outside New York was another popular institution known as the roadside
inn. In some way it is a conscious endeavor to get back to the
simplicity and good cheer of old-fashioned times, when the grandfathers
and grandmothers of the present generation used to get down from their
coaches when the horses were changed, or the snowdrifts were deep, and
go gladly to the warmth of a log fire, in a wayside hostelry, while
orders were given for a dinner of roast duck, and a bowl of punch was
brewed by the ruddy-faced innkeeper. It is a tradition which is kept
fresh in the imagination of modern Americans by the genius of Charles
Dickens, Washington Irving, and a host of writers and painters who
reproduce the atmosphere of English life in the days of coaching,
highwaymen, romance, and roast beef. The spirit of Charles Dickens is
carefully suggested to all wayfarers in one roadside inn I visited,
about an hour away from New York, and called "The Pickwick Inn." It is
built in the style of Tudor England, with wooden beams showing through
its brickwork and windows divided into little leaded panes, and paneled
rooms furnished with wooden settles and gate-leg tables. Colored prints
depicting scenes in the immortal history of Mr. Pickwick brighten the
walls within. Outside there swings a sign-board such as one sees still
outside country inns standing on the edge of village greens in England.
I found it a pleasant place, where one could talk better with a friend
than in a gilded restaurant of New York, with a jazz band smiting one's
eardrums; and the company there was interesting. In spite of the
departure of coaching days, which gave life and bustle to the old inns
of the past, the motor-car brings travelers and a touch of romance to
these modern substitutes. There were several cars outside the
"Pickwick," and I guessed by the look of the party within that they had
come from New York for a country outing, a simple meal, and private
conversation. "Better a dinner of herbs where love is--" Under the
portrait of Mr. Pickwick in a quiet corner of one of the old-fashioned
rooms a young man and woman sat with their elbows on the table and
their chins propped in the palms of their hands, and their faces not so
far away that they had any need to shout to each other the confidences
which made both pairs of eyes remarkably bright. The young man was one
of those square-shouldered, clean-shaven, gray-eyed fellows whom I came
to know as a type on the roads to Amiens and Albert. The girl had put
her dust-cloak over the back of her chair, but still wore a veil tied
round her hat and under her chin--a little pointed chin dug firmly into
her palm, and modeled with the same delicacy of line as the lips about
which a little smile wavered, and as the nose which kept its distance,
with perfect discretion, from that of the young man opposite, so that
the waiter might have slipped a menu-card between them. She had a string
of pearls round her neck which would certainly have been the first prize
of any highwayman holding up her great-grandmamma's coach, and judging
from other little signs of luxury as it is revealed in Fifth Avenue, I
felt certain that the young lady did not live far from the heart of New
York and had command of its treasure-houses.... Two other groups in the
room, sitting at separate tables, belonged obviously to one party. They
were young people, for the most part, with one elderly lady whose white
hair and shrewd, smiling eyes made all things right with youthful
adventure, and with one old fogy, bland of countenance and expansive in
the waistcoat line, who seemed to regard it as a privilege to pay for
the large appetites of the younger company. Anyhow he paid for at least
eight portions of chicken okra, followed by eight plates of roast turkey
and baked potatoes, and, not counting sundries, nine serves of deep-dish
pie. The ninth, unequal, share went, in spite of warnings, protests, and
ridicule from free-spoken companions, to a plump girl with a pigtail,
obviously home from college for a spell, who said: "I guess I sha'n't
die from overeating, though it's the way I'd choose if I had to quit. An
appetite is like love. Its dangers are exaggerated, and seldom fatal."
