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OUTRE-IWER 
 
OUTRE-MER 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA 
 
 BY 
 
 PAUL BOURGET 
 
 MEMBER OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY 
 
 
 ff 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1895 
 
1^1 K?U . p / / 
 
 / 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1894, 1895 
 BY JAMES GORDON BENNETT 
 
 J 
 
J- 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. At Sea i 
 
 II. The First Week i8 
 
 III. Society 43 
 
 A Summer City 43 
 
 IV. Society 71 
 
 Women and Young Girls 71 
 
 V. Business Men and Business Scenes no 
 
 VI. The Lower Orders 159 
 
 The Workingmen 159 
 
 Farmers and Cowboys • 228 
 
 VII. Education 276 
 
 VIII. American Pleasures 326 
 
 IX. Down South 371 
 
 In Georgia 371 
 
 X. Down South 402 
 
 In Florida 402 
 
 XI. Homeward 414 
 
OUTRE-MER 
 
 AT SEA 
 
 On Board the , August, 1893. 
 
 The enormous ship — it has three funnels, a displacement 
 of ten thousand tons, and an average speed of five hundred 
 miles a day — is ploughing the broad ocean under full head- 
 way. An August afternoon sky broods over the Atlantic with 
 its autumn clouds. It is like a flat gray lid, beneath which, 
 tirelessly, monotonously, the waters heave and swell. The 
 dull gray waves, opaque as the sky, rise up, tower aloft, and 
 then come crashing down. For a second, as each uprears 
 hself, the thin rufifled crest shines green, a fringe of foam 
 plays along it, white and undulating. Then the wavering 
 crest gives way, the emerald wall crashes down in a heavy 
 mass of brackish water under the swelling of another wave. 
 I'here are thousands upon thousands of them, heaving, rag- 
 ing, clashing in a frenzy as of a resounding battle; over it 
 sometimes a bird flies with outspread wings, black against the 
 gray sky, seeking its prey in the wind and tempest. The 
 mighty ship ploughs through the terrific heaving of the sea, 
 without either pitching or rolling. So steady is the deck that 
 it would seem like a weird nightmare but for the ceaseless 
 quivering of its metal frame. 
 
 This is one of the five or six steamers that sailors call " ocean 
 
 B I 
 
2 OUTRE-MER 
 
 greyhounds." It deserves the felicitous epithet as much by its 
 proportions and the elegance of the lines which define the 
 slender contour of its colossal hull as by its prodigious speed. 
 Only a few hours ago, we started, and already the coast of 
 Ireland is fading away, losing itself in the leaden rim of the 
 cloudy dome which encircles the horizon. A few more turns 
 of the double screw, and for a whole week we shall have 
 around us only the unfathomable waves, and beyond them the 
 New World. 
 
 How it draws me — that New World, and for reasons no 
 doubt far enough removed from those which are attracting my 
 fellow-travellers. The flag that floats above us bears upon its 
 white field the spread eagle of the United States. The ship 
 is American, and so are most of my fellow-travellers. Hav- 
 ing decided once again to quit France, I preferred to cut the 
 thread at once, and here I am already in Yankee land. I hear 
 only English on this deck, — a nasal English in which the word 
 "well " takes the place of the word "yes," and recurs continu- 
 ally. It has already behooved me to change my French money 
 and to learn without delay that the unit of expenditure has 
 leaped from the franc to the dollar; in other words, is quin- 
 tupled. These are the first two evidences of expatriation, 
 and the next is the indescribable insolence of the ship's ser- 
 vants, or rather of the help. For have I not long known that 
 there are no servants in the United States? Not one of my 
 neighbors, who to the number of a hundred or so are enjoying 
 the air on long folding-chairs, has probably observed these 
 trifles; but for the foreigner they are like the little shiver 
 that thrills through the swimmer as he makes the first plunge. 
 However accustomed one may be to what the tragical and 
 restless Maupassant used to call "the errant life," there is in 
 the sudden leap from any "home " a vague sensation of melan- 
 choly. Or rather — for that is a pretty large word for a 
 simple contraction of the nerves — it is rather an involuntary 
 
AT SEA 3 
 
 impulse to draw back. The thousand inconveniences of the 
 uprooting rise up before you, and you ask yourself, " Why this 
 new journey? What am I crossing the ocean to seek, far from 
 my friends, my books, the familiar scenes of the land where I 
 grew up? " Alas! it is no longer that land that is fading away 
 yonder into the mist, for the name of this coast is Cape Clear 
 Island. Never mind, that Irish island belonged to Europe, 
 after all. That lighthouse which has just been kindled is no 
 doubt heralding the arrival home to other travellers, who for 
 one reason or another have already gone through the experi- 
 ence upon which I am entering. When, eight or ten months 
 hence, if God wills, I see again that point of land, that light 
 flashing out against the sky, shall I have brought back from 
 beyond the sea a rich harvest of ideas and memories? Shall 
 I be telling myself then that I was wrong in again exiling 
 myself for so long a time, or shall I say that I was right? 
 
 To the two questions of afterwards I cannot yet make 
 answer, but I see clearly my reply to the two former, the 
 questions of beforehand. What America has to give me I do 
 not know. What I expect from her I know very well, and 
 I should like to sketch in a few lines upon the opening 
 pages of my journal a sort of programme, an intellectual self- 
 examination. 
 
 When I come to revise my notes, it will make the best of 
 prefaces for them, I think; and it is also the best way of 
 beguiling the weariness of the steamer, that sensation of days 
 at once long and empty, which from the experience of eastern 
 sea-faring I know only too well. There is no such thing as 
 time at sea, — no distribution of hours, no small divisions of 
 life. One is as if cradled, rocked by a mighty power which 
 suppresses you, in which you will melt away. The infinitely 
 littles of sea-faring life, vague dreams of things seen only in 
 their large outlines, are all that come to help you to while 
 away these mornings and afternoons of languid vegetation. I 
 
4 OUTRE-MER 
 
 shall try two remedies, and I begin with the second, which 
 accords only too well with the dominant passion of my mind, 
 with my fancy — my mania, almost — for gathering thousands 
 of scattered facts into the brief limits of a formula. Well, the 
 wolf will always show himself wolf, saith the sage. That is 
 just a way of thinking, of looking at things, and it must have 
 its uses as well as its limitations. In any case, it is my own 
 particular kind of impressionism, and I can be sincere only 
 by yielding to it, begging, in advance, the reader's pardon 
 for this abuse of abstract reflection. 
 
 "Expatriation," I wrote just now. How harsh the word is, 
 and how false it rings! In all my journeyings I have felt, 
 and I feel still more strongly now, that one can never be ex- 
 patriated. However far he may be from his native land or 
 from any land, he has only to retire into his innermost con- 
 sciousness to find himself citizen not of the world, but of that 
 little corner of it from which he came. What draws me to 
 America is not America, but Europe and France; it is the 
 disquietude of the problems in which the future of Europe 
 and France is hidden. Three powers are at work to-day to 
 hew out that future; three divinities, with hands as stern and 
 inexorable as those of the Parcae, whose sovereignty over all 
 the interests and enterprises of the Old W^orld it behooves us 
 to recognize. The first is Democracy; the second is Science; 
 the third, the last to appear and the least easy to name, is the 
 idea of Race. Turn to whatever remotest corner of the con- 
 tinent you may, from St. Petersburg to London, from Rome 
 to Paris, you shall find these three powers at work, busy 
 in moulding the lineaments of a new world, — so at least their 
 devotees assert, — busy in destroying, piece by piece, the 
 antique edifice which for ages has sheltered human life, and, 
 say their adversaries, without building up anything to replace 
 it. And the latter have no difficulty in showing us what sort 
 
AT SEA 5 
 
 of a Europe these new divinities have made, how sinister it 
 is, how different from that of which our fathers dreamed, 
 when, at the close of the last century, they hailed with a shout 
 of confiding hope the dawn of the Revolution. Universal 
 suffrage, — that is to say, the imbecile tyranny of numbers, the 
 reign of force in its blindest and most unjust form, — this is 
 the regime which Democracy has established wherever it has 
 triumphed. To this it has added the clamorous awakening 
 of the lower appetites, a universal discontent with one's lot, 
 and the constant menace of a revolt of the fourth estate, of 
 poverty and envy, against a civilization which promised to 
 give liberty, equality, and fraternity, and which has gone 
 bankrupt of all its unrealizable promises. 
 
 The positive benefit bestowed by Science is a more adroit 
 treatment of nature, known at last with precision ; but it is 
 dearly bought, if it be true that philosophical nihilism is the 
 last outcome of this gigantic attempt to ask questions that 
 have no possible solution. Brought face to face with the 
 Unknowable, and constrained to acknowledge that its method 
 is powerless ever to reach the causes that lie back of phenom- 
 ena and the substance that lies behind accidental circum- 
 stance, what aliment can Science give the soul, except the 
 bread of bitterness and the waters of death ? Developing to 
 the highest degree in the man of to-day the spirit of experi- 
 ment and of criticism, it has made faith in the supernatural 
 almost impossible to an innumerable multitude of average 
 consciences, and it is the sum of the average consciences that 
 makes what we call the national conscience. Hence, what a 
 loss of the Ideal in contemporary Europe ! What uncertainty 
 of conviction, and, as a natural consequence, what incoherent 
 feebleness of will, what weakening of character, what ill- 
 regulated energy, what moral maladies, forever recurring in 
 ever-new complications, in these last years of this end of a 
 century, which has so longed to do well ! 
 
6 OUTRE-MER 
 
 And, finally, the idea of Race, which amid the gun-flashes 
 of Solferino seemed so generous, so logical, — into what a 
 menace of barbarism it has resolved itself, now that the very- 
 Europe which gave herself to progress is only a succession 
 of fortified camps, where thousands of men wait beside their 
 loaded cannon for the hour of such an extermination as his- 
 tory has never yet known I 
 
 Yes, this is the evident task of these three direful and 
 merciless toilers, whom it is nevertheless vain to ban. For in 
 the grand, irresistible forces of society, as in those of nature, 
 there is a character of fatality which is just so far sacred. 
 Lying beyond the foresight and control of man, they appear 
 to us as mysterious emanations of the very principle from 
 which all reality flows. All that is irresistible and illimitable 
 in them commands our acquiescence, as birth and death com- 
 mand it, as day and night, or as this sea, whose waves beat 
 upon this vessel on which I write these lines. In presence 
 of such a necessity despair is impossible, until one has cal- 
 culated all the chances of a happier future; that is to say, 
 until one has made certain that the effects produced by these 
 implacable causes are always the same. 
 
 Now one country has been found where these three forces, 
 so destructive in our old world, have been called upon to con- 
 struct, out of whole cloth, a new universe. This country was 
 a democracy from the very beginning, and a scientific democ- 
 racy, because to conquer this virgin soil it was necessary to 
 make use of the most modern machines and methods of indus- 
 try. It was a country upon which the race problem was forced 
 at its very origin, and against which it still continually brings 
 up, being formed of the alluvium of all the nations of Europe, 
 Asia, and Africa, and forced to make it possible not only for 
 Englishmen to live with Irishmen, and Germans with French- 
 men, but yellow and black men with men of white skins. 
 
 Up to the present time it appears to have succeeded. Every 
 
AT SEA 7 
 
 year its population augments, its riches increase, its cities 
 grow, with the energy of tropical plants. Forty years ago, 
 what was St, Louis, or St. Paul, or Minneapolis? what was 
 Chicago itself? To-day, the inhabitants of those cities of 
 yesterday are counted by the hundred thousand, two hundred 
 thousand, five hundred thousand; and this year the most 
 surprising one of them all has opened an Exposition to which 
 the whole world was invited — and the whole world has gone 1 
 An army of twenty-five thousand men suffices this people, who 
 yet, less than thirty years ago, proved that military energy was 
 as abundant among them as all other forms of energy; and 
 then, the struggle ended, they returned to the occupations of 
 peace with the same rapidity with which they had organized 
 the formidable machinery of war. How can one know of the 
 existence of such a nation, and not be curious to study the 
 conditions of its existence elsewhere than in books? How 
 lose an opportunity to estimate upon the spot the worth of 
 this society, which claims to be that of the future, and which, 
 in any case, is one of the possibilities of the future? I be- 
 lieve that I am aware in advance of all that will shock me in 
 this country, where the poetry of a past is wanting, — I who 
 have so loved Italy, Greece, Syria, and their soil, half formed 
 of the dust of the dead. I know that I shall not find among 
 them those of my own mind and heart. But where would I 
 not go, or to whom, in the hope of getting back a little faith 
 in the future of civilization, which, among us, seems upon 
 the point of sinking into irreparable ruin? 
 
 I have let five days pass since the afternoon of our depart- 
 ure, when I tried my powers at that sort of mental balance 
 sheet, which it is good to draw up in the first and last hours 
 of a long journey. During the journey itself, one must give 
 oneself up to the present sensation. The writer must make 
 use of his general impressions, in the way that the painter 
 
8 OUTRE-MER 
 
 utilizes the walls of his studio. He hangs upon them the 
 studies which at once hide and are sustained by them. Dur- 
 ing these five days, therefore, I have done my best to forget 
 my theories, as I hope to forget them during the months to 
 come; and I have given myself up to steamer life, which is 
 always the same in all climates and on all seas. Neverthe- 
 less, looking at it more closely, this ship is already a bit of 
 America, and one who is keen-sighted in manners could 
 easily distinguish here, as elsewhere, the national tone, that 
 ineffaceable little sign which every people imprints upon its 
 own physiognomy. Who has ever quitted a steamer of the 
 Peninsular Company, the classic P. and O. of Egypt and 
 India, for a vessel of the Messageries, without feeling that all 
 England is in the one and all France in the other, just as all 
 Italy is in the between-decks of one of the Florios, which 
 coast from Genoa to Patrasso ? But one discerns these shades 
 of difference only when one already knows the peoples. 
 
 Here, at all events, is a sketch of some of the pictures 
 which I shall carry away with me from this voyage, now so 
 soon to end. We have made such good time that, having left 
 Southampton on Saturday afternoon, we shall be in New York 
 to-morrow — Friday — evening, notwithstanding that the sea 
 has rudely assailed us at certain times, notably at that middle 
 point of ocean which sailors call the "devil's hole," and 
 although, at the very moment when I resume my journal, the 
 fog is thickening over a sea so smooth that it barely shows a 
 ripple. A ground swell lifts it in a large, slow undulation, 
 while the ship is veiled in a soft, white mist, so dense that 
 from one end of it persons and things at the other seem to 
 melt together in a vague, spectral shimmer. Moment by 
 moment the whistle rends the fog with its strident call, but 
 the speed of our course is not lessened by a single knot. 
 
 "It is safer," says one of my table companions. "In case 
 of collision, the swiftest vessel always cuts down the other." 
 
AT SEA 9 
 
 And first this upper deck, on which I have passed so many 
 hours, while the waves, beaten by the wind, sprinkled it with 
 their salty spray; let me once more bring before my eyes the 
 two passages along the cabins, with their lines of close- 
 crowded steamer chairs. There men and women passed their 
 days, reading, conversing, lounging, sleeping; the colors of 
 their plaids, the intermingling of green and yellow, red and 
 black, bringing out the brightness or the blemishes of their 
 faces. To my fancy, these faces, young and old, which every 
 morning I found in the same place, were like enigmas of 
 race, in which, with a singular curiosity, I amused myself 
 with searching the not-to-be-attested heredities, all the various 
 elements which have been fused together in that Corinthian 
 brass, the American race. In all this crowd there was nothing 
 of the clean-cut outline which distinguishes the physiognomy 
 of almost all Englishmen, clear, heavy, distinct, like their 
 printing. Instead of this were countenances so dissimilar, 
 and physiques so contradictory, that one could easily detect 
 in them all the different atavisms of which the United States 
 is the synthesis. This square-shouldered personage, with 
 hands heavy as beetles and feet like the base of a column, 
 who smokes great cigars with a strong inspiration of the 
 breath, and whose small eyes flash through their spectacles 
 with an expression at once shrewd and kindly, do I need to 
 be told that his name ends in viann, and that he is returning 
 to Chicago, before I can be sure that he is German, or a son 
 of Germany? This other, with the nervous gayety of his deep 
 blue eyes, his red beard, his excited gestures, the evident 
 ail-but of his dress, how can I doubt that he is Irish, or a 
 son of Ireland? This third, with his too black eyes, set in a 
 spare, thin, olive-tinted mask, how indisputably Spanish, the 
 living silhouette of some Californian adventurer ! 
 
