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Maps, plates, charts, '«*r . may be filmed at different reduction ri ..o.-. T^osc ^oo large to be entirely included in one e. — ure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illu.ttrato the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmis d des taux de r6dr jtion diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clich6, il est film6 i partir de Tangle sup^rieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en baa, en prenant le nombre d'images n6cessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 32X i 1 2 3 4 5 6 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. STUDIES FOR THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW. BY JOSEPH HATTON. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. 1. / LONDON : CHAPMAN AND HALL (LIMITED), 11, HENRIETTA STREET, CO VENT GARDEN. 1881. 0' I i WESTMINSTER : J. B. NICHOLS AND SONS, PEINTEE8, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET. ^ CONTENTS. I.— THE OLD AND THE NEW. American and English Society contrasted — A Rocky Mountain World in its Infancy— Administration of the Law — British Justice and American — Art and the Customs — American and English Houses — The Drama in New York — A wonderful Theatre — American Women at home and in London — Snohbism on both sides of the Atlantic — Poetic Tribute to the Old Country — The Destiny of the New pp. 1—38 IL— REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIES. The Treatment of Women and Children — " Diamond Cut Diamond" — Characteristic Phrases — Capping on Extravagance — The Story of a Braggart — Freedom and Hope — The Great Cities— Chicago's Child-like Jealousy of New York — Irish Agitation against England — The Custom of Ulster — International Criticism — Studying Repartee — The Garden City — A Wonderful Revival — The City of the Golden Gate — Post Office Absurdities — Oysters pp. 39 — 93 III.— MAUD S. Trotting and Preaching — Comparisons between English and American Racing — A new Civilisation that presses utility into its Amuse- ments — French Views of American Trotters — On a Chicago Track — The Great Race against Time — The Virtues of Lager Beer— An exciting Finish— American Carriages in England — Driving on both Sides of the Atlantic— Behind a Trotting Horse — The Story of the Spotted Dog— Out-door Sports in the Old World and the New pp. 94—121 CONTENTS. IV.- THE APOSTLE OF UNBELIEF. Two Gospels — John to the Judeans, Robert to the Am* ncaas — The Famous Exponndcr of Materialism— A Chicago Sabbath — Going to hear IngersoU — " What shall we do to be Saved ? " — A funny Story well adapted— The Preacher's Logic — The Evangelical Alliance — Laughter and Tears — Pathetic Profanity — Freedom that tolerates Tyranny pp. 122 — 144 v.— THE GHOSTS OF TWO HEMISPHERES. American and English Bishops— Sunday and the Churches — Religious Freedom — IngersoU's Lecture on Ghosts— Witchcraft — Anec- dotical Rhetoric — Tyrannical Phantoms — Visiting a famous Spiritualist — A Private Seance in New York — The Spiritualist and the Soldier — A Dramatic Story — Mr. Foster's Manifestations- Messages from the Dead — Spiritism at Fault— The Church tolera- ting Modem Jugglery — A Newspaper written by Famous Ghosts — The latest Development of Trade Journalism . pp. 145 — 184 \ I.— ART AND AUTHORSHIP. American Artists — An Evening with the Salmagundi Club— Studies in Black and White — Remarkable Sketches— Art badly paid — French Influence — America's True Mission in Art — Subjects for Painters — Sketching Grounds — Mountain Lakes — Fall Colours — On the Hudson — " Sleepy Hollow " — The Copyright Question — Capital and Authorship — America's Proposals to England — " A Sop to Cerberus " — Counsels of Moderation — A Suggestion for the Exhibition Year of 1883 ...... pp. 185—219 VII.— CHINESE PUZZLES. Celestials under the Stars and Stripes — John at San Francisco and in New York — Opium Dens at Five Points— A Chinese Gambling Saloon — Servants and Slaves — The New Treaty of Washington — Tea in America — Medical Missions to China and Japan — The Influence of Race upon Race — Chinese Books at San Francisco — Revelations of a Joss-house — The Faith and Opinions of Chang Wan Ho-The Greatest Puzzle of all . . . pp. 220— 244 ;ans — The h — Going -A funny vangelical -Freedom 122—144 THE BEGINNING. -R(>ligious t — Anec- a famous kuali stand stations — :ch tolera- us Ghosts 145—184 — Studies l!y paid — ibjects for Colours— )nestion — and—" A on for the 185—219 ico and in Gambling hington — pan — The 'ancisco — of Chang 220—244 Introductory — The Story of the Cuckoo and its application — Traditional Yankees and the Reality — The Origin of these Papers — A Remarkable Orator— Bonds of International Sympathy —Hogs and Second Hand Storms— Franklin's Mother-iv-Law and the Destiny of the United States — End of Preface. " Where the Cuckoo Sings " was the title of the picture. It was a fine Midland counties landscape^ the time early spring, the subject a striking bit of meadow, a willow copse, and a trans- parent pool. On a "half-price day " a group of intelligent working-men were standing before this idealised transcript of Nature. There is always a leader, self- elected or otherwise, in every company. The chief of the toiling gang, out for a holiday and visiting the Birmingham Exhibition of Art, was a critic. VI THE BEGINNING. ^^AyCi ladSf^ he said, " ifs a stunning good picture. Them primroses springing up through the dead leaves at foot of tree is as natural as life. I never see*d waiter more like waiter than the little pond there with willows reflected in it. And meadows in the distance, arenH they first rate?*'* The lads nodded, and said "Aye." '*And what think ye of the moss on owd tree trunk ? Why iVs as natural as my sister's Tom cat ! " " Aye,'* the lads said, it was, and they laughed, whether it was at the incongruity of the simile or in remembrance of some peculiar trait of the familiar animal itself, I cannot say. "Aye, tads, there's no mistake about it, that's a right down good picture," went on the critic ; "do you notice them clouds in the waiter, and buds on the willows ? " "Aye^"' they said they did. They always said "Aye,^^ and nothing more. " Stop a bit ! " said the critic suddenly, first looking at his catalogue, next at the picture. THE DEQINNINQ. Vll then prying into the toillow copse, and again diving into the catalogue, and at last turning to the lads and exclaiming, " But where's the dommed cuckoo ! '* On my first visit to America I was for- cibly reminded of this incident of uncultured criticism. On the stage and m humorous literature, in the provincial concert-room and at metropolitan music halls, I had invariably seen the native American depicted as a loud, noisy, irrepressible person, his ** Yankee ** origin continually proclaimed in word, gesture, and dress. A tall, gav/nt individual, with lank hair and a " goatee beard, ^^ striped trousers, an exaggerated dress-coat, and a waistcoat open at the neck, he would generally be whist- ling " Yankee Doodle " and whittling a stick. I had a vivid remembrance of him sitting in a rocking-chair, with his legs on a mantel- shelf, while he expectorated on a highly-floral wall-paper. The latest stage -Yankee which modified this old idea was Mr. JBuckstone's **Asa I^enchard.** Even that singular indi- vidual, if he did not wear the stars on his coat VIU THE BEGINNING. and the stripes on his trousers, was a very pro- nounced and ouW sort of person, toith a grating nasal twang in his speech, and in his manners a vulgar disregard of the decent customs of social life. Now, remembering the French idea of the Englishman, the German notion of John Bully our ovm stage- Irishman^ and the Yorkshireman of the melodramatic playwright, I did not expect to encounter the ** TJncle Sam** of caricature, nor the *' Jonathan " of the dramatic author. But, after broadly inspecting the scenery of America, after travelling on its railways, steaming up and down its lakes and rivers, being lost in its forests, and bewildered just as much in its gigantic hotels ; after having " been to the east and been to the west** if not " to old Kentucky, ^^ I could not help thinking of my Birmingham friend and exclaiming to myself, " But whereas the domiued Yankee ! " I did not see even a resemblance to the tradi- tional Transatlantic ideal of the platform, the stage, and the cynical traveller. On many occasions I met sallow-faced men with genial THE BEGINNING. IX grey eyes that dominated mouths detiicated to the humorous expression of quaint vieios of life ^ men who in some respects might be regarded as typical of a benevolent kind of " TIncle Sam ** ; but the interrogating bragging "stranger" who ** calculates this great and glorious country is jtist going to knock you into fits of everlasting envy, you bet^ he belongs to the region of fiction and burlesque. In his place you find a quiet self possessed almost retioent man, or a bright, m intelligent, cultured woman ; and you soon dis- cover that Americans know a great deal more about Great Britain than you know about the United States. It has been my good fortune to have visited the United States twice within the last few years, and it has been suggested to me that I ought to have something of interest to say about the country and the people. There are a few points of contrast between England and Ame^ rica that I have thought worth recording. I am emboldened to present them in these volumes because The New York Times con^ sidered several of them worthy of publication X THE BEGINNING, in its bright and scholarly pages, I have added to the articles which ^-ppeared in that jowrnal others which have been published on this side of the Atlantic in Tinsleys* Magazine, Belgravia, The Theatre, Colburn's New Monthly, and other publications. Supplementing the whole with much new matter, I venture to submit the pre- sent work to the reader as a contribution to the international literature of the day, not as an historical review, not as a book of travels, but as a friendly chat about " our kin beyond the sea,** with some sketches of national peculiarities and contrasts that strike an observer on both sides of the Atlantic, It is not ea^, perhaps, to say anything par- ticularly novel about Am£rica. But, with all due deference to my own natural modesty, I believe the reader will find a few new ideas and many new facts in this work. Towns and cities have almost grown up while I have been writing it. These and sundry current com- mercial and other statistics of the time cannot be stale. But what is entirely new to the general reader is a sketch of Col. Ingersoll, the THE BEGINNING. XI remarkable representative and eloquent spokes- man of free thought m America. Destined to exercise a stra/nge and mighty influence on theological opinions in the United States, Col, Ingersoll impressed m£ as an orator of great original power. To consider whether his work is for good or evil does not come within the scope or purpose of these sketches. Leaving his views to the judgment of the reader, I merely introduce him as an important factor of American progress, and as a public man in whom England cannot fail to be interested. The story of the stranger, who, being asked why he was unmoved at a certain pathethic church service while the rest of the congrega- tion were in tears, said, ** The fact is, I dovbt belong to the parish ^^ is no longer applicable to the English stranger in America, nor to the American stranger in England. The bond of sympathy between the two cotmtries is both physical and moral. Even so humble a creature as the American pig being "indisposed" the London journals teem with bulletins as to its condition. " Hog cholera " was recently as Xll THE BEGINNING. exciting an international theme as " the Bern- hardt mania.** Chicago and Cincinnati were shaken to their very centres at certain alleged inaccttracies in an English ConsuVs statements about the precise characteristics of the illness of the Western hog. On my first arrival in the United States I found the bond of sympathy represented in the delight of an audience at Wallack*s with the vagaries of a stage Cockney. Four years later ifn>y baggage was unloaded to the time of " Se might have been a Rooshan" whistled by an Express porter, who treated me to several other snatches of " "Pimafore " music while I was signing a receipt for the trunks. When I left New York, on the eve of the present year, men were saying to each other^ " Your *and, guv'ner, your * and,** just as they had been saying for months before outside the Vaudeville theatre in London ; and my first evening's recreation on arriving home was to see Mr. Edioin Booth play ^^ Richelieu** at the Brvncess*s theatre.