This speech, delivered in all solemnity, aroused a tumult of mirth from
several young women of grown-up appearance--at least they had advanced
beyond the pigtail stage--and under cover of this one of them
deliberately "made up" her face till it bloomed like a rose in June. In
another corner of the Pickwick Inn sat a lonely man whose appearance
interested me a good deal. He was a man of middle age, with black hair
turning white, and very dark, melancholy eyes in a pale, ascetic face. I
have seen his type many times in the Cafe de l'Odeon on the "Latin" side
of Paris, and I was surprised to find it in a roadside inn of the United
States. A friend of mine, watching the direction of my gaze, said, "Yes,
that is a remarkable man--one of the best-known architects in America,
and, among other things, the designer of the Victory decorations of New
York." He came over to our table and I had a talk with him--a strange
conversation, in which this man of art spoke mostly of war, from unusual
angles of thought. His idea seemed to me that peace is only a
preparation for war, and that war is not the abnormal thing which most
people think, but the normal, because it is the necessary conflict by
which human character and destiny are shaped. He seemed to think that
the psychology of the world had become twisted and weakened by too much
peace so that the sight of armless or legless men was horrifying,
whereas people should be accustomed to such sights and take them for
granted, because that, with all pain and suffering, is the price of
life. I disagreed with him profoundly, believing that war in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred is unnecessary and due to the stupidities of
people who are doped by spell-words put upon them by their leaders; but
I was interested in getting this viewpoint from a man whose whole life
has been devoted to beauty. It seemed to me the strangest paradox.... A
roadside inn in the United States is a good place for the study of
psychology and social habits in America. One custom which happens here
during winter and summer evenings is a local dance given by some
inhabitant of the neighborhood who finds more spaciousness here for a
party of guests than in his own homestead. The rugs and chairs are put
away, and the floor is polished for dancing. Outside, the inn is
decorated with colored lamps and lanterns, and a bright light streams
through the leaded window-panes across the road from New York. The metal
of many machines sparkles in the shadow world beyond the lanterns.
Through the open windows, if the night is mild, comes the ragtime music
of a string band and the sound of women's laughter. Sometimes queer
figures, like ghosts of history, pass through the swing-doors, for it is
a fancy-dress dance in the inn, and there is a glimpse of Columbine in
her fluffy white skirt, with long white stockings, and with her hand on
the arm of a tall young Pierrot; while a lady of the court of Marie
Antoinette trips beside the figure of a scarlet Devil, and a little
Puritan girl of New England (two hundred years ago) passes in with
Monsieur Beaucaire in his white-satin coat and flowered waistcoat and
silk stockings above buckled shoes. I like the idea and the customs of
the roadside inn, for it helps to make human society sweet and friendly
in villages beyond the glare of America's great cities.
To study a people, however, one must see them in their homes, and I was
fortunate in having friends who took me into their home life. When I
went there it was at a time when American homes were excited and happy
after the armistice, and when the soldiers who had been "over there"
were coming back, with victory and honor. In many homes of the United
States, scattered far and wide, there was not happiness, but sorrow,
because in the victory march down Fifth Avenue there would be for some
of the onlookers one figure missing--the figure of some college boy who
had gone marching away with smiling eyes and a stiff upper lip, or the
figure of some middle-aged fellow who waved his hand to a group of small
children and one woman who turned to hide her tears. There were empty
chairs in the homesteads of the United States, and empty hearts on
Armistice Day--and afterward. But I did not see them, and I thought of
the many homes in England desolated by the appalling sacrifice of youth,
so that in every town, and in every street, there are houses out of
which all hope in life has gone, leaving behind a dreadful dreariness,
an incurable loneliness, mocking at Victory. There was one home I went
to where a mother of cheery babes waited for her man with an eager joy
she did not try to hide. The smallest babe had been born while he was
away, a boy baby with the gift of laughter from the fairy godmother; and
there was great excitement at the thought of the first interview between
father and son. All the community in the neighborhood of this house in
Westchester County took a personal interest in this meeting when "the
Major" should see his latest born, and when the wife should meet her
man again. They had kept his memory green and had cheered up the
loneliness of his wife by making a rendezvous of his house. She had
played up wonderfully, with a pluck that never failed, and a spirit of
comradeship to all her husband's friends, especially if he wore khaki
and was far from his own folk. One was always certain of meeting a merry
crowd at cocktail time. With some ceremony a party of friends were
conducted to the cellar to see how a careful housewife with a hospitable
husband got ahead of prohibition.... Then the Major came back, a little
overwhelmed by the warmth of his greeting from old friends, a little
dazed by the sharp contrast between war and peace, moved to his depths
by the first sight of Peter, his boy baby. One day at dinner he
described how he had heard the news of Peter in the war zone. He bought
a bottle of champagne to celebrate the event--it was the only bottle to
be had for love or money--and went round to the mess to call a toast.
There were many officers, and the champagne did not give them full
glasses, but in a sparkling drop or two they drank to the son of this
good officer and good comrade. I was glad to get a glimpse of that
American home and of the two small girls in it, who had the habit, which
I find pleasant among the children of America, of dropping a bob
courtesy to any grown-up visitor. The children of America have the
qualities of their nation, simplicity, common sense, and self-reliance.