 And then, beside these faces, with their clearly defined 
 character, there are others in which five or six different types 
 
10 OUTRE-MER 
 
 have blended, — faces heavy and colorless, deeply marked 
 with lines that tell of struggle. They smile, and in the very 
 act of smiling they remain austere, almost bitter, as if the 
 labors and pains of more than one generation had left their 
 impress upon them. Many of the women, and very pretty 
 ones, talk familiarly with both classes. Among them are 
 several actresses, returning to their native country after a tour 
 in England. I picture to myself the gallantries, actual or 
 prospective, which such travelling intimacies would imply on 
 a boat belonging to a Latin country. In the present case, the 
 contrary impression prevails; here are crude manners on a 
 basis of energy and determination, as ours are based on pleas- 
 ure or wit. It is all symbolized in the courage, hardihood, 
 persistence with which, ever since setting sail, and whatever 
 the mutations of the sea, many of the young women have per- 
 sisted in pacing the deck with steady steps; while a group of 
 young fellows and older men played cricket on the forward 
 deck, in driving spray or drenching rain. 
 
 "My brother is not comfortable if he has not two hours of 
 hard exercise every day," a young girl said to me, looking up 
 from her diligent reading of a review article on Physical Cul- 
 ture. 
 
 The dining-room, also, rises up before my eyes, with the 
 barbaric luxury of its new gilding and the humming of voices 
 around the tables. From the hour of our departure the abun- 
 dance of food has kept pace with the barbaric luxury, with its 
 twenty-five dishes for breakfast, luncheon, or dinner. I had 
 often heard of American wastefulness. I became aware of 
 it three times a day, in face of this prodigality of food, which 
 conjured up visions of oxen, sheep, and pigs hanging up by 
 the score in refrigerating rooms between decks, heaps of fish 
 in other ice-boxes, and a provision of milk products and fruits 
 enough to last through a siege. 
 
AT SEA 1] 
 
 The distance between me and the land of the vine was evi- 
 dent enough merely from seeing how those who devoured 
 these things washed down their food. Whiskey, ale, soda, 
 tea, lemonade, port, sherry, dry champagne, brandy, apollina- 
 ris, appeared on all the tables, attesting that voluntary habit 
 of diet so characteristic of Anglo-Saxon countries. There is 
 no type of food with them, as there is with us. Each stomach 
 obeys its own caprice. And in the semi-hallucination caused 
 by the rocking of the sea, I always seemed to see hovering 
 over this assembly the smile of a certain singular personage, 
 a New York dentist who lives in Rome, but whom I met again 
 on this ship, on his way to a congress in Chicago, — one of 
 those indefatigable artists in gold who, with all the daring 
 and dexterity of an engineer, dig tunnels in the teeth of their 
 clients, and build metal bridges in the most devastated 
 mouths. At times he seemed to my eyes to be clothed in 
 the dignity of host at this travelling table, so plainly, from 
 the very first breakfast, did the boon companions show that 
 animal avidity which characterizes a predatory race, to whom 
 the preservation of a great masticating implement has of 
 necessity become as important as talons to the vulture or 
 claws to the lion. 
 
 I see that dining-room again, quiet, decorous, solemnly 
 resonant with the voice of a minister reading prayers. It is 
 Sunday morning, and of two hundred passengers more than 
 one hundred are present at this service ! These very faces 
 which I saw yesterday, and shall see to-morrow, flushed with 
 much eating, are bent over- Bibles, with the seriousness of 
 sincere personal conviction. All these people travel with 
 their own prayer books. I watched them through the sky- 
 light, with the feeling that, in spite of the prodigious afflux 
 of immigration, the soul of those Pilgrim Fathers who set sail 
 in the Mayflower in 1620 is not yet dead, and I pictured to 
 
12 OUTRE-MER 
 
 myself that setting forth, preceded by a day of solemn humili- 
 ation, " the pastor having taken for his text this verse from 
 Ezra : ' Beside the river Ahava I proclaimed a day that we might 
 humble ourselves before our God and receive of him direction 
 in the right way, we, our children, and all our substance.' " 
 
 This is the profound feeling that still stirs in the " revivals " 
 of America, with their emotion so intense that, even in this 
 nineteenth century, new sects are forever springing up. You 
 could feel the throbbing of it between the gilded walls of this 
 gaudy saloon, with which in my mind it will ever be associ- 
 ated. I shall always see there yet another and very different 
 scene — a concert arranged by a theatre manager who is 
 making a starring tour as far as San Francisco. The pro- 
 ceeds of the concert were to be given to the hospital for 
 poor sailors. A former minister of the United States to one 
 of the first courts of Europe had accepted the presidency of 
 the affair. All the humor of a nation of debaters, of men 
 accustomed to be always talking, in private and public, spoke 
 in the tone with which he began, alluding to his unhappy 
 cabin experiences: ^'^ I present to you a very poor sailor.''^ If 
 I had not known to what part of the world I was going, I 
 should have learned from the absolutely simple manner of the 
 umquhile diplomatist. It was enough to make amends for 
 a sentimental ditty that will long ring in my ears, which 
 began, "Two lambs in the field, not dreaming of mint sauce," 
 and the painful vulgarity of a singer who mimicked an Irish 
 chambermaid about to become an actress. Shaking her fist 
 with the vigor of a professional boxer making ready to give a 
 "punishment," she howled, "I 'want to be a Hactress! a 
 Hactress ! " in such formidable tones that the glasses trembled 
 at them as they had not done at the raging of the sea. 
 
 What a course of international psychology was that lower 
 smoking-room, about nine o'clock in the evening, especially 
 
AT SEA 13 
 
 yesterday, when they drew the numbers of one of the last 
 pools, on the speed of the ship. Fifty people, perhaps, in 
 an atmosphere redolent at once of the steamer, of tobacco, 
 of toilet water — for the barber's shop is next door, and he 
 was occupied, with the door open, in shampooing a client's 
 hair — and of alcohol ! There is a bar at the end of the 
 room, where the alchemist to whom is intrusted the cocktails 
 manipulates one of those corrosive mixtures with which Amer- 
 icans delight to burn themselves up. Poker-playing goes on 
 all night long in this room, with its lining of yellow wood and 
 its electric lights, shaded by globes of blue and rose color, 
 that shed a fairy-like radiance. The players are reading the 
 points on the corners of their huge playing-cards; their im- 
 passive faces, schooled for a bluff, betraying only that cold 
 fever of the gambler, which now rages around the numbers of 
 the pool. A cadaverous, thick-lipped actor has put them all 
 In a bag, and is drawing them out and allotting them to the 
 different passengers who in the course of the day have in- 
 scribed their names on the sheet of paper hung up against the 
 smoke-dimmed mirror. Next, they will be put "up at auction, 
 and the fat man will run up the bidding, descanting on the 
 merits of number with the glibness of a commercial traveller, 
 though with sinister prediction. Thus he will say, "481, 
 . . . there will be a terrible fog; 480, that is the lowest, and 
 the best. We shall slip along like the Victory. 480, who 
 wants enough to pay his insurance? 504, that is the highest 
 and the best. This is all halcyon weather. We shall make 
 506." And the bids go up, one dollar, five, ten, twenty, a 
 hundred, until — "One, two, three, gone/" to the Honorable 
 
 Mr. . 
 
 The faces of these stick most in my memory, with their 
 hard, restless eyes, and the firm, half-cruel movement of their 
 mouths. Almost all of them are gray rather than brown- 
 haired, their complexion poisoned by the abuse of the for- 
 
14 OUTRE-MER 
 
 midable alcoholic drinks. Their faces inevitably bring up 
 before me those western legends where a cocked revolver is 
 always within reach of the player. Two faces, especially, 
 appear clearly before me : one, square cut and open, with a 
 sailor-cap drawn down over the brows, a short, straight pipe 
 in the corner of the mouth, and a mocking smile as he raised 
 the bid; the other, sharp and insolent, with an expression at 
 once sly and vulgar. The voices which issued from these two 
 mouths, as each grew more intense in this strife for dollars, 
 betrayed a hatred almost like that of two different species, as 
 if there were, in the background of this play, or more prop- 
 erly this deed, the display of a force almost animal. And no 
 sooner was the strife over the number of miles brought to an 
 end, than it began again over the number of the first pilot 
 we should meet. 
 
 That first pilot boat, how tiny it was as it came flying be- 
 fore the wind to meet us, with all sails spread, the waves at 
 times threatening to engulf it ! We were six hundred miles 
 from port, and it was a matter of three hundred dollars for 
 the pilot. That evening we met another, who had made his 
 five hundred miles for nothing, in the fearful wind of these 
 last few days. For one second the steam is shut off. A tiny 
 bark puts out from the schooner, bearing a rower with the pilot. 
 The latter catches the rope ladder thrown to him from the 
 deck. He has not overleaped the bulwarks before the machin- 
 ery is at work again, and the steamer once more at full speed. 
 Five minutes more, and the brave little sail-boat is only a 
 white speck in the vast expanse, continually engulfed in the 
 enormous hollows of the waves through which we cut, with 
 the uniform speed of men who are determined to " break the 
 record." That is the untranslatable expression by which 
 Americans so well express that which, from the very first, has 
 been the foundation of their character; to hold it possible to 
 
AT SEA 15 
 
 do anything which has once been done, and to exceed it. Is 
 this pride? Is it the madness of battle? Is it yet another 
 instance of atavism — since these men are sons or grandsons, 
 within three or four generations, of desperate men, who 
 crossed this same ocean with the fixed idea that this was their 
 last resort. I do not know; but I do know that I shall not 
 soon forget the frantic speed of the ocean greyhound, during 
 that last day of heavy fog, nor that first approach to the land 
 of all audacity in the audacity of a speed great enough to cut 
 through an ironclad, if we had happened to meet one. But 
 who except myself thinks of such a thing? Every one is 
 already absorbed in the newspapers which the pilot has just 
 brought. "It is hardly worth while, though," says some one; 
 "they are two days old." 
 
 The seventh day we arrive in sight of New York, on a sum- 
 mer morning at once burning and overcast. We could not 
 come up to the wharf yesterday, because of the lateness of the 
 hour, and I am glad of it, in view of the incomparable beauty 
 of the approach. The steamer is passing up the mouth of the 
 Hudson, which forms the harbor of this great city, with a 
 motion as measured as twenty-four hours ago it was rapid. 
 This sensation, so unexpected and profound, would alone 
 repay the whole voyage. The enormous estuary frets and 
 plashes, upheaved by the last surges of the Atlantic ; and on 
 either shore as far as the eye can reach, — on the right, where 
 New York stretches away, on the left, where Jersey City 
 huddles, — is a long succession, indefinite, indeterminate, of 
 short wooden wharves, broad and covered over. There are 
 names inscribed upon them, here a railway company, there a 
 steamship line, then another railway, and then another steamer 
 company; and so on indefinitely, while from one wharf after 
 another gigantic steamboats come and go, carrying away or 
 pouring forth passengers by the hundred, scores of carriages, 
 vast trains of loaded trucks. I count five, six, of these ferry- 
 
16 OUTRE-MER 
 
 boats, — fifteen, twenty. Enormous, their two tiers of white 
 and brown cabins overhang the green water, their iron 
 wheels churn the heavy waves, and over all a gigantic 
 walking-beam beats off their rhythmic motion. They meet, 
 touch lightly, and pass one another by without a shock, so 
 sure is their motion. They seem like colossal beasts of labor, 
 each performing its task with sure fidelity. Numberless little 
 vessels, stout and nimble, dart across their course. They are 
 the tugs. The swells break rudely on their small hulls, and 
 you hear the harsh puffing of their engines, those robust and 
 almost over-large lungs of steel, which quite fill their little 
 bodies. You realize how strong they are by their forward 
 motion, so accurately directed that without ever slowing down 
 they dart between heavy vessels, the impact of which would 
 be shipwreck. Trailing in their wake are the most fragile 
 kind of barks, carrying two, three, four masts. The slight 
 little craft, trembling, almost disappears in the sea-green 
 track cut deep in the laboring water, lashed into combing 
 waves. Now and again one of these tugs sends forth a pierc- 
 ing and piteous whistle, which mingles with the hoarse bellow 
 of the ferry-boats. They are all threading their way on the 
 breast of this vast river, among half a hundred great, slow- 
 moving steamers like our own, — vessels from Europe, from 
 South America, from North America. With tranquil strength 
 the high red hulls cut the heaving mass, freighted with so 
 much of human toil, so many human lives. Their forms are 
 blurred in the warm haze, their outlines melt away, phantom- 
 like. Behind them other steamers come into sight, barely 
 outlined, dimly seen; and still farther in the background 
 looms up a mighty forest of masts and yards, while high over 
 all this gigantic moving mechanism, which might well be 
 the mart of the entire world, towers the statue of Liberty, tall 
 as a lighthouse, outlined against the foaming clouds. On the 
 right and on the left the two cities stretch away, like the 
 
AT SEA 17 
 
 perspective of a dream, far as the eye can reach — beyond 
 the reach of thought. 
 
 Leaning over the ship's rail on the side toward New York, 
 I succeed in distinguishing a mass of diminutive houses, an 
 ocean of low buildings, from the midst of which uprise, like 
 cliff-bound islets, brick buildings, so daringly colossal that, 
 even at this distance, their height overpowers my vision. I 
 count the stories above the level of the roofs; one has ten, 
 another twelve. Another, not yet finished, has a vast iron 
 framework, outlining upon the sky the plan of six more stories 
 above the eight already built. Gigantic, colossal, enormous, 
 daring, there are no words, — words are inadequate to this 
 apparition, this landscape, in which the vast outlet of the 
 river serves as a frame for the display of still vaster human 
 energy. Reaching such a pitch of collective effort, this 
 energy has become an element of nature itself. To deepen 
 this impression, history adds the ferocious truth of figures. 
 In 1624, not much more than two hundred and fifty years ago, 
 the Indians were selling to a Westphalian the extreme tip of 
 Manhattan Island. He founded this city which lies here 
 before me. It is the poetry of Democracy, and these sprout- 
 ings forth of popular vitality are a poem, where the individ- 
 ual is lost sight of, and personal effort is only a note in an 
 immense concert. Verily, this is not the Parthenon, — that 
 little temple on a little hill, in which the Hellenes summed 
 up their Ideal, with hardly anything of the material, and of 
 the Spirit enough to animate it with measure and harmony 
 down to its smallest atoms. But it is the obscure and tre- 
 mendous poetry of the modern world, and it gives you a tragic 
 shudder, there is in it so much of mad and wilful humanity 
 in a horizon like that of this morning — and it is the same 
 every day ! 
 
II 
 
 THE FIRST WEEK 
 
 I HAVE passed a week in New York and have hardly seen 
 one of the persons to whom I have brought introductions. 
 During the burning heats of an August as stifling as that of 
 Madrid, they are all in the country, at the seashore, in Europe. 
 I myself am about to set out for Newport, the Deauville of 
 America, that I may see society at close range. I have there- 
 fore had leisure during these seven days, to ramble about the 
 city as a mere tourist, and to receive a first impression of 
 it — a first shock, as the agreeable Professor Charles N. 
 of Cambridge said to me, advising me to name this book 
 of travels American Shocks, by way of contrast to my Italian 
 Sensations. 
 
 I wish I might put down here the journal of this week ; not 
 that I overestimate the importance and interest of these quite 
 superficial hotel and street experiences. They warrant no 
 general conclusion, and yet they have their value. It is, so to 
 speak, a rushing sense of the foreign, which a longer sojourn 
 will tone down, will do away with, to make room for a more 
 quiet, perhaps more exact, observation. These almost instinc- 
 tive perceptions of the difference of atmosphere between the 
 country we are in and that from which we come, no longer 
 deceive us when they have once been interpreted. I already 
 foresee that certain very general theories are nearing the limit 
 of their existence. It is probable that these hypotheses are very 
 inadequate, and that I shall change them more than once before 
 leaving this continent. Let me at least fix the surprises of 
 
 i8 
 
THE FIRST WEEK 19 
 
 these first hours before they are quite effaced — if it were only 
 by way of memorandum. 
 
 Saturday. — Henry J. said to me when we parted in London, 
 " I am looking forward to your impression of the wooden docks 
 of New York. You will want to return by the next steamer, as 
 C did." 
 
 The latter is a young Frenchman of rare mental superiority, 
 who like myself determined to visit the New World for a course 
 of treatment of activity and democracy. He landed upon a 
 wooden wharf, as I did, found his way to some hotel, as I have 
 done, presented his letters of introduction, as I shall present 
 mine. Five days later he boarded a vessel about to sail for 
 Europe. " I could not endure the blow," was his only reply to 
 the surprise of his relatives. 
 
 In truth, the blow of the landing is severe, at least to a 
 Frenchman accustomed to that administrative order whose 
 delays he curses when he is subjected to them, whose conven- 
 iences he sighs for in this crush of the Anglo-Saxon crowd, 
 where the struggle for life has its humble and vexatious symbol 
 in the struggle for baggage. 
 
