Chapter VII: Part 7

America suffers terribly from its own success, its vastness, its great resources, its commercial scoops, its wealth, vested _en masse_ and so vulgarly in the person of lucky or astute business men. This has bred a tendency to chronic exaggeration in the language of the common people, it has brought on the jaunty airs and tall talk of the man who, however ignorant he may be, thinks that he knows all. But success has also brought kindness and an easy-going temperament. There are no people in the world less disposed to personal ill-temper than the Americans. They are very generous, and in friendship rampageously exuberant. They are not mean, and are disinclined to incur or to collect small debts. They would rather toss who pays for the drinks of a party than pay each his own score. They have even invented little gambling machines in cigar stores and saloons where you can put a nickel over a wheel and run a chance between having five cigars for five cents, or paying twenty-five cents for no cigars at all.

So stands on the one hand the "many-headed," sprung from every country in Europe, an uncouth nation doing what they ought not to do, and leaving undone what they ought to do, but at least having in their hearts, every one of them, the idea that America is a fine thing, a large thing, a wonderful promise. Opposite them stands what may be called the American _intelligence_, ministering as best it can to the wants of young America, and helping to fashion the great desideratum,--a homogeneous nation for the new world.

It seems perhaps a shame to question the significance of any of the phenomena of American life of to-day, to tie what may be likened to a tin can to the end of this chapter; but I feel that this is the most fitting place to put a few notes which I have made of tendencies which are apt to give trouble to the mind of Europeans otherwise very sympathetic to America and America's ideal. They are quite explicable phenomena, and in realising and understanding them for himself the reader will be enabled to get a truer idea of the atmosphere of America.

On my way into Cleveland I read in the _Pittsburg Post_ the following statistics of life at Princeton College, of the students at the College:

184 men smoke.

76 began after entering College, but 51 students have stopped
smoking since entering College.

91 students wear glasses, and 57 began to wear them since entering.

15 students chew tobacco.

19 students consider dancing immoral.

16 students consider card-playing immoral.

206 students correspond with a total of 579 girls.

203 students claim to have kissed girls in their time.

24 students have proposed and been rejected.

* * * * *

Another day I read in the _New York American_ the story of the adventures of Watts's "Love and Life" in America:

The peripatetic painting, "Love and Life," the beautiful
allegorical work, by George Frederick Watts, once more reposes in
an honoured niche in the White House. The varied career of this
painting in regard to White House residence extends over seventeen
years.

This picture, painted in 1884, was presented to the national
Government by Watts as a tribute of his esteem and respect for
the United States, and was accepted by virtue of a special act of
Congress. This was during the second administration of President
Cleveland, and he ordered it hung in his study on the second
floor of the White House. Two replicas were made by Watts of the
painting, and one was placed by the National Art Gallery, London,
and the other in the Louvre, Paris.

The two figures of "Love and Life" are entirely nude, and the
publication of reproductions awoke the protests of purists who
circulated petitions to which they secured hundreds of names to
have it removed to an art gallery. Finally, the Clevelands yielded
to the force of public opinion, and sent the offending masterpiece
to the Corcoran Art Gallery.

When Theodore Roosevelt became President he brought the art exile
back to the White House. The hue and cry arose again, and he sent
it back to the Gallery, only to bring it back again toward the
close of his administration to hang in the White House once more.

The Tafts, failing to see the artistic side of the painting, had
it carried back to the Gallery.

There it seemed destined to stay. The other day Mrs. Woodrow
Wilson, accompanied by her daughter Eleanor, both artists of
merit, toured the Corcoran Art Gallery. They were shown "Love and
Life," and told the tragic story of its wanderings.

Mrs. Wilson thereupon requested the painting to be returned to
the White House. There once more it hangs and tells its immortal
lesson of how love can help life up the steepest hills.

* * * * *

Whilst in New York I visited the charming Fabians, who were the hosts of Maxim Gorky before the American Press took upon itself the rôle of doing the honours of the house to a guest of genius. The story of Gorky need not be repeated. But it is in itself a question-mark raised against the American civilisation.

* * * * *

Tramping through Sandusky I came upon a suburban house all scrawled over with chalk inscriptions:

"Hurrah for the newly-weds."

"Oh, you beautiful doll!"

"Well! _Then_ what?"

"We should worry."

"Home, sweet Home."

"May your troubles be little ones! Ha, He!"

"You thought we wouldn't guess, but we caught you."

As the house seemed to be empty, I inquired at the nearest store what was the reason for this outburst. The storekeeper told me it was done by the neighbours as a welcome to a newly-married couple coming home from their honeymoon on the morrow. It was a custom to do it, but this was nothing to the way they "tied them up" sometimes.

"Won't they be distressed?"

"Oh no, they'll like it."

"Are the neighbours envious, or what is it?" I asked. The storekeeper began to sing, "Snookeyookums."

"All night long the neighbours shout

(to the newly-married couple whose kisses they hear)

"'Cut it out, cut it out, cut it out.'"

On Independence Day I saw a crowd of roughs assailing a Russian girl who had gone into the water to bathe, dressed in what we in Britain would call "full regulation costume." The crowd cried shame on her because she was not wearing stockings and a skirt in addition to knickers and vest.