They are not so bashful as English boys and girls, and they are free
from the little constraints of nursery etiquette which make so many
English children afraid to open their mouths. They are also free
entirely from that juvenile snobbishness which is still cultivated in
English society, where boys and girls of well-to-do parents are taught
to look down with contempt upon children of the poorer classes. I sat
down at table many mornings with a small boy and girl who were
representative, I have no doubt, of Young America in the making. The
boy, Dick, had an insatiable curiosity about the way things work in the
world, and about the make-up of the world itself. To satisfy that
curiosity he searched the _Children's Book of Knowledge_, the
encyclopedias in the library, and the brain of any likely person, such
as the Irish chauffeur and gardener, for scraps of useful information.
In games of "twenty questions," played across the luncheon-table, he
chose mountains in Asia, or rivers in Africa, or parts of complicated
engines, putting the company to shame by their ignorance of geography
and mechanics. For sheer personal pleasure he worked out sums in
arithmetic when he wakened early in the morning. His ambition is to be
an engineer, and he is already designing monster airplanes, and
electrical machines of fantastic purpose--like, I suppose, millions of
other small boys in America. The girl, aged eight, seemed to me the
miniature representative of all American girlhood, and for that reason
is a source of apprehension to her mother, who has to camouflage her
amusement at this mite's audacity, and looks forward with a thrill of
anxiety and delight to the time when Joan will put her hair up and play
hell with boys' hearts. Joan has big, wondering eyes, which she already
uses for cajolery and blandishment. Joan has a sense of humor which is
alarming in an elf of her size. Joan can tell the most almighty
"whoppers," with an air of innocence which would deceive an angel. Joan
has a passionate temper when thwarted of her will, a haughty arrogance
of demeanor before which grown men quail, and a warm-hearted affection
for people who please her which exacts forgiveness of all naughtiness.
She dances for sheer joy of life, lives in imagination with fairies,
screams with desire at the sight of glittering jewels and fine feathers,
and weeps passionately at times because she is not old enough to go with
her mother to dinner in New York. In another ten years, when she goes to
college, there will be the deuce of a row in her rooms, and three years
later New York will be invaded by a pair of hazel eyes which will
complicate, still further, the adventure of life east and west of Fifth
Avenue. Those two young people go forth to school every morning, from a
country house in Connecticut, in a "flivver" driven by the Irish
chauffeur, with whom they are the best of friends. Now and again they
are allowed the use of the Cadillac car and spread themselves under the
rugs with an air of luxury and arrogance, redeemed by a wink from Dick,
as though to say, "What a game--this life!" and a sweep of Joan's
eyelashes conveying the information that a princess of the United States
is about to attend the educational establishment which she is pleased to
honor with her presence, and where she hopes to be extremely naughty
to-day, just to make things hum. This boy and girl are good and close
comrades between the times they pull each other's hair, and have a
profound respect for each other in spite of an intimate knowledge of
their respective frailties and sinfulness. Joan knows that Dick
invariably gets his sums right, whereas she invariably gets them wrong.
She knows that his truthfulness is impregnable and painful in its deadly
accuracy. She knows that his character is as solid as a rock and that he
is patient up to the point when by exasperation she asks for a bang on
the head, and gets it. Dick knows that Joan is more subtle in
imagination than he can ever hope to be, and that she can twist him
round her little finger when she sets out deliberately thereto, in order
to get the first use of the new toy which came to him on his birthday,
the pencil which he has just sharpened for his own drawing, or the
picture-book which he has just had as a school prize. "You know mother
says you mustn't be so terrible selfish," says Joan, in answer to
violent protests, and Dick knows that he must pay the price of peace. He
also knows that Joan loves him devotedly, pines for him when he is away
even for a little while, and admires his knowledge and efficiency with
undisguised hero-worship, except when she wants to queen it over him,
for the sake of his soul. I think of them in a little white house
perched on flower-covered rocks, within sight of the Sound through a
screen of birch trees. Inside the house there are some choice old bits
of English and Italian furniture bought by a lady who knows the real
from the false, and has a fine eye for the color of her hangings and her
chintz-covered chairs. On cool nights a log fire burns in a wide hearth,
and the electric lamps are turned out to show the soft light of tall fat
candles in wrought-iron torches each side of the hearthstone.
Galli-Curci sings from a gramophone between Hawaiian airs or the latest
ragtime; or the master of the house--a man of all the talents and the
heart of youth--strikes out plaintive little melodies made up "out of
his own head," as children say, on a rosewood piano, while the two
children play "Pollyanna" on the carpet, and their mother watches
through half-shut eyes the picture she has made of the room. It is a
pretty picture of an American interior, as a painter might see it....
