Exaggeration, then, is one easy artifice of effect. Another is the constant repetition of certain words and phrases which have lost their meaning by detrition and are known to all. Not to be disappointed is sometimes as pleasant as to be surprised. A catchword passed from one to another is often a signal of sympathy, and many a man has been taken for a wit merely because his tinkling brain has given back the echo which was expected. In stereotyped phrases, in ready-made sentences, in the small change of meaningless words, the American language is peculiarly rich. "To cut ice," "to get next to," "straight goods," {*}—these and similar expressions, of no obvious merit in themselves, long ago lost their freshness, and are not likely to assume a dignity with age. But they save trouble, they establish an understanding between him who speaks and him who hears; and when they are thrown into a discourse they serve the purpose of gestures, To exclaim "I should smile" or "I should cough" is not of much help in an argument, but such interjections as these imply an appreciation not merely of slang but of your interlocutor.

* To the Englishman who knows them not, the following quotations will explain their significance:—

"Tain't what ye ain't or what ye don't do that cuts ice with me."

"Well, invested capital has got to protect itself when the law won't do it. Ain't them straight goods?"

"Boston don't want Bishop Potter to come up here an' tell her 't she ain't next to the latest curves in goodness. Hully gee, no!"

Slang is better heard than read. The child of the street or the hedgerow, it assumes in print a grave air which does not belong to it, or, worse still, it is charged with the vice or the vagabondage which it suggests. And so it is that Slang words have a life as closely packed with adventure as is the life of those who use them with the quickest understanding. To ask what becomes of last year's Slang is as rash as to speculate on the fate of last year's literature. Many specimens die in the gutter, where they were born, after living a precarious life in the mouths of men. Others are gathered into dictionaries, and survive to become the sport of philologists. For the worst of their kind special lexicons are designed, which, like prisons and workhouses, admit only the disreputable, as though Victor Hugo's definition—"L'argot, c'est le verbe devenu forcat"—were amply justified. The journals, too, which take their material where they find it, give to many specimens a life as long as their own. It is scarcely possible, for instance, to pick up an American newspaper that does not turn the word cinch to some strange purpose. The form and origin of the word are worthy a better fate. It passed from Spain into the Western States, and was the name given to saddle-girths of leather or woven horse-hair. It suggests Mexican horsemanship and the open prairie. The explanation given in the Century Dictionary will make clear its meaning to the untravelled: "The two ends of the tough cordage, which constitute the cinch, terminate in long narrow strips of leather called latigos, which connect the cinches with the saddle, and are run through an iron ring, called the larigo ring, and then tied by a series of complicated turns and knots, known only to the craft." In the West the word is still used in its natural and dignified sense. For example: "At Giles's ranch, on the divide, the party halted to cinch up." And then in the East it has become the victim of extravagant metaphor. As a verb, it means to hold firm, to put a screw on; as a noun, it means a grip or screw, an advantage fair or unfair. In the hand of the sporting reporter it can achieve wonders. "The bettor of whom the pool-room bookmaker stands in dread"—this flower of speech is culled from the 'New York World'—"is the race-horse owner, who has a cinch bottled up for a particular race, and drops into the room an hour or two before the race begins." The idea of bottling a cinch is enough to make a Californian shudder, and this confused image helps to explain the difference between East and West.

Thus words wander farther and farther from their origin; and when at last their meanings are wholly forgotten or obscured, they become part of the common speech. One kind of Slang may succeed to another, but cinch is secure for ever of a place in the newspaper, and in the spoken language, of America. Caboodle, also, is firmly established. The long series of words, such as Cachunk or Kerblunk, which suggest the impact of falling bodies with the earth, will live as expletives with Say, Sure, and many other, interjections which fill up the pauses of thought and speech. There are two other specimens of Slang beloved by the journals, for which it would be rash to prophesy a long life. To call a man or a thing or an act "the limit," is for the moment the highest step, save one, in praise or blame. When the limit is not eloquent enough to describe the hero who has climbed the topmost rung of glory, the language gasps into simplicity, and declares that he is It. "I didn't do a thing," says an eminent writer, "but push my face in there about eight o'clock last night, and I was It from the start." Though the pronoun is expressive enough, it does not carry with it the signs of immortality, and the next change of fashion may sweep it away into the limbo of forgotten words.

The journals do their best to keep alive the language of the people. The novelists do far more, since their works outlive by months or years the exaggeration of the press. And the novelists, though in narrative they preserve a scrupulous respect for the literary language, take what licence the dialect and character of their personages permit them. It is from novels, indeed, that future generations will best be able to construct the speech of to-day. With the greatest skill the writers of romance mimic the style and accent of their contemporaries. They put into the mouths of those who, in life, knew no other lingo, the highly-flavoured Slang of the street or the market. Here, for instance, is the talk of a saloon-keeper, taken from W. Payne's story, 'The Money Captain,' which echoes, as nearly as printed words can echo, the voice of the boodler:

"Stop it?" says the saloon-keeper of a journalist's attack. "What I got to stop it with? What's the matter with you fellows anyhow? You come chasin' yourselves down here, scared out of your wits because a dinky little one cent newspaper's makin' faces at you. A man 'd think you was a young lady's Bible-class and 'd seen a mouse.... Now, that's right," he exclaims, as another assailant appears; "make it unanimous. Let all hands come and rig the ship on old Simp. Tell him your troubles and ask him to help you out. He ain't got nothing better to do. Pitch into him; give him hell; he likes it. Come one, come all—all you moth-eaten, lousy stiffs from Stiffville. Come, tell Simp there's a reporter rubberin' around and you're scared to death. He'll sympathise with you—you sweet-scented skates."

It is not an elegant method of speech, but such as it is, it bears as close a resemblance to the dialect of Chicago as can be transferred from the ear to the eye.

If we compare the present with the past, we cannot but acknowledge that American Slang has grown marvellously in colour and variety. The jargon of Artemus Ward and Josh Billings possessed as little fire as character. These two humourists obtained their effect by the simple method, lately advocated by Messrs Roosevelt and Carnegie, of spelling as they pleased. The modern professors of Slang have invented a new style. Their pages sparkle with wit and allusion. They interpret their shrewd sense in words and phrases which have never before enjoyed the freedom of printer's ink. George Ade, the best of them all, has shown us how the wise ones of Chicago think and speak. His 'Fables in Slang' is a little masterpiece of humour in substance and wit in expression. To quote from it would be to destroy its effect. But it will discover the processes of Slang, as it is understood in the West, more clearly than any argument, and having amused the present generation, it will remain an historical document of enduring value.