* * * * *

In many districts men bathing naked have been arrested as a sort of breach of the peace. Naked statues in public have been clothed or locked away. In several towns women wearing the slashed skirt have had to conform to municipal regulations concerning underwear.

* * * * *

I have noted everywhere mockery on the heels of seriousness.

No doubt these question-marks will be followed by satisfactory answers in the minds of most readers, especially in the light of the statement that "it is a sacrament to walk the streets as an American citizen. Being an American is a sacred mission."

XIII

ALONG ERIE SHORE

Cleveland exemplifies the characteristics of contemporary America, and points to the future. It has its horde of foreign mercenaries living by alien ethics, and committing every now and then atrocious crimes which shock the American community. But it is a "cleaned-up" town. All the dens of the city have been raided; there is no gambling, little drunkenness and immorality. On my first night in the town I had my supper in a saloon, and as I sat among the beer-drinking couples I listened to an old man who was haranguing us all on the temptations of women and drink. The saloon-keeper had no power to turn him out, and possibly had not even the wish to do so. The passion for cleaning up America overtakes upon occasion even those whose living depends upon America remaining "unclean."

Cleveland is well built, and has fine avenues and broad streets. It is well kept, and in the drawing-room of the town you'd never suspect what was going on in the back kitchen and the yard. But take a turn about and you see that the city is not merely one of good clothes, white buildings, and upholstery; there are vistas of smoke and sun, bridges and cranes, endless railway tracks and steaming engines. They are working in the background, the Slavs and the Italians and the Hungarians, the Kikes and the Wops and the Hunkies. There is a rumour of Chicago in the air; you can feel the pulse of the hustling West.

Perhaps nothing is more promising than the twelve miles of garden suburb that go westward from the city along Erie Shore. Tchekof, working in his rose-garden in the Crimea, used to say, "I believe that in quite a short time the whole world will be a garden." This growth of Cleveland gives just that promise to the casual observer. How well these middle-class Americans live? Without the advertisement of the fact they have finer arrangements of streets and houses than we have at Golders Green and Letchworth. Nature is kind. There is a grand freshness and a steeping radiance. The people know how to live out-of-doors, and the women are public all day. No railings, fences, bushes, just sweet lawn approaches, verandahs, on the lawns sprinklers and automatic fountains scattering water to the sparrows' delight. The iris is out and the honeysuckle is in bloom.

I prefer, however, to walk in the sight of wooded hills or great waters, and as soon as I could find a way to the back of the long series of suburban villas I went to the sandbanks of the shore and into the company of the great lake. It was just sunset time, and the sun of fire was changing to a sun of blood and sinking into the waters. There was a great suffusion of crimson in the western sky and a reflection of it in the green and placid lake. But the water in the foreground was grey, and it rippled past silver reeds. I stood and listened; the great silence of the vast lake on the one hand and the whizz of automobiles on the other, the _paup-paup_ of electric-tram signals, the great whoop of the oncoming freight trains on the Lake-Shore railway. Far out on the water there were black dashes on the lit surface and little smokes proceeding from them--steamers. The lake became lucent yellow with blackness in the West and mystery in the East. A steamer in the East seemed fixed as if caught in a spell. Then the blackness of the West came like an intense dye and poured itself into the rest of the sky. The East became still--indigo, very precious and holy, the colour of incense smoke.

I tramped by Clifton through the deep dust of a motor-beaten road towards Lorain. It was night before I found a suitable place for sleeping, for most of the ground was private, and there were many people about. At last I found a deserted plot, where building operations had evidently been taking place during the day, but from which the workmen had gone. There were, however, many tools and covetable properties lying about, and I had hardly settled down before I heard the baying of dogs on a chain. About half-past eleven Fedka the watchman came along, singing a Russian song to himself, and he lighted a large lantern, unloosed two dogs, then went into a shed, lay down and went to sleep--a nice watchman! My only consideration was the dogs, a bull-dog and a collie, but they didn't know of my presence. They had expeditions after tramps on the road, after waggons, automobiles, tramcars, trains, but never once sniffed at the stranger sleeping under their noses. However, at about three in the morning the bull-dog spotted me, and no doubt had rather a queer turn. He actually tripped on me as he was prowling about, and my heart stood still. He eyed me, growled low, sniffed at my knees, snorted. "He will spring at my throat in a moment," I thought; "I'll defend myself with that big saw lying so handy beside me!" But no, wonder of wonders! the dog did not attack me, but just lay calmly down beside me and was my gaoler. He dozed and breathed heavily, but every now and then opened one eye and snarled; evidently he took his duties seriously. I forgot him and slept. But I had the consciousness that in the morning I had to get away somehow.

But about half an hour before dawn some one drove a score of cows down the road, causing the collie to go mad--so mad that the bull-dog bestirred himself and followed superciliously, not sure whether he were needed or not. Then I swiftly put my things together and decamped--and got away.

I watched the dawn come up out of a rosy mist over Erie. The lake was vast and placid and mud-coloured, but there were vague purple shadows in it. I learned that mud was the real colour at this point, and there was no clear sparkling water to bathe in, but only a sea stirred up.