 No sooner is the steamer docked than you find yourself in 
 an immense shed crowded with people who come and go, 
 jostling and being jostled. Gigantic policemen, rotund under 
 their tight girdles, stand firm in the sea of people, like columns 
 against which they must break. Custom-house officers in 
 uniforms unbuttoned because of the heat, their cheeks dis- 
 tended with tobacco, deface with long jets of brown saliva the 
 place destined for the trunks ; and the trunks are no sooner 
 brought up from the hold and set down there, than around 
 them swarm expressmen offering checks, and carpenters armed 
 with hammer and chisel to open and nail down the boxes. 
 Custom-house officers plunge their arms into the open trunks, 
 turning and overturning linen and dresses with all the rough 
 
20 OUTRE-MER 
 
 heedlessness of men in a hurry. The trunks at last closed and 
 checked are seized by porters, and sent spinning down to a 
 lower story by a long wooden incline, at the risk of crushing 
 them, while a pungent, sickening odor of perspiring flesh 
 mingles with the confused din. Such is the entrance to the 
 great American city — as swift and brutal as a round in the 
 ring. All the time there are sharp-eyed little men running 
 about in the chaos of people and trunks. They are reporters 
 on the lookout for an interview. I see the ship's dentist 
 struggling with one of them, who is asking him about the 
 cholera in Italy. The dilapidated hack in which I finally seat 
 myself seems like a wheeled Paradise, as it bears me away 
 from the tumultuous crowd, though it is jolting over a wretched 
 wooden pavement, and the quarter that lies between the wharf and 
 '"ifth Avenue, where my hotel is to be found, is abominably ugly. 
 Rows of red houses stretch out before me to an indefinite 
 extent, all precisely alike, with sash windows and no blinds. 
 Other houses appear hideous with signs, their ground floors 
 occupied either with liquor saloons or with stalls set out with 
 miserable wares, cheap fruits, and withered vegetables. The 
 foul pavement is covered with a sticky mud, compounded of 
 rubbish rather than of earth. Not a tree before these houses, 
 not a grass plot ; but rails laid along the streets for tramways, 
 poles for telegraph wires, and presently what seems to be a 
 long double tunnel supported by iron pillars. It is the aerial 
 railway, the " elevated " as they say. There are four of them 
 which stretch the whole length of the city, and carry two hun- 
 dred million passengers every year. During the short time 
 that our way follows this tunnel I count the trains that pass 
 overhead, three going down town and three up. The strong 
 framework which supports them trembles under their weight 
 and the fleetness of their passage. What can be the life of 
 those inhabitants of this city whose windows open upon this 
 incessant mad flitiht of locomotives and cars? 
 
THE FIRST WEEK 21 
 
 The hack passes through two quieter streets and reaches an 
 avenue, where a succession of cable cars rushes by in the same 
 mad haste. An endless chain runs underground, carrying 
 along the heavy cars upon rails, over which our carriage jolts. 
 Their automatic movement would terrify you like a nightmare 
 but for the man standing in the front. His clenched fingers 
 work the handles of the lever that by turn grips and releases 
 the chain, which moves invisible below the long fissure that lies 
 like a third rail between the other two. There are so many of 
 these cable cars, they go so fast, they so compactly block the 
 avenue, that vehicles drawn by horses hardly find room to pass 
 along. The latter are, therefore, becoming so rare that the 
 aspect of the streets is not like any part of any European city. 
 There are no fiacres such as are the gayety of Parisian streets, 
 no hansoms such as make the animation of those of London, 
 none of the botte which roll through Rome to the nimble trot 
 of their horses. You at once perceive that that darling of the 
 middle class, the private hired carriage, has no reason for being. 
 The laborer and the business man have the elevated road or 
 the street car that goes faster than the best horse. Those who 
 are neither laborers nor business men are rich men and have 
 their own carriages. 
 
 One open place with trees and turf, dominated by a tower 
 like the Giralda of Seville, is Madison Square, the point where 
 commercial Broadway crosses fashionable Fifth Avenue stretch- 
 ing endlessly away without cable road or elevated railway. The 
 tower is surmounted with a statue, in whose outlines I recognize 
 the Diana of the great sculptor, St. Gaudens, photographs of 
 which I have seen. The slender figure of the goddess stands out 
 finely against the blue sky. It is the first evidence of beauty 
 that I have seen since I set foot outside of the ship. Below the 
 Diana, all up and down the tower, is stretched in huge iron let- 
 ters the announcement of a bicycle exhibition. Between the 
 noble creation of the artist and the contiguous advertisement 
 
{ 
 
 22 OUTRE-MER 
 
 ■; tlie contact is as close and the contrast almost as great as 
 between the New York of labor, which I have just passed 
 through, and the New York of wealth, which at this moment I 
 am entering. Is there a cause for this total absence of transi- 
 tion ? Does it betray a complete absence of that sense of har- 
 mony which we call — which we used to call — taste ? Is it 
 simply that the city, having grown too rapidly upon a territory 
 too narrow, finds space lacking for its growth, as it is also lack- 
 ing, it would appear, for the posting of bills? I leave the solv- 
 ing of these problems to a time when I have not to install 
 myself in a new hotel, and when I am not wearied with seven 
 days at sea. A negro in livery, with smiling face and white 
 teeth, in which sparkle bits of gold half as large as my finger- 
 nail, has just opened the door of my carriage. I have barely 
 time to speak to the clerk when another negro opens the door 
 of an elevator, which mounts with dizzy rapidity to the seventh 
 floor ; and now behold a third negro entering the parlor in 
 which I am hastily scratching down these notes, to bring me a 
 jug of filtered water, overtopped by a lump of ice almost as 
 big as his head. I gaze upon him in amazement ; but he, 
 much offended with my absence of mind, while waiting for 
 my orders draws a key from his pocket, takes a second from a 
 secretary, and a third from the door, and begins to jingle them 
 to attract my attention. 
 
 " What are you doing ? " I ask him. 
 
 " I thought you might want to send a telegram," he replies, 
 with a familiar mendacity that would disarm a slave-dealer. I 
 send him for a newspaper, which he brings me. It is marked 
 three cents, but he asks me ten, adding philosophically, by way 
 of excuse, — 
 
 " You know, on the other side everything is cheaper." 
 
 Sunday. — Mass this morning in a little church at the corner 
 of I'hirtieth Street. One of the facts best known and most 
 
THE FIRST WEEK 23 
 
 remarked upon in France is the vitality of Catholicism in the 
 United States. The names of the three great authors of this 
 renascence — Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Ireland, and Mon- 
 signor Keane — are as familiar to us as to Americans them- 
 selves. What is the secret of this vitality ? I shall try some 
 day to find out. At present I can only grasp the too apparent 
 contrast between our own churches and this one. 
 
 On the outside, its walls of gray stone, with their fluttering 
 Japanese ivy, are not very different from the other buildings in 
 the block. To enter, you cross an anteroom, where you must 
 pay fifteen cents, — a little more than seventy-five centimes. 
 For that matter, what would the poor do in the vast hall of pol- 
 ished wood, which serves as chapel ? Each seat is covered with 
 leather cushions, the entrance to them barred by red silk cords, 
 hanging between hooks of copper. The entire floor is carpeted ; 
 the pictures on the walls are covered because it is summer. It 
 gives one the impression of a prayer club. Everything is brand- 
 new, opulent, comfortable, and yet religious, for the worship- 
 pers follow the service without a whisper or a wandering glance. 
 Recognizing copies of certain pictures, behind their green 
 gauze coverings, — a Madonna of the impassioned Andrea, 
 a Virgin of the lucid Raphael, Allori's tragic Judith, — 
 the churches of Italy rise up before me in sudden contrast, — 
 ruinous, unclean, sullied by superstition ; and yet so beautiful, 
 because they have endured, because everything in them moves 
 the heart with the profound emotion of the past — a long, long 
 past ! 
 
 But the worshippers who are gathered in this church have 
 precisely such a building as suits them. They are men of the 
 present, and for them religion is neither a reverie nor a long- 
 ing. The sermon, which the priest bases upon the gospel for 
 the day, — the incident of the Good Samaritan, — still farther 
 reveals the close presence of things actual. He speaks of the 
 descent from Jerusalem to Jericho in precisely the terms with 
 
24 OUTRE-MER 
 
 which he would speak of going from up- town to the Battery. 
 He refers to St. Paul, and his conversion as the apostle was 
 riding near Damascus corner. In his illustrations, the word 
 dollar continually recurs : " If you had made a thousand 
 dollars " ..." If you had paid a hundred dollars for such a 
 thing ; " and his severe, large-featured face grows sarcastic, his 
 voice vehement, as he pours invectives upon the clergy of 
 Europe, " with their prelates who live like princes." When 
 he raises his arm, I see that the red vestment which he has 
 put on for preaching shines with a briUiant newness which 
 harmonizes well with this church, these seats, this carpet, these 
 people, this sermon. But I ask again, at what hour and where 
 do the poor folk pray? 
 
 By carriage up Fifth Avenue and through Central Park, 
 which is the Bois de Boulogne of New York. Two hours of 
 the afternoon ; and I paid four dollars — say twenty francs — 
 for a drive that would be worth a hundred sous with us, or five 
 shillings in London. One of my steamer companions, who 
 recommended this drive to me, gave me several reasons for 
 its costUness. The first and most evident, I have already men- 
 tioned. A carriage is a luxury, and all luxuries are expensive 
 here, while the necessaries are cheaper than elsewhere. This 
 is why America still tempts our laboring people, and why so 
 many of its own rich men go to Europe that they may have 
 these luxuries, and better ones, at a fifth or a sixth the price. 
 The second reason is that the hackmen, like all other laborers, 
 are bound together in an impregnable Union. 
 
 Besides, it is but too evident that money cannot have much 
 value here. There is too much of it. The interminable suc- 
 cession of luxurious mansions which line Fifth Avenue proclaim 
 its mad abundance. No shops, — unless of articles of luxury, 
 — a few dressmakers, a few picture-dealers — the last froth of 
 the spent wave of that tide of business which drowns the rest 
 of the city — only independent dwelUngs, each one of which, 
 
THE FIRST WEEK 25 
 
 including the ground on which it stands, impUes a revenue 
 which one dares not calculate. Here and there are vast 
 constructions which reproduce the palaces and chateaux of 
 Europe. I recognize one French country seat of the sixteenth 
 century ; another, a red and white house, is in the style of the 
 time of Louis XIII. The absence of unity in this architecture 
 is a sufficient reminder that this is the country of the individual 
 will, as the absence of gardens and trees around these sumptu- 
 ous residences proves the newness of all this wealth and of the 
 city. This avenue has visibly been willed and created by sheer 
 force of millions, in a fever of land speculation, which has not 
 left an inch of ground unoccupied. This rapidity is again 
 shown in the almost total absence of life-like figures in the 
 sculptures with which the windows and colonnades of these 
 impromptu palaces are decorated. An artist needs time to 
 observe and patiently follow the forms of life ; and if the whole 
 United States had not found means to get along without him, 
 where would they have been ? They have made up for it by 
 feats of energy. That is something to triumph over in the 
 industrial world. The world of art requires less self-conscious- 
 ness, — an impulse of life which forgets itself, the alternations 
 of dreamy idleness with fervid execution. Years must pass 
 before these conditions are possible on the banks of the 
 Hudson. 
 
 Is the Park also a hasty and arbitrary production ? How- 
 ever that may be, the virginal vigor of the soil there bursts forth 
 in foliage of surprising opulence. It seems to me — but is this 
 a just view? — that there is a degree of disproportion between 
 this prodigal leafage and the branches themselves, as if these 
 fine trees had slighter trunks and a more nervous ramification 
 than ours. Have they grown too fast, like the houses? 
 
 The extent of the Park is enormous, and you stand amazed 
 when, having followed paths embowered in verdure, others wind- 
 ing around a lake, still others bordering immense fields where 
 
26 OUTRE-MER 
 
 sheep are feeding, you perceive above the thick green of the 
 clumps of trees a train flying over a track of red metal, thirty 
 feet up in the air, and the city beginning all over again. 
 
 This Park is simply a garden bisecting one of the avenues of 
 the city, — the Seventh. A whole people throng its paths this 
 Sunday afternoon, a veritable nation of working folk at rest. 
 I have not met two private victorias on these roads, swarming 
 as they are with vehicles. They are all pleasure carriages, 
 packed full with women and children, or tilburys driven by 
 their owners. I observe a sort of cart which is new to me, — 
 an oblong box with a bellows top, which at need might shelter 
 two persons. It is almost hidden between four enormous 
 wheels of startling fragility. A horse which goes like the wind 
 is attached to it without a collar, entirely free in his slight net- 
 work of flexible straps. As these carriages fly past, you might 
 fancy a race of huge demented spiders, so large and at the 
 same time so slight is their iron framework. The people who 
 pass you by in these vehicles and on the sidewalks are substan- 
 tially dressed and without elegance, -^ not a single workman's 
 blouse, and on the other hand not a rag nor anything which 
 would betray poverty. The men are rather small, thin, and 
 nervous in action. The women are small, too, and without 
 much beauty. In the dress of the latter there is a visible 
 abuse of high colors and of trimming. It is like an immense 
 walking emporium of ready-made clothes. Nevertheless, an 
 air of social health and good humor breathes from this crowd. 
 The mounted policemen who occasionally pass appear as Httle 
 to be watching as to be themselves in need of watching. 
 What I feel most strongly, without being able to -give a posi- 
 tive reason for the feeling, is that I am terribly far away, and 
 in a terribly different country. 
 
 Monday. — At what time of day do they die here ? At what 
 time do they love? At what time do they think? At 
 
THE FIRST WEEK 27 
 
 what time, indeed, are they men, nothing but men, as old 
 Faust said, and not machines for work or locomotion ? This 
 is the question I keep asking in spite of myself, after a day 
 spent in the cable cars, the elevated, — the L, to borrow the 
 New Yorker's abbreviation, — the electric cars, the ferry-boats, 
 seeing the city. One succeeds the other so rapidly, you are 
 so quickly transferred from tramway to tramway, from train 
 to train, that the stranger, one who is not up to the times, feels 
 a stupefaction something like that of the honest citizen at one 
 of Hanlon-Lee's pantomimes. This, be it said in parenthesis, 
 is probably the origin of this device in America. The acro- 
 bats had only to hurry, to make haste, to excite to frenzy 
 that fever for getting there which has led the people of this 
 country to the singular invention of making the street walk. 
 
 For that is what this cable tramway, this railway on the level 
 of the street, these electric tramways, really are — it is the 
 street which walks — which runs indeed. You miss a car — 
 another is here ; so full you could hardly drop a dollar on the 
 floor. You get in none the less, glad of a chance to stand 
 inside on the platform, on the step, while ragged urchins, fright- 
 fully thin, but all nerves and energy, manage to jump aboard of 
 a car between two street corners, into an elevated car between 
 two stations, crying the daily paper — no, not even that, the 
 paper of the hour, of the minute. F^dison began life that way, 
 legend says. 
 
 What faces I have met in the vagaries of this aimless jour- 
 ney ; what thousands of faces which I shall never see again ! 
 What strikes me most in these innumerable countenances is 
 the absence of interest. The contrast is extraordinary between 
 the good-fellowship of the omnibus that is complet with us, 
 where all the neighbors take notice of one another, where the 
 merest nothing starts a conversation. Here each eye seems 
 fixed upon the inner thought — upon some business — whatever 
 it may be, which will not wait, and which is the reason why, 
 
28 OUTRE-MER 
 
 when they leave the car, men and women run, as they ran to 
 catch it, as they run up and down the stairs of the elevated 
 road. 
 
 Mr. , a brother journalist who has served me to-day as 
 
 guide, says that they are no more pressed for time than any 
 Parisian. 
 
 " They hurry so," he said, " from mere habit, interest, nerv- 
 ousness. With it all they have curious streaks of laziness. 
 You will see them buy a paper in a hotel, at a restaurant, and 
 pay three cents more than the marked price, because they are 
 too indolent to go into the street for it." 
 
 I begin to understand how this negligence and this activity 
 belong together as I remark the rude finish of these very cars, 
 the want of care in the attire of the people. But these are 
 individual cases ; and you have only to come in contact with 
 things as a whole to receive again that impression of a Babel 
 with a splendor all its own, an impression which — shall I avow 
 it? — I have felt most strongly in connection with a building 
 devoted entirely to business offices, and a bridge over which 
 runs a railway ! 
 
 The building is called the Equitable, from the name of the 
 insurance company that built it. It is a gigantic palace with a 
 marble fagade, rising up almost at' the end of Wall Street, the 
 street of the miUiards, and very near Trinity Church ceme- 
 tery, where, hushed by the frantic tumult of life and the grating 
 of the cable car, reposes the printer of the first newspaper pub- 
 lished in New York, — William Bradford. What a tomb for a 
 journalist ! 
 