In New York, as in London, it is the ambition of many people, I find, to
seek out a country cottage and get back to the "simple life" for a
spell. "A real old place" is the dream of the American business man who
has learned to love ancient things after a visit to Europe, or by a
sudden revolt against the modern side of civilization. The "real old
place" is not easy to find, but I met one couple who had found it not
more than thirty miles or so from Madison Square, yet in such a rural
and unfrequented spot that it seemed a world away. They had discovered
an old mill-house, built more than a hundred and fifty years ago, and
unchanged all that time except by the weathering of its beams and
panels, and the sinking of its brick floors, and the memories that are
stored up in every crack and crevice of that homestead where simple folk
wed and bred, worked and died, from one generation to another. The new
owners are simple folk, too, though not of the peasant class, and with
reverence and sound taste they decline to allow any architect to alter
the old structure of the house, but keep it just as it stands. In their
courtyard, on a Sunday afternoon, were several motor-cars, and in their
parlor a party of friends from New York who had come out to this little
old mill-house in the country, and expressed their ecstasy at its
quaint simplicity. Some of them invited themselves to supper, whereat
the lady of the mill-house laughed at them and said, "I guess you'll
have to be content with boiled beans and salad, because my man and I are
tired of the fatted calf and all the gross things of city life." To her
surprise there was a chorus of "Fine!" and the daintiest girl from New
York offered to do the washing-up. Through an open door in the parlor
there was a pretty view of another room up a flight of wooden stairs. In
such a room one might see the buxom ghost of some American Phoebe of
the farm, with bare arms and a low-necked bodice, coiling her hair at an
old mirror for the time when John should come a-courting after he had
brushed the straw from his hair....
I went into another country cottage, as old as this one and as simple as
this. It stands in a meadow somewhere in Sleepy Hollow, low lying by a
little stream that flows through its garden, but within quick reach, by
a stiff climb, through silver beeches and bracken, and over gray rocks
that crop through the soil, to hilltops from which one gazes over the
Hudson River and the Sound, and a wide stretch of wooded country with
little white towns in the valleys. Here in the cottage lives a New York
doctor and his wife, leading the simple life, not as a pose, but in
utter sincerity, because they have simplicity in their souls. Every
morning the doctor walks away from his cottage to a railway which takes
him off to the noisy city, and here until five of the evening he is busy
in healing the sufferers of civilization and stupidity--the people who
overeat themselves, the children who are too richly fed by foolish
mothers, business men whose nerves have broken down by worry and work
for the sake of ambition, society women wrecked in the chase of
pleasure, and little ones, rickety, blind, or diseased because of the
sins of their parents. The little doctor does not deal in medicine and
does not believe in it. He treats his patients according to his
philosophy of natural science, by which he gives their human nature a
chance of freeing itself from the poison that has tainted it and getting
back to normal self-healing action. He has devised a machine for playing
waves of electricity through his patients by means of which he breaks up
the clogging tissue of death in their cell life and regenerates the
health of the cell system. He has made some startling cures, and I
think the cheerful wisdom of the little man, his simple, childlike
heart, and the clean faith that shines out of his eyes are part of the
secret of his power. He goes back to his country cottage to tend his
flowers and to think deeper into the science of life up there on the
hilltop which looks across the Sound among the silvery beeches, where in
the spring there is a carpet of bluebells and in the autumn the fire of
red bracken. In spring and summer and autumn he rises early and plunges
into a pool behind the shelter of trees and bushes, and before dressing
runs up and down a stone pathway bordered by the flowers he has grown,
and after that dances a little to keep his spirit young.... I liked that
glimpse I had of the American doctor in Sleepy Hollow.
[Illustration: I LIKED THE GREETING OF THE TRAIN CONDUCTOR]
And I liked all the glimpses I had of American home life in the suburbs
of New York and in other townships of the United States. I liked the
white woodwork of the houses, and the bright sunlight that swept the sky
above them, and the gardens that grew without hedges. I liked the good
nature of the people, the healthiness of their outlook on life, their
hopefulness in the future, their self-reliance and their sincerity of
speech. I liked the children of America, and the college girls who
strolled in groups along the lanes, and the crowds who assembled in the
morning at the local station to begin a new day's work or a new day's
shopping in the big city at their journey's end. They had a keen and
vital look, and nodded to one another in a neighborly way as they bought
bulky papers from the bookstall and chewing-gum from the candy stall and
had their shoes shined with one eye on the ticket office. I liked the
greeting of the train conductor to all those people whose faces he knew
as familiar friends, and to whom he passed the time o' day with a
jesting word or two. I liked the social life of the American middle
classes, because it is based, for the most part, on honesty, a kindly
feeling toward mankind, and healthiness of mind and body. They are not
out to make trouble in the world, and unless somebody asks for it very
badly they are not inclined to interfere with other people's business.