Down by the shore, just after my dip, I caught a young aureole with red breast and mouth so yellow, and I tried to feed him with sugar and butter; but he was very angry, and from many trees and low bushes round about came the scolding and calling of the parents, who had been rashly giving their progeny his first run.

I tramped to the long settlement of Lorain with its store-factory and many Polish workers, but continued to the place called Vermilion, walking along the grey-black sands of the shore. I came to Crystal Beach. It was a perfect day, the zenith too radiant to look at, the western sky ahead of the road a rising smoke of sapphire, but filled with ineffable sunshine. It was difficult to look otherways but downward, and I needed all the brim of my hat to protect my neck and my eyes. The lake was now blue-grey as the sea, but still not very tempting, though Crystal Beach is a great holiday resort. It seemed to me more than a lake and yet less than a sea--the water had no other shore and yet suggested no infinity. The visitor, however, considered it beautiful. That was clear from the enthusiastic naming of the villas and resorts on the shore. Again, it was strange to pass from the workshop of America to the parlour,--from industrial Lorain to ease-loving Vermilion, and to exchange the vision of unwashed immigrants in slouch hats for dainty girls all in white and smart young men in delicate linen.

I went into the general store and bought butter and sugar and tea, and then to the baker for a loaf of bread and a peach pie. What a delicacy is an eight-penny peach pie when you know you are going to sit on a bank and munch it, drink coffee, and watch your own wood-blaze.

On my way to Sandusky I got several offers of jobs. A road surveyor and his man, trundling and springing along the road in their car, nearly ran me down, and as a compensation for my experience of danger stopped and gave me a lift, offering also to give me work if I wanted it. All the highway from Cleveland to Toledo was to be macadamised by next summer; thousands of men were wanted all along the line, and I could get to work that very afternoon "farming ditches on each side of the road" if I wished.

I jigged along three miles in the automobile and then stepped down to make my dinner. Whilst I was lighting my fire a Bohemian came and had a little chat with me.

"How far ye going?"

"Chicago."

"You should get on a freight train. I come up from New York myself on a freighter and dropped off here two days ago. It's too far to walk; you carry heavy things. Besides, there's a good job here mending the road. I've just been taken on. A mile up the road you'll see a waggon; ask there, they're making up a gang. The work's a bit rough but the pay good."

Then I came on a gang of Wops and Huns loading bridge-props and ribbons and guard-rails on to an electric trolley, and the boss again applied to me.

"No, thanks!"

A man with an asphalt and coal-oil scatterer came past. His was a dirty job. He sat behind a boiler-shaped cistern, which another man was dragging along with a petrol engine. It had a rose like a watering-cart, but instead of water there flowed this dark mixture of asphalt and oil. The man, a Lithuanian, was sitting on the rose, his legs were dangling under it, and it was his task to keep his finger on the tap and regulate the flow of the fast-trickling mixture. Though a Lithuanian by birth he spoke a fair English, and explained that the asphalt and oil laid the dust for the whole summer, and solidified the surface of the road, so that automobiles could go pleasantly along. There was another machine waiting behind, and they had not men to work it. If I liked to report myself at the depot I could get a job, it was quite simple, not hard work, and the pay was good. He got two dollars a day.

Then, as I was going through a little town, a Norwegian came running out of a shop and pulled me in, saying, "You're a professional, no doubt, stay here and take photographs"; and he showed me his screens and classical backgrounds. It was interesting to consider the many occasions on which I might have given up Europe and started as a young man in America, entering life afresh, and starting a new series of connections and acquaintances. But I had only come as a make-believe colonist.

As the weather was very hot I took a wayside seat erected by a firm of clothiers to advertise their wares, and it somewhat amused me to think that as I sat in my somewhat ragged and dust-stained attire the seat seemed to say I bought my suit at Clayton's. As I sat there six Boy Scouts came tramping past, walking home from their camping-ground, boys of twelve or thirteen, all carrying saucepans and kettles, one of them a bag of medical appliances and medicines, all with heavy blankets--sun-browned, happy little bodies.

There is all manner of interest on the road. The gleaming, red-headed woodpecker that I watch alights on the side of the telegraph-pole, looks at the wood as at a mirror, and then, to my mild surprise, goes right into the pole. There must be a hole there and a nest. I hear the guzzling of the little woodpeckers within. Upon reflection, I remember that the mother's beak was disparted, and there was something between. Rather amusing, a woodpecker living in a telegraph-pole--Nature taking advantage of civilisation!

Then there are many squirrels in the woods by the road, and they wag their tails when they squeak.

At tea-time, by the lake shore, a beautiful white-breasted but speckled snipe tripped around the sand, showing me his round head, plump body, and dainty legs. He had his worms and water, I my bread and tea; we were equals in a way.

Then after tea I caught a little blind mouse, no bigger than my thumb, held him in my hand, and put him in his probable hole.

As I rested by a railway arch Johnny Kishman, a fat German boy, got off his bicycle to find out what manner of man I was. His chief interest was to find out how much money I made by walking. And I flabbergasted him.