 Figures alone can give an idea — not, indeed, exact but ap- 
 proximate — of this human beehive with its thousand offices. 
 Mr. tells me that ten thousand persons a day use the ele- 
 vator of which we availed ourselves for going up to the roof. 
 The hum of life in the enormous building, the swarms of comers 
 and goers, the endless ramifications of the corridors, reduce 
 
THE FIRST WEEK 29 
 
 your mind almost to a stupor of admiration, sucli as you also 
 feel when looking from above upon this great city. 
 
 Far as the eye can reach it stretches away, between the two 
 rivers which girdle the island, and through innumerable 
 columns of smoke one is still able to distinguish the practical 
 simphcity of its construction — broad, longitudinal avenues cut 
 at right angles by streets, thus distributing the blocks of houses 
 in equal masses. You are acquainted with the city as soon as 
 you understand it. Given the number of the street, with the 
 usual East or West, showing that it is on the right or left of 
 Fifth Avenue, and you know within ten yards how far you have 
 to go, all the blocks being of uniform size. This is not even 
 a city in the sense in which we understand the word, we who 
 have grown up amid the charm of irregular cities which grew 
 as the trees do, slowly, with the variety, the picturesque 
 character of natural things. This is a table of contents of 
 unique character, arranged for convenient handhng. Seen 
 from here it is so colossal, it encloses so formidable an 
 accumulation of human efforts, as to overpass the bounds of 
 imagination. You think you must be dreaming when you 
 see beyond the rivers two other cities — Jersey City and 
 Brooklyn — spread out along their shores. The latter is only a 
 suburb, and it has nine hundred thousand inhabitants. 
 
 A bridge connects New York with Brooklyn, overhanging an 
 arm of the sea. Seen even from afar, this bridge astounds you 
 like one of those architectural nightmares given by Piranesi in 
 his weird etchings. You see great ships passing beneath it, 
 and this indisputable evidence of its height confuses the mind. 
 But walk over it, feel the quivering of the monstrous trellis of 
 iron and steel interwoven for a length of sixteen hundred feet 
 at a height of one hundred and thirty-five feet above the water ; 
 see the trains that pass over it in both directions, and the steam- 
 boats passing beneath your very body, while carriages come 
 and go, and foot passengers hasten along, an eager crowd, and 
 
30 OUTRE-MER 
 
 you will feel that the engineer is the great artist of our epoch, 
 and you will own that these people have a right to plume them- 
 selves on their audacity, on the go-ahead which has never 
 flinched. 
 
 At the same time you ask yourself what right they have to 
 call themselves, as a people, young. They are recent, their 
 advent is so astonishingly new that one can hardly believe in 
 dates in the face of these prodigies of activity. But recent as 
 is this civilization, it is evidently mature, at least here. The 
 impression upon me this evening is that I have been exploring 
 a city which is an achievement and not a beginning. Its life is 
 not an experiment ; it is a mode of existence, with its incon- 
 veniences as well as its splendors. For the go-ahead, the tire- 
 less forward, is not confined to trains and machines. I have 
 been called from this paper to reply to fifteen applications for 
 autographs and six requests for interviews. This eagerness 
 would make me vain if I did not know that it is the lot of every 
 foreign visitor. Let but the press announce your arrival, and 
 if your connections are in the slightest degree public — though 
 you are here merely to avoid a scandalous lawsuit — you must 
 pay your entrance fee, sign your name hundreds of times and 
 proclaim aloud what you think of the country — before you 
 have seen it ! A reporter has even come this evening to ask 
 my opinion as to love in America, after a sojourn of forty-eight 
 hours ! 
 
 Tuesday and Wednesday. — Matters of business have called 
 me again to the neighborhood of the Equitable and the 
 Battery, with the effect only of renewing and heightening my 
 first impressions. The less prosaic duty of securing a suit- 
 able shelter for a somewhat prolonged winter sojourn has led 
 me, in the course of these journeyings, to examine several 
 hotels. 
 
 Such visits give only the most superficial impressions. 
 
THE FIRST WEEK 31 
 
 And yet, in every country, hotels have this documentary 
 value, that they give what the people of the country ask for. 
 Every one who establishes a lodging-house or a restaurant is, 
 in his way, a psychologist, whose talent consists in securing 
 guests. And how, if not by perceiving and ministering to 
 their tastes? A simple inn, once it is successful, resembles 
 the imagination of those who frequent it, and who enjoy 
 themselves there because they frequent it. 
 
 In the French provinces, for example, the hotels are in- 
 differently furnished, with tiny wash-basins and water jugs, 
 battered furniture, and threadbare carpets; but the food is 
 nearly always excellent, and the wine cellar stocked with 
 intelligence. This is indeed the taste of the middle-class 
 citizen of our country, whom boarding-school and barracks 
 have taught to do without comforts, who are hostile to useless 
 expenditure on any large scale, economically making things 
 last indefinitely. On the other hand, his sensations are acute; 
 he is a high liver, knowing in wines. He likes to talk, and 
 he willingly lingers over the table, in the good fellowship of 
 the coffee cup and the liqueur glass. So in Italy, the grand 
 dismantled palace, which so often does duty as locanda, with 
 its frescoed ceilings, the great pictures on its walls, ill-warmed 
 from a badly constructed chimney, with servants in tattered 
 dress-coats, intelligent and familiar, with fried fish, a risotto 
 3.nd fiaschi of home-made wine scattered over the table — how 
 well it suits the travellers of Tuscany, of the Romagna, and 
 Venice ! Not one of these features but its counterpart is to 
 be found, in the man accustomed to a poverty-stricken life in 
 some setting of magnificence, naturally kindly to his inferiors 
 and indulgent as to their personal appearance, son of a coun- 
 try where money is scarce and industrial activity still more 
 infrequent, and where parsimony governs even food. So, 
 again, the English hotel, with the abundance of its little 
 rooms, its distant and active servants, its copious morning 
 
32 OUTRE-MER 
 
 breakfast, the great pieces of roast meat for its cold lunch, and 
 its dinner served at separate tables, that by themselves alone 
 reveal the love of home and the reserve which are the ground- 
 work of nineteen Englishmen out of twenty. They have a 
 word for it for which neither Frenchmen nor Italians have a 
 translation, so little have they the thing; it is privacy, that 
 which a gentleman is bound to respect in the private life of 
 another gentleman, and the right to make respected in his 
 own life. Even in a transient caravanserai they find means 
 for having this law observed. 
 
 These various pictures and reflections followed me as I 
 crossed the threshold of certain New York hotels which had 
 been pointed out to me as most recently built. They are all 
 edifices of the kind which, in Chicago, they call " sky scrapers" 
 and "cloud pressers." One is ten stories high, another twelve, 
 another fourteen. The last and newest has seventeen. 
 
 First comes the marble hall, more or less splendid in deco- 
 ration, upon which frequently opens a restaurant or bar, a 
 cloak-room, a book-store, and other shops. An index points 
 you to the fact that the barber shop is in the basement. 
 Behind a grating are the elevators, — four, five, six, — ready 
 to mount up with the rapidity of an electric despatch. Yes- 
 terday I felt as if the Americans made the streets walk; to-day 
 I feel as if they made the floors of their houses fly. 
 
 These hotels, foolishly sumptuous, have carpets only on the 
 passageways. The stairways show their naked marble, on 
 which no one ever sets foot, unless, haply, the servants, 
 who also have their own elevators. And all along the walls 
 of the passages, as on those of the smallest chambers, are fan- 
 tastic appliances for keeping up this chase of the stories, and 
 giving you, if you live on the fifteenth floor, the sensation of 
 being on the first. Upon a box in each corridor are written 
 these words: "United States Mail Chute." I ask their mean- 
 ing, and my guide shows me a long glass channel, down which 
 
THE FIRST WEEK 33 
 
 a letter thrown into this opening will descend to the box to 
 which the postman has access. My attention is attracted by 
 a mysterious disk covered with printed characters, to which 
 a needle is attached by a pivot. My guide explains to me 
 that by pressing a button the traveller can order to be brought 
 him the thing to whose name he has directed the point of this 
 needle. I glance at the curious list, and perceive that I may 
 thus procure for myself, within five minutes, the whole series 
 of cocktails and champagnes, all the newspapers and reviews, 
 a one- or a two-horse carriage, a doctor, a barber, a railway 
 ticket, all sorts of cold or warm dishes, or a theatre ticket. 
 The only wonder is that the machine has not been so far per- 
 fected as to offer the means of being married or divorced, of 
 making one's will, and of voting. 
 
 While awaiting these necessary improvements, it is proper 
 to add that these niceties of refinement are merely comple- 
 mentary to others more appreciable. You can count the 
 bedrooms which have not their private dressing-room, with 
 bath-room, where hot and cold water run at will at all hours 
 of the day and night. And with this, a meaningless luxury 
 of woodwork and draperies. As I transcribe these notes, I 
 see again a tiny parlor on the ninth floor of one of these 
 hotels, at the corner opposite to and at precisely the same 
 height as the clock in the tower of a neighboring church. 
 With its sofa and armchairs of Havana silk, its narrow bands 
 of soft white silk on the tables and the backs of chairs, the 
 light mahogany of its woodwork, the fine quality of its wicker 
 chairs, and the etchings on the walls, one would never believe 
 it to be a hotel room, to be let for the day or night. And 
 there are two hundred of these bedrooms and parlors in this 
 immense building. 
 
 Look at it now from without, and consider that all these 
 apartments are warmed by an apparatus of metal tubes, 
 through which hot water passes up or down at the turn of a 
 
34 OUTRE-MER 
 
 wheel; that electricity lights its uttermost corner and keeps 
 everything going, from the bells to the clocks; that gas is laid 
 on everywhere alongside of the electric lights, in case the 
 latter should give out. Think then of the innumerable quantity 
 of pipes which perforate this sort of living creature of brick 
 and iron. It does not move, indeed; but at an incredible 
 distance overhead it breathes out a column of black smoke, 
 thick as that of a steamer. Think what human ingenuity is 
 required for the adjustment of so many small pieces! I 
 counted, in my visits to these five hotels, five different sys- 
 tems for emptying the wash-basins and bath-tubs. Translate 
 this humble detail into concrete reality. It means that five 
 subtle intellects, at the service of five men determined to 
 make a fortune, have studied this apparently childish prob- 
 lem, in the hope, justified by the result, of meeting with 
 capitalists who will patronize the invention, and architects 
 who will adopt it. Is it thus from the small to the great? 
 Very probably; and this genius of novelty is evidently in its 
 youth. But, seeing what a travelling American requires for 
 his occasional shelter, recognizing how much money is nec- 
 essary for the satisfaction of so complicated a desire for com- 
 fort, measuring the degree of ingenuity here attained in 
 making matter subserve to the needs of man, how can we 
 admit that this civilization is only a first sketch? It is at 
 once clearly manifest, to him who reviews it without preju- 
 dice, that these are signs of maturity far rather than of experi- 
 ment and beginning. But New York does not sum up the 
 whole United States, any more than Paris sums up France, 
 and we must see. 
 
 Thursday. — Two oases in the tourist existence which for 
 four days I have been leading here. A luncheon at the Play- 
 ers' Club, with men of letters connected with a great review, 
 and an evening at the theatre with another literary man, who 
 
THE FIRST WEEK 35 
 
 manages an important newspaper. I jot down my impres- 
 sions, without being careful to connect them with those that 
 have gone before, quite understanding that, though it is always 
 legitimate to set down physical things, one must exercise great 
 care when it comes to moral things. I hope to remain in the 
 United States for several months, that my judgment of these 
 things may be accurate. 
 
 This club has a singular history, and confirms what I have 
 often heard of the peculiar position of comedians in America. 
 It was founded by the actor Booth. He bought the house 
 and furnished it. He adorned it with precious collections, 
 gathered by his own care, and entirely composed of objects 
 which have to do with the theatre. He then gave it to the 
 club, reserving the right to occupy one apartment, and there 
 he died. I was struck by the extreme decorum of the sur- 
 roundings. The square before the windows, Gramercy Park, 
 looks like a bit of Kensington. The respectability of the 
 artist is written everywhere, and a thousand details attest that 
 it is not personal to him; I mean that it is the comedian's 
 art itself, of which this house reveals the worship. 
 
 Two fine portraits, one of Booth himself, the other of Jeffer- 
 son — by the painter Sargent — show faces deeply moulded 
 by thought and will, almost too intellectual for a profession 
 which demands more of instinct, of unconsciousness. All 
 the other actors whose pictures adorned the walls have this 
 same expression, grave even to severity. I seemed to see 
 in them the energy of the race applied to culture. One must 
 hear the Americans utter the word art, all by itself, without 
 the article, to understand the intense ardor of their desire for 
 refinement; and this word refined also recurs continually in 
 the conversation of the members with whom I visited the 
 club. 
 
 You hear few or no anecdotes of private life in the conver- 
 sations suggested by the portraits. On the other hand, I am 
 
36 OUTRE-MER 
 
 astonished to observe how carefully they guard the remem- 
 brance of the slightest shades of expression observed by these 
 actors in their play, and especially how the interpretation of 
 such or such a part in Shakespeare fires their minds. Once 
 again I perceive the national strength of this poet's genius, 
 and how all literature derives from him in every English- 
 speaking country. Moliere has no such position with us, nor 
 Goethe in Germany. Their work does not radiate that unique 
 and continuous influence which Dante also exerts over the 
 Italian mind. Perhaps Americans feel a more passionate at- 
 tachment to Shakespeare than even the English. It is their 
 way to cling fast to a tradition, and I have already fancied 
 more than once that I perceived the sense of need of a more 
 distant background in this country, where all is present and 
 actual. I gained a new proof of this, though a very slight 
 one, while walking out with one of my companions of this 
 morning, who directed my attention to two lanterns planted 
 before a house. 
 
 "They were put there," he said, "during the time when the 
 master of this house was the first magistrate of New York. It 
 is the custom. He died, and they were left there. You 
 cannot understand that, — you who live in a country which 
 has a history, — but I like to look at them because they have 
 been there for twenty-five years, and it is good to find a little 
 of the past in a city so new." 
 
 Nothing, on the other hand, can be more exclusively and 
 absolutely local or less Shakespearian than the play to which 
 another brother journalist took me in the evening. 
 
 " It is not very good," he said, "but you will see what suits 
 our public." 
 
 We found ourselves in a little theatre, which possessed the 
 peculiarity of having almost no boxes. No New York theatre 
 has more, except the Opera. Is it due to want of skill, or 
 haste in the construction of the halls? Is it the wish to in- 
 
THE FIRST WEEK 37 
 
 crease the number of sittings? Is it a sign of democratic 
 manners? Or is it simply the ever-present precaution against 
 fire? However this may be, men and women without dis- 
 tinction, and of ahnost all classes, are crowded together in 
 the orchestra and balcony. They follow the drama with pas- 
 sionate interest, though they already know it, for it has been 
 given an incalculable number of times. Its name is The New 
 South, and the mere title of the piece suggests curious differ- 
 ences, not only of manners but of laws. 
 
 A Northern officer, stationed in the South a few years after 
 the war, finds himself involved in a quarrel with the brother 
 of his fiancee, a Georgian planter. This man snatches his 
 sword from him and threatens him. The officer defends him- 
 self with the scabbard. He strikes his adversary upon the 
 head, and the latter falls. The victor hastens to seek for succor, 
 and during his absence a negro whom the planter had formerly 
 insulted, and who sees him lying unconscious, cuts the plant- 
 er's throat with the officer's sword. The latter, convicted of 
 murder, is sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. His fiancee 
 believes in him. She appeals to a law peculiar to that State, 
 which authorizes any citizen, with the authorization of the 
 governor, to choose a convict for a servant. She releases 
 from prison the supposed murderer of her brother and takes 
 him into her service, that he may prove his innocence. The 
 character of this girl, so extraordinary in the eyes of a for- 
 eigner, arouses tempests of applause. When she says to her 
 father, ''Go you your way; I will go mine," the enthusiasm 
 of the public exceeds all bounds. 
 
 The fjersonal force of will, the impelling power of con- 
 science in the being who acts according to its dictates, this, 
 doubtless, is what these people were applauding. By contrast 
 I picture to myself how a French audience would receive this 
 girl's attitude toward her father. I must believe that these 
 spectators do not look upon family relations precisely as we 
 
38 OUTRE-MER 
 
 do ; for peals of laughter greeted another scene which would 
 rudely shock a Parisian audience. The heroine's sister — in 
 love with a doctor, to whom she first makes a mock declara- 
 tion in the course of a consultation in which she puts out a 
 tongue a foot long — surprises her father in the act of asking 
 the hand of an old lady in marriage. 
 
