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    by Karen Dalrymple and PG Distributed Proofreaders





    AMERICA TO-DAY

    _OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS_

    BY
    WILLIAM ARCHER

    NEW YORK
    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
    1899




    CONTENTS


    _PART I--OBSERVATIONS_

    I. The Straits of New York--When is a Ship not a Ship?--Nationality of
    Passengers--A Dream Realized

    II. Fog in New York Harbor--The Customs--The Note-Taker's
    Hyperæsthesia--A Literary Car-Conductor--Mr. Kipling and the American
    Public--The City of Elevators

    III. New York a much-maligned City--Its Charm--Mr. Steevens'
    Antithesis--New York compared with Other Cities--Its
    Slums--Advertisements--Architecture in New York and Philadelphia

    IV. Absence of Red Tape--"Rapid Transit" in New York--The Problem and
    its Solution--The Whirl of Life--New York by Night--The "White Magic" of
    the Future

    V. Character and Culture--American Universities--Is the American
    "Electric" or Phlegmatic?--Alleged Laxity of the Family Tie--Postscript:
    The University System

    VI. Washington in April--A Metropolis in the Making--The White House,
    the Capitol, and the Library of Congress--The Symbolism of Washington

    VII. American Hospitality--Instances--Conversation and
    Story-Telling--Overprofusion In Hospitality--Expensiveness of Life in
    America--The American Barber--Postscript: An Anglo-American Club

    VIII. Boston--Its Resemblance to Edinburgh--Concord, Walden Pond, and
    Sleepy Hollow--Is the "Yankee" Dying Out?--America for the
    Americans--Detroit and Buffalo--The "Middle West"

    IX. Chicago--Its Splendour and Squalour--Mammoth Buildings--Wind, Dust,
    and Smoke--Culture--Chicago's Self-Criticism--Postscript: Social Service
    in America

    X. New York in Spring--Central Park--New York not an Ill-Governed
    City--The United States Post Office--The Express System--Valedictory


    _PART II--REFLECTIONS_

    North and South, I

    North and South, II

    North and South, III

    North and South, IV

    The Republic and The Empire, I

    The Republic and The Empire, II

    The Republic and The Empire, III

    The Republic and The Empire, IV

    American Literature

    The American Language, I

    The American Language, II

    The American Language, III

    The American Language, IV



    The letters and essays which make up this volume appeared in the
    London _Pall Mall Gazette_ and _Pall Mall Magazine_ respectively, and
    are reprinted by kind permission of the editors of these periodicals.
    The ten letters which were sent to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ appeared also
    in the _New York Times_.




    PART I

    OBSERVATIONS




    LETTER I

    The Straits of New York--When is a Ship not a Ship?--Nationality of
    Passengers--A Dream Realized.


    R.M.S. _Lucania_.

    The Atlantic Ocean is geographically a misnomer, socially and
    politically a dwindling superstition. That is the chief lesson one
    learns--and one has barely time to take it in--between Queenstown and
    Sandy Hook. Ocean forsooth! this little belt of blue water that we cross
    before we know where we are, at a single hop-skip-and-jump! From north
    to south, perhaps, it may still count as an ocean; from east to west we
    have narrowed it into a strait. Why, even for the seasick (and on this
    point I speak with melancholy authority) the Atlantic has not half the
    terrors of the Straits of Dover; comfort at sea being a question, not of
    the size of the waves, but of the proportion between the size of the
    waves and the size of the ship. Our imagination is still beguiled by the
    fuss the world made over Columbus, whose exploit was intellectually and
    morally rather than physically great. The map-makers, too, throw dust
    in our eyes by their absurd figment of two "hemispheres," as though
    Nature had sliced her orange in two, and held one half in either hand.
    We are slow to realise, in fact, that time is the only true measure of
    space, and that London to-day is nearer to New York than it was to
    Edinburgh a hundred and fifty years ago. The essential facts of the
    case, as they at present stand, would come home much more closely to the
    popular mind of both continents if we called this strip of sea the
    Straits of New York, and classed our liners, not as the successors of
    Columbus's caravels, but simply as what they are: giant ferry-boats
    plying with clockwork punctuality between the twin landing-stages of the
    English-speaking world.