I came into Huron by a road of coal-dust, and left the beautiful countryside once more for another industrial inferno. Here were many cranes, black iron bridges, evil smells, an odorous, green river. There was a continuous noise as of three rolls of thunder in one from the machinery of the port. I stopped a party of Slavs, who were strolling out of the town to the strains of an accordion, and asked them by what the noise was made. I was informed it was the lading of Pennsylvanian coal and the unlading of Wisconsin and Canadian ore, the tipping of five to ten tons at a time into the holds of coal boats or into trucks of freight trains.

I went into a restaurant in the dreary town, and there, over an ice-cream, chatted with an American, who hoped I would lick Jack London and Gibson and the rest of them "to a frazzle." A girl, who came into the shop, told me that last year she wanted to walk to Chicago and sleep out, but could not get a companion--a chance for me to step in. Mine host was one of these waggish commercial men in whom America abounds, and he had posted above his bar:

ELEVEN MEN WHO ASKED
CREDIT
LIE DEAD IN MY CELLAR

But he made good ice-cream.

Every one combined to boost the town and advise me to see this and that. The port machinery and lading operations were the wonder of Erie Shore, and provided work for a great number of Hungarians, Italians, and Slavs. Not so many years back there was no such machinery here, and the work was done with buckets and derricks.

I forebore to have supper at the creditless inn, but as I walked out of the dark town I spied a fire burning on a bit of waste land, and there I boiled my kettle and made coffee. It was an eerie proceeding, and as I sat in the dusk I saw several children come peering at me, _hsh_ing the younger ones, and inferring horrible suspicions as to my identity. When I had finished my supper I went down to the beach, and there, on the sand amidst old logs, under a stooping willow tree, I made my bed.

It was a wonderful, placid night after a long, hot day. The smoke-coloured lake was weakly plashing. There was no sign of the past sunset in the west, and smoke seemed to be rising from the darkness of the horizon. The one light on the city pier had its stab of reflection in the water below. Near me, still trees leant over the water. The branches and leaves of the willow under which I slept were delicately figured against the sky as I looked upward, and far away over the lake the faint stars glimmered. The moon stood high in the south, and illumined the surface of the waters and the long coast line of the bay.

When I awoke next morning what a sight! The blue-grey lake so placid, just breathing, that's all, and crimson ripples stealing over it from the illuminated smoky east. It was clear that the smokiness of the horizon came from real smoke--from all the chimneys and stacks of Huron. I saw massed volumes of it hurrying away from the docks and the works, and standing out on the lake like a great wall. As I lay on my spread on the sand, looking out idly with my cheek on my hand, I saw the sun come sailing through the smoke like a red balloon. No celestial sunrise this, but Nature beautifully thwarted.

I made a fire and cooked my breakfast, and sat on a log enjoying it; and all the while the sun strove to be himself and shine in splendour over the new world, whose beauties he himself had called into being. For a whole hour, though there was not a cloud in the sky or a mist on the lake, he made no more progress than on a foggy January morning in London. He gave no warmth to speak of; he was an immaterial, luminous moon.

But at last he got free, and began to rise indeed, exchanging the ragged crimson reflection in the water for a broad-bladed flashing silver dagger. A great glory grew about him; all the wavelets of the far lake knew him and looked up to him with their tiny faces. His messengers searched the horizon for the shadows of night, for all lingering wraiths and mists, and banished them. The smoky door by which the sun had come out of the east was shut after him. But he shed so much light that you could not see the door any longer.

I went in for a swim, and as I was playing about in the sunlit water the first human messenger of the morning came past me--a fisherman in a tooting, panting motor-boat, dragging fishing-nets after him. He gave me greeting in the water.

Fishing is good here--as a trade. Every day many tons of carp are unloaded. The fish are caught in gill-nets--nets with a mesh from which the fishes are unable to extricate themselves, their gills getting caught. The nets are framed on stakes, floated by corks and steadied by leads. The fishermen leave them standing two or three days, and when the fish are wearied out or dead they haul them in.

This very hot day I marched to an accompaniment of the thunder of the dock-works, and reached Sandusky,--a very large industrial port, the junction of three railways, not a place of much wealth, its population at least half foreign.

I had a shave at a negro barber's, and chatted with the darkie as he brandished the razor.

After the war he and his folks had come north and settled in Michigan. He sent all his children to college. One was earning a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month as music-mistress in Washington.

"They treat you better up here than in the south?" said I.

"Why, yes!"

"And in London better still."

"Oh, I know. My father went to London. He stayed at a big hotel, and there turned up three Southerners. They went up to the hotel-keeper and said, 'Look hyar, that coloured feller 'll have to go; we cahn stay here with him!' And the hotel-keeper said, 'If he don't please you, _you_ go; we won't keep you back.'"

"Very affecting," said I.

"There was a fellah came hyar to play the organ for the Episcopal Church," the negro went on. "He was called Street. The other fellah was only fit to turn the music for him. He had the goods, b'God he had. Tha's what I told them."

With that I got away. Outside the shop a hawker cried out to me:

"Kahm'ere!"

"What d'you want?" said I.

"I've a good safety razor."

"Don't use them."

"A fountain pen to write home to your wife...."