 The insolent girl's boisterous outburst of laughter, as she 
 cuts a caper, shaking her finger at the old gentleman, appeared 
 highly gratifying to the audience, who evidently found this 
 absolute equality between parents and children the most nat- 
 ural thing in the world. My companion, to whom I made 
 some such remark, admitted that the family is much more 
 united with us than in Anglo-Saxon countries, and notably 
 than in America. 
 
 "But," he said, "you have this evil, that with you a girl 
 cannot live her own life apart from her family. Her parents 
 love her too much and she loves them too much. She never 
 learns to depend upon herself. She has no 'self-reliance,' 
 as we say. This independence of ours has the advantage that 
 a young woman without fortune expects to earn her bread 
 honestly and courageously, like a man. She becomes a doc- 
 tor, a professor, the secretary of a company, no matter what, 
 — and she is happy." 
 
 Can he be right on the last point? Neither he nor I will 
 ever know. As I make my way homeward, I recall to mind, 
 as bearing out his assertion, the few minutes after luncheon 
 which I spent in visiting the offices of the Review with which 
 my hosts of the Players are associated. I see again the vari- 
 ous women there engaged, in all departments of the work; 
 one, especially, young and graceful, seated before a type- 
 writing machine, copying a manuscript. Her taper fingers 
 played upon the keys of the instrument as upon those of a 
 piano. It was a suitable work, dainty, not too fatiguing, and 
 I could read upon her charming face a deep serenity of con- 
 
THE FIRST WEEK 39 
 
 science, a calm will, a dignity that was touching in a creature 
 so young and evidently so poor. Must we believe that the 
 active independence of such a woman necessarily results in 
 a relaxation of family ties? It is possible, after all; for the 
 continuance of the family appears to be entirely conditioned 
 upon the right of primogeniture, or at least upon freedom of 
 bequest, and upon that inequality which appears to be, of all 
 others, most unjust, — that of inheritance. 
 
 Friday. — I resume my journal on the train between New 
 York and Newport, very comfortably settled in one of those 
 Pullman coaches which bear the pretentious name of palace 
 car. By way of parenthesis, let me say, that though I have 
 not yet been a week in the United States, I can bear witness 
 to the habitual excess of metaphor, which seems to be an 
 American instinct. The most insignificant production is 
 advertised as "the best in the world." A victorious pugilist 
 becomes "the world's champion." I happened to open the 
 annual report of the West Point Academy, and there I read, 
 "Science and art, in which the cadets excel." 
 
 Where does naturalness end? Where does that charlatan- 
 ism begin, which is so well defined by the three well-nigh 
 untranslatable words which we are beginning to adopt and 
 practise, the puff, the boom, and the bliiff'^ Certainly, the 
 splendors of a real palace have nothing in common, with the 
 lavish elegance of these long carriages. Such as they are, 
 their luxury puts to shame the best F^uropean railway carriages. 
 
 They are so connected as to form a covered vestibule from 
 one end of the train to the other. A buffet is attached to 
 them; and, if the journey is to be not of six hours but of 
 several days, bath-rooms, a barber's shop, and a reading-room 
 will be added. It can hardly be called extravagance to travel 
 in them; for there is only one class in the United States, and 
 the supplement which gives a right to seats in these cars is 
 
40 OUTRE-MER 
 
 insignificant. I paid only a dollar for my Pullman chair from 
 New York to Newport. 
 
 Here again are fifty signs of that singular bent toward com- 
 plexity which has struck me every moment since I landed. 
 Everything is fitted, planned, compressed, so as to get the 
 greatest number of adjustable articles into the smallest possi- 
 ble space. The arm-chair in which you are seated turns upon 
 a pivot, and may be tipped to any angle that pleases you. If 
 you want your window open, a negro brings a metal screen 
 which he slips into grooves cunningly devised between the 
 ledge of the window and the raised sash. If you desire to 
 take luncheon, play cards, or write, he places before you a 
 table which rests upon the floor by a single movable foot, the 
 other end being fitted into the side of the car. Boys are con- 
 tinually passing along, offering newspapers and books. I 
 distinguish among them Alphonse Daudet's Sappho, with 
 a second title added. Or, Lured by a Bad WoDian' s Fatal 
 Beauty ! Everywhere is a profusion of rugs, draperies, carved 
 mahogany, and nickel-plated ornaments. The very negroes 
 who pass back and forth, now in uniform and now in white 
 jacket and napkin, seem like ornamental animals, a whim of 
 the company, who have provided for my benefit this outland- 
 ish display. Armed with a sort of feather brush, which they 
 wield with simian agility, they move about as we approach 
 the stations, impartially dusting passengers and furniture, and 
 equally without consulting their wishes. I just now saw one 
 of them whisk off the hat of an old gentleman who was read- 
 ing the paper. He brushed it, and replaced it upon the 
 sufferer's head, without saying with your leave or by your 
 leave. The old gentleman did not so much as raise his eyes. 
 
 Town and country succeed one another. The train passes 
 at full speed over low bridges, spanning broad rivers which 
 flow between forests, — remains of forests, rather, — violated, 
 massacred forests, whose vigorous vegetation still bears wit- 
 
THE FIRST WEEK 41 
 
 ness to the primitive splendor of this country, before "the 
 pale-faced destroyer of forests " had set foot upon it. Rows 
 upon rows of cottages, without gardens, without a single one 
 of those little, open-air drawing-rooms in which the French 
 citizen loves to saunter, pruning- shears and watering-pot in 
 hand. But where shall Americans find the time to saunter, 
 the time to watch the budding rose trees, to let themselves 
 live? Their rose trees are those vast, ever-multiplying fac- 
 tory chimneys. Their gardens are these houses, so rapidly 
 built that a single generation sees them increase fivefold, ten- 
 fold, and more. In 1800, New Haven, through which we 
 have just passed, had five thousand inhabitants; to-day it has 
 eighty thousand, and its commerce is valued at more than a 
 hundred and fifty million francs a year. A little way back it 
 was Bridgeport, which last year put out a hundred millions 
 worth of sewing-machines and carriages; or Hartford, where 
 insurance companies have an aggregate capital of seven hun- 
 dred millions of francs. These figures become, as it were, 
 concrete in view of this landscape, which they explain and 
 with which they blend, so many are the steamboats in the 
 most insignificant ports, the electric railways in the city 
 streets, the factories in the country towns, and the advertise- 
 ments, advertisements, everywhere. I had taken out paper 
 to make a general summary of the impressions of this first 
 week. I cannot do it, so much is my attention absorbed by 
 the medley of primitive scenery — so little removed from 
 aboriginal wildness — and exaggerated industrialism. 
 
 There is hardly any motion of the car, notwithstanding our 
 great speed. A pamphlet by one of our most distinguished 
 engineers, M. de Chasseloup-Laubat,^ which I read before 
 leaving home, had already explained this to me, pointing out 
 the wisdom with which the builder had placed the long car 
 
 ^ Travels in America, chiejly to Chicago, by the Marquis of Chasseloup- 
 Laubat, Paris, 1893. 
 
42 OUTRE-MER 
 
 upon small, six-wheeled trucks, in such a way as to bring the 
 seats outside of the axis of trepidation. Through this pam- 
 phlet I also made acquaintance with the locomotive, that strong 
 and beautiful engine of speed, here built very high and so 
 arranged that through his cab windows the engineer can see 
 the track, as it lies ribbon-like before him. All the mechan- 
 ism — cylinders, valves, levers — is exposed, and within easy 
 reach. The forward part rests upon a small guiding truck, 
 which admits of shorter curves, and a more slightly built track. 
 Who invented all these improvements? Who thought out all 
 the strangely complicated details of these cars? 
 
 The answer is always the same; everybody and nobody, a 
 will always under control, an ever- watchful eye, an intrepid 
 search for novelty, and an insatiable longing for improvement, 
 which, so far, seems to me the most marked feature of Ameri- 
 can civilization, and the one least expected. Nevertheless, 
 if I were obliged to return to Europe to-morrow, it is in this 
 thought that I should sum up the impressions of my first rapid 
 contact with this people. They seem, in fact, to have tri- 
 umphed over time, since this extreme attainment of luxury 
 touches so closely the barbarism of the West, and still more 
 undisguisedly that of the popular quarters of New York. I 
 am curious to know whether I shall find the same contrast, the 
 same astonishing differences of atmosphere, in the watering- 
 place where I shall be this evening, and of which all the 
 Americans who have spoken to me of it seem a little proud 
 and a little ashamed. 
 
 "There is only one Newport in the world," they say; in- 
 variably adding, "But Newport is only a clique of million- 
 aires, only a 'set ' ; it is not America." 
 
 "Why not ?" I have several times asked. 
 
 "You will understand when you have l)een there," they 
 reply, no less invariably. "There are more millions of dol- 
 lars represented in the small tip of that little island than in 
 all London and Paris together." 
 
Ill 
 
 SOCIETY 
 
 I. A Summer City 
 
 I CAME to Newport for a few days. I have remained here 
 a whole month, taking my part in this hfe which has indeed 
 no counterpart, at least, not to my knowledge. Neither Deau- 
 ville nor Brighton nor Biarritz resembles it, nor Cannes, although 
 the last approaches it in the splendor of its villas and the 
 almost total absence of the lower middle class. But Cannes 
 is a Cosmopolis like Rome or Florence, perhaps more so, while 
 Newport is exclusively, absolutely American. A few European 
 visitors have passed through it this summer, on their way to 
 Chicago and the World's Fair. Usually they may be counted 
 by six or seven. The French know nothing of Newport. The 
 Enghsh — a very few of them — come here for the yachting ; 
 but they prefer the Isle of Wight, with Cannes and the con- 
 venient Solent. 
 
 The small number of travellers, explained by its remoteness 
 and the shortness of the season, gives this watering-place an 
 inveterately national character. No ; this elegant coterie, or, 
 as the detractors of Newport scornfully call it, this " set," is 
 not America, but it is American society ; and social life, empty 
 and artificial as it may appear to be, is always bound by deep- 
 lying secret fibres to the country of which it is the flower — a 
 flower sometimes insipid, more often poisonous. Even when 
 its standards, as in France, are totally different from the stand- 
 ards of the country in general, it reveals in its adherents the 
 
 43 
 
44 OUTRE-MER 
 
 spiritual faults and virtues which are peculiar to the race. The 
 idlers bring the same susceptibility, the same temper, the same 
 intelligence, to their amusements, or their attempts at amuse- 
 ment, which the industrious bring to their toil. 
 
 In the upper circles of Parisian life, for example, all the 
 strength and all the weakness of the French nature are found 
 devoted to the arts, to luxury, to amusement. Extreme vivacity 
 of thought, with its subtle variations, criticism with its starthng 
 destruction of illusion and its unexpected betrayals into enthu- 
 siasm, a mad hardihood of irony, with bondage to public 
 opinion, an indescribable mediocrity of human nature, an air 
 of good taste even in folly, above all, a charm, a spirit of 
 sociability, pervade the atmosphere of our clubs, our salons, 
 our restaurants, theatres, promenades. National character has 
 always its own shades of individuality in its vices and its vir- 
 tues, its frivolities and its toils. This national physiognomy 
 is what we have to discern ; and every datum is of value, from 
 the hall of a casino to a church, from the prattle of a woman 
 of the world to the utterances of a revolutionary laborer. 
 
 I am very sure, therefore, that any one who has eyes to see 
 may discern the American spirit — the real interest and the 
 chief reason of my journey — behind the ostentation of New- 
 port. But have I these eyes ? At any rate, here is a bundle of 
 sketches from life taken on the spur of the moment in response 
 to the first questions which one naturally asks in making a study 
 of people of the world. How are they housed, and with what 
 furniture do they surround themselves? How do they recruit 
 their numbers? How do they amuse themselves? How do 
 they converse ? More general inquiries will come later, if they 
 are to come at all. 
 
 How are they housed? Detached villas, very near the 
 street, with greenish, most velvety lawns and bronze figures 
 
SOCIETY 45 
 
 under the trees amid clumps of blue hortensias ; porticoes 
 before the doors, over which flutters the Japanese ivy, rapid 
 growing, not evergreen like the other, but fading every season ; 
 graceful symbol of the American impatience which cannot 
 wait. There are twenty, thirty, forty different styles of con- 
 struction, almost as many as there are dwellings ; some square 
 and squat, others tall and slender, others slender and long ; 
 all with guillotine and bow windows, almost all of painted 
 wood, which clothes them, as it were, in a thin dark sheath of 
 elegant cleanliness — and so on indefinitely along Bellevue 
 Avenue, Narragansett Avenue, all the streets of the new New- 
 port which, within a few years, the caprice of millionaires has 
 built upon the cliff; for this part of the town has only yes- 
 terday become fashionable. 
 
 The other, the real town, is down near the shore, with modest 
 little houses of white wood which have a grace all their own. 
 Somehow they suggest the cabin of primitive times, the frail 
 rustic shelter built by the colonist's own hands, in this land of 
 forests, with its rough-hewn beams and ill-matched boards. 
 To this day stone buildings are rare in the United States. 
 Brick and iron have succeeded to wood. To quarry and dress 
 stone requires too much both of time and labor. 
 
 Between old Newport, where the quiet homely life keeps on 
 all through the winter, and the other, the summer Newport, 
 fashionable and transient, there is no intermediate. Nothing 
 suggests the rough draught of a watering-place ; first efforts cor- 
 rected, worked over and over, a gradual encroachment of 
 fashion. The same outbreak of individuality which reared the 
 palaces of Fifth Avenue in New York, almost as by Aladdin's 
 lamp, created in a flash of miracle this town of cottages. The 
 only difference is in the complicated architecture where the 
 rich have vied with the rich as to who shall excel the others. 
 The " go-ahead " American spirit is seen here in a costHness of 
 construction very significant, when one reflects that these dwell- 
 
46 OUTRE-MER 
 
 ings do duty for six weeks, perhaps for two months, in the 
 year, and that each one takes for granted such accessories as 
 a four-in-hand, a yacht, or perhaps two, for cruising along the 
 coast, a private car for railway journeys, a New York house 
 and another country house! 
 
 One of these men has spent some time in England, and 
 it has pleased him to build for himself on one of these Rhode 
 Island lawns an English abbey of the style of Queen Elizabeth. 
 It rises up, gray and stern, so like, so perfect, that it might, ' 
 without changing a single stone, be transported to Oxford on 
 the shores of Isis, to make a pendant to the delicious cloister 
 of Magdalen or the fagade of Oriel. Another man loves 
 France, and he has seen fit to possess in sight of the Atlantic 
 a chateau in the style of the French Renascence. Here is 
 the chateau ; it reminds you of Azay, Chenonceaux, and the 
 Loire, with its transparent ribbon of water winding idly in and 
 out amid the yellow sand of the islands. A third has built 
 a marble palace precisely like the Trianon, with Corinthian 
 pillars as large as those of the Temple of the Sun at Baalbek. 
 And these are not weak imitations, pretentious and futile 
 attempts, such as in every country bring ridicule upon brag- 
 garts and upstarts. No. In detail and finish they reveal con- 
 scientious study, technical care. Evidently the best artist has 
 been chosen and he has had both freedom and money. 
 
 Especially money ! Caprices like these take for granted 
 such quantities of it that after a walk from cottage to cottage, 
 from chateau to abbey, you half fancy that you have been vis- 
 iting some isle consecrated to the god Plutus, whose most mod- 
 ern incarnation is the god Dollar. But this is a Plutus who 
 yesterday sat at the hearthstone of Penia, the untamed goddess 
 of poverty ; a Plutus whom neither wealth nor luxury has ener- 
 vated or enfeebled ; a Plutus who, being no longer obliged to 
 work, wills that his gold shall work, that it shall make itself 
 manifest, spread itself, " show off," to use the real Yankee word. 
 
SOCIETY 47 
 
 And this gold makes itself so manifest, it shows off with such 
 violent intensity, that it impresses you like the deploying of an 
 army. Flaubert wrote to one of his pupils : " If you cannot 
 construct the Parthenon, build a pyramid." All America seems 
 to be instinctively repeating to itself in other words this stern 
 but stimulating counsel. As in the harbor and streets of New 
 York you are dismayed at so much activity, so in these New- 
 port avenues you are amazed at so much wealth. It either 
 revolts or charms you, according as you lean toward socialism 
 or snobbery. The psychologist who looks upon a city as a 
 naturalist looks upon an ant-hill, will recognize in it the fact 
 which I observed at the very first, — something indescribably , 
 extravagant, unbridled. The American spirit seems not to 
 understand moderation. Their high business buildings are too 
 high. Their pleasure- houses are too elegant. Their fast trains 
 go too fast. Their newspapers have too many pages ; too much 
 news. And when they set themselves to spend money, they are 
 obliged to spend too much in order to have the feeling of spend- 
 ing enough. 
 