Slang is the only language known to many thousands of citizens. The newly arrived immigrant delights to prove his familiarity with the land of his adoption by accepting its idioms and by speaking the American, not of books but of the market-place. And yet this same Slang, universally heard and understood, knocks in vain for admission into American literature. It expatiates in journals, in novels of dialect, and in works, like George Ade's, which are designed for its exposition. But it has no part in the fabric of the gravely written language. Men of letters have disdained its use with a scrupulousness worthy our own eighteenth century. The best of them have written an English as pure as a devout respect for tradition can make it. Though they have travelled far in space and thought, they have anchored their craft securely in the past. No writer that has handled prose or verse with a high seriousness has offended against the practice of the masters—save only Walt Whitman. The written word and the spoken word differ even more widely in America than elsewhere. The spoken word threw off the trammels of an uneasy restraint at the very outset. The written word still obeys the law of gradual development, which has always controlled it. If you contrast the English literature of to-day with the American, you will find differences of accent and expression so slight that you may neglect them. You will find resemblances which prove that it is not in vain that our literatures have a common origin and have followed a common road. The arts, in truth, are more willingly obedient than life or politics to the established order; and America, free and democratic though she be, loyally acknowledges the sovereignty of humane letters. American is heard at the street corner. It is still English that is written in the study.



AMERICAN LITERATURE.

There can, in fact, be no clearer proof that the tradition of literature is stronger than the tradition of life than the experience of America. The new world, to its honour be it said, has discovered no new art. The ancient masters of our English speech are the masters also of America. The golden chain of memory cannot be shaken off, and many of those who raise with the loudest voice the cry of freedom have shown themselves the loyal and willing slaves of the past.

The truth is that from the first the writers of America have lagged honourably behind their age. The wisest of them have written with a studious care and quiet reverence. As if to mark the difference between the written language and the vernacular, they have assumed a style which belonged to their grandfathers. This half-conscious love of reaction has been ever present with them. Tou may find examples at each stage of their history. Cotton Mather, who armed his hand and tongue against the intolerable sin of witchcraft, wrote when Dutch William was on our throne, and in style he was but a belated Elizabethan. There is no other writer with whom we may compare him, save Robert Burton, who also lived out of his due time. Take this specimen of his prose, and measure its distance from the prose of Swift and Addison, his younger contemporaries: "Wherefore the Devil," writes Mather in the simplicity of his faith, "is now making one Attempt more upon us; an Attempt more Difficult, more Surprising, more snarl'd with unintelligible Circumstances than any that we have hitherto Encountered; an Attempt so Critical, that if we get well through, we shall soon enjoy Halcyon Days with all the Vultures of Hell trodden under our feet." In sound and structure Mather's style is what the critics call "archaistic." It is all untouched by the influences of another world, and though "the New Englanders were," in Mather's view, "a People of God settled in those, which were once the Devil's Territories," they carried their prose from the old country, and piously bowed before an old tradition.

Thus has it been with each generation of men. Thoreau fondly believed that Walden had brought him near to nature, and he wrote with the accumulated artifice of the centuries. Hawthorne's language was as old in fashion as the Salem which he depicted, as "the grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor, who came so early with his Bible and his sword, and trode the common street with such stately port, and made so large a figure as a man of war and peace." But it was. upon Emerson that tradition has most strangely exercised its imperious sway. Now Emerson was an anarch who flouted the conventions of art and life. It was his hope to see the soul of this world "clean from all vestige of tradition." He did not understand that what is? proceeded inevitably from what was He affected to spurn the past as a clog upon his individuality. Anticipating Walt Whitman, he would have driven away his nearest friends, saying, "Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more." So lightly did he pretend to esteem history that he was sure that an individual experience could explain all the ages, that each man went through in his own lifetime the Greek period, the medieval period—every period, in brief—until he attained to the efflorescence of Concord. "What have I to do with the sacredness of tradition," he asked proudly, "if I live wholly from within?" So much had he to do with it that he never wrote a line save in obedience. Savage as he was in the declaration of his own individuality, he expressed it in the gracious terms of an inherited art. To this age Emerson's provincialism appears sad enough. It would not have been remembered had it not been set forth in a finely studied and mellifluous prose. No sooner did Emerson take pen in hand than his anarchy was subdued. He instantly became the slave of all the periods which he despised. He was a faithful follower of the best models, a patient student of masters dead and gone. Though he aspired to live wholly from within, he composed his works wholly from without, and fashioned an admirable style for himself, more antique in shape and sound than the style affected by the Englishmen of his time. But it is Edgar Allan Poe who most eloquently preached the gospel of style, and who most honourably defended the cause of art pursued without the aid of the pulpit. Taste he declared to be the sole arbiter of Poetry. "With the intellect or the Conscience," said he, "it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally it has no concern whatever either with Duty or Truth." Not that he belittled the exigence of Truth; he did but insist on a proper separation. "The demands of Truth," he admitted, "are severe; she has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable in song is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do." And thus it followed that he had small sympathy with Realism, which he denounced in the clear spirit of prophecy many years before it had become a battle-cry of criticism:

The defenders of this pitiable stuff [he wrote] uphold it on the ground of its truthfulness. Taking the thesis into question, this truthfulness is the one overwhelming defect. An original idea that—to laud the accuracy with which the stone is hurled that knocks us in the head. A little less accuracy might have left us more brains. And here are critics absolutely commending the truthfulness with which the disagreeable is conveyed! In my view, if an artist must paint decayed cheeses, his merit will lie in their looking as little like decayed cheeses as possible.

Of this wise doctrine Poe was always a loyal exponent. The strange veiled country in which he placed the shadows of his creation lay not within the borders of the United States. He was the child neither of his land nor of his century. Dwelling among men who have always worshipped size, he believed that there was no such thing as a long poem. A fellow-citizen of bustling men, he refused to bend the knee to industry. "Perseverance is one thing," said he, "genius quite another." And it is not surprising that he lived and died without great honour in his own country. Even those of his colleagues who guarded the dignity of their craft with a zeal equal to his own, shrank from the pitiless logic of his analysis. They loved his work as little as they respected his life. They judged him by a censorious standard which took no account of genius. And Poe shared with dignity and without regret the common fate of prophets. If he is still an exile in American esteem, he long since won the freedom of the larger world. He has been an inspiration to France, the inspirer of the nations. He did as much as any one of his contemporaries to mould the literary art of our day, and in the prose of Baudelaire and Mallarme he lives a life whose lustre the indifference of his compatriots will never dim.