* In * While these volumes hav been passing through the pressy Mr. John McCuHough has made a distinct success in " Vir- THE BEGINNING. xm England we watch the records of American weather with a continual solicitude, A severe winter in the United States means snow block- ades and frozen rivers in England. It se^ms hardly necessary for America to cable to us now-a-days any more than a description of the weather on their side of the Atlantic, f or , with little deviation, it has the habit of travelling over to us. We are in receipt of nearly all Americans second-hand storms ; and we receive them just as freely as her other products, without taxi/ng them. Supposing one day a perverse government should plaice at our various ports of entramce the barrier of a Protective Duty against all other importations, only ad- mitting storms free, then you would see a still ginius" at Drury Lane Theatre^ and Mr. Edwin Booth and Mr. Henry Irving have appeared, together, at the Lyceum, in " Othellot^ Mr. Irving adding to his repertoire the character of lago, and extending his fame by an impersonation quite worthy of all that Charles Lamb said of Brinsley in the same part. In the chapter entitled •' Home Again,'^ the reader will find some details in regard to the engagement of Mr, Booth at the Lyceum, the interest of which is enhanced by the enthusiastic welcome given to the American actor in the house of the most popular of his English contemporaries. XIV THE BEGINNING. stronger illmtration of the inapplicahility to America and England of the story of the man who did not belong to the parish. But let Its not dwell upon the possibilities of the future. To-day is sufficiently interesting. Moreover t everybody , from Mr, Gladstone doton- wards, indulges in speculative forecasts of the destiny of America, It is said that Dr, Frank- lin*s mother-in-law hesitated about permitting her daughter to marry a printer, as there were already two printing-offices in the United States, and she was uncertain whether the country could support a third. This careful lady, it will be seen, very considerably under - estimated the future prosperity of the United States. It is not the tendency of English opinion to m^ke a similar mistake. The old country is rather inclined to be over sanguine in reading the horoscope of the new. Great Britain has a lively faith in the growing prosperity and power of the United States, To qttote a familiar Trans- atlantic phrase for a fixed belief i/n anything. Great Britain " takes stock " i/n the splendid destiny of America ; and English capital and THE BEGINNING. XV English people endorse the faith in every State of the Union. While this sympathy towards the material welfare of America is active on the British side of the Atlantic, there is in every American heart a secret corner dedicated to the old country, and to our mutual interest in the illu>strious d*iad of Westminster Abbey. Appealing to these allied peoples, and discussing the characteristics of both, without fear or favour, I venture to command to their friendly reception the rapid sketches and social studies which make up these volumes of To-Day in America. 14, Titchjkld Terrace, Regeni's Park, London^ May 1881. ERRATA. Vol. I. page 23, line 1, for « Paget," read " Puget." „ 4, for " yews," read '* hews." %% . »> TO-DAY IN AMERICA. I. THE OLD AND THE NEW. American and English Society contrasted — A Rocky Mountain World in its Infancy— Administration of the Law — British Justice and American — Art and the Customs — American and English Houses — The Drama in New York — A wonderful Theatre — American Women at home and in London — Snohbism on both sides of the Atlantic — Poetic Tribute to the Old Country — The Destiny of the New. r I. If Great Britain is interesting to our cousins of the United States because it is old, America is attractive to Englishmen because it is new. An American city compared witli an English town has points of difference which will affect different natures in different ways. Youth will be better pleased with the New World than with the Old, since youth dwells upon the future, age upon the past. America looks forward. England looks back. The boy strains his eyes towards coming days ; the man turns to those VOL. I. B 2 TO-DAT IN AHEBICA. which have fled. America is making money and building cities. England is spending the accumulated wealth of ages, and the active histories of her cities date back to ancient Rome. Since 1 was in the United States at the Presidential election of Mr. Hayes, four years ago, to the time when I watched the great torch- light procession of the Republican party one autumn night in 1880, New York has marched quite a distance towards Harlem ; Chicago has annexed many miles of prairie for new streets and avenues ; the other cities of the Republic have greatly advanced in material wealth and commercial importance ; and westward new industries, new communities, new towns, have sprung into exist- ance, notably Leadville. In 1876 the site of this busy mining centre was a lonely gulch, or mountainous waste, a r^ion of bitter memories to the few rough prospectors who had entered it with doubt and left it without hope. To-day Leadville has a population of 30,000 men and women, chiefly men, engaged more or less in developing the mineral resources which had been overlooked by the original explorers. The first building in Leadville was erected in June, 1879. To-day it has five churches, three schools, a Young Men's Christian Association, a hundred gambling saloons, and four daily newspapers. It is the centre of a hundred silver and lead mines, which in one year yielded £2,295,409 worth of ore. It is ten thousand feet above the sea, and stretches THE OLD AND THE NEW. 8 out prospecting arms towards Canon City and Denver. The discovery of the precious metals has dotted the Rocky Mountains with villages, towns, and miniature cities, links in the chain of a strange and new civili- zation, where at present neither Coke nor Blackstone is much considered in the administration of the law, and justice is ** the rough vengeance" of primitive com- munities. A world in its infancy may be observed among the Rocky Mountains, a world that one day will be strong and vigorous and full of healthy life. Denver, the capital of the State of Colorado, has been in existence twenty years longer than Leadville, and its population does not largely exceed its younger rival ; but Denver has broad streets, fine buildings, handsome public school-houses, pleasant gardens: and it offers far more legal security for life and property than Leadville. I was told at Chicago by a gentleman from Colorado that the mining attractions of Gunnison County would probably draw 40,000 new inhabitants to that district within twelve months. The first white men who visited the district were surveyors for ^e Pacific Railroad in 1853. In 1861 a few Californian miners prospected for gold in the neighbourhood of what is now Leadville, and left it without a suspicion that they liad been walk- ing over a region of silver and lead. The Gunnison country now contains eleven growing villages, with projected railway accommodation. " Gunnison City '* is »2 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. the chief " location ** of the new mining district, and promises to have, what a local writer calls, " a terrible boom," which will run it up from a population of 500 to one of 10,000 within a few months. '^ At a small place called Gothic," says the author of a pamplilot on the advantages of emigrating to this region, *^ a young man recently arrived here, and within a few hours he had located a vein which assayed four hundred and seventy-six ounces on the surface, and at a depth of ten feet over two thousand ounces. He proposes to marry and live at Gothic." If the story of Colorado is wonderful, that of Kansas is still more extraordinary. Part of Louisiana, pur- chased by the United States Government from France in 1803, it was erected into a territory in 1854, admitted to the Union 1861 ; and to-day it has a population of close upon a million, made up of emigrants from Ger- many, Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, British America, and in the United States from Illinois, Mis- souri, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Kentucky. In 1855 the population was 8,601 ; in 1879 it was 849,978 ; so that in 24 years, from 1855 to 1880, the population increased a hundred- fold. It is a grand thing if you are young to have a hand in this kind of progress, this mining of gold and silver, this buildmg up of towns. I probably interpret the senti- THE OLD AND THE NEW. 5 ment8 of many of my English readers when I say that I would rather be an old man in London than in New York or Boston; and, for that matter, would rather spend my declining years in some English village under the shadow of an old castle, or beneath the elms that grow on cathedral greens, than rest in any other place in the world. Mr. Buskin overshot the mark when he said he could not, ^' even for a couple of months, live in a country so miserable as to possess no castles." Men are, after all, more than castles ; living hearts are better than dead stones ; and there is no country in the world where, as it seems to me, you get closer to Nature than in the great forests, on the shores of the vast lakes, or among the lonely mountains of the United States of America. n. Americans tell me there are social castes in New York, and exclusive circles of society in Chicago. Boston is more like an English city than any other town in America. Yet even in Boston and Philadelphia you will fail to discover anything like the caste of an English cathedr{d city. Only the Brahmins can be more exclu- sive, as touching another community, than the clergy of a cathedral city towards the tradespeople, or the county gentry in regard to the tenant farmer. All through e TO-DAT IN AMERICA. Amerioaii cities and in the best society the tendency is towards making intellect aristocratic, to give knowledge and culture foremost places. This is not so in English cities. It obtains somewhat in London ; though not here when the guests at a dinner party are placed according to social rank : then Intellect has to give way to Blood ; then Knowledge has to sit at the feet of Birth ; then Culture must succumb to Hereditary' Distinction. It is true the journalist, the author, the '^ scientist," the Disraeli of enterprising youth, will now and then ** get even" with society by a life-long battle ; but the fact remains that caste in England is almost as severe a thing as it is in India ; and, viewed from the stand- point of this unshakable truth, life in America must have special charms for young Englishmen who have their way to make in the world. III. Though Americans themselves are inclined to dis- count the liberty, equality, and fraternity, which is the backbone of their constitution, it appears to English- men very real, more particularly as regards equality. We have as much legal liberty in England as in America, except perhaps in the matter of *^ shooting." If we commit wilful murder on the English side of the Atlantic, we are hanged to a certainty. In the United States the chances of escape are numerous. I have THE OLD AND THE NEW. lately seen and met several murderers in American cities. They might perhaps be more correctly called ^' manslaughterers/* to coin a word that fits our legal definition of killing in a quarrel. One of these men is quite in a large way of business, not as a murderer, but as a speculator in corn. It is the uncertainty of the law vindicating itself in America that makes men take it into their own hands. Americans are not more pas- sionate, vindictive, and revengeful than we are. They know that their magistrates and judges are elected by the popular vote ; and they know how wide this system makes the meshes of the legal net Besides, fancy waiting for the law to vindicate itself in new towns such as Leadville, where the venturesome and lawless of all nations meet on equal terms ; where the liquor saloons are open night and day ; where there is but one object in life, to get rich quick and go away I The pistol is bound to be the real moral force in such a district. Under the law in England we have more practical and certain justice than they ha^e in America. We are longer in getting what we do get but it is assured. It comes sooner or later ; often later than sooner. What a blessing if we could combine the good in the two systems and exclude the bad I A friend of mine has just died after twenty years of litigation over a mere disputed account. At first it was one suit. The defendants were a great Railway Company. They had plenty 8 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. ^ I ;l:: of money and therefore the power to break that suit up into six different actions, which they dragged through nearly every court in England. One day ray friend would win in one issue, the next he would lose in another. Next to losing he found it most ex- pensive to win. They *' got him into Chancery," and there the other day he died broken-hearted, before the House of Lords could give its final de- cision upon his whole case. There are more iniquities committed by the so-called High Court of Judicature than are dreamed of even by the most inveterate haters of these modern inquisitions. The delays of civil cases do not apply to criminal trials. A litigious tyrant in the Court of Queen's Bench, or a wealthy de- fendant in Chancery, gets as much law as he likes to pay for ; but justice falls quick and sharp and fatally on the vulgar thief and the red-handed murderer. In England only the " royal clemency " stands between a convicted murdorer and the gallows. The royal clemency is a state fiction. It can only be invoked by the Home Secretary, who under the influence of public opinion in the press and on the platform may, with the guid- ance and advice of the judge, be induced to review the evidence or take into consideration some new fact which is disclosed between the condemnation and the appointed execution. If in cold blood you shoot a man or woman in England and are arrested nothing can save THE OLD AND THE NEW. 9 you. In America there are many more verdicts of guilty and many more condemnations for murder than there are executions. This is not criticism. I am only stating facts. Often in England we discuss the question of the abolition of capital punishment. Humanitarians believe there would be no more murders than there are at present if we put away the gallows as we have put away the stocks and the ducking-stool. I differ with these kindly people. I believe I know of two more " shootings " that might have taken place, not in cold blood it is true, but two more " pistol fatalities," certainly, if the conditions of taking life had been the same in London as in Chicago, or even in New York- I have since