    To-morrow we shall be in New York harbour; it seems but yesterday that
    we slipped out of the Cove of Cork. As I look at the chart on the
    companion staircase, where our daily runs are marked off, I feel the
    abject poverty of our verbs of speed. We have not rushed, or dashed, or
    hurtled along--these words do grave injustice to the majesty of our
    progress. I can think of nothing but the strides of some Titan, so vast
    as to beggar even the myth-making imagination. It is not seven-league,
    no, nor hundred-league boots that we wear--we do our 520, 509, 518, 530
    knots at a stride. Nor is it to be imagined that we are anywhere near
    the limit of speed. Already the _Lucania's_ record is threatened by the
    _Oceanic_; and the _Oceanic_, if she fulfils her promises, will only
    spur on some still swifter Titan to the emprise.[A] Then, again, it is
    hard to believe that the difficulties are insuperable which as yet
    prevent us from utilising, as a point of arrival and departure, that
    almost mid-Atlantic outpost of the younger world, Newfoundland--or at
    the least Nova Scotia. By this means the actual waterway between the two
    continents will be shortened by something like a third. What with the
    acceleration of the ferry-boats and the narrowing of the ferry, it is
    surely no visionary Jules-Vernism to look forward to the time when one
    may set foot on American soil, within, say, sixty-five hours of leaving
    the Liverpool landing-stage; supposing, that is to say, that steam
    navigation be not in the meantime superseded.

    As yet, to be sure, the Atlantic possesses a certain strategic
    importance as a coal-consuming force. To contract its time-width we have
    to expand our coal-bunkers; and the ship which has crossed it in six
    days, be she ferryboat or cruiser, is apt to arrive, as it were, a
    little out of breath. But even this drawback can scarcely be permanent.
    Science must presently achieve the storage of motive-power in some less
    bulky form than that of crude coal. Then the Atlantic will be as
    extinct, politically, as the Great Wall of China; or, rather, it will
    retain for America the abiding significance which the "silver streak"
    possesses for England--an effectual bulwark against aggression, but a
    highway to influence and world-moulding power.

    Think of the time when the _Lucania_ shall have fallen behind in the
    race, and shall be plying to Boston or Philadelphia, while larger and
    swifter hotel-ships shall put forth almost daily from Liverpool,
    Southampton, and New York! Think of the growth of intercourse which even
    the next ten years will probably bring, and the increase of mutual
    comprehension involved in it! Is it an illusion of mine, or do we not
    already observe in England, during the past year, a new interest and
    pride in our trans-Atlantic service, which now ranks close to the Navy
    in the popular affections? It dates, I think, from those first days of
    the late war, when the _Paris_ was vainly supposed to be in danger of
    capture by Spanish cruisers, and when all England was wishing her
    god-speed.

    For my own taste, this sumptuous hotel-ship is rather too much of a
    hotel and too little of a ship. I resent the absolute exclusion of the
    passengers from even the most distant view of the propelling and guiding
    forces. Practically, the _Lucania_ is a ship without a deck; and the
    deck is to the ship what the face is to the human being. The so-called
    promenade-deck is simply a long roofed balcony on either side of the
    hotel building. It is roofed by the "shade deck," which is rigidly
    reserved "for navigators only." There the true life of the ship goes on,
    and we are vouchsafed no glimpse of it. One is reminded of the
    Chinaman's description of a three-masted screw steamer with two funnels:
    "Thlee piecee bàmboo, two piecee puff-puff, wàlk-along ìnside, no can
    see." Here the "wàlk-along," the motive power, is "ìnside" with a
    vengeance. I have not at this moment the remotest conception where the
    engine-room is, or where lies the descent to that Avernus. Not even the
    communicator-gong can be heard in the hotel. I have not set eyes on an
    engineer or a stoker, scarcely on a sailor. The captain I do not even
    know by sight. Occasionally an officer flits past, on his way up to or
    down from the "shade deck"; I regard him with awe, and guess reverently
    at his rank. The ship's company, as I know it, consists of the purser,
    the doctor, and the army of stewards and stewardesses. The roof of the
    promenade-deck weighs upon my brain. It shuts off the better half of the
    sky, the zenith. In order even to see the masts and funnels of the ship
    one has to go far forward or far aft and crane one's neck upward. Not a
    single human being have I ever descried on the "shade-deck" or on the
    towering bridge. The genii of the hundred-league boots remain not only
    inaccessible but invisible. The effect is inhuman, uncanny. All the
    luxury of the saloons and staterooms does not compensate for the lack of
    a frank, straightforward deck. The _Lucania_, in my eyes, has no
    individuality as a ship. It--I instinctively say "it," not "she"--is
    merely a rather low-roofed hotel, with sea-sickness superadded to all
    the comforts of home. But a first-class hotel it is: the living good
    and plentiful, if not superfine, the service excellent, and the charges,
    all things considered, remarkably moderate.

    What chiefly strikes one about the passengers is their homogeneity of
    race. Apart from a small (but influential) Semitic contingent, the whole
    body is thoroughly Anglo-Saxon in type. About half are British, I take
    it,

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