The hawker had many wares.

I spent the night in a saloon at Venice, and watched the rate at which German fishermen can drink beer.

Next morning I walked across Sandusky Bay by the Lake Shore railway-bridge, a mile and a half long--an unpleasant business, watching for the express trains and avoiding being run over. At last I got to Danbury, and could escape from the rails to the cinder-path at the side. The engine-drivers and firemen of the freight trains greeted me as they passed me, and now and then I was able to offer "Casey Jones" a cup of coffee and exchange gossip.

"Amidst old logs, under a stooping willow tree, I made my bed."]

The enormous freight trains told their tale of the internal trade of America; on no other lines of railway in the world could you witness such processions of produce. All sorts of things flew past on these lumberous trains--cars full of hogs with hundreds of motionless black snouts poking between the bars; refrigerator cars full of ham--dead hogs, dripping and slopping water as they went along in the heat, and the sun melted the ice; cars of coal; open cars of bright glistening tin-scraps going to be molten a second time; cars of agricultural machinery; cars laden with gangs of immigrant men being taken to work on a big job by labour contractors; closed cars full of all manner of unrevealed merchandise and machinery. On the cars, the names of the railways of America--Illinois Central, Wabash, Big Four, Lake Shore....

At Gypsum I returned to the highroad, and there once more had an offer of a job from a gang. I was surprised to see boys of thirteen or fourteen hard at work with spade and shovel.

"I see you're working for your living," said I.

"What's the matter with you?"

"I said 'You're working for your living.'"

"Wahn a jahb?"

"No; I'm not looking for one. I'm walking to Chicago."

A contractor came forward, a short Frenchman in waistcoat and shirt-sleeves. His bowler hat was pushed to the back of his head, and his hair poked out from under it over his scarred, perspiring brow. He was not working--only directing.

"What would _you_ be? A sort of tramp?" said he. "I used to have a hobo-station at Toledo. I've seen the shiner[3] line up sixty or seventy of them and send them to work with car fare paid. They'd work half a day and then disappear mysteriously. We have pay-day once in two weeks; but these tramps, many of them educated fellers too, would never work the time through or wait for their pay. Thousands of dollars have been lost by hoboes who gave up their jobs before pay-day."

There was an Englishman from Northampton in the gang, and he testified that America had "England licked ten times over."

There were fat Germans in blouses, moustachioed Italians with black felt hats pulled down over sunburnt, furrowed brows. All the men and the boys were suffering from a sort of "tar blaze" in the face. They were glad to ease up a little to talk to me; but they had a watchful eye on the face of the boss, who besides being contractor was a sort of timekeeper.

The contractor was vexed that I wouldn't take a job. Labour was scarce. He averred that before I reached Chicago the farmers would come on to the road and compel me to work on their fields. Trains had been held up before now.

"I thought slavery was abolished?" said I.

The next town on my route was Port Clinton, a bright little city, and in the eyes of at least one of its citizens a very important one. I had a long talk with a chance-met journalist and the keeper of a fruit-shop. The journalist, by way of interviewing me, told me all I wanted to know about the district. Fruit-growing was far in advance here. Perry Camp, the greatest shooting-butts in the world, was near by. The Lake Shore railway was going to spend a million dollars in order to shorten the track a quarter of a mile. The greengrocer told me I had the face of a Scotsman, but spoke English like a Swede--which just shows how badly Americans speak our tongue, and hear it as a rule.

In the course of my interview I confessed that for roadside literature I read the Gospel of St. John and the Book of Revelation, a chapter a day, and when I came to the end of either book I started again. The greengrocer interrupted the journalist, and said:

"When you're tired, you just take out the Bible and read a little, eh, and you get strength and go on? I knew you were that sort when I saw you first coming up the other side of the road, and I said to my friend, 'He reads his Bible.'"

The greengrocer was much edified, and told me that he was the agent for the district of Billy Sunday, the revivalist. Wouldn't I stay and address a mass meeting?

I fought shy of this offer. The journalist looked somewhat sourly at the greengrocer for breaking into his interrogatory. But then a third interrupter appeared, a little boy, who had come to purchase bananas, and he addressed me thus:

"On which side did your family fight in the year 1745? On the side of Prince Charlie? That's the side I'm on."

No descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers he.

On the way out to Lacarne two old fishermen in a cart offered me a ride, and I stepped up.

"What are you, German?" I asked, always on the look-out for the immigrant.

"We are Yankees."

"Your father or grandfather came from Germany?"

"No; we're both Yankees, I tell yer."

"I suppose your ancestors came from England then."

"No; we've always bin 'ere."

They had been out three nights seine-fishing on the lake, were very tired, and rewarded themselves with swigs of rum every now and then, passing the bottle from one to the other and then to me with real but suspicious hospitality. Their families had always been in America. The fact that they came originally from England meant no more to them than Hengist and Horsa does to some of us.

By the way, Hengist and Horsa were a couple of savages, were they not?

The fishermen put me down beside a plantation, which they said was just the place in which to sleep the night. I wasn't sorry to get on to my feet again, and I watched them out of sight,--fat, old, sleepy, hospitable ruffians.