shaken hands with these two gentlemen who misunderstood me, and I them ; and between our- selves I am -ery glad we all three lived in the English metropolis. This paper is not a psychological study of passion, nor a confession of private warfare and buried hatchets. The law is, however, an interesting theme. Let us pursue it a little further. It is perhaps as unfair to contrast London with New York or Chicago as it is to compare authors who are totally dissimilai*. There are critics who are ever- lastingly making contrasts between Dickens and Thack- eray. New York and London, Chicago and London, may be discussed far more justly as to their points of contrast than Dickens and Thackeray, or Georges iSand 10 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. I P and George Eliot. It is a point of information as well as comparison when one states that, compared with Chicago or New York, London is a haven of good roads and sanitary legislation. Our hansom cab is as much superior to the public conveyance of the United States as an American hotel clerk is superior to the London hotel porter. There is hardly a street in Chicago or New York as well paved and watered as the commonest thoroughfare in London. The reason for this, I am told, fs on account of the "jobs " perpetrated by civic authorities. We in England have officials who now and then steal, but when we find them out we imprison them for many years and confiscate (or return to its rightful owner) their stolen pro- perty. Most people agree about honesty being the best policy; but it is a good thing to have pre- miums for honesty, prisons for thieves, and the gal- lows for murderers. The higher the position of the thief in England the more severely he is dealt with. We used to have a hard law for the poor and an easy one for the rich. But now we have a sweet law for the poor and a bitter one for the rich. The rich man is no longer let off" where tlie poor one would be punished. The press has altered all this, more particularly the daily press. Journalists have made so much fuss over the slightest indication of leniency towards the rich that magistrates and judges have come to an exaggerative re- THE OLD AND THE NEW. 11 cognition of the responsibilities of education and wealth when education and wealth *^ let their angry passions rise." ** I am sony/' says the magistrate, ^' to see a person of your means and rank in such a position as that you now occupy before me ; it is your duty to set an example to your humbler fellow-citizens ; I shall therefore make an example of you ; I shall not fine you, but commit you to jail for six calendar months." If he had been a poor wretch whom nobody cared about and whooc case would not be reported in the papers the verdict and sentence might have been, ^* You are fined five shillings, in default of payment a week^s imprison- ment ; call the next case.' »» IV. American houses in the cities are in many cases better built and more convenient than our own. There is a singular uniformity in the furnishing of them. Throughout America one notices an absence ot individual taste. Dining-rooms and parlours are all arranged according to one pattern, and the pattern is far more French than English. If the government of Washington admitted the art manufactures of Europe into the United States free of duty, American houses would in course of time be as well decorated as English houses. The people would certainly be the 12 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. better for it. Art elevates a nation. There is much real pleasure to be derived from the possession and contemplation of good pictures and beautiful forms of sculpture and pottery ; and if the art tastes of American cities were cultivated hy the cheapening of paintings, china, bronzes, bric-a-brac, house decoration would advance and the tone of society would improve. It is a painful blank in the generality of American houses, the absence of pictures, the lack of decorative art This baldness does not necessarily indicate a want of taste but the costliness of gratifying it. In the first place rent is more than double that of England. A house for which you would pay £100 a year in London would be £300 in New York. In addition to this the taxes are high, and when you have paid your taxes you still have to subscribe to a private fund for the cleansing of your street and the watching of your premises. Ireland has annexed the local government of New York, and the rewards of politicians have to come out of the rates ; so that the sixty million dollars a year which New York pays to its local government has many claims to satisfy besides the mere expenses of city administration. There- fore, when a man takes a house in New York, unless he has a very good income he cannot afford to fill his rooms with works of art. The Customs duties on bric- a-brac and pictures are rigidly enforced, re-valuations often being made so as to bring up the duties on the THE OLD AND THE NEW. 13 original cost in Europe to 100 and 200 per cent. Indeed, except to the rich the duties are prohibitive. A lady whom I met at Chicago fought the New York Customs for nine months over a statue which she bought in Italy, and in spite of ample evidence as to its cost had to pay duty on twice its value. The Customs officials as a rule pay but little attention to invoices. They are sometimes influenced by bribes and the personal influence of rela- tives and persons in power. Now and then they try to vindicate their mouldy reputations by seizing upon some petty smuggler on board an ocean steamer and ruining his poor little enterprise of shawls and jewellery. But as a rule their practice is uncertain, unjust, and a scandal to a great country. The process of investiga- tion is an insult to every decent man. On entering the port you have to sign a declaration as to your baggage, and to state that you are prepared to take an oath of the truth of your statement. Then you are handed over to a set of officers who not only disregard your declaration entirely but treat you openly as a liar and a thief. It is in no sense of personal com- plaint that I place this process of collecting Customs on record, for I never take into a country duty-paying goods without declaring them. Smuojgling is a poor business on a small scale. When 1 enter into that trade I will do it in the picturesque fashion of the past on board my own ship, with an adventurous crow, and 14 TO-DAT m AMERICA. a piratical station of landing. One would have thought that ^^ the bold smuggler/' as he was wont to be called a hundred years ago, had died out. I remember being considerably astonished only two years ago on seeing a pretty little skiff brought into a creek in the Isle of Wight) England, with the broad arrow upon it. The master and his crew had been lodged in prison. They had for a long time been doing an illicit trade with France, and had amassed quite a large sum of money. It was almost a sad picture, the trim little craft, moored to a Go- vernment buoy, with the rippling waves making music on her sharp yacht-like bow, while the iron-dad fleet went steaming by to their anchorage in Southampton water. The Americans themselves have many grievances against the Customs administration. The whole spirit of the regulations is harsh and offensive. Tlie Times of New York has recently admitted this, and the editorial explanation is tc» the effect that practically the service remains as it was at the close of the war. " Very high duties had been imposed under the stress of an immediate need, and all evasion, or attempted evasion, of these was pursued with the most relentless severity. It was assumed, and not without some justice, that everybody would escape such duties if possible, and the energies of the law were directed to making escape impossible. The duties being not only high but numer- ous and complicated, the utmost honesty on the part of THE OLD AND THE NEW. 15 the importer, combined with the utmost vigilance and intelligence in the service, would not always suffice to answer exactly the requirements of the law. There may be much done for the improvement of the adminis- tration in its details, and particularly in enforcing a system of appointment and promotion which will render discipline and efficiency more easily attainable. But the Custom-house will always remain a source of infinite annoyance, difficulty, and expense, largely unnecessary to our merchants so long as the Customs duties them- selves are unreformed." A special grievance arises from the fact that you never know from one year to another upon what principle the Customs officials will act in regard to what may be considered art tools. Recently a correspondent, writing to an American editor, says that in December 1879 an art student going home after a professional tour in Europe took home a number of photographs of art studies. They were admitted free as studio properties, or tools of trade. In June 1880 other young artists, travelling by the same line and submitting to the same Customs officials, were charged 25 per cent, upon the value of similar tools. This correspondent declares that there is a movement on foot for making the duties upon works of art heavier than they are at present. A dozen years ago a number of American artists agitated for the purpose of 16 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. KmI putting a duty of a dollar per square inch on oil-paint- ings. To-day, however, there are many leading artists and men of taste who are anxious for a total abolition of taxes in this direction ; and it affords me a certain amount of personal gratification to reflect that I have had many opportunities, of which I have always availed myself, of pointing out the enormous advantage that would accrue to the United Spates by such a policy. If the art taste of New York were cultivated by the cheapening of pottery, and china, and first-class paint- ings, there would probably grow up a higher feeling for the stage and for what is great and true in the drama than exists to-day in that cosmopolitan city. You cannot cultivate one branch of art without elevating the appreciation and understanding of another. Progress in one direction has an extending influence in regard to other studies. It is the stone cast into the lake that sends a ripple to the far-off" shore. There is one great thing to be said in favour of New York. It has never accepted the immoral class of farcical comedy which French art has established in London. The high respect in which American gentlemen hold their women has shielded society from tlie blistering influences of the " humour " of the French stage. The censorship in England is administered with such a politic deference to the undoubted genius of French dramatic authors, that THE OLD AND THE NEW. 17 the Lord Chamberlain's sanction for the production ot a vicious play is regarded as a sort of official endorse- ment of it, and thus the public and the press consider themselves relieved of a responsibility which in America is accepted and exercised far more vigorously than the censorship of the royal official in London. From a moral standpoint the New York stage has a wholesome influence; but artistically it has not ad- vanced since I made the round of its theatres four or five years ago. The Variety Show, or as we should say in London the Music Hall, has taken extensive posses- sion of the stage. The innovation is akin to the inroad which opera bouffe made upon theatrical London, to the detriment of the stage for a generation. The theatre is not a necessity of English life : it is a necessity in America. The presence of the city's families, fathers, mothers, children, is a check upon the prurient satire of Anglo-French comedy in New York ; but London has sanctioned so much that is vicious and degrading in this connection that it would seem as if we are graduall}' drifting into the unhealthy complaisance of certain French audiences for whom " The Decameron " in action would hardly be too outrageous. Still, as I have said before, the drama in New York, outside this question of morality, is in a bad state. On my previous visit comedy, drama, and tragedy occupied the stages of the leading theatres. The mounting and dressing of the VOL. I. 18 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. pieces were excellent, the acting admirable, the aadi- ences large and appreciative. To-day minstrels and buffoons hold the temples of the drama. The Fifth Avenue had a variety show the night I visited it ; so had Haverleys in another locality; the Union Square was exhibitin^^ opera bouffe, and the other houses were advertising the lightest kind of entertainment. The general tendency was towards broad fiin and negro minstrelsy. Now, one does not object to minstrels, but they should not leave their own halls. Moore and Burgess in London and the Sanfranciscos and Haverleys in New York are pleasant enough in their way and in their proper places; but one has a right to object to Haverley's coloured people at Her Majesty's just as one feels that they have no business to monopolise the Fifth Avenue in New York. A theatre is the pulpit of the dramatist — the temple of the play-goer. It must be a bad thing for New York when Mr. Edwin Booth has to seek " fresh woods and pastures new," leaving his beautiful theatre to ^^ Cinderella" (an English panto- mime out of season); while Mr. Leicester Wallack finds himself without a managerial policy. " I like your play," said Mr. Wallack to a certain intimate friend of mine, who had read to him a new English drama, '^ it would suit my company ; it would be a credit to all of us; but it is too high toned for our market. The public just now must be amused; you must make them laugh; THE OLD AND THE NSW. 19 they don^t want strong illustrations of life, examples