Whence comes it, this sedulous attention to style, which does honour to American literature? It comes in part, I think, from the fact that, before the triumph of journalism, American men of letters were secluded from their fellows. They played no role in the national drama. They did not work for fame in the field of politics. They were a band of aristocrats dwelling in a democracy, an imperium in imperio. They wrote their works for themselves and their friends. They made no appeal to the people, and knowing that they would be read by those capable of pronouncing sentence, they justified their temerity by a proper castigation, of their style. And there is another reason why American literature should be honourably formal and punctilious, If the written language diverges widely from the vernacular, it must perforce be studied more sedulously than where no such divergence is observed. For the American, accustomed to the language spoken by his countrymen and to the lingo of the daily press, literary English is an acquired tongue, which he studies with diligence and writes with care. He treats it with the same respect with which some Scots—Drummond, Urquhart, and Stevenson—have treated it, and under his hand it assumes a classic austerity, sometimes missed by the Englishman, who writes it with the fluency and freedom bred of familiar use. The stately and erudite work of Francis Parkman is a fair example. The historian of 'Montcalm and Wolfe' has a clear title to immortality. Assuredly he holds a worthy place among the masters. He is of the breed of Gibbon and Michelet, of Livy and Froude. He knows how to subordinate knowledge to romance. He disdains the art of narrative as little as he disdains the management of the English sentence. He is never careless, seldom redundant. The plainest of his effects are severely studied. Here, for instance, is his portrait of an Indian chief, epic in its simplicity, and withal composed with obvious artistry:

See him as he lies there in the sun, kicking his heels in the air and cracking jokes with his brother. Does he look like a hero? See him now in the hour of his glory, when at sunset the whole village empties itself to behold him, for to-morrow their favourite young partisan goes out against the enemy. His head-dress is adorned with a crest of war-eagle's feathers, rising in a waving ridge above his brow, and sweeping far behind him. His round white shield hangs at his breast, with feathers radiating from the centre like a star. His quiver is at his back; his tall lance in his hand, the iron point flashing against the declining sun, while the long scalp-locks of his enemies flutter from the shaft. Thus gorgeous as a champion in panoply, he rides round and round within the great circle of lodges, balancing with a graceful buoyancy to the free movements of his war-horse, while with a sedate brow he sings his song to the Great Spirit.

That is the language of classicism. The epithets are not far-sought. They come naturally to the mind. The hero's shield is round and white; his lance is tall; long are the scalp-locks of his enemies. Thus would Homer and Virgil have heightened the picture, and Park-man is clearly attentive to the best models. Even when he describes what his eye has seen he cannot disengage his impression from the associations of literature. It is thus that he sets before us Braddock's line of march:

It was like a thin, party-coloured snake, red, blue, and brown, trailing slowly through the depth of leaves, creeping round inaccessible heights, crawling over ridges, moving always in dampness and shadow, by rivulets and waterfalls, crags and chasms, gorges and shaggy steeps. In glimpses only, through jagged boughs and flickering leaves, did this wild primeval world reveal itself, with its dark green mountains, flecked with the morning mist, and its distant summits pencilled in dreamy blue.

As you read these words you are less keenly conscious of a visual impression than of a verbal effect, and it may be said without reserve that never for a page of his many volumes does Park-man forget the demands of dignity and restraint.

Excellent as is the style, it is never American. Parkman does not reveal his origin in a single phrase. He has learned to write not in his own land, but in the England of the eighteenth century. When he speaks of "the pampered Sardanapalus of Versailles," and of "the silken favourites' calculated adultery," we are conscious that he has learnt whatever lesson Gibbon has to teach. In other words, he, too, is obedient to the imperious voice of convention. And the novelists follow the same path as the historians. Mr Henry James, in his patient analysis of human character, has evoked such subtle harmonies as our English speech has not known before. Mr Howells, even when he finds his material in the land of his birth, shows himself the master of a classic style, exquisite in balance and perfect in tone. And both share the common inheritance of our tongue, are links in the central chain of our tradition, and in speech, if not in thought, are sternly conservative.

This, then, is an irony of America, that the country which has a natural dislike of the past still dances to the ancient measures, that the country which has invented so much has not invented a new method of expression, that the country which questions all things accepts its literature in simple faith. The advantages of conformity are obvious. Tradition is nine-tenths of all the arts, and the writers of America have escaped the ruin which overtakes the bold adventurer who stakes his all upon first principles. But sometimes we miss the one-tenth that might be added. How much is there in the vast continent which might be translated into words! And how little has achieved a separate, living utterance! Mr Stedman has edited an American Anthology, a stout volume of some eight hundred pages, whose most obvious quality is a certain technical accomplishment. The unnumbered bards of America compose their verses with a diffident neatness, which recalls the Latin style of classical scholars. The workmanship is deft, the inspiration is literary. If many of the authors' names were transposed small injustice would be done them. The most of the work might have been written anywhere and under any conditions. Neither sentiment nor local colour suggests the prairie or the camp.

It is the intervention of dialect which alone confers a distinctive character upon American verse. Wisely is Mr Stedman's collection called an Anthology. It has something of the same ingenuity, the same impersonality, which marks the famous Anthology of the Greeks; it illustrates the temper not of a young but of an old people.

How shall we surprise in her literature the true spirit of America? Surely not in Walt Whitman, whose work is characteristic not of his country, but of himself, who fondly believed that he would make a loud appeal to the democracy because he stamped upon the laws of verse, and used words which are not to be found in the dictionary. Had the people ever encountered his 'Leaves of Grass,' it would not have understood it. The verse for which the people craves is the ditties of the music-hall. It has no desire to consider its own imperfections with a self-conscious eye. It delights in the splendour of mirrors, in the sparkle of champagne, in the trappings of a sordid and remote romance. The praise of liberty and equality suits the ear not of the democrat, but of the politician and dilettante, and it was to the dilettante and politician that Walt Whitman addressed his exhortations. Even his studied contempt for the literary conventions is insincere, and falls away from Kim when he sees and feels most vividly. He attempted to put into practice Emerson's theory of anarchy. He was at the pains to prove that he was at once a savage and a poet. That he had moments of poetic exaltation is true. The pomp of Brooklyn Ferry lives in his stately verse.

But he was no savage. It was his culture that spoke to the culture of others; it was a worn-out commonplace which won him the regard of politicians. He inspired parodists, not poets. And he represented America as little as he echoed the voice of the people.

Nor is it in the works of the humourists that we shall catch a glimpse of the national character. They, too, cast no shadow but their own. They attain their effects by bad spelling, and a simple transliteration reveals the poverty of their wit. There is but one author who represents with any clarity the spirit of his country, and that author is Mark Twain. Not Mark Twain the humourist, the favourite of the reporters, the facile contemner of things which are noble and of good report, but Mark Twain, the pilot of the Mississippi, the creator of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. He is national as Fielding is national. Future ages will look upon Huck Finn as we look upon Tom Jones,—as an embodiment of national virtue. And Mark Twain's method is his own as intimately as the puppets of his imagining. It is impossible to read a page of his masterpieces without recognising that they could have been composed only in an American environment. The dialect in which they are written enhances their verisimilitude without impairing their dignity; and the flashes of humour which light up the gravity of the narrative are never out of place nor out of tune. The cunning and resourcefulness of his boyish heroes are the cunning and resourcefulness of America, and the sombre Mississippi is the proper background for this national epic. The danger, the excitement, the solemnity of the great river are vividly portrayed. They quicken his narrative; they inspire him to eloquence. He remembers with a simple enthusiasm the glory of the sun setting upon its broad expanse; he remembers also that the river and its shoals are things to fear and to fight.