The plantation was a mosquito-infested swamp, and I did not take the fishermen's advice. Myriads of "husky" mosquitoes were in the air, the unpleasanter sort, with feathered antennæ, and whenever I stood still on the road scores of "Canadian soldiers" settled on me, a loathsome but innocuous species of diptera.

I sought shelter of man that night, and through the hospitality of a Slav workman found a place in a freight train--a strange bed that not only allows you to sleep, but takes you a dozen miles farther on in the morning. The engine-driver told me that there was a "whole bunch of tramps" on the train, but that no one ever turned tramps off an empty freight train,--not on the Lake Shore railway at any rate.

When I "dropped" from the freighter I found myself at Elliston, and commenced there a day of delicious tramping. The opal dawn gave birth to a great white horse of cloud, and out of the cloud came a strong fresh breeze, having health and happiness on its wings. A quiet Sunday. I reached Toledo this day--and parted company with Erie Shore--great, busy, happy, prosperous Toledo. It was strange to exchange the country for the town; to come out of the green, fresh, silent landscape into the close, stifling, bustling town, full of promenaders talking and laughing among themselves vociferously.

As I came into the city the day-excursion boat was just about to start on the return journey to Detroit. Excursionists were flocking together to the quay, a great spectacle to a Briton. All the men were carrying their coats in their arms, many had their collars off and the neckbands of their shirts turned down, bunches of carnations on their naked chests; many were without waistcoats, and had tickets with the name of their town pinned to their fancy-coloured shirts; the red, perspiring, glistening faces of many of them suggested an over-confidence in beer as a quencher of thirst. The women carried parasols of coloured paper. They were all in white, and were so thinly clad that you asked yourself why they were so thin. But despite all precautions the sun had marked everybody, but marked them kindly.

Suddenly a bell was rung on the steamer, and a little man came forward and announced in broken English:

"Somebody wan' to come on the boat; the time is supp."

FOOTNOTE:

[3] Policemen.

XIV

THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE

Even Americans of the highest culture and of Boston families speak English differently from any people in the old country. The difference may not be obvious to all, but it is there, and it is a thing to rejoice in, not to be sorry for. The American nation is different from the British, has different history and a different hope; it has a different soul, therefore its expression should be different. The American face as a type is different; it would be folly to correct the words of the mouth by Oxford, or Eton, or Granville Barker's theatre, or the cultured Aberdonian, or any other criterion. The use of American expressions of quite moderate tone amounts to a breach of good taste in many British drawing-rooms; and if you tell a story in which American conversation is repeated with the accent imitated, you can feel the temperature going down as you proceed; that is, if you are not merely making fun of the Americans. Making fun of any foreign people is always tolerable to the British; a truly national and insular trait. The literary world and the working men and women of Britain can enter into the American spirit, and even imitate it upon occasion; but that is only the misfortune of our populace, who ought to be finding national expression in journalism and music-hall songs and dancing, and who are merely going off the lines by imitating a foreign country. It is loss to Britain that the Americans speak a comprehensible dialect of our tongue, and that the journalist of Fleet Street, when he is hard-up for wit, should take scissors and paste and snip out stories from American papers; or that commercial _entrepreneurs_ should bring to the British public things thought to be sure of success because they have succeeded in America--"Within the Law," "I Should Worry," "Hullo Ragtime!" and the rest. The people who are surest in instinct, though they are sympathetic to a brother-people, hate the importation of foreign uglinesses, and the substitution of foreign for local talent.

The American language is chiefly distinguished from the British by its emphatic expressive character. Britain, as I have said, lives in a tradition; America in a passion. We are laconic, accidental, inarticulate; our duty is plain, and we do it without words. But the American is affirmative, emphatic, striving; he has to find out what he's going to do next, and he has got to use strong words. Britain also is the place of an acknowledged Caste system; but America is the place of equal citizens, and many American expressions are watchdogs of freedom and instruments of mockery, which reduce to a common dimension any people who may give themselves airs.

The subtler difference is that of rhythm. American blood flows in a different _tempo_, and her hopes keep different measure.

* * * * * * *

Americans commonly tell us that theirs is the language of Shakespeare and Shakespearian England, and that they have in America the "well of English undefiled." But if they have any purely European English in that country it must be a curiosity. Shakespeare was a lingual junction, but we've both gone on a long way since then, and in our triangle the line subtending the Shakespearian angle gets longer and longer. O. Henry makes a character in one of his stories write a telegram in American phraseology, so that it shall be quite unintelligible to people who only know English:

His nibs skedaddled yesterday per jack-rabbit line with all the
coin in the kitty and the bundle of muslin he's spoony about. The
boodle is six figures short. Our crowd in good shape, but we need
the spondulicks. You collar it. The main guy and the dry goods are
headed for the briny. You know what to do.--BOB.

This is not Shakespearian English, but of course it is not Shakespearian American. The worst of the contemporary language of America is that it is in the act of changing its skin. It is difficult to say what is permanent and what is merely eruptive and dropping. Such expressions as those italicised in the following examples are hardly permanent:

"One, two, three, _cut it out_ and work for Socialism."