of virtue triumphant and vice defeated : they want action, colour, movement, laughter, and you must send them away happy. They will not have anything that is sombre. The condition of the drama is deplorable in New York at this moment." I asked permission to use his words, and he willingly accorded it to me. Agreeing with him as to the present condition of the stage in New York, I join issue as to his views of managerial duty. Wallack's should lead and guide public taste, and it would pay to do so. The public in every country goes to see whatever is really good, whether it is sombre or merry The drama in question is a grim story, but it is founded upon the masterpiece of a master. In Mr. Wallack's opinion it is a fine dramatic work, the leading part wo3 thy of Booth, the play a credit to the authors, and one that would do honour to any stage; yet he cannot produce it, because just now the public only likes to laugh, because variety showsare successful, becausedramatic taste in New York is depraved. Mr. Wallack has done great work in his time. The name of his theatre is more familiar on the lips of English people than that of any other house. It is sad when an artist of his reputation and power has to admit that professional pride and artistic duty have to stand in abeyance before a vitiated and degenerate taste. Mr. Steele Mackaye is a younger and bolder man ; and as there is no rule without an exception, he establishes the truth c2 20 TO'DAY IN AMERICA. of tho old saying. Ho has built a theatro that may well be called a temple of the drama, and he finds that the passions of pride and avarice, and the virtues ot love and faith, are still talismans to move the human heart and fill the theatrical treasury. Let us hope this gleam of light in the dramatic darkness of New York will spread until it illumines the entire art sky. V. It is appropriate hero that I should refer to what I have already mentioned in another publication,* the work which Mr. Mackaye has done for the United States. When Londoners first heard of Madison Square Theatre they treated the story as a well-elaborated joke, a fairy tale, a sketch of the sort of theatre which might be found in Utopia. A double stage that has complete ^'sets" built upon it, and when a change of scene is required moves up into the roof or down into tho cellar ; an orchestra stationed above the proscenium, out of sight, which yet plays the incidental music of a drama with perfect facility ; an auditorium that suggests a veritable *' temple of art," with an atmosphere that is hot or cold as the seasons may require ; a manage- ment that is associated with a semi-clerical directorate acknowledging tlie power of the stage as a preacher and * Warne's International Annual. THB OLD AND THE NEW. u a teacher. How could we, tlio cultured and learned of London, dream of a lesson such as this coming from New York? The theatre is a model of ai'chitectural skill and artistic decoration. It is almost ecclesiastical in its style. Every seat in it is comfortable ; cushions are not confined to stalls or boxes ; the lighting is from lamps let into the walls, so that the heat of the gas is confined to the passages. The ventilation is perfect. In summer the atmosphere of the house is cooled by air pumped into it over many tons of ice. In winter it is heated with a careful regard to the barometer. During the acts the attendants hand round to every auditor who wishes it glasses of ice-water. There is not a seat in the house from which the stage cannot be thoroughly seen. The drop curtain is a piece of needle- work from a design by Louis Tiffany. It is an exquisite picture of lake, reeds, birds, butterflies, and flowers, upon which the mind rests with a sense of calm relief. Between the elaborate sots of the flrst and second acts the interval is 45 seconds, two minutes between second and third, eight minutes between third and fourth. Tliere is a ** ladies* parlour" at the head of the first flight of stairs. No fees are charged for any attention or ac- commodation. The front of the stage is lighted by jets enclosed in glass that gives them the appearance of one long gleam of light; and a bank of flowers fills the place ^31 ii ' p f'l 22 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. nsnally occupied by an orchestra in English theatres. Critics often complain of versatility, yet Mackaye, the originator of the new theatre which is to revolutionise stage mechanism, can do everything connected with a theatre from carpentry to play- writing. He has invented the new house, written the play which is running there, and has acted several of the parts in the drama. " When I have built a second theatre in America — and I r'i&U build a new house as superior to this as this is to any other," he said to me, standing on his double stage, " I would like to go to London and build a house for Henry Irving." The name of the actor-manager of the Lyceum Theatre, next to that of Sarah Bernhardt, is the most frequently mentioned in conversation con- cerning London players; and, of all English actors, Mr. Irving is the most written about and discussed in the American press. It is a fact favourable rather to the condition of the English as compared with the American stage that " Hazel Kirke," which has made an unprecedented run at Mr. Mackaye^s theatre, is not a high-class work in any sense. It is inferior to other plays by the same author, and much of its success may be credited to Mr. Mackaye's excellent stage management, his judicious selection of the artists engaged, the mysterious novelty of the double stage and the prestige of the theatre. " Hazel Kirke " is a play of " The Willow Copse '* THE OLD AND THE NEW. 23 class. It is a melodramatic story fairly well told, and with the old Adolphi ring of noble self-denial and triumphant virtue. One night, when the author was called before the curtain on a special occasion and he was asked for "a speech, a speech," Mr. Mackaye delivered an eloquent address on the hidden meanings and moral purpose of his play. To him it was an allegory as well as a play, on the same principle as Mr. Herbert's " Judgment of Daniel." There is the play, and there is the picture. There is enough in both for story and for entertainment, but underneath are the allegorical features ; and Mackaye explained these to his audience as clearly and with as much point as Mr, Herbert discloses in the decorative works with which he is frescoing the Hall of Justice at Westminster. Mackaye's speech was a moral sermon on art as the handmaiden £ virtue, and it was listened to with great appreciation by a crowded and intel- ligent house. The incident suggested to me many curious reflections. There was a certain unsophisti- cated air about the whole business, and it carried me back to boyish days when I could sit at the Adelphi, a very sad and solemn spectator of the unnecessary trials of tearful virtue and the demoniacal sufferings of un- 8uccessful vice. 24 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. VI. iii ifl That which will strongly impress the English traveller who goes about with his eyes and ears open in America is the misrepresentation, alike of English and American manners and customs in both countries, by gossips and by writers. I say this with all humility, and hope I may not have my literary eyes poked out by feminine pens for adding that it is largely owing to lady writers, whose brightness and charm of expression give so much piquancy to their graphic libels on each other. How is it for example that the American women who write in English papers exaggerate, in their style and phrases, those peculiarities which strike the English people as vulgar, and which put forward as American- isms are, nevertheless, not characteristic of good society in the United States ? Recently there have been two or three American writers of the gentle sex contributing to weekly papers in London and professing to treat English subjects from an American point of view. To make tlie articles stand out as specialities the writers , seem anxious to givo them the breadth, not to say the coarseness, that is to be found in some of the original corresponaence of Western journals. And yet in each case the lady stands up, as she ought to do, for her country, alike in regard to the good taste and beauty iiii: THE OLD AND THE NEW. 25 of its women. Let me take one of the best of tliese American writers, not with a view to be critical but as an example of the sort of opinions that are held by- certain classes of American people. The author would probably say that the vievrs expressed are intended to be exaggerations. They answer my purpose none the less on that account. Exaggeration after all only repre- sents a little extra colour, for which due allowance can be made. The American critic of English manners and customs went to Ascot. She is supposed to be an American lady of position, writing to a dear friend in Fifth Avenue. Looking into her descriptive letter on " The Human Race at Ascot " as a mirror of polite society, the English reader finds that New York ladies talk in this fashion : " The man who don't own a drag is a disgrace to his sex, and the woman who don't get invited on top of a drag is unfit for polite society." — " When we reached Windsor I screamed with de- light." — "Bob wished his throat were a mile long when lunch-time arrived." — " The drags, Ella, lunch on top of themselves." — " One or two costumes nearly put my eyes out with their loud colours." — *' I wasn't gotten up tremendously." — "Next year we've de- cided to take a house near Ascot for race week, and then, says Bob, we'll make Rome howl." The journal in which this appears professes to be in the highest society, even consorting with royalty, and the 26 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. anonymous American author is supposed to write exactly as one American young lady would write to another of her own sex and nationality. Surely this kind of burlesque is not calculated to heal the social differ- ences of opinion as to habits and manners which always crop up between American and English women. It is certainly not calculated to make London ladies take kindly to the severe criticisms of another American lady author who sneers at Englishwomen for growing fat at forty, and being perpetually on the watch to marry their daughters to " swells." The truth is both countries are very much misrepresented by writers on both sides, the desire to say something clever and amusing over- coming the duty of being honest and true. It is, for example, a clever thing to say that " I never saw such a contrast as that between the occupants of the drags and the carriages to the left. It was the difference between thorough-breds and under-breds — a difference that is nowhere so marked as in England. We have nothing of the sort. Our second and third-rate people are presentable. Here they arc hopeless, and this is the reason why Americans are accused of a fondness for the aristocracy. They want the best, and find it at the top." Whenever I have heard Americans charged with a fondness for the aristocracy the criticism has generally come from an American ; and if the critic whom I just THE OLD AND THE NEW. « quoted thinks the aristocracy she meets arc the best people in England she has not seen Great Britain and knows nothing of the English people. She cannot have visited the Northern counties ; she cannot know the country folk of the West ; she can have had no experi- ence of the town and country homes of the Midlands. When she says the second and third-rate people of England are " hopeless," she has her eyes on a London snob and her heart in an inaccessible drag. Now, it is notorious that the aristocrats whom the writer in question admires, and places above the grand old county families and the yeomen of England, are by no means types of which the higher aristocracy are proud ; and she libels the sovereign people on both sides of the Atlantic when she flouts at everybody who is not bom with a title. "If I were English I'd be a duke with a drag, or die." With all her boast of equality and freedom, she has eyes for nobody without a title, and for no incident that is not connected with the upper ten thousand ; and yet she uses expressions that belong to the very "thirdest rate" society of New York, while preaching up American liberty as against English snobbery. Perhaps all this is done for effect, in the mere trade interest of her essays. Nevertheless, she should be reminded that a clever woman, with a pen in her hand and the liberty of using it in a high-class 28 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. London paper, owes a duty to her sex, to her country, and to international society. It has often occurred to me that Americans in London are apt to grow jealous of each other. I fear they think it is the thing to be everlastingly in "high society," and that their English friends expect it of them. Nothing of the kind. If English people envy America one privilege more than another it is that of one man being joer se as good as another man. The great charm of America to me is the reality of the. practice of principles of equality. Americans cannot make a greater mistake than to fancy that, to create an impression in England, they must begin by forming the acquaintance of dukes and duchesses. Now, I do not know who Mrs. , of New York, is. She went to Guildhall (when General Grant was entertained there) in a handsome carriage and pair. She was received by a brace of aldermen in their scarlet cloaks, and had a seat at the head table among the civic dignitaries and their guests. A number of American ladies less conspicuously placed were in- dignant at the distinguished position occupied by Mrs. . She had no right to such marked attention. She was