CHICAGO.

The luxury of my quarters in Boston seduced me into a disquisition on

American hospitality which would have come in equally well with

reference to any other city. Were I to search very deeply into my soul

(an exercise much in vogue in Boston), I might perhaps find reasons for

my rambling off. To say that Boston did not interest me would be the

reverse of the truth. It interested me deeply; but it did not excite me

with a sense of novelty or vastness. One can only repeat the obvious

truth that it is like an exceptionally dignified and stately English

town. One instinctively looks around for a cathedral, and finds the

State House in its stead. To the founders of this city, the glory of God

was not a thing to be furthered, or even typified, by any work of men's

hands; but the salvation of men's souls, they thought, could be best

achieved in a well-ordered democratic polity. Their descendants have of

late years taken to decorating their places of worship, and Trinity

Church (by H.H. Richardson), and the new Old South Church, are ambitious

and beautiful pieces of ecclesiastical architecture. But the old Old

South Meeting-House, the ecclesiastical centre of the city, is the flat

and somewhat sour negation of all that is expressed or implied in an

English cathedral. Let me not be understood to disparage the Old South

or the spirit which fashioned it. In my eyes, minster and meeting-house

are equally interesting historic monuments, and to my hereditary

instincts the latter is the more sympathetic. I merely note the fact

that the most conspicuous edifice in Boston, its Duomo, its St. Peter's

or St. Paul's, is dedicated, not to the glory of God, but to the

well-being of man.

Not physically, of course, but intellectually, Boston has been likened

to Edinburgh. The parallel is fair enough, with this important

reservation, that the theological element in the atmosphere is not

Presbyterian but Unitarian. The Boston of to-day, it must be added,

especially resembles Edinburgh in the fact that its pre-eminence as an

intellectual centre has virtually departed. The _Atlantic Monthly_

survives, as _Blackwood_, survives, a relic of the great days of old;

but Boston has no Scott Monument to bear visual testimony to her

spiritual achievement. She ought certainly to treat herself to a worthy

Emerson Monument on the Common, whither the boy Emerson used to drive

his mother's cows: not, of course, a Gothic pile like that which

commemorates the genius of Scott, but a statue by the incomparable St.

Gaudens, under a modest classic canopy.

But if, or when, such a monument is erected, it will absolve no one of

the duty of making a pilgrimage to Concord. Even if it had no historic

or literary associations, this simple, dignified, beautiful New England

village, with its plain frame houses and its stately elm avenues, would

be well worth a visit. Village I call it, but township would be a better

word. Let no one go there with less than half a day to spare, for the

places of interest are widely scattered. My companion and I went first

to Walden Pond, then to the Emerson and Hawthorne houses, then to that

ideal burying-place, Sleepy Hollow, where Emerson and Hawthorne and

Thoreau rest side by side, and finally to the bridge--

Where once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

Everything here is beautifully appropriate. The commemorative statue of

the "minute-man" with his musket is simple and expressive, and the four

lines of Emerson's hymn graven on the pedestal are the right words

written by the right man, entwining, as it were, the historical and

literary associations of the place. An exquisite appropriateness, too,

presides over the Poets' Corner of Sleepy Hollow. The grave of Emerson

is marked by a rough block of pure white quartz, in which is inserted a

bronze tablet bearing the words:--

The passive master lent his hand

To the vast soul that o'er him planned.

Altogether, among the places of pilgrimage of the English-speaking race,

there is none more satisfactory or more inspiring than Concord, Mass.

If Boston is no longer a great centre of literary production, it

remains, with its noble public library in its midst, and with Harvard

University on its outskirts, a great centre of culture. I shall always

remember a luncheon party at Harvard, where I was the guest of an

eminent Shakespearean critic, and had for my fellow guests a very

learned Dante scholar (one of the most delightful talkers imaginable), a

famous psychologist, a political economist, and a lecturer on English

literature. The talk fell upon the depopulation of New England, or

rather the substitution of an alien race for (I had almost said) the

indigenous Yankee stock. There was some discussion as to whether the

Yankee was really dying out, or had merely spread throughout the West,

taking with him and disseminating the qualities which had made the

greatness of New England. It was not denied, of course, that westward

emigration has much to do with the matter. The New England farmer,

unable to stand up against the competition of the prairies, has betaken

himself to the prairies so as to compete on the winning side. But one of

the company maintained that this did not account for the whole

phenomenon. "The real key to it," he said, "lies in such a family

history as mine. My grandmother was the youngest of thirteen children;

my mother was the eldest of five; my brother and I are two; and we are

unmarried."

