(_BY RUDDIER STRIPLING._)
After the roughness of the Atlantic, in which to my taste there is far
too much water moving about, I stepped on to America with considerable
relief. I was quite satisfied, after that excellent dinner, the first
I had enjoyed since Liverpool slid away eastward, to walk aimlessly
through the streets till I fell into the arms of a broad-shouldered,
pug-nosed, Irish New York policeman. I remember no more till New York
passed away on a sunny afternoon, and then I fell asleep again and
slept till the brakeman, conductor, Pullman-car conductor, negro
porter and newsboy somehow managed to pull me out into the midnight
temperature of 80 below freezing. It was just like having one's head
put under the pump, but it did not quite revive me, for I mistook
my host in his sleigh for a walrus, and tried to harpoon him with my
umbrella. After matters had been explained, we went off, at least I
did, and never woke up till I fell out into a snow-drift, just as we
turned a corner at our journey's end.
[Illustration: "Ta-ra-ra-Boom!"]
In the morning, I had some idea that the sky was a great sapphire, and
that I was inside it, and that the fields were some sort of velvet
or wool-work, going round and round with the sun rioting over them,
whatever that may mean, till my head ached. I can't quite understand
all this now, but it seemed a very picturesque, impressionist
description when I wrote it. Then I went for a walk down Main Street.
I think it is about 400 miles long, for I got nowhere near the end,
but this was perhaps owing to my uncertainty as to which side was
the pleasanter to walk on. At last I gave it up, and sat down on the
side-walk. Now, the wisdom of Vermont, not being at all times equal
to grasping all the problems of everybody else's life with delicacy,
sometimes makes pathetic mistakes, and it did so in my ease. I
explained to the policeman that I had been sitting up half the night
on a wild horse in New Zealand, and had only just come over for the
day, but it was all in vain.
The cell at Vermont was horribly uncomfortable. I dreamt that I was
trying to boil snow in a thimble, to make maple syrup, and to swim on
my head in deep water, with a life-belt tied to my ankles. There was
another man there, and in the early morning he told me about Mastodons
and Plesiosauri in a wood near the town, and how he caught them by the
tails and photographed them; and also that Ringandknock, a mountain
near, was mentioned by EMERSON in a verse, which I remembered,
because he made "co-eval" rhyme with "extended." Only a truly great
Philosopher could have done that.
It was all new and delightful; and it must have been true, because my
informant was a quiet, slow-spoken man of the West, who refrained from
laughing at me. I have met very few people who could do that. Next day
all the idleness and trifling were at an end, and my friends conveyed
me back to New York.
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