 How do they furnish their houses ? 
 
 I have in mind, as I write these words, the interior of some 
 fifty of these villas, perhaps more. From the week of my 
 arrival, upon the presentation of my letters of introduction, I 
 was caught up in the whirlwind of luncheons, coaching-parties, 
 yachtings, dinners, and balls, which for several weeks sweeps 
 over Newport like a simoom. " Be in the rush," says an adver- 
 tisement in the electric car which runs between the beach and 
 the lower town. A recommendation of a special brand of 
 yeast accompanies this eloquent appeal, this " all aboard " 
 which the Americans speedily force you to act upon. 
 
 Their energy extends even to their hospitality, which bestirs 
 itself in your behalf, multiplying its " five-o'clock teas " and its 
 " to meets." It is a warm spontaneity of welcome of which we 
 
48 OUTRE-MER 
 
 have no notion in Latin countries. With us the foreigner may 
 get into society if he settles down and does us the hojior of 
 preferring our country to his own. As for him who is simply 
 passing through not to return, it takes us some time to over- 
 come a certain distrust ; we do not, without a thorough ac- 
 quaintance, pass over from formal courtesy to intimacy. The 
 American throws his house wide open to you as soon as you 
 are duly presented. He wants you to know his friends ; he 
 wants all his friends to treat you as he does. 
 
 Slanderers say that there is no merit in this ; that their large 
 way of living prevails in all Anglo-Saxon countries where chil- 
 dren are many, needs complicated, incomes proportionately 
 large, and economy unknown. One more guest hardly counts 
 in such a home. This is true. Still I think I perceive here a 
 feeling more complex than that opulent and indifferent hospi- 
 tality which is still that of wealthy Orientals. 
 
 The American, who lives so fast, carries to the highest pitch 
 a fondness for seeing himself live. It seems as if he looked 
 upon himself and his surroundings in the light of a singular 
 experiment in social life, and as if he hardly knew what he 
 ought to think of it. He makes it a point that you, a Euro- 
 pean, shall be correctly informed before judging of this experi- 
 ment, and he helps to inform you. " You see such or such a 
 one," he will say to you. "He is an American of this or that 
 type. Read such a book — you will find there a true picture 
 of the American of that State." If he knows that you are 
 travelling for the purpose of taking notes, he is disturbed, and 
 yet he finds pleasure in it as an act of homage. He wants 
 your notes to be taken from life. If he sees in you a simple 
 tourist, he wants your reports when you return home to be 
 something other than the erroneous legends of which, to his 
 exasperation, he finds traces in our • newspapers. There is a 
 curious mixture of doubt and pride in the pleasure which he 
 feels in escorting you from one end of his house to the other. 
 
SOCIETY 49 
 
 showing you in a breath the picture gallery and the linen 
 closet, the drawing-rooms and the bed-chambers. One of 
 their best novehsts, Howells, has sagaciously noted this peculiar 
 trait of character, this facility of offering oneself as a lesson of 
 things. 
 
 "We men of the modern world," says March, in A Hazard 
 of New Fortunes, " are inclined to take ourselves too objec- 
 tively, to consider ourselves more representative than is 
 necessary." / 
 
 Meanwhile, to the professional observer this turn of mind 
 lightens half his task. It is so difficult in Italy, Spain, Ger- 
 many, in France itself, to picture to oneself the " home " of 
 those we know the best, and yet the witness that tells the most 
 is the objects which we gather around us according to our own 
 whims. A drawing-room, a bed-chamber, a dining-room, have 
 a physiognomy, almost a countenance, in the likeness of our 
 tastes, our needs, the things in ourselves which often we our- 
 selves do not suspect. 
 
 A first impression emerges from the hom.es of Newport. I( 
 ought to be correct, so much does it accord with the rest of 
 American life, even outside of villas like these. This is a new 
 evidence of excess, abuse, absence of moderation. On the 
 floors of halls which are too high there are too many precious 
 Persian and Oriental rugs. There are too many tapestries, too 
 many paintings on the walls of the drawing-rooms. The guest- 
 chambers have too many bibelots, too much rare furniture, and 
 on the lunch or dinner table there are too many flowers, too 
 many plants, too much crystal, too much silver. 
 
 At this moment I can see in the centre of one of these 
 tables a vase of solid silver, large and deep as the pot of a 
 huge plant, too small, however, for a bunch of grapes, a prodi- 
 gal bunch with grapes as large as small cannon balls. I see 
 again a screen made of an Italian painting of the school of the 
 
 K 
 
50 OUTRE-MER 
 
 Carracci, cut into four parts. The canvas has not been much 
 injured and the work was well done, but what a symbol of this 
 perpetual extravagance of luxury and refinement ! 
 
 This excess has its prototype in the rose so justly called 
 the " American beauty," enormous bunches of which crown 
 these tables. It has so long a stem, it is so intensely red, so 
 wide open, and so strongly perfumed, that it does not seem 
 like a natural flower. It requires the greenhouse, the exposi- 
 tion, a public display. Splendid as it is, it makes one long 
 for the frail wild eglantine with its rosy petals which a breath 
 of wind will crumple. For the eglantine is a bit of nature, and 
 also of aristocracy, at least in the sense in which we Europeans 
 understand the word, for with us it is inseparable from an idea 
 of soft coloring and absence of pretension. It is certain that 
 1 this excess reveals in this people an energy much more like 
 that of the Renascence, for example, under'divers forms, than 
 .that meagreness of individuality which we moderns disguise 
 'lunder the name of distinction. Tha't vigor of blood and 
 nerves which has enabled the men of the United States to 
 conquer fortune, persists in him through all his fortunes and 
 manifests itself by splendor within the house as it was first 
 manifested by splendor outside of it. You find vigor every- 
 where, even in the senseless prodigalities of high life. 
 
 Yet, these millionaires do not entirely accept themselves. 
 This is the second impression forced upon you by a more atten- 
 tive observation of these " halls " and drawing-rooms. They 
 do not admit that they are thus different from the Old World, or 
 if they admit it, it is to insist that if they chose they could equal 
 the Old World, or, at least, could enjoy it. 
 
 ■, " We have made money enough to be artists now," said an 
 architect to me, "and we have no time to wait. So I am studying 
 the French eighteenth century ; I intend to build houses of that 
 type, with every modern improvement, — water, light, electricity." 
 
SOCIETY SI 
 
 His patriotism is perfectly sincere, very intense, and he makes 
 it consist in the conquest or at least the loan of a foreign style ! 
 The furnishings of the Newport houses betray a similar effort, 
 — a constant, tireless endeavor to absorb European ideas. One 
 might count in these villas all the articles made in America. 
 It is in Europe that the silk of these stuffed chairs and these 
 curtains was woven ; in Europe that these chairs and tables 
 were turned. This silverware came from Europe, and this 
 dress was woven, cut, sewn in Europe ; these shoes, stockings, 
 gloves came from there. "When I was in Paris; " "Then we 
 go to Paris ; " " We want to go to Paris to buy our gowns." 
 
 These expressions continually recur in conversation, and it 
 was certainly a Parisian salon which served as model of the one 
 in which you find yourself. These toilettes are surely modelled 
 on the same pattern as those of the elegant Parisian women. 
 Only, drawing-room and dresses alike have, like everything else, 
 that indescribable something too much. The fashion of these 
 gowns is not of to-day but of to-morrow. The dressmakers 
 have a very expressive way of noting this almost indescribable 
 shade of difference. They say, " We will try the new designs 
 first on the foreigners — then we shall weed them out for the 
 Parisian women." 
 
 Thus is explained this characteristic of the excessive ; this 
 art of being on dress parade, which these women — often so 
 beautiful — still further heighten by a profusion of jewels worn 
 in daylight. At noon they will have at their waists turquoises 
 as big as almonds, pearls as large as filberts at their throats, 
 rubies and diamonds as large as their finger-nails. Yes, it is 
 indeed Europe, but overgrown, exaggerated ; and this inordi- 
 nate imitation only accentuates the difference between the Old 
 World and the New. 
 
 Among the freaks of decoration thus borrowed from our 
 country, one has become singularly changed during its passage 
 
52 OUTRE-MER 
 
 of the Atlantic. I speak of the taste for old things — the fanr ^ 
 for bric-a-brac and bibelots so characteristic of our age. it 
 has become hateful to us, because universal competition has 
 so raised the prices that very few European fortunes are large 
 enough to permit it. Counterfeiting has followed, and second- 
 rate articles are especially abundant. 
 
 The Americans have come to market with their full purses. 
 With us a millionaire is a man who has a million francs. Here 
 a millionaire is one who has a miUion dollars ; that is, five 
 million francs. They have brought to market that universal 
 knowledge which comes from the constant habit of having 
 seriously undertaken collecting and looked at it in the light of 
 a true lesson in things. For the last thirty or forty years, 
 thanks to their full purses, they have laid hands upon the finest 
 pictures, tapestries, carvings, medals, not only of France, Eng- 
 land, Holland, Italy, but also of Greece, Egypt, India, Japan. 
 Hence they have in their town and country houses a wealth 
 of masterpieces worthy of a museum. In some Newport villas 
 which I could name, is an entire private gallery, which has 
 been transported thither bodily ; its original owner having 
 spent years in collecting it from among the rarest works of the 
 early German school. And they keep on in this way ! The 
 other day I heard an amateur say sadly, alluding to the finan- 
 cial crisis which happens to bear heavily upon Italy and the 
 United States at once : — 
 
 " The Italians are rather low down just now, and there are 
 things to be had sub rosa. But at present nobody can profit 
 by it." 
 
 One asks oneself where they would put these Italian things, 
 so completely covered by paintings is the Cordovan leather 
 which covers the walls of their houses. And then there are 
 the glass cases under which treasures of cut stones await the 
 magnifying-glass, with enamels, engraved armor, ancient books, 
 medals, especially portraits. In two adjacent villas, a quarter 
 
SOCIETY 53 
 
 of an hour apart, I thus saw the portrait of a great Genoese 
 seigneur, a Venetian admiral, an English lord of the last cen- 
 tury, that of Louis XV. by Vanloo, with the inscription " Given 
 by the King," that of Louis XIV. by Mignard, with the same 
 
 inscription, that of Henry IV. by Porbus. F , who does 
 
 not like the Americans, said to me with irony : — 
 
 " Yes ; they have the portrait of the great King, but where 
 is their grandfather's portrait? " 
 
 And he attributes this love of old pictures to a vague and 
 awkward attempt to make a false gallery of ancestors. In my 
 opinion he does not recognize the sincerity, almost the pathos, 
 of this love of Americans for surrounding themselves with 
 things around which there is an idea of time and of stability. 
 This sensation, so difficult for us to conceive, and which my 
 companion of the Players artlessly expressed to me in New 
 York, is intelligible to me, and after these few weeks of the 
 United States I feel it myself It is almost a physical satisfac- 
 tion of the eyes to meet here the faded colors of an ancient 
 painting, the blurred stamp of an antique coin, the softened 
 shades of a tapestry of the Middle Ages. In this country, 
 where everything is of yesterday, they hunger and thirst for the 
 long ago. We must believe that the soul of man is possessed 
 by an indestructible desire to be surrounded with things of 
 the past, since these extravagances of luxury subserve such a 
 desire. They do not discern it in themselves, but they feel 
 it all the same. Last week one of these men ordered his car- 
 riage to turn back that he might show me the statue of a New- 
 porter who was a friend of his grandfather. 
 
 " One likes to think of a time so far away," he said. 
 
 This desire for a deeply prepared soil is just what a tree 
 would feel on being transplanted to a new place with its roots 
 too near the surface. This unconscious effort to surround 
 themselves with the past, to ennoble themselves by it, is what 
 saves these homes of millionaires from being coarse, so formed 
 
 \\\ 
 
54 OUTRE-MER 
 
 by sheer force of money, and for the purpose of showing that 
 they were so formed. It is an unexpected bit of poetry in 
 what but for that would be merely "the apotheosis of the check 
 and the chic,''' to repeat a low pleasantry of a very low song of 
 a former day. It consoles one for seeing strewed about among 
 these magnificences a few inexpressibly vulgar and childish 
 ornaments such as an outrageous toy, — a moon-faced doll with 
 an eyeglass and a tall hat, smoking a lighted cigarette, while a 
 music box hidden in its body plays a vulgar air. Written below 
 it, to the shame of those writers who first made use of the 
 expression, are the words, "/>';/ de sieck.'^ What a mosaic is 
 the taste of this race which takes everything pell-mell from our 
 civilization, the excellent and the bad, our finest works of art 
 and our most deplorable caricatures ! 
 
 How do they recruit their numbers? By a single method 
 and from a single class. In this respect, when we compare 
 this summer Newport with our Deauville, or with Brighton on 
 the other side of the Channel, there is a never-to-be-forgotten 
 difference. There is here no upper class, as in England, no 
 aristocratic Olympus whose customs are followed by all " tuft- 
 hunters " — the picturesque word with which Oxford students 
 banter those of their comrades who are trying to get into the 
 smart set, hypnotized by the golden tassel that dangles from 
 the caps of the students who belong to the nobility. There is 
 not here as in France that irrational but potent survival of an 
 ancient order in the very midst of a vigorous democracy, whose 
 most expressive sign is without doubt our notion of the " club." 
 With us the " circle " has ceased to be the natural, almost the 
 necessary, sphere of those who keep up a certain style. It has 
 come to be a sort of brevet, almost a rank, in an undetermined 
 social regiment, the staff of which lives at the Union, the Jockey, 
 or the Rue Royale. 
 
 In America all men in society have been and still are busi- 
 
SOCIETY 55 
 
 ness men. They were not born to social station ; they have 
 achieved it. They did not find it ready made and handed 
 over to them. They made it themselves, because it suited 
 them to add such a refinement to their wealth, by way of cop- 
 ing to their edifice. The result is a profound equality among 
 them, a singular uniformity of habits, thought, tastes, which 
 'speak their absolute similarity of origin.. The attempt has 
 indeed been made, of late years, to break up this uniformity, 
 to establish an artificial Olympus, that of the " four hundred," 
 which are drawn from the families of oldest traditions and most 
 wealth. This whim could not be carried out, because the true 
 foundations of all these great fortunes are too recent, too well 
 known ; and besides, they could not be kept up without a con- 
 tinuance of the toil which produced them. Such a one became 
 rich through the discovery of a gold mine twenty-five years ago. 
 A railroad built in i860 made such a one a millionaire. Behind 
 each of the names which appear in the newspaper reports of 
 social functions, any American can see this or that factory, 
 commercial house, bank, land speculation, and generally the 
 factory is at full blast, the wickets of the commercial house and 
 the bank are always open, the speculation is still going on. 
 Democrats may say that such titles to a place in society are 
 worth quite as much as a coat of arms crossed by bastardy or 
 doubtful marriages, or a historic celebrity which has no coun- 
 terpart in those that inherit it. Certain it is that the founda- 
 tions of American society are frankly evident. Their immedi- 
 ate results are no less so. 
 
 First among them is the almost total absence of adventurers 
 and adventuresses in a watering-place Hke Newport. It is easy 
 to deceive a composite society, but not a society of business 
 men. A family whose revenues are doubtful may make a figure 
 in a circle where the authentic nobility must needs resort to 
 expedients for its support, in which reigns that spirit of shifti- 
 ness in money matters which is habitual with those who earn 
 
56 OUTRE-MER 
 
 nothing. In America, every one knows wliat his neighbor is 
 " worth," and besides, society hfe is here a hixury, while the 
 minor daily expenses are so great as to be unsupportable by an 
 ill-balanced budget. 
 
 French novehsts since Balzac have often painted the type of 
 the ambitious poor young man who keeps himself in the full 
 current of high life by the superior management of very mod- 
 est resources. Here a presentable evening suit costs a hun- 
 dred and fifty dollars, — seven hundred and fifty francs, — a 
 carriage to go to dinner costs three dollars, and five if you also 
 return by carriage. A woman pays fifty per cent duty on the 
 evening dress she brought from Paris. The New York dress- 
 makers' and miUiners' bills come up to about the same figure. 
 It is hardly an economy to have a seamstress in the house to 
 copy the models of the great dressmakers, — that resource of 
 the prudent Parisian woman, — in a place where a clever maid 
 has forty dollars a month and a good dressmaker three dollars 
 a day. This sort of abuse of wealth, not peculiar to Newport 
 but found all over America, is at once a folly and a purifying 
 process. We may rail at the frivolity of this existence, con- 
 demn its extravagance. It may deserve many satires. It is at 
 least very upright and very sound. 
 