I am inclined to think that this story of a dwindling stock is typical,

not for New England alone, but for other parts of the Union. It seems as

though the pressure of life in the Eastern States, and perhaps some

subtle influence of climate upon temperament, were rendering the people

of old Teutonic blood--British, Dutch, and German--unwilling to face the

responsibility of large families, and so were giving the country over to

the later and usually inferior immigrant and his progeny. I am not sure

that it might not be well to cultivate a new sense of social duty in

this matter. Is it Utopian to suggest a policy of "America for the

Americans"--some effectual restriction of immigration before it is too

late, so as to leave room for the natural increase of the American

people? This is an "expansion," a "taking up of the white man's burden,"

which would command my warmest sympathy. It is to the interest of the

whole world that the America of the future should be peopled by "white

men" in every sense of the word.

New England, however, cannot be utterly depopulated of its old stocks,

for at every turn you come up against those good old Puritan names which

bespeak a longer ancestry than many an English peer can claim. I find

among the signatures to a petition against the reinstatement of an

elevated railroad in Boston, such names as Adams, Morse, Lowell,

Emerson, Bowditch, Lothrop, Storey, Dabney, Whipple, Ticknor, and Hale.

Of the fifty signatures, only three (or, at the outside five, if we

include two doubtful cases) are of other than English origin. In

contrast to this I may mention another list of names which came under my

notice at the same time--a list of the purchasers at a sale by auction

of seats for a New York first-night. Here twenty-six names out of forty

are obviously of non-English origin, while several of the remaining

fourteen have a distinctly Hebraic ring.

Though very much smaller than New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia,

Boston is essentially a great city, with a very animated street life,

and nothing in the least provincial about it. But it is not in these

great capitals, not even in this marvellous Chicago where I am now

writing, that one most clearly realises the bewildering potentialities

of the United States. It is precisely in the minor, the provincial

cities, which to us in Europe are no more than names--perhaps not so

much. For instance, what does the average Englishman know of Detroit?[H]

What State is it in? Is it in the North or the South, the East or the

West? For my part I knew in a general way, having been there before,

that Detroit was situated somewhere between Chicago and Niagara Falls,

but until a few days ago I should have been puzzled to describe its

situation more precisely. Well, I arrive in this obscure, insignificant

place, and find it a city of considerably more than a quarter of a

million inhabitants, beautifully laid out, magnificently paved and

lighted, its broad and noble avenues lined with handsome commercial

houses and roomy if not always beautiful villas, trees shading its

sidewalks, electric cars swimming in an endless stream along its

bustling thoroughfares, its imposing public library swarming with

readers, its theatres crowded, its parks alive with bicyclists, an eager

activity, whether in business, culture, or recreation, manifesting

itself on every hand. Or take, again, Buffalo, somewhat larger than

Detroit, but still by no means a city of the first rank. Everything that

I have said of Detroit applies to it, with the addition that some of

its commercial buildings are not only palatial in their dimensions, but

original and impressive in their architecture. An afternoon stroll along

Woodward-avenue, Detroit, or Main-street, Buffalo, reassures one as to

the future--the physical, at any rate--of the American people. The

prevailing type is, if not definitely Anglo-Saxon, at any rate Teutonic,

and the average of physical development is very high, especially among

the women. It may have some bearing upon what I have been saying above

to note that, in point of stature and beauty, the Bostonian woman, as a

rule, seemed to me to fall far short of her sisters in the other cities

I have visited. I have before my mind's eye many distinguished and

delightful exceptions to this rule; but, postponing gallantry to

sociological candour, I state my general impression for what it is

worth.

Here, in Chicago, gallantry and candour go hand in hand. A legend of the

envious East represents that a Chicago young man travelling in Louisiana

wrote to his sweetheart: "DEAR MAMIE,--I have shot an alligator. When I

have shot another, I will send you a pair of slippers." The implication

is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, a base and baseless

calumny. New York itself does not present a higher average of female

beauty than Chicago, and that is saying a great deal. But I must not

enlarge on this fascinating topic. A Judgment of Paris is always a

delicate business, and I am in nowise called upon to make the invidious

award. Were I compelled to undertake it, I could only distribute the

apple, and my homage, in equal shares to the goddesses of the East, the

South, and the Middle West.

When I was in Chicago in '77, it was the metropolis of the West, without

qualification. Now it is merely the frontier city of the Middle West.

From the standpoint of Omaha and Denver, it seems to fill the Eastern

horizon, and shut out the further view. Many stories are told to show

how absolutely and instinctively your true Westerner ignores the Eastern

States and cities. Here is one of the most characteristic. A little girl

came into the smoking car of a train somewhere in Kansas or Nebraska,

and stood beside her father, who was in conversation with another man.

The father put his arm round her and said to his companion, "She's been

a great traveller, this little girl of mine. She's only ten years old,

and she's been all over the United States."

"You don't say!" replied the other; "all over the United States?"

"Yes, sir; all over the United States," said the proud father; and then

added, as though the detail was scarcely worth mentioning, "except east

of Chicago."

Chicago, unfortunately, marks the limit of my wanderings; so I shall

return to England without having seen anything of the United States,

except for a sort of Pisgah-glimpse from the tower of the Auditorium.