The thing I liked best in the United States is the belief of its
citizens in the progress of mankind toward higher ideals of common
sense; and after the madness of a world at war it is good to find such
faith, however difficult to believe.
IV
AMERICA'S NEW PLACE IN THE WORLD
The United States of America has a new meaning in the world, and has
entered, by no desire of its own, into the great family of nations, as a
rich uncle whose authority and temper must be respected by those who
desire his influence in their family quarrels, difficulties, and
conditions of life. Before the war the United States was wonderfully
aloof from the peoples of Europe. The three thousand miles of Atlantic
Ocean made it seem enormously far away, and quite beyond the orbit of
those passionate politics which stirred European communities with Old
World hatred and modern rivalries. It was free from the fear which was
at the back of all European diplomacy and international intrigue--the
fear of great standing armies across artificial frontiers, the fear of
invasion, the fear of a modern European war in which nation against
nation would be at one another's throats, in a wild struggle for
self-preservation. America was still the New World, far away, to which
people went in a spirit of adventure, in search of fortune and liberty.
There was a chance of one, a certainty of the other, and it was this
certain gift which called to multitudes of men and women--Russians and
Russian Jews, Poles and Polish Jews, Czechs, and Bohemians, and Germans
of all kinds--to escape from the bondage which cramped their souls under
the oppression of their own governments, and to gain the freedom of the
Stars and Stripes. To the popular imagination of Europe, America was the
world's democratic paradise, where every man had equal opportunity and
rights, a living wage with a fair margin and the possibility of enormous
luck. A steady stream of youth flowed out from Ireland to New York, year
after year, and Irish peasants left behind in their hovels heard of
great doings by Pat and Mick, who had become the gentlemen entirely out
there in the States, and of Kathleen and Biddy, who were piling up the
dollars so fast that they could send some back to the old people and not
feel the loss of them at all, at all.
The internal resources of America were so vast and the development of
their own states so absorbed the energies of the people that there was
no need of international diplomacy and intrigue to capture new markets
of the world or to gain new territory for the possession of raw
material. The United States was self-centered and self-sufficient, and
the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine prohibiting foreign powers from any
colonizing within the boundaries of the Republic was developed in
popular imagination and tradition to a firm policy of self-isolation and
of non-interference by others. The American people had no interest,
politically, in the governments or affairs of other nations, and they
desired to be left alone, with a "Hands off!" their own sovereign power.
It was this reality of isolation which gave America immense advantages
as a republic and had a profound influence upon the psychology of her
citizens. Being aloof from the traditions of European peoples and from
their political entanglements and interdependence, the United States
could adopt a clear and straightforward policy of self-development on
industrial lines. Her diplomacy was as simple as a child's copy-book
maxim. Her ambassadors and ministers at European courts had no need of
casuistry or Machiavellian subtlety. They had an exceedingly interesting
and pleasant time reporting back the absurdities of European embassies,
the melodrama of European rivalries, the back-stairs influence at work
in secret treaties, the assassinations, riots, revolutions, and
political crises which from time to time convulsed various
countries--and the corrupt bargainings and jugglings between small
powers and great powers. The American representatives in Europe watched
all this as the greatest game on earth, but far away from the United
States, and without the slightest effect upon the destiny of their own
country, except when it excited Wall Street gamblers. American diplomats
were not weighted down by the fear of offending the susceptibilities of
Germany or France or Italy or Russia, nor were they asked to play off
one country against another, in order to maintain that delicate and evil
mechanism known as "the balance of power"--the uniting of armed bands
for self-defense or the means of aggression. The frontiers of America
were inviolate and the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards were not open to
sudden attack, like the boundaries between Germany and France, Turkey
and Bulgaria, Italy and Austria, where fear of invasion was the
under-current of all political and popular thought, and the motive power
of all national energy, to the detriment of social progress, because of
the crippling cost of standing armies and unproductive labor for the
material of war. Nationally, therefore, the United States of America was
in supreme luck because it could use its youth and resources with full
advantage, free from menace and beyond all rivalry.