. The farmer commonly tells you that hundreds of automobiles whirl past his door every day. This day there were just one hundred and ten, of which thirty-two were auto-cycles and the rest cars. As a set-off against this there were only five buggies and three ordinary cyclists. That was one of the last days of June, when I was seventy miles from Chicago. I had two offers to take me into the city that day!

Besides counting the vehicles that passed me I took stock of the automobilists themselves. No one passed till 7 A.M., and then came a loving couple, looking like a runaway match. He was clasping her waist, and their trunks were roped on to the car behind. Then six young men, all in their wind-blown shirts, came tearing along on auto-cycles. Scarcely had the noise of these subsided when a smart picnic party rolled past in a smooth-running car, flying purple flags on which was printed the name of their home city--Michigan. This is a common custom in America, to carry a flag with the name of your city. It boosts your own town, and is thought to bring trade there.

Six townsmen came past me in a grand car. Their hats were all off; they were all clean shaven and bald. Coats had been left at home, and the six were in radiantly clean coloured shirts. They smiled at me; I was one of the sights of the road.

Many picnic parties passed me, and men and women called out to me facetiously. Six shop-girls on a joy ride came past, and one of them kissed her hand to me--that is one of the things the girl in the car can safely do when she is passing a pedestrian.

Family parties went by, and also placid husbands and wives having a spin before lunch, and bashful happy pairs sitting behind the back of the discreet chauffeurs. There came an auto-cycle with a frantic man in front and a girl astride on his carrier behind. She was wiping the sand out of her eyes as she passed, her skirt was blown by the wind, and she showed a pair of dainty legs; the funny way in which she was obliged to sit made her look like a stalk bending over among reeds.

One of the few cyclists I met came up after this, and he dismounted to talk to me. He was a tender of gasoline engines "on vacation." I learned from him about the single auto-cycle for two. It appears that in America they manufacture special seats to screw on the back of a motor-cycle; some use that. Many, however, just strap a cushion on. Young men who have auto-cycles have a "pull" with the girls; they pick them up and take them to business, or take them home from business, and on holidays they take them for rides of joy. Several similar couples passed me during the day.

All sorts of gear went by; rich gentlemen in stately pride, workmen with their week-day grime scarcely cleared from their faces, gay girls with parasols, honeymoon pairs, cars with men driving, cars with women at the wheel. The automobile is far more of a general utility in the United States than in England. Workmen, and, indeed, farmers themselves--not those who curse--have their own cars. They mortgage their property to get them, but they get them all the same. Even women buy cars for themselves, and are to be seen driving them themselves. In Great Britain it is very rare that you see a woman travelling alone in a car, but in America it is a frequent sight. Of course in Russia, in the country, an automobile is still a rarity. I passed last summer in a populous part of the Urals and did not see a single car. I did not even see an ordinary bicycle. The farther west you go the more you find the inventions of the day taken advantage of. It is an important phenomenon in America; it shows that there is a readiness to adopt and utilise any new thing right off, directly it is discovered.

This readiness, however, results in a lack of seriousness. Inexpert driving is no crime; accidents are nothing to weep over; badly constructed cars are driven along loose springy roads with blood-curdling speed and recklessness. The pedestrian is vexed to see a car come towards him, leaping, bounding, dodging, dribbling, like some tricky centre-forward in a game of football. The nervous pedestrian has to climb trees or walls upon occasion to be sure he won't be killed. And then the cars themselves go frequently into ditches, or overturn and take fire. The car has become a toy, but it's dangerous for the children to play with.

Then the dust! Carlyle said there was nothing but Justice in this world, and he used the law of gravity as his metaphor, but he didn't consider the wind--alas, that the dust does not fly in front of the car and get into the motorist's eyes, but only drifts away over the poor tramp who never did him any harm.

The only horse vehicle I remarked on the road was the buggy, a gig with disproportionately large wheels, the direct descendant of the home-made cart. The buggy is still popular.

"Where've you been?" asks one American of another.

"Oh, just buggying around," he replies.

But the buggy is staid and conventional. It belongs to the old censorious religious America. It is supremely the vehicle of the consciously virtuous. It is also a specially rural vehicle. I think those who ride in buggies despise motorists from the bottom of their hearts; they think them vulgar townspeople, and consider motoring a form of trespass. But the automobilists are not prevented, and they bear no rancour. They haven't time to consider the countryman. The man in the buggy belongs to the past. In the future there will not be time to be condemnatory, and the man who stands still to feel self-virtuous will go to the wall.

The people who will continue to feel superior to the motorists will be tramps sitting on palings, grinning at them as they pass by. They also will remain the only people the motorists, rushing abreast of Time, will ever envy. However much progress progresses there will always remain those who sit on the palings and grin.

VI

THE REFLECTION OF THE MACHINE

As I tramped from village to village I was surprised to see so much stained glass in the churches of the Methodists, the Congregationalists, and other Puritans. Until quite modern times stained glass belonged exclusively to the ritualistic denominations. The Puritan, believing in simplicity of service, and in spirit rather than in form, put stained glass in the same category as the burning of incense, singing in a minor key, and praying in Latin. It partook of the glamour of idolatry; it had a sensuous appeal; it blurred the pure light of understanding. The true Puritan meeting-place is one of clear glass windows, hard seats, and a big Bible. It seems a pity that a very clear profession of faith should be blurred by picture windows--and, let me add by way of parenthesis, cushioned seats and revivalist preachers.