 (It is all that, in this summer sojourn ; witness the total 
 suppression of the element which in Europe adorns and cor- 
 rupts so many watering-places — I refer to the demi-monde.') 
 As American society is principally drawn from business circles, 
 the men have but little leisure. They are all absent several 
 days in the week, occupied in making the money which it is 
 the function of their wives to display. It follows that if they 
 have relations outside of their own homes, they are not to be 
 found here. Those who remain in Newport the whole week 
 round are few m number, and for the most part old, smce they 
 are " out of business," or very young and not yet in it. A few 
 diplomatists on their vacation and a few flying visitors complete 
 
SOCIEIY 57 
 
 the masculine part of society, the smallness of whose number 
 would compel them to good conduct if, indeed, their inherited 
 puritan morality, always present in a country of Anglo-Saxon 
 traditions, — at least under the form of hypocrisy, — did not 
 make all scandal impossible. 
 
 For that matter, by what diplomatic processes would the 
 most adroit member of the demi-monde succeed in brushing up 
 against the real society, in offering a facile imitation of it, as 
 with us, in a circle where all forms of pleasure are organized 
 into a club and one must have an admission, a presentation, 
 patronage, in order to take a cup of tea here, to play a 
 game of tennis there? More than this, the race is not old 
 enough for the courtesan to have become the petted but re- 
 fined creature, scoffing and witty, who amuses a man and little 
 by little makes her way into his daily intimacy. Simply to 
 recognize how entirely she is absent from a city which elsewhere 
 would be her favorite field of operation is to see that she is 
 here reduced to the condition of a mere instrument of pleasure. 
 Theo, who has lived ten years in the United States, said to me, — ' 
 
 "Women are not necessary to America is as they are to us. / 
 A man only goes with them here when he is slightly drunk and 
 wants to keep it up." 
 
 It is possible that the sentimentality which gives a touch of 
 tenderness to gallantry in France is in certain respects more 
 human. Socially the American is right ; I mean that the sharp 
 line of demarcation between the women of his own circle and 
 the others makes him look upon the former with quite other 
 ^■eyes. He respects them more in his imagination and in his 
 iconduct. He may be a profligate ; he is never or very rarely 
 la libertine. The distance between the two words is great. The 
 proof is found in the conversation of young men at the clubs. 
 They talk of sport, of play, of business, but the name of a 
 woman is never uttered. 
 
58 OUTRE-MER 
 
 The common origin of the social forces, if I may so call it, 
 has also this result, that social life finds its end and aim in 
 itself. All the families included in it being rich, and aspiring 
 to nothing else to which it can help them, the result is that the 
 atmosphere is more simple, happy, innocent, than any we know. 
 There is less secrecy in personal relations, because they are not 
 nor can be the means of self-advancement. The wealthy 
 classes of America having no sort of influence over the elec- 
 tions, an ambitious politician has no use for society. There is ; 
 no Institute toward which the favor of a social set may advance ' 
 a writer or an artist. Nor is there any group of salons whence ' 
 literary reputations may radiate. It is only exceptionally that 
 daughters are dowered, so that the number who seek fortune 
 through marriage is limited to ruined foreigners of title, and 
 these generally disappear after a season. They quickly dis- 
 cover that old Europe is still the safest field for this sort of 
 speculation. 
 
 As on the other hand morals appear to be especially good and 
 an acknowledged liaison is a phenomenon here, social life can- 
 not serve as a screen for the complications of amatory experi- 
 ence. Thus reduced to its true basis, social life turns its efforts 
 into the line of public pageantry and outward display, and as it 
 must always have a genuine aliment, a positive occupation for 
 its vigorous activities, society life in this country tends to give 
 itself up entirely to sport. Here, again, that which is essentially 
 a fault becomes a source of health, so true it is that with strong 
 races everything ministers to their strength, while among a 
 decaying people even culture and refinement lead to nothing 
 but disease and decay. 
 
 How do they amuse themselves? That I might answer this 
 question with some sort of correctness, I have amused myself 
 with following, hour by hour, for several days together, the 
 way in which those of the women who are what is called 
 
SOCIETY 59 
 
 "leaders in society" employ their time. I transcribe one of 
 the sketches I thus made, taking it at random from twenty 
 others. They are all pretty much alike in respect of the 
 powerful physique, which they take for granted, the fondness 
 for the open air and exercise. This way of amusing them- 
 selves explains why these women of the world, instead of 
 having a ruined digestion, pale cheeks, "an old-glove air," — 
 to quote a wicked humorist, — ■ like so many of their sisters in 
 European capitals, still retain their brilliant complexions, 
 their supple motions, their strong vitality. They know this, 
 and are proud of it. 
 
 "What pleases me in the fact that I am an American," said 
 one of them, " is the thought that I belong to a fine, healthy 
 race." 
 
 I remember, too, with what contempt another, speaking of 
 an actress of the Odeon, who was in New York for a month, 
 described her as "That little woman with a wishy-washy 
 complexion." They are inexhaustible in their criticisms of 
 Parisian women. I remember that another of them, deplor- 
 ing the change in one of her countrywomen recently married 
 to a Frenchman, said, " She was so plump, with so good a com- 
 plexion, and now she has become thin and quite sallow." 
 
 They smile when thus speaking, with that gratified smile of 
 theirs, so difificult for us to understand in its respectable ani- 
 malism, with their polished teeth, in which the dentist has 
 put bits of gold that shine so brightly as not to appear in the 
 least like a blemish. 
 
 The young woman whose striking image I now invoke was 
 in the saddle before nine in the morning, after one of those 
 hearty breakfasts which the Anglo-Saxons find necessary, the 
 meal at which they gain strength for all the demands of the 
 day. She has trotted and galloped for two hours in the salt 
 air, returning at eleven, in time to change her gown and go 
 to the Casino, where there is a tennis tournament. Two of 
 
60 OUTRE-MER 
 
 her friends, a girl and a young woman two years married, are 
 to take part in it. This is the fashionable place of meeting 
 in Newport, — this square of turf framed in with buildin ;s 
 of tasteful architecture, clothed in the temporary ivy of the 
 Japanese vine. Around the players are gathered a concourse of 
 women, for the most part in light-colored costumes, with that 
 profusion of dainty ornament which makes their toilette as 
 evidently perishable as costly. Their costumes look as if 
 made to be worn a single hour, with nothing to individualize 
 the beauty of the women who wear them. A saying recurs 
 to my mind, in reference to this sort of impersonality of con- 
 summate elegance, so delicate, so romantic, and which so 
 well explains the difference between this sort of elegance and 
 another sort. In one of those pen portraits with which people 
 amuse themselves as a parlor game, a Frenchwoman wrote, 
 describing her own character : — 
 
 " I never dressed myself for a ball without knowing whom 
 it was that I was going there to see." 
 
 American women dress themselves that they may be beauti- 
 ful, because they are "fine, healthy women," like others of 
 their race, and at the present moment not one of them is 
 thinking of exciting admiration, so absorbed are they in the 
 game, in which the newcomers immediately become as much 
 absorbed as the others. Trained by their "physical culture " 
 lessons, they can judge of athletic feats wherever they see 
 them, with an almost professional intelligence, just as in a pas- 
 sage of arms a fencer measures with a single glance the quick- 
 ness of the champions and their recovery. At one time one 
 of the young men, who had just served a ball, held up his 
 foot for an attendant to clean the mud from the rubber sole 
 of his shoe. His attitude during this very commonplace 
 action was so graceful that I heard a young girl exclaim : — 
 
 "Oh, I hope he will win! He is so nice looking 1 " 
 
 The artless expression betrayed the American woman's pro- 
 
SOCIETY 61 
 
 found admiration of "looks," — physical beauty considered 
 after a pagan sort of way. This admiration is carried to such 
 a point that one of the most celebrated gymnasts of the 
 United States invited a number of women of the best society 
 to his private room, after one of his exhibitions, and gave 
 them a lecture on muscular action, illustrating by his own 
 person. The photograph of this torso, with muscles indeed 
 like that of the Vatican over which the aged Michael Angelo 
 passed his hands, is sold in all the shops, and more than one 
 of these women who are now looking on at the tennis tourna- 
 ment has it in her own sitting-room. 
 
 "Some people think it is terribly indecent," said one of 
 them, showing me this singular witness to the independence 
 of her ideas. "I don't. It is just something Greek; that's 
 all." 
 
 Half-past twelve. — Tennis is over for to-day. The beauti-^ 
 ful horsewoman of this morning, who has taken her rest by 
 looking on at this game of strength and skill, breathing in the 
 air like a great plant, has left the Casino for a yacht, where 
 she will take luncheon. I see her get into her carriage, a 
 very high due, take up the reins, and go off at the full 
 speed of her horse, guiding him with her supple and firm 
 little hands, bravely, deftly, in her elegant costume and her 
 jewels. She is a "whip," as they say here, one of the five or 
 six women who can best drive a coach, and to whom four 
 horses offer no more terrors than this single chestnut. 
 
 Half an hour later I find her in the electric launch which 
 plies between her yacht and the wharf. The machinery of this 
 frail bark has been improved after the invention of another 
 yachtsman, the owner of one of the pleasure boats which I see 
 
 anchored in the harbor. Th was speaking to me of the 
 
 ignorance in which some of the children of the rich are brought 
 up. If they have good minds, they gain by it the ability to 
 retain the truly American gift of direct vision ; they see things 
 
62 OUTRE-MER 
 
 and not the ideas of things. Furthermore, their ever-active hfe 
 develops in them the virtue of an immediate relation with reahty. 
 The number of yachts in this roadstead is a sufficient demon- 
 stration of the degree to which the love of a life of activity and 
 movement is a national characteristic. They form a little fleet, 
 some of them almost as large as a transatlantic steamer, and 
 capable of a cruise around the world, though that included 
 the enormous ground swells of the Pacific and the heavy seas 
 of Cape Horn. Others are small toys of ships equal to a 
 voyage from Bar Harbor to New York if they keep close in- 
 shore, doubling all the capes and entering all the creeks. And 
 then there are sail-boats, decked cutters which remind me of 
 the Bel- Ami, poor Maupassant's floating work-room. 
 
 The one which we board is of medium dimensions, but fitted 
 up with a magnificence which again gives me the impression of 
 the want of restraint of this strange country. The sleeping-room, 
 with its hangings of old rose damask and its furniture of white 
 enamel ; the drawing-room, also in light colors decorated with 
 plants and flowers, with its book-shelves, its piano, its deep arm- 
 chairs, its ancient rugs, its water-colors by well-known artists ; 
 the dining-room in its dark mahogany, with the table laid, on 
 which the soft brilliancy of orchids mingles with the harsher 
 brilliancy of crystal and silver ; the glazed upper saloon with its 
 embroidered cushions on the wide sofas, where negroes are 
 stationed banjo in hand ; finally the deck with its rocking-chairs 
 set among palms, and an aviary of exotic birds with flashing 
 wings, — all this represents an extreme attainment in luxury 
 which touches upon the realm of fancy. 
 
 Imagination looks backward twenty five — fifty years. It 
 sees a pioneer plodding over the Western plains, a poor Irish- 
 man landing in New York from an emigrant ship, a German 
 seated at the desk of some hotel office. These were the 
 fathers or grandfathers, or at most the great-grandfathers, of 
 the company gathered here, already so accustomed to these. 
 
SOCIETY 63 
 
 refined splendors thcit they are as much at their ease as princes 
 of the blood. It takes generations to make a real nobleman, 
 one who feels and acts as such. But a single generation 
 suffices to make a man of high life who shall have all the easy 
 assurance in the midst of elegance of one of the innumerable 
 indolent lords who swarm in the clubs of London and Paris. 
 Even half a generation is often enough. 
 
 Half-past four. — Lunch, where again the inevitable dry 
 champagne has flowed without stint, has given place to con- 
 versation upon the deck. Other women have come, two girls 
 alone, two others accompanied by two Yale students not even 
 related to them, four or five bachelors, veritable citizens of 
 Cosmopolis, spending their incomes between Paris, London, 
 Cannes, and this corner of the world, whenever the care of their 
 property recalls them to the United States. Already the elec- 
 tric launch is beginning to carry passengers back to the shore. 
 The whole " party " gathered on the boat is about to disperse. 
 Most of them, and among them is the young woman whose day 
 I am describing, are going to look on at a polo match. I am 
 going with her. A quarter-hour upon the always-troubled 
 waters of the harbor, twenty minutes in a carriage, and we are 
 at the boarded enclosure in which this admirable and redoubt- 
 able game is to be played. A side hill commands it, and a 
 dense mass of people are gathered there with intent to see the 
 match from the outside. This game is so national, its energy 
 and danger are so well suited to the race, that humble working- 
 women, washerwomen for example, begin their day at four 
 o'clock in the morning that they may the sooner be through 
 with their work and spend their afternoon here. 
 
 " They are right," said the American who told me this fact. 
 " It is a magnificent game. . . . Twenty years ago our young 
 men thought of nothing but drinking. Now that they have cul- 
 tivated a taste for sports, especially this one, they are obliged to 
 
64 OUTRE-MER 
 
 be temperate so as not to grow stout. They eat little ; they do 
 not drink ; they go to bed early. Without this regimen they 
 could not keep it up a week at a time." 
 
 The fact is that, once having set foot upon this green lawn 
 and seen the two bands of players riding their horses at full 
 speed, their bodies bent forward, their long wooden mallet bal- 
 anced in the free hand, it is difficult to associate with drunk- 
 enness or dissipation the enthusiasm such a virile exercise nec- 
 essarily takes for granted. There are eight of them galloping 
 along on fleet and nimble ponies. With their yellow boots, 
 their knickerbockers, and their shirts and caps of the colors of 
 their side, they follow in compact mass the white ball which 
 rolls over the green turf. The horses, lathered with foam, follow 
 it of their own accord, with the fine intelligence of an animal 
 bestridden by a horseman so well trained that he seems like a 
 part of his horse. 
 
 The ball leaps forward under a blow of the mallet more 
 accurate than the others, and the two bands are off on a gallop. 
 They defile close in front of the line of carriages drawn up 
 along the boundary. You hear the horseshoes pound along the 
 trampled turf. The sound is at once muffled and clear, and ac- 
 companied by the louder sound of their breathing. The same 
 little shudder thrills through the lookers-on that they feel in Seville 
 when watching the duel of the cuadrilla and the bull. Perhaps 
 there is more real danger here, although the setting seems less 
 ferocious. I was on the field only an hour, and in that time one 
 of the riders had fallen from his horse. Another took his place, 
 and ten minutes later received a blow of the mallet full in the 
 face. I saw him fall from his horse blinded with blood. He 
 fainted, then revived, and left the field supported by two friends, 
 without attracting much attention from any one. The chief 
 regret was the interruption of the game. 
 
 The necessity of dressing for the evening offered some conso- 
 lation. For this long day of comings and goings will close, like 
 
SOCIETY 65 
 
 all the others, by a dinner party followed by a ball at the Casino 
 or elsewhere : unless the open air and so mucli exercise have got 
 the better of the fashionable woman. The fatigues of the day 
 explain why evening receptions are so rare in Newport, with the 
 exception of these balls. Dinner, parties break up at half-past 
 ten or even earlier, the departing guests sometimes leaving their 
 hosts so weary that they would feel some hesitation at remain- 
 ing a quarter hour later. 
 
 "It has often happened," said Miss L , the most beau- 
 tiful " Honess " of this season, " that having ordered my carriage a 
 little late I have remained in the dressing-room and gone to sleep 
 upon a bench, so tired was I, rather than return to the drawing- 
 room, knowing as I did that my poor hosts were tired too." 
 
 How do they converse ? This is the last question and the most 
 important which can be asked with regard to the men and 
 women who constitute society. All the rest is only trappings 
 and gesticulation : the art of conversation is society itself. 
 When good, it is its best reason for being ; when bad, silly, and 
 empty, it is its greatest weariness, and always, good or bad, its 
 chief characteristic. But how describe the peculiar character 
 of a conversation without setting down a whole series of real 
 dialogues, which would be at once incoherent and in bad taste ? 
 We must seek for its true tone in the romances of those writers 
 who have known and loved society, and from this point of view 
 Mr. Henry James's earlier novels appear to me to be the most 
 trustworthy witnesses. I say his earlier ones, because this very 
 acute observer has of late more particularly studied his com- 
 patriots as they appear in foreign lands. Those on this side of 
 the water find fault with him for this, and I recently read in a 
 newspaper this astounding epigram, the metaphor being bor- 
 rowed from the electric railway : — 
 
 " He has so much talent it is to be regretted that his trolley 
 does not run on an American wire ! " 
 
 F 
 
66 OUTRE-MER 
 
 None the less is it true that no one else has so accurately 
 reproduced the distinguishing characteristics of conversation 
 as heard in a drawing-room or at a dinner table in Boston or 
 New York. 
 