Fully to realise the marvellous precision [he writes] required in laying the great steamer in her marks in that murky waste of water, one should know that not only must she pick her intricate way through snags and blind reefs, and then shave the head of the island so closely as to brush the overhanging foliage with her stern, but at one place she must pass almost within arm's reach of a sunken and visible wreck that would snatch the hull timbers from under her if she should strike it, and destroy a quarter of a million dollars' worth of steamboat and cargo in five minutes, and maybe a hundred and fifty human lives into the bargain.

In calm, as in flood, Mark Twain has mastered the river, and has made it his own. Once upon a time the Mississippi called up a vision of the great Gulf opening on the sight of La Salle, "tossing its restless billows, limitless, voiceless, lonely as when born of chaos, without a sail, without a sign of life." Now a humbler image is evoked, and we picture Huck Finn and Jim floating down the broad stream in the august society of the Duke and the Dauphin.

Though Mark Twain cultivates the South-Western dialect, and does not disdain the speech of Pike County, there is in his two romances no suspicion of provincialism. Style and imagination give them the freedom of the whole world. They are of universal truth and application. But since the days of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer the conditions of American literature have changed, and for the worse. As in England, so in America, a wide diffusion of books, an eager and general interest in printed matter, have had a disastrous effect. The newspapers, by giving an improper advertisement to the makers of books, have rendered the literary craft more difficult of pursuit. The ambition of money has obscured the simple end of literature, and has encouraged a spirit of professionalism eminently characteristic of a practical country. We hear of works of fiction sketched in the back-offices of publishers, whose hands are held upon the public pulse. All is arranged, we are told, by the man of business—period, plot, characters. Nothing is left to the novelist but to carry out the instructions of his taskmaster, and when you contemplate the result you can feel no surprise at this composite authorship. It is no better than a money-making partnership, a return to the miserable practices of Grub Street and its hacks, a curiosity of trade, not of art, and so long as its sorry product is distinguished from genuine literature no great harm is done.

Of the modern tendencies which affect literature, not commerce, the most conspicuous is the tendency to decentralise. Every province has its coterie, every county its school The whole continent is pegged out in well-acknowledged claims. Boston cultivates one style, Chicago another. Each corner makes the most of its own material, and cheerfully discovers to the other States its character and temperament. The result is of great and varied interest. The social history of America is being written piecemeal, and written often with a skill and sincerity which merit the highest praise. And not merely has each province found its chronicler, but the immigrants, also, are intent upon self-expression. The little masterpieces of Abraham Cahan are an earnest of what the Ghetto can achieve, and whether the Jews are faithful to Yiddish, or, like Cahan, acquire the language of their adopted country, there is no reason why they should not atone in a free land for centuries of silence. To enumerate the manifold achievements of the States is impossible. One example will suffice, and no city will better suit my purpose than Chicago. That admirable literature should come from Chicago is of itself a paradox. It is still more surprising that the best writers of Chicago should display the qualities of tranquillity and reticence, which you would expect least of all to find in that monstrous city. Yet it is characteristic of Miss Edith Wyatt and Mr H. B. Fuller, who have painted the manners of Chicago with the greatest skill, that they never force the note. They look upon their fellow-citizens with an amiable sympathy; they describe them with a quiet humour. It is true that they have an excellent opportunity. It is true also that they rise to their occasion. Within the limits of Chicago are met the most diverse of men. On the one hand are the captains of industry, intent to amass a fortune at all costs; on the other are the sorry prigs who haunt Ibsen clubs and chatter of Browning. Miss Wyatt, with an exquisite irony, makes clear her preference. In her eyes the square-dealing and innocent boodler is a far better man than the sophisticated apostle of culture, and this truth she illustrates with a modesty and restraint which are rarely met with in modern fiction. She never insists; she never says a word too much. With exquisite concision she sets her carefully selected facts and types before you, and being the antithesis of priggishness in a priggish city, she glorifies "the common growth of Mother Earth," and compels your agreement. Her collection of stories—'Every One His Own Way'—as free from pretence as from exaggeration, paints the citizens of Chicago with the subtlest fancy and the simplest truthfulness.

Mr H. B. Fuller employs an ampler canvas. His intention is the same. He also discards the artifice of exaggeration. He attempts to harrow your feelings as little as to advertise himself. He displays not the saeva indignatio, which won another novelist of Chicago so indiscreet a fame. He is for gentler methods and plainer judgments. In 'The Cliff Dwellers' he has given us a picture of the tribe inhabiting the Clifton, a monstrous sky-scraper full eighteen stories tall, whose "hundreds of windows," he tells you, "glitter with multitudinous letterings in gold and in silver, and on summer afternoons its awnings flutter score on score in the tepid breezes that sometimes come up from Indiana." His picture is never overcharged; his draughtsmanship is always sincere. He knows the tribe with an easy familiarity, and he bears witness to their good and their evil with perfect impartiality. He is never a partisan. His portraits are just, and he leaves his reader to sum up the qualities of each. At his hands Chicago suffers no injury. She does not return his generosity. A prophet is not without honour save in his own country, and when I asked for his books at the biggest bookshop in Chicago, I was met with a stare of ignorance.

And what you find in Chicago you may find in New England, in Kentucky, in California, everywhere. The curiosity of this vast continent tempts its writers to explore. Their material varies with the locality of their choice. Their skill is a common inheritance. They cultivate the graces as carefully as did their predecessors. Their artistic conscience is no less acute. Above all, they have brought the short story to a point of singular perfection. If Edgar Poe showed them the way, they have proved themselves apter disciples than any save the most skilful of Frenchmen.

It is, indeed, impossible to look forward to the future of American literature without hopefulness. In that half-discovered country style and invention go hand in hand. The land of Mr Howells and Frank Norris, of Mrs Atherton and Mrs Wharton, of Stephen Crane and Harold Frederic, has accomplished so much that we may look confidently for the master, who in his single achievement will knit up its many diverse qualities and speak to the world with the voice of America.



THE UNDERWORLD.

Nowhere and at no time, save in the England of the eighteenth century, was the underworld so populous or so popular as in the America of to-day. In life, as in letters, crime and criminals hold there a lofty place. They are the romance of the street and the tenement-house. In their adventure and ferocity there is a democratic touch, which endears them to a free people. Nor are they so far remote from the world of prosperity and respect in the cities of the United States as elsewhere. The police is a firm and constant link between criminal and politician. Wherever the safe-blowers and burglars are, there you will find stool-pigeons and squealers, {*} ready to sell their comrades for liberty and dollars. And if the policeman is the intimate of the grafter, he is the client also of the boss who graciously bestowed his uniform upon him. At chowder parties and picnics thief, policeman, and boss meet on the terms of equality imposed upon its members by the greatest of all philanthropic institutions—Tammany Hall. If you would get a glimpse into this strange state within a state, you have but to read the evidence given before the Lexow Committee {**} in 1894. It would be difficult to match the cynicism and brutality there disclosed.