nobody at home. If she had successfully passed the gate of St. Peter and they had been left out in the cold they could not hpve put on airs of greater injury and disgust. This is so much like English THE OLD AND THE NEW. 29 snobbism that I can only sit and wonder why New York does not send over to England more really representative people. Just as the shoddy Englishman and his family bring England into disgrace on the Continent of Europe, I suspect America suffers by the rich nobodies who come here and claim to represent the distinguishing characteristics of transatlantic life. Happily every day brings the two countries closer together ; and as the real people of both hemispheres meet and begin to understand each other, striking below the snobbish surface of second-rate London so- ciety, so will their gradual discovery of the strength and beauty that lies at the root of national characteristics foster a mutual respect and esteem. VII. In the Anglo-American criticism of English women already mentioned, of course the old scandals are re- peated that at forty English women are red and fat, and their American sisters thin and complexionless. As usual the Hawthorne libel is quoted, that after reaching a certain age English women are " beefy." Now, it is well known that this expression, touched English feeling somewhat keenly, and that Hawthorne wished he had not used it, for he liked England, and always felt hered- itary sympathies towards her. I am reminded of Pro- 80 TO-DAT IN AMERICA. fessor HuxIey^s remarks on this subject at Buffalo wlien he addressed there the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He said he had heard of the degeneration of the original American stock, but during this visit to the States he had failed to perceive it. He had studied the aspect of the people in steam-boats, on the cars, and in the streets. He met with very much the same kind of faces as those in England, except as to the men, who shaved more than Englishmen. As to stature, he thought American men had the best of the comparison. While he would not use Hawthorne's words, he said, in respect of the size of American ladies, he thought the average of fine portly women fully as great on one side of the Atlantic as on the other. I agree with the philosopher, and to this extent, that the retaliatory criticism of " scragginess and falling off at thirty " is a libel on American ladies. I have seen more handsome women of forty in America and England than in any part of the world, and the pretty girls of America are praised in every English book of travels. As for ** the figure," which some of the American writers in England say so much about, that is a mystery upon which I will not venture to enter ; for London vies with New York in the ingenious manufacture of those ** lines of beauty" which are advertised as necessary to the " female form divine." The other day I noticed in a leading London journal a criticism of a '^ home-thrust >» THE OLD AND THE NEW. 31 from a New York paper at an American lady who returns to her native land with English manners and some artifi- cialities which her countrymen do not consider an addition to her natural charms. Among other details of her foreign education she is charged with showing off her London pronunciation in " weally " for really, aiid " coals " for coal. Tlie English writer is angry at this, and says we do not say " weally" nor " coals." But my friend is wrong ; we do. And it may be added that this kind of modification of the language is characteristic of some of the most pretentious ^Meaders of London society." " Vewy " for very is considered to be as distingud as " weally " for really, and the young parson at the fashionable church in my neighbourhood thinks it im- pressive to call his congregation ** dearly beloved bwetheren,^* and to tell them that the ^^ Scwipture moveth " them ^^ in sundwy places to acknowledge and confess," <&c. ; not that he is afflicted with an impedi- ment in his speech, nor with an incompetency to pro- nounce his r's, but he changes them into w^s from a belief that he is giving evidence of his familiarity with society. It is the fashion among this affected class to say yaaa for yes; and I feel sure that the editorial writer who loyally retorted upon his brother of the United States is not unacquainted with the crutch-and- toothpick phrase " quite too delightfully charming, don't you know." Not that I would for a moment intimate 82 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. that he would countenance the thin kind of descriptive elaboration indulged in by a weak and flaccid intellec- tuality that leans in limp affectation upon a granny's stick. It must be owned that even outside " the golden youth" of the period, with its round shoulders and bloodshot eyes, there is in '* polite society " a maudlin affectation of pronunciation, and a strange tendency to drawl, which may well excite the wonder of Americans and the contempt of all sensible persons. It is akin to " the Grecian bend " that obtained among English women for a season, and to the " Piccadilly crawl " of the jeunesse dorS, which neither Punchy nor Mr. Toole, nor Miss Farren, nor the burlesque writers who have inspired the fun of the comic stage, have entirely eradi- cated to-day. It was a good thing for the two countries, officially more perhaps than socially. General Grant's visit to England. His letter, commenting upon his reception and praising our English people, gave great satis- faction throughout the country. It was made the text of " editorials " in many leading journals, both in London and the provinces. The General's modesty and the unpre- tentious way in which he accepted the honours conferred upon him, not as tributes to his own merits but as ex- hibitions of friendly sympathy and regard for his country, impressed all classes with a personal respect for the man himself. Looking at him while he was THE OLD AND THE NEW. 33 receiving some marked compliment, you might fairly set him down to be one of the most unimpressionable of men ; but he always speaks his few words of thanks with a genuine earnestness that comes straight from a heart evidently moved by the best impulses. The Reform Club's reception was worthy of itself, and not unworthy of the great nation which the General re- presents. Lord Granville presided at the House dinner, and the Right Hon. W. E, Forster, M.P. occupied the vice-chair. The members present were leaders in poli- tical life, and in proposing the toast of the evening, *' The President and People of the United States," Mr. Forster said that, " in praising the people of America, he felt that he was complimenting his own countrymen." This kind of national self-satisfaction ran all through the public speeches of the time. Some critical Americans on the other side of the Atlantic, who have not travelled in England, may regard this plurality of view as ob- jectionable ; but it was meant in the best sense to be complimentary. Englishmen are undoubtedly a proud, if not a conceited race ; but when they say to America, " We are brothers ; drop the word foreigner ; we are proud of having you as our brother, we glory in your greatness and rejoice in your prosperity," they mean all they say, and their intention is to be genuinely fra- ternal. I think General Grant felt this as thoroughly as VOL. I. D 84 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. tlio press of England exprosacd it. Even tlie American contemporary of the critic previously quoted uncon- sciously confessed the genial influence of all this, for in her latest article on English people and Americans she touched my own sentiments nearly when she said she had sometimes thought that the true American gentleman is, in some respects, the finest specimen of his kind in the world. '* He has no temptation to be a snob, because it is part of his creed that there is no social position anywhere which outranks his own. A certain liberality is born in him — in so large a country intolerance would not be at home. He is chivalrous, too ; for chivalry belongs to the youth of nations, and America is young. When he loves there is no conflict between his love and .his pride. He is as proud of his self- surrender as another man might be of his obstinacy. Generous, fearless^ unselfish, and cultured, I should say he had not his peer anywhere, had I not met in England men worthy to be his brother — good enough, and gentle enough, and chivalrous enough, to have been born in America." That is the way to get at the hearts that beat with responsive manliness on both sides of the Atlantic. It is the truth, and there is no need to hold the truth back in an international discussion of men and manners, and women and sentiment, here or in the States. And that everlasting wrangle about the two THE OLD AND THE NEW. 35 methods of speaking the English language, Madame puts the case with point and spirit : We have been told always that the love of fair play is inherent in the English mind; but it is not fair play, or fair judgment, to found one's conceptions of the American character on the satires of the '"amatists, or to judge the gentlemen and ladies of a nation by the •rift-wood which some wave of good fortune often sends to your shores. I have myself met, in London society, such Americans as I should never, by any chance, encounter at home — men whose adverbs and adjectievs had embraced each other till they were in a state of hopeless confusion, and whose manners were as odions as their neck-ties were flashy and vulgar. I have seen well-bred English vomen smile on these men, condoning their vulgarities as American eccentricities, and quite unaware that they were opening their doors to persons who no morn belonged to good society at home than they were fitted for it here. To see men of this sort regarded as specimen Americans, and to hear one's country judged accordingly, is one of the gad-fly stings which try the patience and the temper of Americans who know ^•etter. I commend this to persons, on both sides, who insist upon taking their representative men and women from non-representative quarters. Both countries have enough sins to answer for without invented grievances and exaggerated blemishes being dragged into the general account. VIII. Among all the graceful tributes to England which have been published since Washington Irving's time, nothing more eloquent or touching has appeared than A Trip to England " by that delightful lyrist and d2 << i''ii i''* ^1 36 TO-DAY IN AMERICA, good fellow Mr. William Winter. The volume is made up from letters contributed to the I^ew York Tribune, They are issued this year in an edition de luxe, with illustrations by Mr. Joseph Jefferson, the actor, whose " Rip Van Winkle " is not more delicate in artistic finish than are his black and white sketches of London. In a brief preface to these letters we are told that " their writer passed ten weeks of the summer of 1877 in England and France, where he met with a great and surprising kindness, and where ho saw many beautiful and memorable things," the desire to commemorate which led to the re-publication of this Tribune correspondence. The volume needs no apology. The beauties of England and the sympathetic language that the poet finds in her gurgling streams, her song-birds, her whispering woods, and in the echoes of her grey cathedrals and moss-grown ruins of ancient hall and castle, find a deep and fervent expression in Mr. Winter's book. As witness — England contains many places like Windsor ; some that blend, in even richer amplitado, the elements of quaintness, loveliness, and mag- nificence. The meaning of them all is, as it seemed to me, the same: that romance, and beauty, and gentleness are not effete, bat for ever vital; that their forces aio within our ov,:? souls, and ready and eager to find their way into all our thoughts, sctions, and circumstances, and to brighten for every one of us the face of every day; that they ought rather to be relegated to the distant and the past, not kept for our books and day-dreams alone; but — in a calmer and higher mood than i» usual in this age of universal mediocrity, critical scepticism, and mis- cellaneous tumult — should be permitted to flow out into our architec- ture, aJ " vnments, and customs, to hallow and preserve our antiquities, THE OLD AND THE NEW. 37 to soften our manners, to give us tranquillity, patience, and tolerance, to make our countrj* lovable for our own hearts, and so to enable us to bequeath it, sure of love and reverence, to succeeding ages. The sentiment of admiration and respect for old English ways, for the frank simplicity of country people, and for the cherished love of home which in- spires them ; for their quiet restful manners, their vene- ration for authority, their pious faith in tradition, and their substantial manliness ; the charm of the nooks and corners of the upper Thames, the green lanes and hedge- rows of country places ; the glorious and historic spots, and the general intellectual movement which the dwell- ing-places of never-dying greatness had excited in the American poet's nature : all this was still active in his mind when I sat with him at the window of his cottage on Staten Island in the autumn of last, 3'ear looking out to sea, and fixing our gaze upon the point where all the great ocean steamers appear coming inwards, and dis- appear going outwards. Many a ship has been tenderly watched from that little observatory as it sailed away to Europe, not one more affectionately than that which contained Winter's bosom friend Edwin Bootli : His barque will fade in mist and night Across the dim sea-line, And coldly in our aching sight Th" solemn stare will shine — All, all in mournful silence, save For ocean's distant roar — Heard where the slow, regretful wa^e Soils on the Inuelv shore. 