"_I should worry_ and get thin as a lamp-post so that tramps
should come and lean against me."

"_Him with the polished dome._"

"She hadn't been here two days before I saw her kissing the boss.
Well, said I, _that's going some_."

"This is Number Nine of the Ibsen, _highbrow_ series."

"_Do you get me?_"

"I'll _put you wise_."

"And how is your _yoke-mate_?"

"He thinks too much of himself: _too much breathed on by girls_."

"A low lot of _wops and hunkies_: _white trash_."

"Poor negroes; _coloured trash_."

"She is _one good-looker_."

"She is _one sweetie_."

"My! You have _a flossy hat_."

But I suppose "He is a white man" is permanent, and "Buy a
postcard, it'll _only set you back a nickel_."

"She began to lay down the law: _thus and so_."

"Now _beat it_!"

"Roosevelt went ranching, that's how he got so _husky_."

"Is it far? It is only _a little ways_."

"Did they _feed that to you_?"

"When he started he was in a poor way, and carried in his hay in
his arms, but now he is quite _healed_."

But the difference in speech is too widespread and too subtle to be truly indicated by this collection of examples, and the real vital growth of the language is independent of the flaming reds and yellows of falling leaves. In the course of conversation with Americans you hear plenty of turns of expression that are unfamiliar, and that are not merely the originality of the person talking. Thus in:

"How do they get on now they are married?"

"Oh, she has him feeding out of her hand,"

though the answer is clear it owes its form to the American atmosphere.

Or, again in:

"I suppose she's sad now he's gone?"

"Oh! He wasn't a pile of beans to her, believe me,"

you feel the manner of speech belongs to the new American language. The following parody of President Wilson's way of speaking is also an example of the atmosphere of the American language:

So far as the prognosticationary and symptomatic problemaciousness
of your inquiry is concerned it appears to me that while the
trusts should be regulated with the most unrelentful and
absquatulatory rigorosity, yet on the other hand their feelings
should not be lacerated by rambunktions and obfusticationary
harshness. Do you bite that off?

_Punch_ would have no stomach for such Rabelaisian vigour.

But wherever you go, not only in the cities, but in the little towns, you hear things never heard in Britain. I go into a country bakery, and whilst I ask for bread at one counter I hear behind me at the other:

"Kendy, ma-ma, kendy!"

"Cut it out, Kenneth."

"Kendy, kendy, kendy!"

"Oh, Kenneth, cut it out!" Or, as I sit on a bank, a girl of twelve and her little baby sister come toddling up the road. The little one loses her slipper, and the elder cries out:

"Slipper off again! Ethel, perish!"

America must necessarily develop away from us at an ever-increasing rate. Influenced as she is by Jews, Negroes, Germans, Slavs, more and more foreign constructions will creep into the language,--such things as "I should worry," derived from Russian-Jewish girl strikers. "She ast me for a nickel," said a Jew-girl to me of a passing beggar. "_I should give her a nickel_, let her work for it same as other people!" The _I shoulds_ of the Jew can pass into the language of the Americans, and be understood from New York to San Francisco; but such expressions make no progress in Great Britain, though brought over there, just because we have not the big Jewish factor that the Americans have.

To-day the influence that has come to most fruition is that of the negro. The negro's way of speaking has become the way of most ordinary Americans, but that influence is passing, and in ten or twenty years the Americans will be speaking very differently from what they are now. The foreigner will have modified much of the language and many of the rhythms of speech. America will have less self-consciousness then. She will not be exploiting the immigrant, but will be subject to a very powerful influence from the immigrants. No one will then be so cheap as the poor immigrant is to-day. Much mean nomenclature will have disappeared from the language, many cheap expressions, much mockery; on the other hand, there will be a great gain in dignity, in richness, in tenderness.

XV

THROUGH THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY

I have come to that portion of my journeying and of my story where all day, every evening, and all night long I was conscious of the odour of mown clover, of fields of ambrosia.

I was tramping along the border of Northern Ohio and Southern Michigan, from Toledo to Angola, Indiana. I was entering the rich West. The fields were vast and square, the road was long and flat, and straight and quiet, the June haze hung over luxuriant meadows, and there was a wonderful silence and ripening peace over the country.

One evening, as the red sun sank into night-darkened mist, I talked with an old farmer, who was smoking his pipe at his gate.

"I came along this same road like you, with a bundle on my back, forty years ago," said he, "and I took work on a farm; then I rented a farm. Many's the lad I've seen go past of an evening. And one or two have stopped here and worked some days, for the matter of that."

The farmer had left England when he was a stripling, and I tried to talk to him of the old country, but he was not really interested. He did not want to go back.

That is the Colonial feeling.

Strange to plough all day, or sow or reap, and in the evening to return to the quiet, solitary house of wood beside the great red-painted barn and not want England or Europe, not be interested in it, not want anything more than you've got; to have the sun go down red and whisper nought, and the stars come up and the moon, and yet not yearn; to work, to eat, to market; to have children growing about you ripening in so many years, and corn springing up in the fields ripening in so many weeks; births, marriages, deaths, sowings, harvests....

There is all the pathos of man's life in it.