* A stool-pigeon is a thief in the pay of the police; a squealer is a grafter who betrays his brother.

** This strange collection of documents, a whole literature in itself, bears the prosaic title, "Investigations of the Police Department of the City of New York."

In every line of this amazing testimony you may detect a contempt of human life and justice, an indifference to suffering, an eager lust after unearned dollars, which are without parallel. The persons who play their part in this austere, begrimed tragi-comedy, come for the most part from oversea, and have but a halting knowledge of the language spoken by judges and senators. Yet their very ignorance stamps their speech with authenticity, and enhances its effect. The quick dialogue is packed with life and slang. Never were seen men and women so strange as flit across this stage. Crook and guy, steerer and turner, keepers of gambling-hells and shy saloons, dealers in green-goods, {*} come forward with their eager stories of what seems to them oppression and wrong.

* Forged dollar-notes.

With the simplicity which knows no better they deplore their ill-rewarded "industry," and describe their fraudulent practices as though they were a proper means of earning bread and butter. They have as little shame as repentance. Their only regrets are that they have been ruined by the police or forced to spend a few barren years in the State prison. And about them hover always detective and police-captain, ill-omened birds of prey, who feed upon the underworld. There is nothing more remarkable in this drama of theft and hunger than the perfect understanding which unites the criminal lamb and the wolfish upholder of the law. The grafter looks to his opponent for protection, and looks not in vain, so long as he has money in his pocket. The detective shepherds the law-breakers, whom he is appointed to arrest; he lives with them; he shares their confidences and their gains; he encourages their enterprise that he may earn a comfortable dividend; and he gives them up to justice when they are no longer worth defending. No dramatist that ever lived could do justice to this astounding situation, and it is the highest tribute to human ingenuity that few of the interlocutors fall below their opportunity.

And it may be admitted that New York gave, and gives, an easy chance to policemen bent upon oppression. What can the poor, ignorant foreigners, who throng the east side of the city, do against their brutal and omnipotent guardians? "An impressive spectacle was presented to us one day," reports the Committee, "in the presence of about 100 patrolmen in uniform, who during the period of three preceding years had been convicted by the police commissioners of unprovoked and unwarranted assault on citizens." Still more impressive than "this exhibit of convicted clubbers" was "a stream of victims of police brutality who testified before the Committee. The eye of one man, punched out by a patrolman's club, hung on his cheek. Others were brought before the Committee, fresh from their punishment, covered with blood and bruises, and in some cases battered out of recognition." The whole city seemed the prey of a panic terror. One day "a man rushed into the session, fresh from an assault made upon him by a notorious politician and two policemen, and with fear depicted upon his countenance threw himself upon the mercy of the Committee and asked its protection, insisting that he knew of no court and of no place where he could in safety go and obtain protection from his persecutors." From all which it is plain that too high a price may be paid for the philanthropy of Tammany Hall, and that a self-governing democracy cannot always keep an efficient watch upon its guardians.

What is it in the life and atmosphere of America which thus encourages crime, or rather elevates crime to a level of excellence unknown elsewhere? In the first place, the citizens of New York are the disciples of Hobbes. To them life is a state of war. The ceaseless competition for money is a direct incentive to the combat. Nature seems to have armed every man's hand against his fellow. And then the American is always happiest when he believes himself supreme in his own walk. The man who inhabits the greatest country on earth likes to think of his talent as commensurate with his country's. If he be a thief, he must be the most skilful of his kind; if he be a blackmailing policeman, he must be a perfect adept at the game. In brief, restlessness and the desire of superiority have produced a strange result, and there is little doubt that the vulgar American is insensitive to moral shocks. This insensitiveness is easily communicated to the curious visitor. A traveller of keen observation and quick intelligence, who has recently spent "a year amongst Americans," accepts the cynicism of the native without a murmur. After yielding to that spirit of enthusiastic hope which is breathed by the Statue of Liberty, he thus discusses the newly-arrived alien:

Even the stars in their courses [thus he writes] fight for America, if not always for the immigrant when he lands. The politicians would fain prevent his assimilation in order that his vote might be easily manipulated by them; but first of all he must have a vote to be handled, and to this end the politicians provide him with naturalisation papers, fraudulent it may be—the State Superintendent of Elections in New York estimates that 100,000 fraudulent naturalisation papers were issued in New York State alone in 1903,—and thus in the very beginning of his life in America the immigrant feels himself identified with, and takes delight and pride in, the American name and nature; and lo! already the alien is bound to the "native" by the tie of a common sentiment, the [Greek word] of the Greeks, which is one of the most powerful factors of nationality.

Poor [Greek word]! many follies have been spoken in your name! But never before were you identified with fraudulent naturalisation! Never before were you mistaken for the trick of a manipulating politician!

Such being the tie of a common sentiment, it is not surprising that the Americans are universally accustomed to graft and boodle. With characteristic frankness they have always professed a keen interest in those who live by their wits. It is not for nothing that Allan Pinkerton, the eminent detective, called affectionately "the old man," is a national hero. His perfections are already celebrated in a prose epic, and he is better known to west as to east than the President himself. And this interest, this sense of heroism, are expressed in a vast and entertaining literature. Nowhere has this literature of scoundrelism, adorned by Defoe and beloved by Borrow, flourished as it has flourished in America. Between the dime novel and the stern documents of the Lexow Committee there is room for history and fiction of every kind. The crooked ones of the earth have vied with the detectives in the proper relation of their experiences. On the one hand you find the great Pinker-ton publishing to the world a breathless selection from his own archives; on the other, so practised a novelist as Mr Julian Hawthorne embellishing the narrative of Inspector Byrnes; and it is evident that both of them satisfy a general curiosity. In these records of varying merit and common interest the attentive reader may note the changes which have taken place in the method and practice of thieving. There is no man so ready to adapt himself to new circumstances as the scoundrel, and the ingenuity of the American rogue has never been questioned. In the old days of the backwoods and romance Jesse James rode forth on a high-mettled steed to hold up cars, coaches, and banks; and James Murel, the horse-thief, celebrated by Mark Twain, whose favourite disguise was that of an itinerant preacher, cherished no less a project than an insurrection of negroes and the capture of New Orleans. The robber of to-day is a stern realist. He knows nothing of romance. A ride under the stars and a swift succession of revolver-shots have no fascination for him. He likes to work in secret upon safe or burglar-box. He has moved with the times, and has at his hand all the resources of modern science. If we do not know all that is to be known of him and his ambitions it is our own fault, since the most expert of his class, Langdon W. Moore, has given us in 'His Own Story of his Eventful Life' (Boston, 1893) a complete revelation of a crook's career. It is an irony of life that such a book as this should come out of Boston, and yet it is so quick in movement, of so breathless an excitement, that it may outlive many specimens of Bostonian lore and culture. It is but one example out of many, chosen because in style as in substance it outstrips all competitors.