38 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. No ship ever went out into the great waters carrying homewards English travellers more sensitively alive to the generous qualities of the American people than myself and my fellow voyager, nor more deeply im- pressed with the splendid destiny that awaits their country in the future, when, having established their financial prosperity, Americans begin to think, with the poet, of the pleasurable duty of those art-adornments of town and village which help to redeem life from " the tyranny of common place," to raise a people's aspira- tions above sordid ambitions, and which hand down to posterity humanising legacies of poetry and peace. m 39 II. REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AND REPRE- SENTATIVE CITIES. The Treatment of Women and Children — " Diamond Cut Diamond" — Characteristic Phrases — Capping an Extravagance — The Story of a Braggart. — Freedom and Hope — The Great Cities— Chicago's Child-like Jealousy of New York — Irish Agitation against England — The Custom of Ulster — International Criticism — Studying Repartee — The Garden City — A Wonderful Revival — The City of the Golden Gate— Post Office Absurdities— Oysters. I. » The rule in America is restlessness. The opposite obtains in England. The old country is, therefore, peculiarly attractive to many persons who have lived their lives in America and want r'»°t. The intensity of life in the cities is especially apparent in Chicago. All the town seems to be perpetually " on the rush.' There is a drawbridge that crosses one of the chief thoroughfares. The traffic is detained while it opens and shuts. Scores of men leap from the cars and try to get over while it is moving. Not that they really facilitate their progress, for they have eventually to wait for the cars to cross; but they must "get on." It is as if some demon of motion was behind everybody in 40 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. Chicago, there is such a general onward stampede in the prairie city. But let it be said in their honour that the men are never in too great a hurry to neglect any opportunity of bei ig polite to women. And this must be said generally for the men of the United States. Their natural gallantry towards the sex, their considera- tion for women of every class and station, puts to shame the most polislied nations of Europe. A woman may travel alone from one end of the States to another, and every man seems pledged to her safety and comfort. The fact that she is alone gives her immunity from insult. In London a pretty girl or a well-dressed woman cannot walk along any leading thoroughfare without being insulted by word or look half-a-dozen times.* The rudeness of men towards women in omni- 1 1 1 1 • " He is not confined to any particular class of society — the cad, though Clytie rarely encountered but one representative of the great lying, sneaking, selfish family. You meet the thing which pestered her most frequently west of Temple Bar. It delights to walk in Bel- gravia. Regent Street and Piccadilly are its special haunts. The most despicable form of the cad is the two-legged animal that walks from the hips, with rounded arms and insolent swagger, and seems devoted to the amusement of annoying respectable women and girls who find themselves alone in the West-end streets. Poor Clytie 1 This eye- glassed, stay-laced creature, called a fashionable man ; this haw- hawing, blue-eyed nonentity sorely beset her, filling her with fear, and bringing the tears into her eyes. It is true she had been accustomed to admiration in Dunelm; but the rude, vulgar, leering stare of the London " swell " in stays was a new and terrible sensation to her. It almost frightened her as much as the otter scared Mr. Kingsley's water- REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AND CITIES. 41 buses and on railways, and their impertinence to them in the streets, are a burning disgrace to a nation which boasts of its manhood, and glories in its advanced civilization. The women of America do not quite ap- preciate the deference and respect which they receive at the hands of their countrymen. They are too apt to accept special courtesies as a right No wonder many of them dislike England, where men often give them an equality of position with themselves, letting them fight their own way in a crowded railway depot or omnibus station without the slightest acknowledgment of the privilege of the stronger sex, which is to be kind and gentle in the treatment of the weaker. Yet a pretty American girl once said to me, " I admire an English husband because he does not let his wife fool him as an American husband does ; but I wouldn't marry an Englishman; I should be afraid of him." II. Is it not a strange anomaly, this British rudeness to women going hand in hand with traits of nobility that have wrung tributes of admiration from foreign critics innumerable? And is there not a theme worthy of philosophic consideration in the fact that the New baby. I wonder honest men with wives and sisters, honest men who honour their mothers, have not long ago united themselves in a vow to exterminate this creeping vermin of the streets, which is a blot upon manhood and a curse to society." — Clytle (1874). 42 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. World, in spite of its toil and drudgery, notwith- standing the absence of the civilising influences of ancient hall and castle, so necessary to existence, ac- cording to Buskin ; that this busy people, clearing forests, making roads, building up towns and cities, in the midst of all kinds of vulgar drawbacks, with the scum of Europe continually pouring in upon them from all quarters ; is it not an evidence of a capacity for the very highest civilisation that this people has kept, pure as gold, its respect for women, and, true as steel, its love for little children ? Its courtesy to women, its manly recognition of her weakness, runs into extremes, as does its generous treatment of children. Women who agitate for additional "rights" in America are poor unappreciative creatures who have not studied the lot of their sisters in other lands. The unwritten laws of justice to women in America are stronger than all that has been set down for their protection in the statute" books of England. Christ's appeal for little children would seem to have settled deep down into the heart of every American man. There is, however, such a thing as " killing with kindness," and there is no impartial traveller but must see that the indulgences of childish whims and childish tempers are excessive and injurious. "Helen's Babies," which tickled the parental fancy in England, is generally regarded, on this side of the Atlantic, as a humorous exaggeration. It is not ; they REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AND CITIES. 43 are typical American children these little ones of the Transatlantic author. Fletcher of Saltoun, who wanted to write the songs of a nation in preference to its laws, would have included in these days also its anecdotes, for American stories have a large national influence, and are eminentlv characteristic. Great homas^e is paid to the wit of children in American anecdote, and *' smartness " is the quality in boys which is most frequently illustrated and dwelt upon. Take, for ex- ample, a story I heard, among other good things, over a pleasant American dinner-table : A Detroit grocer was hungrily waiting for his clerk to return from dinner that he too might partake of his own noon-day meal, when a boy came into the store with a basket in his hand and said : " I seed a boy grab up this 'ere basket from the door and run, and I run after him and made him give it up.'* " My lad, you are an honest boy." " Yes, Sir." " And you look like a good boy." " Yes, Sir." " And good boys should always be encouraged. In a box in the back room there are eight dozen eggs. You may take them home to your mother and keep the basket." The grocer had been saving these eggs for days and weeks to reward some one. In rewarding a good boy 44 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. he also got eight dozen bad eggs carried out of the neighbourhood free of cost, and he chuckled as he walked homeward. The afternoon waned, night came and went, and once more the grocer went to his dinner. When he re- turned his face wore a contented and complacent smile. His eye caught a basket of eight dozen eggs as he entered the store, and he queried : *' Been buying some eggs ?" " Yes ; got hold of those from a farmer's boy," replied the clerk. *' A lame boy with a blue cap on ? " •' Yes." ^' Two front teeth out ? " " Yes." The grocer sat down and examined the eggs. The shells had been washed clean, but they were the same eggs which the good boy had " lugged " home the day before. III. Just as the anecdotes of the people are full of illus- trations of their patience with children and their ad- miration of the awakening intellect of boyhood, so is the bent of their thought and occupation evidenced in the popular phrases and metaphors of the time. Their similes are mostly taken from the practices of trade, the slang REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AND CITIES. 46 of the showman, and the shibboleths of religion. " Who is bossing this business? " " Who is running this show?" "Who is engineering this thing?" In England the military and naval spirit of the people would give us as equivalents for these phrases, *' Who is in command here ? " '* Who is the captain of this ship?" "Who is the chief in this aflFair?" The speculative habits of the people give us in the political oratory of the country such well-understood remarks as " I don't take any stock in it," while the game of poker furnishes many illustrative phrases that help to point morals and adorn tales. " Bluffing " has no end of hidden meaning for a crowd. Negro-minstrelsy enter- tainers well know its value. " You don't play that on me" is the repartee for any attempt at cosenage or practical joking. , When a man tells a humorous story he is said to have " got ofFa good thing " ; when he dies he " passes in his checks." There is less respect for human life in America than in England. Innumerable stories testify to this ; and the humorous history of two strangers, each having murdered the other's relative, may be taken as an illustration in point, with this ad- vantage, that it is an example of the common and ready habit of " capping " an extravagant statement, which is quite a speciality of American humour. The two strangers in question were toasting their shins on opposite sides of a big stove in a ferry waiting-room, 46 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. and it was noticed that they oflen looked at each other, as if almost certain that they had met before. Finally one of them got up and said : '* Stranger, I've seen a face almost like yours. Did you ever have a brother Bill ? " " Yes." " Was he a sailor?" " He was." *' Did you hear of him last about ten years ago ? " " Yes, just about ten years ago." " Sti'anger," continued the first, seemingly greatly affected, " I've sailed with your brother Bill. We were wrecked together on the Pacific, and before help came I had to kill and eat him ! I knew you must be related. I'm awful sorry it was your brother, and, though I was driven to it, and the law can't touch me, I'm willing to pay you damages. Be kinder fair with me, for Bill was old and tough. About how much do you think is fair ? " The other wiped a tear from his eye, expectorated across the stove, and replied : " Stranger, where is your dad ? " " Been dead these twelve years." " Died in Nevada, didn't he ? " " Yes, out there somewhere." " Well, I killed him I I knew you were his son the minute I saw you. He and I were in a mine one day, REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AJJD CITIES. 47 and as we were going up in a bucket I saw that the old rope was going to break under the strain. When we were up about 200 feet, I picked up your old dad and dropped him over. It was bad on him, but it saved me. Now you ate my brother Bill, and I murdered your dad, and I guess we had better call it even, and shake to see who pays for the drinks." They shook, and drank, while ^' the old lake captains who could not tell a lie had to sit back and realise how sad it was that they were born with such tender consciences." The love of fun, written, spoken, acted, is a powerful factor in American life, and the entire press of the Bepublic administer to it. But there are journals which are especially devoted to the invention and nar- ration of amusing stories and quaint conceits. TJie Detroit Free Press, the Burlington Hawket/e, and the Danhury News, are foremost among these papers ; and it is suggestive of the direction in which popular thought and action run that their stories deal largely with religious cant, with card-sharping, with trade swindles, clever boys, and objectionable mothers-in-law. They frequently hit very hard a national vice, a time- serving politician, or a social abuse ; and their satire is never more telling than when it strikes a sham or a braggart. I do not know at the moment who is the author of the following story. It is worthy of Mark 48 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. III, i \\i\ '< Twain. I found it in a local newspaper that was smuggled into the cars by a smart newsboy at a little town between Now York and Pittsburg. " I aint no right to be here, and V\\ have to make tracks you bet if the conductor comes along," he said, '^ but I cant sell none outside, won't you take one ? " I did, and, as in most other cases of local newspapers, I found the facetiae columns the most prominent. In the earliest English provincial newspapers you find first and fore- most foreign news and dispatches from the seat of European wars. In the pioneer sheets of new Ame- rican towns the leading features are funny anecdotes, strange romances, and sanguinary tragedies. *' The First Man " is the title of the story which offers one of the best satirical examples of brag which I came across in my miscellaneous reading on the cars travelling West. Some repairs were needed to the engine when a certain railway train reached Reno, and, while the passengers were taking a philosophical view of the delay and making themselves as comfortable as possible in the waiting room, in walked a native. He was not a native Indian, nor a native grizzly, but a native Nevadian, and he was "rigged" out in imperial style. He wore a bearskin coat and cap, buckskin leggings and mocassins, and in his belt was a big knife and two revolvers. There was Hght*iir.g in his eye, destruction in his walk, and as he sauntered up to the red-hot stove, and " scattered tobacco REPRESENTATIVE TRAITB AND CITIE8. 