I slept that night in the dry wayside hay, under the broad sky and the misty golden moon. It was a quiet night, warm and gentle. Earth held the wanderer in her cradle and rocked him to sleep.

They are kind people about here. Next morning as I sat by my fire a woman sent her son out to me with a quart of milk and a bag of cookies. And milk is a much commercialised business on this western road,--the electric freight train carries nearly all the milk away in churns to Toledo. It was a very welcome talkative boy who brought out the milk. His father rented one-third of a section (213 acres), but was now laid up with pneumonia. As a consequence of the father's illness the young children had to work very hard in the fields. And there was a sick cow on the farm--sick through eating rank clover. And the boy himself had had scarlet fever in the spring. The serving-girl had had to go away "to have her little baby," and the one that came in her place brought the fever.

"What's your name?" said I.

"Charles."

Cheerful little Charles. He had much responsibility on his shoulders.

There were some big farms along the road, and near Metamora I had the privilege of seeing a dozen cows milked simultaneously by a petrol engine, rubber tubes being fixed to their teats and the milk pumped out. It was astonishing, the matter-of-fact way in which the latest invention was applied to farm life.

"It's rather ugly," said I.

"Well, what are you to do when labour is so scarce?" was the reply.

Land is rich here, but labour is scarce. I fell in with a garrulous farmer who told me that land now sold at 150 dollars (£30) the acre, and that in a few years it would rise to 250 dollars. The days of large farmers were over. All the big ranches were being sold up, and the farmers were taking holdings that they could farm themselves without help. Labour was expensive, owing to the high wages paid in the towns for industrial work; even at two and a half dollars (ten shillings) a day it was difficult to get a decent gang to do the work in the harvest season. You could do better with a small piece of land. Fields here were forty and fifty acres, and the steam plough was not used. In the old days land was dirt cheap, and you could buy vast tracts of it; there were no taxes, no extra expenses, and you just went in to raise tremendous crops and make a big scoop. To-day things were different. To work on a large scale a horde of labourers was necessary. But now the Socialists were stopping the flow of immigrants into the country. Socialists said that it was too difficult to organise newcomers. The newcomers behaved like blacklegs, strike-breakers, all the first year of their stay in America. They didn't know the language, were very poor, suspected their brother workmen of jealousy, and just took any wage offered them. The Socialists wanted to keep the price of labour up, and my farmer friend bore them a grudge because it was difficult to develop the land unless the price was reduced.

A little later, outside Fred M'Gurer's farm, the jovial farmer himself came and squatted beside the fire and chatted of affairs. He had insured his house for 1000 dollars, but it would take 1800 dollars to rebuild it. "I think it's only fair to take some of the risk myself," said he; "and if the place burns down the company will know I didn't set it alight o' purpose."

Fifty-eight years old is Fred M'Gurer, and his son is now coming to live and work with him altogether, after seven years spent wintering in the city and summering in the country. Irish once, and of an Irish family--but they go to no church. The old man feels that he is a Christian all the same, and will get to heaven at last, because he "deals square with his fellow-men."

Fred and his son work the farm all by themselves, outside labour is so expensive. The beet-fields take all the immigrants. Did I see the red waggons as I came along, full of Flemish and Russians living by beet-picking on the beetroot farms near by?

I saw them.

"America is a high hill for them that don't speak the language," said Fred. But he said that because he likes talking himself, and can't imagine himself in a land where he could not hold converse. The immigrants manage very well without the language, and scale the hill, and rake in the dollars easily. Perhaps they do not glean much of the American ideal, and the hope of the American nation. But I suppose Fred did not mean that.

I had a pleasant talk with a successful German farmer, who took me in a cart from Pioneer to Grizier, through comparatively poor country. He had possessed a farm of five acres in Germany, but there each acre had been worth between 450 and 500 dollars. When he came to Grizier land was selling at 25 dollars an acre, and he was able to buy fifty acres of it and to bring up his family in health and plenty. His farm was now worth more than 5000 dollars.

I slept on an old waggon in a wheat-field near Grizier; but about midnight it began to rain, and I was obliged to seek shelter in a crazy, doorless, windowless cottage, and there I sat all next day and slept all the next night whilst the elements raged. In the cottage were two chairs, a home-made table, and a broken bedstead. I cooked my meals on the rainy threshold. The refuge was shared by a great big bumble bee, two red-admirals, a brown squirrel, and two robins.

The second morning was Sunday, radiant, fresh, and green. The road was soft but clean, with yielding cakes of mud; the grass was fresh, for every blade had been washed on Saturday; the wild strawberry was a brighter ruby; on spread bushes the wild rose was in bloom; there were sun-browned country girls upon the road, who were shy but might be spoken to; the odour of clover was purer, the hay-fields had round shoulders after the storm, and you'd think cows had been lying down where the wind had laid the tussocks low. The sun shone as if it had forgotten it had shone before, and was doing it for the first time. To-day it became evident that the grain was ripening; the apple trees in fantastic shapes were knee-deep in yellowing corn. The little oak trees by the side of the road presented foliage, every leaf of which looked as if it had been carefully polished.

In America wild strawberries are three on a stalk, which causes a pleasant profusion....