Without knowing it, Langdon W. Moore is a disciple of Defoe. He has achieved by accident that which the author of 'Moll Flanders' achieved by art. There is a direct simplicity in his narrative which entitles him to a place among the masters. He describes hair-breadth escapes and deadly perils with the confident air of one who is always exposed to them. He gives the impression of the hunted and the hunter more vividly than any writer of modern times. When he is opening a safe, you hear, in spite of yourself, the stealthy step upon the stair. If he watches for a pal at the street end, you share his anxiety lest that pal should be intercepted by the watchful detective. And he produces his effects without parade or ornament. He tells his story with a studied plainness, and by adding detail to detail keeps your interest ever awake. Like many other great men, he takes his skill and enterprise for granted. He does not write of his exploits as though he were always amazed at his own proficiency. Of course he has a certain pride in his skill. He cannot describe his perfect mastery over all the locks that ever were made without a modest thrill. He does not disguise his satisfaction at Inspector Byrnes' opinion that "he had so deeply studied combination locks as to be able to open them from the sound ejected from the spindle." For the rest, he recognises that he is merely a workman, like another, earning his living, and that nothing can be accomplished save by ceaseless industry and untiring toil. Like many another hero, Langdon W. Moore was born in New England, and was brought up at Newburyport, a quiet seaport town. The only sign of greatness to be detected in his early life was an assault upon a schoolmaster, and he made ample atonement for this by years of hard work upon a farm. He was for a while a typical hayseed, an expert reaper, ready to match himself against all comers. He reached his zenith when he was offered fifty dollars in gold for six weeks' toil, and he records with a justified pleasure that "no man had ever been paid such high wages as that." But his energetic spirit soon wearied of retirement, and he found his way to New York, not to be fleeced, like the hayseed of the daily press, but to fleece others. The gambling hells knew him; he became an adept at poker and faro; and he soon learned how to correct or to compel fortune. His first experiment was made upon one Charley White, who dealt faro bank every Saturday night; and it is thus that Moore describes the effect of an ingenious discovery:

He kept his box and cards in a closet adjoining his room. One night during his absence I fitted a key to his closet, took out his cards, and sand-papered the face of eight cards in each deck. I then removed the top of his faro-box, bulged out the centre of the front plate at the mouth, and filed the plate on the inside at both corners to a bevel. I then replaced the top, put in a deck of cards, and made a deal. I found the cards not sanded would follow up and fill the mouth of the box after each turn was made; and if the mouth remained dark and the edge of the top card could not be seen, one of the sand-papered cards was next, and a loser. This would give me several "dead" turns in each deal.

By this means the great man, still despised as a Boston bean-eater, was able to bring his adversary to ruin. The adversary at last discovered the artifice, and "for the next five years," to quote Moore's own words, "we met as strangers."

It will be seen that from his earliest days Moore possessed a scientific ingenuity, which the hard experience of life rapidly improved. And it was not long before a definite direction was given to his talent. Arrested in 1856, as he thought unjustly, he determined "to do no more work until obliged to do it for the State." He therefore turned his skill of hand to account, and went into the "green goods business." His success in this venture was so great that he made the best dollar bills ever put upon the market, and he boasts legitimately that in the game he "never lost a man." Presently he discovered that there was a quicker profit in stolen bonds. "From my first venture in this bond-smashing business," to quote his own simple words, "in 1862 up to 1870, I made more money than in any branch of industry I was ever engaged in." "Branch of industry" is admirable, and proves that Moore had a proper appreciation of his craft. But bond-smashing compelled a perfect knowledge of locks and bolts, and in this knowledge, as has been said, Moore was supreme. At the end of his career, when he had hung his arms upon the wall, and retired to spend a green old age at Boston, it was to his treatment of Yale and Lillie locks that he looked back with the greatest pleasure. But no exploit flattered his vanity more easily than the carrying off from the Bank at Concord—the Concord of Emerson and Hawthorne—of some three hundred thousand dollars. That he purchased his freedom by an ample restitution mattered nothing to the artist. His purpose was achieved, his victory won, and if his victims came by their own again, he at least had the satisfaction which comes of a successful engagement.

Of this adventure he writes with more enthusiasm than he is wont to show. He wishes his readers to understand that it was not a sudden descent, but the culmination of five months' steady work. He had watched the bank until he knew the habits of its manager and the quality of its locks. He "was satisfied from all he saw that by hard persistent work the bank could be cleaned out completely." It was on a July day in 1867 that the scheme first took shape in Moore's mind. He had stopped at noon at the hotel at Concord for food, and saw the cashier of the bank returning from his dinner.

The bank had been closed during his absence [thus he tells his simple story], and he now unlocked the street door and left the key in the lock. I followed him upstairs and saw him unlock the outer and inner doors of the vault, and also the door of the burglar-box. I presented a hundred-dollar note and asked to have it changed. Being accommodated, I left the place, observing as I went out that the lock on the street door was a heavy one of the familiar tumbler variety, and that it had a wooden back.

Thus the train was laid, and in three months came the explosion. Impressions were taken of locks, keys were provided, a waggon and team were held in readiness, and one day as the cashier left the bank to get his dinner, Langdon W. Moore, with a meal-bag concealed under his vest, quietly opened the front door and entered the bank. One check he knew. As he went in a girl of twelve tried to follow him—a near relative of the cashier. The exercise of a little tact satisfied her that the directors were in session, and she ran off to her playmates under the big elm at the opposite corner of the street. Moore lost no time in locking the door behind him, in opening all the locks, which yielded to his cunning and foresight, and in packing the meal-bag full of bonds, bank-notes, and plate. He accomplished the deed without haste, and by the time that the cashier had finished his dinner Moore had disappeared with his bag, and his waggon, and his friends, and left no trace behind.