49 juice" over it, a dozen passengers looked pale with fear. Among the travellers was a car painter from Jersey City, and after surveying the native for a moment he coolly inquired : " Aren't you afraid you'll fall down and hurt your- self with those weapons ? " " W — what I " gasped the native. " I suppose they sell such outfits as youVo got on at auction out here, don't they?" continued the painter. " W — what d'ye mean — who ar' ye ? " whispered the native as he walked around the stove and put on a terrible look. " My name is Logwood," was the calm reply, ** and I mean that, if I were you, I'd crawl out of those old duds, and put on some decent clothes I " " Don't talk that way to me, or you won't live a minit! " exclaimed the native as he " hopped around." " Why, you homesick coyote, I'm Grizzly Dan, the heaviest Indian fighter in the world ! I was the first white man in the Black Hills ! I was the first white man among the Modocs I " " I don't believe it ! " flatly replied the painter. 'mi ok more like the first white man down to the able ! " Tl native drew his knife, put it back again, glared around, and then asked : VOL. I. B 50 TO-I>AY IN AMERICA. ■ I i I Ri! ! " Stranger, will ye come over behind the ridge and shoot and slash till this thing is settled ? " " You bet I will I " replied the man from Jersey, as he rose up. *• Just pace right out and I'll follow I " Every man in the room jumped to his feet in wild excitement. The native started for the back door, but when he found the car painter at his heels, with a six- barrelled Colt in his hand, he halted and said : " Friend, come to think of it, I don't want to kill you and have your widow come on me for damages." " Go right ahead — I'm not a married man I " re- plied the painter. " But you've got relatives, and I don't want no law- suits to bother me just as spring is coming." " I'm an orphan, without a relative in the world I " shouted the Jerseyite. '• Well, the law will bury you, but it would be a week's work to dig a grave at this season of the year. I think I'll bi'eak a rib or two for you, smash your nose, gouge out your left eye, and let it go at that!" " That suits mo to a dot ! " said the painter. " Gen- tlemen, please stand back, and some of you shut tho door of the ladies' room I " " I was the first man to attack a grizzly bear with the bowie knife," remarked the native as he looked around. " I was the first man to discover silver in j i REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AND CITIES. 51 Nevada. I made the first scout up Powder river. I was the first man to make hunting shirts out of the skins of Pawnee Indians. I don't want to hurt this man, as he seems kinder sad and downhearted, but he must apologize to me." ** I won't do it I " cried the painter. " Gentlemen, I never fight without taking off my coat, and I don't see any nail to hang it on," said the native. " ril hold it — I'll hold it ! " shouted a dozen voices in chorus. " And another thing," softly continued the native, " I never fight in a hot room. I used to do it years ago, but I found it was running me into a consump- tion. I always do my fighting out doors now." ** I'll go out with you, you old rabbit-killer ! " ex- claimed the painter, who had his coat off. " That's another deadly insult, to be wiped out in blood, and I see I must finish you. I never fight around a depot though. I go out on the prairie, where there is a chance to throw myself." " Where's your prairie, lead the way ! " howled the crowd. " It wouldn't do you any good," replied the native, as he leaned against the wall. ** I always hold a ten- dollar gold piece in my mouth when I fight, and I haven't got one to-day, — in fact dead broke." E 2 i: 1: ;-y2 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. *' Here's a gold piece ! " called a tall man, holding the metal. " I'm a thousand times obleeged," mournfully replied the native, shaking his head. " I never go into a fight without putting red paint on my left ear for luck ; and I haven't any red paint by me, and there isn't a bit in Reno." ** Are — you — going — to — fight ? " demanded the car- painter, reaching out for the bear-skin cap. '* I took a solemn oath when a boy never to fight without painting my left ear," protested the Indian killer. ** You wouldn't want me to go back on my solemn oath, would you ? " " You're a cabbage, a squash, a pumpkin dressed up in leggings ! " contemptuously remarked the car painter, putting on his coat. " Yes, he's a great coward," remarked several others, as they turned away. " I'll give ten thousand dollars for ten drops of red paint! " shrieked the native. " Oh ! why is it that I have no red paint for my ear when there is such a chance to go in and kill ? " A big blacksmith from Illinois took him by the nock and " run him out," and he was seen ro more for an hour. Just before the train started, and after all the passengers had taken their seats, the " first man " re- appeared on the platform. He had another bowie knife REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AND CITIES. 53 In his belt, and in his right hand he flourished a toma- hawk. There was red paint on his left ear, his eyes rolled; and in a terrible voice he called out : " Where is that man Logwood ? Let him come out • here and meet his doom ! " " Is that you ? Count me in ! '* replied the car- painter, as he opened a window. He rushed for the door, leaped down, and was pulling off his overcoat again, when the native began to retreat, calling out : " I'll get my hair cut and be back here in seventeen seconds. I never fight with long hair. I promised my dying mother I wouldn't do it ! " When the train rolled away he was seen flourish- ing his tomahawk around his head in the wildest manner. One night, when Mr. H. L. Bateman was entertaining Mark Twain at his hospitable little house at Kensington, an eminent tragedian told the company a humorous story. It was so good that I suggested to the American author that he should make a note of it as a specimen of English wit. He smiled blandly, took out a pocket- book, and did so. The next day I discovered the anec- dote in one of Twain's own books. If the gentle and indulgent reader should have a similar experience in regard to the above, I hope it may not take the edge off the excellence of the satire. It is a good wholesome trait of Anibt^ica, as well as of England, that the ))eopIe 54 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. '1 ■; i i! know and recognise their own failings and shortcomings. American weaknesses are nowhere more sharply criti- cised and burlesqued than in America. Nobody is so severe on the follies and misdeeds of Great Britain as the English themselves. IV. American cities are very much alike in their ground- plp.iis, architecture, and furniture. They have all a similar aspect or physiognomical likeness ; though they have specialities in the way of distinctive streets and individual buildings. They strike an English traveller as new. The stores and houses all seem characteristic of the push and go of the people. There is a wonderful accessibility about them. Nothing is fenced in. Sub- urban villas have their gardens, where there are any, practically open to the road. Barriers of all kinds are regarded as an offence. You can '^ walk right in " and " interview " anybody in America, from the President downwards. " Not at home " and " engaged " do not belong to the white-lying vocabulary of the United States. " Go right in " is the invitation you receive on the threshold of every bureau or office where you have business, and there is nothing more agreeable to a stranger than this fi*eedom of intercourse anc he frank- ness of business men. There is nothing like it in London, where honest men fret their hearts out trying REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AND CITIES. 55 to get at the heads of departments in the pursuit of their calling. It is an old story in England, the heart- less obstructions placed in the path of young inventors, authors, and others, seeking for recognition. In America anybody, everybody, is considered entitled to a hearing. ** Why do we get a'ong so well in this great estab- lishment, and how is it every man and boy about the place looks so eariisst and so hopeful ?" asked the chief of a remarkable New York institution, repeating my question, " because every boy and man in the place knows that he has a clear prospect of advancement. If the lad who sweeps the office comes to me to-morrow morning and says * Sir, I think I have discovered a plan whereby you can save an hour or a dollar in a par- ticular operation' I should listen to him with respect and attention. In your country I am told he would very likely be kicked out of the place for his imperti- nence." He had struck the true cause of much of the hopelessness of the prevailing toil among the English masses. New York is the most cosmonolitan of the American cities. Boston claims to be the Athens of the United States. Washington, the seat of Government, is stately and diplomatic. Philadelphia is the Manchester and Liverpool of America. Chicago has given itself several romantic and flattering titles, including " the Garden City," <' the Prairie City," and " the Phoenix City," 56 TODAY IN AMERICA. San Francisco is the commercial metropolis of Cali- fornia. It is the Golden Gate of Wonderland. New York is something like Paris with a touch of the backwoods, the latter represented by gaunt untrimmed telegraph poles, the former by Madison Square, Union Square, and Fifth Avenue. Philadelphia suggests the Quaker element of Sunderland and Darlin^n under the pressure of a great industrial destiny. Washington is Washington. If you want to study the curious ways and manners of the office-seeker and the depth of ignominy in which he is content to wallow to live, go and spend a few months in "the city of magni- ficent distances." At the same time you will find Washington a lively city, especially during the sitting of the national parliament. Unchecked by the conven- tionalism of the capitals of the old world, you will be delighted or disappointed, according to the nature of your moral constitution, by the freedom of Washington society. Chicago continually calls to mind the simile of the phoenix rising from the ashes, but instead of that clean smug bird of the insurance placards it is a bird that has been mauled somewhat under the efforts of the fire- men to keep the ashes from smouldering. The Chicago bird finds its pinions wet and muddy as yet under the struggle of adverse fire and water, but it will rise aloft one day, and its perch should be the top of one of those wonderful ladders which the stalwart firemen run out and REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AND CITIES. 57 climb before you can fairly consult your stop-watch and time the operation. The picturesque has not yet spread the charm of its gentle spirit over American cities ; but it is moving on the face of things in San Francisco, where the despised Chinamen and miners from all the nations of the world lend their dress and gait to the car-bustle of the streets and the boot-blacks "on the comer" in a miscellaneous contrast of form and colour. They are all busy cities, each jealous of the other. There is almost a childish simplicity in the way in which Chicago dis- counts the pretensions of all her rivals. " New York I" exclaimed a prominent citizen when I remarked that Chicago might some day be as fine a city as New York. " We don't compare ourselves with New York, we con- sider we are ahead of them anyhow. There is only one city we stand in competition with and that is your London." I said the ambition to rival London was laudable but perhaps a little wild. He did not think so ; not that he had ever seen London. Had it as fine a street as State Street? Did it have as many main tracks of railway run through it ? Had it as good a fire service ? Had it as many telephones at work ? These and a hundred other questions he asked me, firing them off with marvellous volubility. It pleased him greatly to learn that I considered the fire brigade system of Chicago was ahead of the whole world. New York included, and that I had never seen anything like its 58 . TO-DAT IN AMERICA. I !i ii i i telephonic arrangements. With regard to London there is this to be said, that there is nothing to be said. A Londoner never feels called upon to brag about London. An Englishman as a rule is generally found criticising it adversely ; but with a certain amount of unconscious pride in its greatness and its power. New York is the second or third largest German city in the world, and it has a larger Irish population than Dublin. Whatever latent ill-feeling may still exist in America against England is fanned and kept alive by the Lnsh. " I train up my sons," said an L*ish American to me on a New York ferry boat, " to handle a rifle, and with one eternal vow on their lips to use it one day in the invasion of England." " And do you think that day will ever come ? " " As surely as the righteous shall find their reward in heaven!" " Were you bom in Ireland ? " ** No, I saw daylight first in New York." " You have never been to England ? " " No, nor to Ireland ; but I live in the blessed hope of seeing both." " On that day when you invade the Saxon land ? " *• If I don't live to see it my boys will ; but the time is nearer than you think." " Do vou know that there are thousands of educated and patriotic Irishmen who regard such men as you as REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AND CITIES. 