Another masterpiece, in Moore's opinion, was what he magniloquently calls the great robbery of an express car. Here, too, he proved the fineness of his craft. He left nothing to chance, and he foresaw, with the coolness of a practised hand, every step which his adversaries would take. His first care was to obtain the assistance of the messenger who travelled on the car which he proposed to rob, and the zeal and energy wherewith he coached his accomplices ensured success. Again and again he rehearsed every scene in the comedy. Before his eyes the messenger was attacked by two masked ruffians, of whom one caught him by the throat, while the other put a pistol to his head, saying, "If you open your mouth I will blow a hole through your head large enough for a pigeon to fly through." Then the messenger was gagged and bound, a piece of soap was put into his mouth, that he might appear in the last extremity, and presently he was set to learn by heart the tale that he should tell his employers. By long practice each actor became perfect in his part. The car was raided, one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars was the modest spoil, and Pinkerton and his men were gallantly defied. A hasty trip to Canada still further perplexed the pursuers, and if we may believe Moore, he not only baffled the great detective, but persuaded the Express Company to dispute his claim. Moore, in fact, took a sportsman's as well as an artist's pleasure in the game. After the discomfiture of his enemies, he loved nothing better than a neat job. He professes a frank delight in explaining how once upon a time he opened the Honourable Benjamin Wood's safe, and did not soil his carpet. And there was good reason for his scruple. No sooner had he flashed his dark lantern on the office than he observed that the floor was newly covered, and that fresh paint and paper shone upon the walls. Now he had no objection to easing the Honourable Benjamin of fifty thousand dollars. Being a gentleman, he would scorn to spoil a new Brussels carpet. Accordingly he took some papers from Mr Wood's file and spread them carefully on the floor. The rest of the dramatic recital shall be given in his own words:

When this was done, we drilled two five-eighth-inch holes through the fire-proof door into the bolt case, jacked the plate from the frame,... and opened the door. I then put in a wooden wedge at the top to keep the plate from springing back, took down the jack, and shook out all the loose filing upon the papers. This I gathered carefully up, and put the lime, plaster, and papers in the coal-hod, placed some more clean papers under the door, and made everything ready to leave the building as soon as the boodle was transferred safe to our pockets. After looking through the books and papers, the money was taken out and counted. It amounted to but a single one-dollar note.

Was ever an artist so bitterly deceived? Langdon W. Moore rose to the occasion. He was no pilferer, and scorned to carry off so mean a booty. In the words of the police-captain, he would not add larceny to burglary. But he paid the penalty of greatness. His work was instantly recognised. "I know the man," said Captain Jordan, "for there is but one in the world who would take all that trouble to save your carpet while breaking open your safe."

It reminds you of the story told by Pliny of Apelles the painter, who once upon a time called upon Protogenes, another master of his craft, when Protogenes was not within. Whereupon Apelles, seeing a picture before him, took a pencil and drew in colour upon the picture a passing fine and small line. Then said he to the old woman in the house, "Tell thy master that he who made this line inquired for him." And when Protogenes returned, and had looked upon the line, he knew who had been there, and said withal, "Surely Apelles has come to town, for it is impossible that any but he should make in colour so fine workmanship." Thus genius is betrayed by its own perfection, and he who refused to soil the carpet could not but be recognised by his skill.

And Langdon W. Moore was forced to pay another and a more grievous penalty for his renown. As the fame of his prowess spread abroad, he fell a prey to the greed of detectives. Do what he would, he could never rid himself of the attentions of the police. Henceforth it was almost impossible for him to work in safety, and whatever booty he obtained he must needs share with his unwelcome companions. He was like a fly condemned to spend his life in the irk-some society of the spider. When he had not much to give, his poverty was rewarded by years in prison; and then, as he says himself, he "was welcomed back into the old criminal life by crooked police officials." These officials had no desire to help him. "I was not asked by them"—again it is Moore who speaks—"if I was in want of anything, but was told that if I wanted to make some money they could put me on to a good bank job where I could make a million." And, if we may believe the historians, Moore's experience is not singular. The truth is, the thief-taker still flourishes in America. Jonathan Wild, his occupation gone in England, has crossed the ocean, and plies his trade with greater skill and treachery than ever. He thinks it better to live on the criminal than to catch him. And thus he becomes a terror not to the evildoer but to the law-abiding citizen. It is his business to encourage crime, not to stamp it out. If there were no thieves, where would the stool-pigeon and detective find their profits? "W'y," said a pickpocket {*} in New York, "them coppers up there in the Tenderloin couldn't have any diamond rings if we didn't help to pay for 'em. No, they couldn't. They'd sit down in the street and actually cry—an' they're big men some of 'em—if we guns was run off the earth." In other words, the lesson of the American Underworld is that the policeman may be a far greater danger to the community than the criminal. Jonathan Wild will always do more harm than Jack Sheppard. The skill and daring of the cracksman makes him a marked man. But quis custodes custodiet?

* See 'The World of Graft,' by J. Flint (1901), p. 154.



EPILOGUE.

A traveller visiting a strange land takes for granted the simpler virtues. He notes with gratitude and without surprise the generous practice of hospitality. He recognises that the husbandman, patiently toiling on his farm, adscriptus glebae, holds in his toil-worn hands the destiny of his country. He knows that the excellent work done in tranquil seclusion by men of letters and scholars will outlast the braggart achievements of well-advertised millionaires and "prominent" citizens. Fortunately, such virtues as these are the common inheritance of all peoples.

They are not characteristic of this nation or of that. They belong, like air and sunlight, to the whole civilised world. And it is not by similarities, but by differences, that the traveller arrives at a clear picture of a foreign land. Especially in America do the softer shades and quieter subtleties escape the unaccustomed eye. The swift energies, the untiring restlessness, the universal haste, obscure the amenities of life more darkly there than elsewhere. The frank contempt of law and blood, which receives a daily illustration, must needs take a firmer hold of the observer than the peaceful tillage of the fields and the silent acquisition of knowledge. America is unhappy in that she is still making her history, not one episode of which a vigilant and lupine press will suffer to go unrecorded. Graft and corruption stalk abroad, public and unashamed. The concentration of vast wealth in a few pockets results, on the one hand, in a lowering of the commercial code, on the other, in a general diffusion of poverty, These are some of the traits which mark America off from the other nations, and these traits none with a sense of the picturesque can ever overlook.

Yet it is not these traits which make the deepest impression upon the returning traveller. As he leaves the shores of America he forgets for the moment her love of money and of boodle, he forgets her superb energy and hunger for life, he forgets the exquisite taste shown by the most delicately refined of her citizens. He remembers most vividly that he is saying good-bye to the oldest land on earth. It is an irony of experience that the inhabitants of the United States are wont to describe themselves as a young people. They delight to excuse their extravagances on the ground of youth. When they grow older (they tell you) they will take another view of politics and of conduct. And the truth is that old age long ago overtook them. America is not, never was, young. She sprang, ready-made, from the head of a Pilgrim Father, the oldest of God's creatures. Being an old man's daughter, she has escaped the virtues and vices of an irresponsible childhood. In the primitive history of the land her ancestors took no part. They did not play with flint-knives and set up dolmens where New York now stands. They did not adorn themselves with woad and feathers. The Prince Albert coat (or its equivalent) was always more appropriate to their ambition. In vain you will search the United States for the signs of youth. Wherever you cast your eye you will find the signal proofs of an eager, grasping age. Youth loiters and is glad, listening to the songs of birds, wondering at the flowers which carpet the meadow, and recking not of the morrow. America is grave and in a hurry. She is not content to fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden age. The one hope of her citizens is to get to Wall Street as quickly as possible, that they may add to their already useless hoard of dollars. For this purpose they have perfected all those material appliances which increase the rapidity and ease of life. They would save their labour as strenuously as they would add to their fortunes. A telephone at every bed-head has made the toil of letter-writing superfluous. A thousand ingenious methods of "transportation" have taken away the necessity of walking. There is no reason why in the years to come hand and foot should not both be atrophied. But there is nothing young in this sedulous suppression of toil. Youth is prodigal of time and of itself. Youth boasts of strength and prowess to do great deeds, not of skill to pile millions upon millions, a Pelion upon an Ossa of wealth. Nor in the vain luxury of New York can we detect anything save the signs of age. It is only in modern America that the mad extravagance of Nero's Rome may be matched. There the banquet of Trimalchio might be presented without surprise and without reproach. It differs from what are known as "freak dinners" only in the superiority of its invention and in the perfection of its table-talk.

In brief, the fantastic ambition of a "cottage" at Newport, as of Trimalchio's villa in Southern Italy, is the ambition, not of primitive, reckless, pleasure-loving youth, but of an old age, sated and curious, which hurries to decay.

Again, it is not a young people which cries aloud "too old at forty!" In the childhood of the world, the voice of age is the voice of wisdom. It is for Nestor that Homer claims the profoundest respect, and to-day America is teaching us, who are only too willing to learn the baneful lesson, that knowledge and energy die with youth. Once upon a time I met an American who had returned from his first visit to Europe, and when I asked what was the vividest impression he brought from thence, he replied: "I was surprised to see an old man like the German Emperor doing so much work." In our more youthful eyes the German Emperor has but crossed the threshold of life. The years of his mature activity lie before him, we believe, like an untrodden road. But for the American, prematurely worn out by the weight of time and the stress of affairs, William II. already hastens to his decline, and clings to the reins of office with the febrile courage of an old man.

And all the while America is sublimely unconscious that the joys of childhood are not hers. Though with the hypochondria of advancing years she demands a doctor for her soul, she knows not from what disease she suffers. She does not pray for a Medea to thrust her into a cauldron of rejuvenescence. With a bluff optimism she declares that she is still the youngest of the nations, and boasts that when she has grown up to the height of her courage and activity she will make triumphant even her bold experiment in democracy. Not upon her has the divine injunction descended: [Greek phrase]. She who knows so much knows not herself. How should she, when she is composed of so many and so diverse elements? And lacking self-knowledge, she lacks humour. With the best will in the world, she cannot see the things about her in a true proportion. The blithe atmosphere, clear as crystal, sparkling as champagne, in which she lives, persuades her to take a too serious and favourable view of her own character. And let it be remembered that with her optimism she still treasures the sentimentality of her Puritan ancestors. She is a true idealist, who loves nothing so dearly as "great thoughts." She delights in the phrases and aspirations which touch the heart more nearly than the head. Though her practice does not always square with her theory, especially in the field of politics, she is indefatigable in the praise of freedom, equality, and the other commonplaces of democracy. The worst is, that she cannot laugh at herself. Her gravity and sensitiveness still lie, like stumbling-blocks, in her path. She accepts the grim adulation of such unwise citizens as Mr Carnegie as no more than her due. If only she could dismiss the flattery of her admirers with an outburst of Gargantuan hilarity, all virtues might be added unto her. But, as I have said, she lacks this one thing. She is the home of humourists and no humour. A thousand jesters minister to her amusement, and she pays them handsomely. More jokes are made within her borders in a day than suffice the rest of the globe for a year. And the laughter which they provoke is not spontaneous. You can hear the creak of the machine as it goes to work. The ever-present jester is a proof that humour is an exotic, which does not grow naturally on the soil, and does not belong more intimately to the American people than did the cumbersome jokes of Archie Armstrong to the monarch who employed him. The humour which simplifies life, and detects a spice of ridicule even in the operations of business and politics, is rarely found in America. Nor is its absence remarkable. The Americans are absorbed from early youth to ripe old age in the pursuit of success. In whatever path they walk they are determined to triumph. Sport for them is less an amusement than a chance to win. When they embark upon business, as the most of them do, their ambition is insatiable. They are consumed by the passion of money-making. The hope of victory makes them despise toil and renounce pleasure. Gladly will they deprive themselves of rest and lead laborious lives. The battle and its booty are their own reward. They count their gathered dollars with the same pride wherewith the conquering general counts his prisoners of war. But the contest marks their faces with the lines of care, and leaves them beggared of gaiety. How can they take themselves other than seriously when millions depend upon their nod? They have bent their energies to one special end and purpose—the making of money; and in the process, as an American once said to me, they forget to eat, they forget to live. More obviously still, they forget to laugh. The comedy of their own career is never revealed to them. Their very slang displays their purpose: they are "out for the stuff," and they will not let it escape them. A kind of sanctity hangs about money. It is not a thing to be taken lightly; it is no proper subject for a jest. And as money and its quest absorb the best energies of America, it follows that America is distinguished by a high seriousness with which Europe is powerless to compete. However far a profession may be removed from the mart, profit is its end. Brilliant research, fortunate achievement—these also are means, like buying and selling. In scholarship, as in commerce, money is still the measure of success. Dr Muensterberg, a well-known professor at Harvard, has recorded the opinion of a well-known English scholar, which, with the doctor's comment, throws a clearer light upon the practice of America than a page of argument. "America will not have first-class scholarship," said the Englishman, "in the sense in which Germany or England has it, till every professor in the leading universities has at least ten thousand dollars salary, and the best scholars receive twenty-five thousand dollars." Dr Muensterberg refused at first to accept this conclusion of the pessimist, but, says he, the years have convinced him. Scholars must be paid generously in the current coin, or they will not respect their work. It is not greed, precisely, which drives the American along the road of money-getting. It is, as I have said, a frank pride in the spoils, a pride which is the consistent enemy of light-heartedness, and which speedily drives those whom it possesses into a grave melancholy.

This, then, is the dominant impression which America gives the traveller—the impression of a serious old gentleman, whom not even success will persuade to laugh at his own foibles. And there is another quality of the land, of which the memory will never fade. America is apprehensive. She has tentacles strong and far-reaching, like the tentacles of a cuttle-fish. She seizes the imagination as no other country seizes it. If you stayed long within her borders, you would be absorbed into her citizenship and her energies like the enthusiastic immigrant.

You would speak her language with a proper emphasis and a becoming accent. A few weeks passed upon her soil seem to give you the familiarity of long use and custom. "Have I been here for years?" you ask after a brief sojourn. "Can it be possible that I have ever lived anywhere else?"

THE END