59 the curse of their country, and that they believe England is anxious and willing to do all she can to content Ire- land, and make her prosperous ? " " Do I believe that the leopard can change its spots ? I tell you, Sir, that England is a tyrant, and that she has ground an iron heel on the neck of my country from the first day she got power over us till this very day ; and that she is a .'* I cannot print the epithets he applied to England. When I told him that Irishmen had no disabilities under the law, and that they filled many of the chief offices of government and the bench, that they held distinguished positions in London, on the press, at the bar, in art and in literature, he ascribed their advance- ment to English ignorance which failed in competition with Irish ability, and he would not allow one single redeeming quality to the men or women of England. He was not an exceptional person among the Irish in America. They are actively at work against England, individually and collectively. They subscribe funds in support of all kinds of seditious organisations. The lower classes in the United States believe that there are Irish armies ready to " march on London," just as the peasants of Sligo and Connaught imagine that America is getting troops ready to send to their aid. It is to be feared that much of this invasion fever is kept up by unscrupulous agents in the interest of the various funds 60 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. that are collected for the work of " breaking the Saxon yoke." Far be it from my intention to slight the honest efforts of earnest Irishmen for the advancement of their country. I am not going to defend the mis- rule of the past nor the feeble efforts of the present, but the idea sought to be propagated in America that the English nation does not sympathise with distressed Ireland, that we are not anxious to help her, that we are not ready to do her justice, that we have no feeling for her woes, and that we are a set of self-seeking tyrants, is nonsense too absurd for serious consideration were it not proclaimed every day in earnest among the Irish in America, and printed in their journals for general circulation. V. I talked to many Irishmen upon what is called the Irish Question, and found generally that they are only conversant with the wrongs their forefathers had suf- fered, and that these are greatly exaggerated. The same fault exists on both sides of the Atlantic. If instead of posing as cheap martyrs Mr. Parnell and his party (an insignificant minority even among the Irish members — 35 to 105) had kept clearly before England the grievances of the Irish tenant and the remedies REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AKD CITIES. 61 necessary for his contentment, they would have done a great and useful work. I am not prepared to say that their action does not possess a substratum of utility. Their follies even have helped to induce people to study the Irish Question, and one might, therefore, have for- given them if in their zeal for Ireland they had not forced the British Parliament to hamper the privileges of debate with such checks and limitations as to destroy that splendid margin of liberty for speech and action which has been its boast and pride for centuries. It is not generally understood on either side what are the demands of those Irish tenants who ask for the Ulster Custom; and the ingratitude of the so-called Irish party towards Mr. Gladstone is singularly illus- trative of the difficulties that obstruct the path of any Minister who strives to solve what is called the Irish Land Question. Mr. Gladstone is the only Minister since the Union who has really approached the point at which Ireland is to be satisfied. He disestablished the Protestant Church. That was a great concession, but like Catholic Emancipation it still left the Irish tenant at the mercy of the landlord. Thereupon Mr. Gladstone gave them a Land Act, which swept away the grievance of having to get the consent of a " Commissioner of Improvements " for new works on his farm in order to recover compensation on eviction. It settled for ever the question of " prospective" and " retrospective " im- 6S TO-DAY IN AMElilCA. « rl I !' I i'' 1 provomonts. It gave the tenant free and unfettered property rights in his improvements. In seventy years not so much had been done. ' It made evictions difficult and dear ; " but," as Mr. O'Brien in his recent work on the land question says,* ^^ the Act was curative rather than preventive. It lefl the landlord in possession of the old powers, which he often abused, but at the same time provided means, not previously in existence, of fining him when he did wrong." But the penalties seem to have fallen as lightly upon tliem, and by raising rents on improved property they have been enabled to recoup themselves for the fines they have had to pay on evictions ; while, on the other hand, the tenants have not been properly compensated. They have been obliged to go to law to get their money, and litigation has been made for tliem tedious and expensive. There are many instances of persecution by small landlords and needy proprietors in the records of the law courts, while the rich owners can ** worry" to any extent an evicted te- nant suing for compeiisation. This ought not to be, and what the tenant claims to-day, and what he has always felt to be his due, is that ^^ the rights of possession " shall be as sacred as " the rights of property." He maintains that he has as much right to deal with '^ pos- session " as the landlord has with " property," and tha^ * T/w Parliavuintary Ilutory of the Irish Land Question. By R. Barry O'Brien. London, 1880. REPRESENTATIVE TRAITB AKD C1T1E8. 63 paying a fuir rent settled on a fair basis he ought to be as free and fixed in his rights as the landlord is in his, and that when a spiteful or greedy owner disturbs him in his tenancy he should have legal power to dispose of the possession without interference from the landlord. This is undoubtedly the tenant's view, and it has, at least, the merit of being clear and distinct, though I have failed to gather that this is the Irish " platform " from the speeches of Irish members. It is not for me to say whether the Irish tenant is right or wrong. John Stuart Mill said he was right ** The Irish circumstances and the Irish ideas as to social and agricultural economy,'* he said, ^* are the general ideas and circumstances of tlie human race. It is the English ideas and circumstances that are peculiar. Ireland is in the main stream of human existence and human feeling and human opinion. It is England that is in one of the lateral channels." Whether their ideas are right or wrong, Mr. O'Brien says ^^ the Irish peasantry have held them for 300 years, and the fact of their existence must be recognised and dealt with. For 300 years the English Government have stood by and championed the landlords, and what has been the result ? The estrangement and disaffection of a people whose 'foible,' to use the language of Swift, * is loyalty.' " It has been said over and over again that the general adoption of the Custom of Ulster would give Ireland all 64 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. ',! I she asks for, and to-day it is argued by the one practical Irishman who has written upon the subject, that every- thing required to secure " the sacred rights of posses- sion " can be maintained under the Ulster law. He is very explicit on the point. " In Ulster," he says, " * sacred rights ' of possession are acknowledged, and * sacred rights ' of property remain inviolate." Then, in heaven's name, one naturally asks, what objection can there be to enacting in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught laws which are found to work well and to give peace and prosperit} to Ulster ? Let us, with Mr. O'Brien, study this lesson of Ulster. Some three hun- dred years ago there was a land question in the North oC Ireland a? there is to-day in the South. The old one was very much like this new one. On the acce>Sfiion of James L regular tenure ot land in Ireland was unknown, and the more industrious the tenant the more likely he was to bo turned out of his holding that it might be let through his improvements for more money. So that, just as uncertainty of tt^nure was the evil to be remedied in Ulster in 1603, so is that the question to-day in those parts of Ireland where the Ulster custom is not acknowledged. Elizabeth left Ireland in '* barbarism and desolation." James tried to " reclaim" the country. James sent Sir John Davis and Sir Arthur Chichester to do the necessary work, Sir Arthur as the Ambassador, Sir John as his secretary. The province of Ulster they found was " the most rude REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AND CITIES. 65 ^^ ft d is and unreformed." Here the " tenancies-at-will" system existed. They thought it a bad system, chiefly because it worked ill against England by enabling the great landed chiefs to raise multitudes of troops, while in Ireland great territorial lords could not do this so easily, because their tenants had rights in their holdings and would not hazard the loss of their sheep and corn, and '^ the undoing of themselves, for tlie best liuidlord in England." At the same time the two English Ministers saw that a good honest Tenancy Act would pacify Ulster, and Sir John's first dispatch to England concluded with a iiope that in the next Parliament an Act would be passed enjoining " every great lord to make such certain durable estates to his tenants which would be good for themselves, good for their tenants, and good for the Commonwealth." Tyrone's fli^t, and the wholesale confiscations of land that followed, afforded Chichester and Davis good opportunity for commencing their work " of plantation." Tliey were quick and shrewd in accepting it. A royal proclamation was issued, assuring the tenants of the fugitive earls tliat they should not be disturbed in their peacetible pos- session " so long as they demeaned themselves as dutiful subjects." The Receiver appointe*i to get in the rents of the exiled earls was instructed to make it appear that the King would bo a more gracious landlord than Tyrone. Then followed Chichester'is proposal to estab- VOL. I. .# 66 TO-DAY IN AMERICA. lish colonies of Scotch and English as well as Irish people, and its sufficient endorsement by the Privy- Council to enable Chichester to push on with his work. His chief instructions were to settle the natives in large proportions on the lands, and to diminish the power of the landlords, to cut down large estates, and to establish an independent body of small freeholders. Despite the comfortable way in which he was allowed to begin his work, Chichester had many difficulties to contend with owing to an active party who opposed him at home, "the party of extermination," who favoured the Elizabethan habit of "the strong arm." The Southern landlords applied for grants in the North. They were rigorously opposed by Chichester, who knew that their conduct in the South had not tended much in the direction of pacification. Only one great English lord succeeded in getting a grant to "plant" and "reclaim" in the North. This was Lord Say; but the Scottish lords received krge gifts, in- cluding Lord Ochiltre, 3,000 acres in Tyrone; Earl Abercorn, 3,000 ; Duke of Lennox, 3,000 ; and Lord Minto, 1,000 in Donegal. There were many other grants to Scotch noblemen. Their representatives soon arrived, and the business of allotment was commenced. Faith was not kept with the natives. Chichester com- plained bitterly of this in his despatches to the Govern- ment. He brought about a compromise to this extent, that the settlement on the soil should consist of a mixture REPRESENTATIVE TRAITS AND CITIES. 67 m In- k VC of Irish, English, and Scotch, modified by the imported conditions that the English and Scotch should have the "fat" lands, and the Irish the "lean." The total number of acres settled was 511,465: of these the English and Scotch had 209,000, and 110,330 were granted to servitors and natives. Reservations were made for schools and for the clergy. The average number of acres hold by each person was between 1 ,000 and 2,000. Queen Elizabeth's grants in Munster were enormous compared to James's in Ulster. For example, she gave Sir Christopher Hatton 10,000 acres. Sir Walter Raleigh 13,000, Sir W. Herbert Kerry 24,000, and several other lords 10,000 and 11,000 each. " The economical grants of James I. in Ulster," says Mr. O'Brien, " were productive of results as beneficial to Ulster as the extravagant grants of Elizabeth had been productive of results injurious to Munster." The latter led to absenteeism, the former to a resident proprietary. The Ulster landlords staid at home in Ireland and attended to their affairs. Chichester knew that a con- tented tenantry was the secret of a successful establish- ment of a contented landocracy, and with Sir John Davis ho took special care " to settle an