 As to the more strictly contemporary talk, that color of the 
 present and the actual which Gyp so happily renders for us, it 
 seems to me that no one has given a better idea of it than the 
 distinguished woman who has made the pseudonym Julien 
 Gordon famous. I refer to her novels the European reader, 
 who, without crossing the ocean or leaving his easy-chair, may 
 be curious to verify the few features which to my mind most 
 distinctly mark American conversation. For Americans love 
 to talk much more than the English, if not so much as the 
 Gallo-Romans ; especially is this true of those in whose veins 
 flow a few drops of that excitable Irish blood, which is no more 
 able to be silent than to forget. 
 
 The first of these features is somewhat hard to reduce to a 
 formula. I venture one nevertheless, helping it out by com- 
 ment. I call \t point of view. 
 
 You converse with a Frenchman; if he is bright and ani- 
 mated, after ten sentences the subject will have changed. 
 He lets himself be carried along by the association of ideas 
 so that in the course of an hour you will have touched on all 
 subjects, without method, without profit, but with pleasure. 
 He leaves you with the impression of an alert and ready 
 mind which, to use correctly an old word that is very 
 French, is illumined on many things. You have not felt that 
 which nine times out of ten you will feel with an American 
 man or woman, — an energy which never relapses even in the 
 trivialities of social intercourse, a mind which has its own 
 standpoint from which to look upon life, and which holds 
 to it, compels you to accept it, utilizes you. 
 
 This is because, under the outward semblance of the 
 
SOCIETY 67 
 
 woman of the world who is talking with you in a drawing- 
 room amid lights and flowers, there is a resolute creature 
 who, from the time she came out, began to mould her own 
 personality after some chosen model. Such a one has re- 
 solved to be a great lady after the English type. She has 
 lived much in London, and has had the wit to fit herself to 
 her surroundings. You find it impossible to draw her away 
 from this position, or to elicit from her any " references " 
 that are not British and of London. A second is pleased 
 to be a Parisian, and her conversation shuts you up in a 
 round of ideas which forever and ever presuppose Paris. 
 For her there is nothing but our books, our pictures, our 
 plays, our actors. A third has taken it into her head to be 
 an actress. She has taken lessons in elocution and speaks 
 well. Her conversation turns wholly upon the theatre. A 
 fourth is by way of being literary. Within a quarter of an 
 hour you discover that in the midst of the whirlwind of 
 society she had found time for a wide reading, and she keeps 
 it up by talking to you with that singularly vigorous pre- 
 cision and particularity with which people here are endowed. 
 One of my French friends who was sought for as the husband 
 of a very rich girl, renounced the half-formed engagement 
 because the girl, being extremely interested in science, spent 
 a whole evening in explaining to him a newly invented loco- 
 motive. "I can't marry an engineer," was his only reply 
 to the reproaches of the person who had introduced him 
 to her. 
 
 In general, it must be admitted, the point of view is less 
 severe, less uncompromising, and you will find in the conver- 
 sation of Americans, especially of the women, a second char- 
 acteristic which saves them from stiffness and pedantry. 
 This is vivacity. In their lightest words there is a distinct 
 flavor of reality; there is also animation, action. Nothing 
 abstract or vague; the words always make pictures, the terms 
 
6S OUTRE-MER 
 
 always reveal experience. They have not in the slightest 
 degree that motive of personal effacement which gives to 
 manners their highest polish, but which robs conversation of 
 so much individuality. They never hesitate to speak of them- 
 selves, to tell of their journeys, their adventures, of what 
 they call their "experiences." With little feeling for the 
 spirit of words, they easily come thus to have what we may 
 call the spirit of things, a picturesque speech which, when 
 mingled with gaiety, produces an original and novel "humor." 
 Here again, under the rich woman or the stately man, you 
 feel "the people " close at hand. 
 
 You feel it also in a certain general artlessness of conver- 
 sation. Broad innuendo is absolutely absent from it, and 
 scandal is seldom cruel. The imitation of aristocratic imper- 
 tinence, that scourge of underbred society, finds no place 
 here. Ridicule is incessant, but it is a ridicule that never 
 wounds. It is carried on chiefly by lively anecdotes. Per- 
 sonal characteristics are its principal object; after that social 
 blunders, lack of taste in "lion-hunting," that is, the pursuit 
 of celebrated or titled people. Anecdotes of this class gener- 
 ally come from Europe, and go to prove that the usual result 
 of the passage from the New to the Old World is not to cor- 
 rect the faults of the American, but to make them more pro- 
 nounced. At home, in his natural surroundings, he is more 
 simple, more cordial. In short, hearing him talk you esteem 
 him, you feel him to be "good-natured," to use his own ex- 
 pression, without many dislikes or many desires, and easily 
 amused. Forain said to me after a few days in Newport, 
 "They are children." This sort of spirit seemed flavorless to 
 that keen observer, who has entered so deeply into the old 
 age of our decadence. It has a flavor, but so different from 
 the Parisian acridity that it is perhaps impossible to taste 
 them both. 
 
 However, the Americans are doing their best in this line. 
 
SOCIETY 69 
 
 They enjoy repeating this most admirable of Forain's stories, 
 though with the same effort of understanding which they 
 apply to the reading of Verlaine and Mallarm^. For 
 another note of their conversation is a frequent reference 
 to French writers of the extreme Left. This taste has reached 
 even the women by the medium of the painters who have 
 gone to Paris to study and have been pleased to enter into 
 the current, make acquaintance with things. One of the 
 unintended pleasures of conversation with these women is the 
 amazing contrast between certain names and the lips that 
 utter them, and that go on to apply to them with surprising 
 frankness the same words, "lovely," "enchanting," "fascinat- 
 ing," that equally describe all paintings and all natural land- 
 scapes, a horse and a musical phrase, a bonnet and a statue. 
 
 Two classes of subjects appear to me to be entirely excluded 
 from conversation ; one is politics, the other religion. This 
 silence is the more significant when we reflect that these 
 are the two unfailing interests of America, and that in no 
 country do political and religious life appear to be more 
 intense. This phenomenon may be attributed to various 
 causes. For my part, I see in it a proof that Americans pos- 
 sess in a very high degree that distributive faculty which in 
 itself is only a particular manifestation of their strength of 
 will. You never hear a business man speak of business outside 
 of his office. They excel in fixing the stopping-point. The 
 same energy which permits them, having embarked in an un- 
 dertaking, to give themselves entirely to it, permits them, the 
 matter being finished, to give themselves with equal thorough- 
 ness to a new one. They make a certain use of the verb " to 
 have " which shows this. They say that they have a drive or 
 a ride, as they would say that they have a bottle of wine 
 to drink, a book to read. It is as if, a portion of the day 
 being theirs, an hour, two, three hours, their first concern is 
 
70 OUTRE-MER 
 
 to use it — to make the most of it, to make it an almost 
 isolated whole. 
 
 They no more mingle their sentiments than their occupa- 
 tions. These are pigeonholes which they open and close at 
 will. Politics is one of these pigeonholes, rehgion is another, 
 society is a third ; and then, politics here are not, as with us, 
 left a prey to the hazard of popular fancy or passion. They 
 are ordered like any other business, and the parties are gov- 
 erned by the " machine " in a way which permits no chimeras 
 either of general ideas or of petty intrigues. As to religion, 
 absolute freedom has so multiplied sects, and shades of dif- 
 ference in the sects, that all discussion has come to be 
 impossible. It would be a clashing of opinions so vast and 
 continuous that as a natural consequence they have agreed to 
 a mutual tolerance. This absence of the two great principles 
 of irritation which exist in this world has resulted in giving 
 conversation an air of harmlessness, almost of benignity, as of 
 a most cordial simplicity. So, at least, it impresses me, for 
 all these travelling impressions ought to carry with them the 
 corrective of a " perhaps," since they can never be entirely 
 verified even after a second, a third, or even a tenth experience. 
 
IV 
 
 SOCIETY 
 
 II. Wo?nen and Young Girls 
 
 I HAVE a quantity of notes made in the course of months 
 after those first ones, upon that American "society," of which 
 at Newport I had at once the most complete and most striking 
 experience. I have seen it again under all aspects, at Boston, 
 at Chicago, at New York again, and at Washington. 
 
 These notes were hastily set down day by day, like a paint- 
 er's sketches, destined one day to be blended in some special 
 final picture. I have run them over more than once, with the 
 idea of classifying them, of summing them up in a few some- 
 what clear statements. The difficulty which I have found in 
 making such a synthesis arises less from their abundance than 
 from a process of metamorphosis which my own mind has 
 undergone in the course of this long journey and these many 
 experiences. 
 
 Just as the words "the United States" now translate them- 
 selves for me by thousands of concrete and distinct pictures, 
 while at my arrival they brought u]d l)efore me a confused and 
 indeterminate mass, so these other words, " American Society," 
 have ceased to express for me the unique thing of which I had 
 a prevision at Newport. 
 
 There is no American society as there is a French society 
 and an English society. In the United States there are as 
 many social systems as there are cities, and as not one of these 
 cities has succeeded in establishing a supremacy of fashion like 
 
 71 
 
72 OUTRE-MER 
 
 that which Paris exercises over our provinces, it resuUs that 
 there are all sorts of social centres, each one of which deserves 
 a monograph. Certain novehsts are working in this field; 
 among them I may cite Mr. Chatfield Taylor, to whom we 
 already owe such curious sketches of fashionable Chicago ; and 
 common speech itself furnishes proof of these differences in 
 social circles, with the extravagances peculiar to proverbial 
 expressions. How many times in the course of this journey 
 have people said to me : — 
 
 " In Boston they ask you what you know ; in New York, 
 how much you are worth ; in Philadelphia, who your parents 
 were ! " 
 
 This epigrammatic remark is not entirely accurate. It 
 seemed to me that in New York, for example, painters, 
 sculptors, writers, and theatrical artists were assured of as 
 cordial a welcome as in the ancient and learned citadel of 
 Puritanism, — the "Hub" of Massachusetts. It remains none 
 the less evident that the ardor for culture is more general and 
 more intense in Boston, the mania for luxury more violent in 
 New York, and that in Chicago there is more imitation, more 
 uncertainty in the endeavor after the fitting. In that city I 
 saw ladies rise from their seats in the theatre at the suggestion 
 of one of their escorts, to visit an actor in the green room. 
 But when a lady from New England who was with them in 
 their box refused to join them in their incursion behind the 
 scenes, they sat down again, their eyes betraying the thought, 
 " So it is not proper ! " 
 
 They long after Washington. " It is a delightful place," a 
 lady said to me. " The men are not busy as they are here. 
 They are in politics or something. They have plenty of time 
 for afternoon teas ! " 
 
 This abundance of time for five-o'clock teas does, in fact, 
 give to the city on the banks of the Potomac something of the 
 effect of Dresden or Weimar. Walking along these streets, with 
 
SOCIETY 73 
 
 their border of private houses, with no suggestion of business 
 or commerce, you might fancy yourself in some strasse of a 
 German capital. And the easy flexibility of social life is in 
 singular contrast with the overweighted condition of the other 
 cities. I fancy that 'Frisco — as the contemptuous East insists 
 upon calling San Francisco — has also its very distinct, very 
 special, very original social circle ; and St. Louis also, and 
 especially New Orleans. 
 
 It results that the traveller has, after a little while, some diffi- 
 culty in recovering the first impression of unity, which is yet 
 the true one ; for these different " societies " are merely varie- 
 ties of a single species, or as groups within a group. They 
 have, at any rate, one trait in common, with regard to which 
 it is so impossible to be mistaken, that the most superficial 
 observers have remarked it no less than the most profound, 
 the two weeks' tourist as much as a Bryce, or a Claudio 
 Jeannet. All these forms of social life, however different they 
 may be, are entirely, absolutely, the work of " woman." It is 
 by woman and for women that these social circles exist, so that, 
 in order to understand them in their birth and development, it 
 is necessary first of all to study and understand the American 
 woman. Such a task is difficult in any country : how much 
 more when it has to do with creatures at once so complete and 
 so complex, each one of whom has her own will, a small uni- 
 verse of ideas, sentiments, ambitions ! 
 
 At all hazards, here are a few reflections, a few sketches 
 chosen from among a couple of hundred, as in some respects 
 the most representative. 
 
 A first problem forces itself upon you, — a historic problet 
 the solution of which will, at least, explain how this supreme 
 product of this civilization has been made. How does it come( 
 to pass that the men of this country — so energetic, so strong- 
 willed, so dominating — have permitted their wives to shake off 
 
74 OUTRE-MER 
 
 masculine authority more completely than in any other part of 
 the world? It would seem as if these sturdy conquerors, ac- 
 customed to see everything bend before their daring and often 
 their severity, would be more incapable than others of tolerat- 
 ing in their homes a will, an energy, an activity, a personality 
 in fact, equal to their own, existing by itself beside them and 
 confronting them. 
 
 The contrary fact appears, inscrutable, and, if social life 
 is more closely observed, every slightest detail of manners 
 makes it equally evident. Not a hotel, not a bank, not a 
 public building, which has not its ladies' entrance by which 
 they go in and out as independendy, as much a law to them- 
 selves, as men can be. One of them enters those electric or 
 cable cars which abound in the United States. The seats are 
 all occupied, but nineteen times in twenty a man gets up to 
 give his place to the newcomer, who accepts it without thanks, 
 so entirely natural does the courtesy appear. If this rule has 
 any exceptions, it is because certain women deem it a reproach 
 and humiliation to be treated differently from men. That the 
 young girls of the best famihes go out alone on foot, or in a 
 carriage, is a social custom so well known that one would be 
 ashamed to cite it, except for the sake of interpreting its mean- 
 ing more accurately. This proof of their freedom of action is 
 also a proof of the respect which men in America profess for 
 them. A man who should too boldly stare at a woman who was 
 alone would be so discredited that the most ill-bred person 
 would not venture to do so. What do I say? He would not 
 so much as think of it, so fixed is the habit of equality between 
 the two sexes. 
 
 This equality extends from small things to great. You visit 
 a public school ; you will there see girls working with boys, and 
 the teacher a man or a woman as it happens. You enter a 
 laboratory of the university. There are young girls bending 
 over the microscope side by side with the students. You 
 
SOCIETY 75 
 
 permit the entrance of a reporter, who comes unannounced 
 in the name of a great newspaper ; it is a woman who asks to 
 interview you. You ask the address of a doctor ; you ascertain 
 that there are as many women doctors as men, or if not as 
 many, that they are so many as to cease to be exceptional. 
 You go into the courts of law ; the secretary who draws up the 
 warrants is a woman. There are women lawyers. There are 
 women pastors in certain churches. x\t the head of a volume 
 containing the census of the occupations of women in the 
 United States, one of them, a poet of high standing, Julia Ward 
 Howe, has placed this proud sentence. It explains better than 
 whole commentaries that passion for activity which character- 
 izes the claims of women in this country. 
 
 " The theory that woman ought not to tvofk is a corruption 
 of the old aristocratic system. ... A respect for labor is the 
 foundation of a true democracy." 
 
 Who can be surprised if creatures possessing this pride, 
 this consciousness of individuality, having conquered the 
 right of taking upon themselves occupations most foreign to 
 their sex, reign uncontested in the realm most fit for them, — 
 the management of social life? The very origin of the social 
 life of America, as I have already pointed out, makes this 
 necessary. In this country the women who belong to society 
 have not, as with us, and in England, received a different 
 education from those who are not of it. Their birth is not 
 different; their family is not different; nor is their nature. 
 They bring to it the same strength of resolution, the same 
 power of realism, the same independence of personality. It 
 remains to inquire why men permitted this independence to 
 be born and to grow up. 
 
 This phenomenon has complex reasons, as excellent ob- 
 servers have pointed out. And first, it is precisely that fever 
 of democracy, that idolatry of the doctrine of equality, which 
 for a hundred years was one of the passions and the prides 
 
76 OUTRE-MER 
 
 of the American. To this day, though in certain Eastern 
 cities an invasion of old European prejudices has introduced 
 a few pretensions which that Jacobin Stendhal energetically 
 called the "aristocratic virus," this idolatry of equality re- 
 mains very much alive in the middle class. I have seen a 
 theatre audience spring up frantically at this word of a labor- 
 ing man as he entered a liquor saloon : — 
 
 " I am a freeborn American citizen, and I will go where 
 I please." 
 
 Such theories have their logic. The equality of the man 
 and the woman was on similar terms. The religious sects have 
 contributed to this end, by giving to woman the possibility 
 of preaching like a man, and consequently of considering 
 herself, and making herself to be considered, his equal in 
 reason, eloquence, and authority. There are women in the 
 origin of many of the religious confessions. Ann Lee founded 
 the Shakers. Barbara Heck reformed the Methodists. Lu- 
 cretia Mott gave their faith to the Hicksites, — to the 
 "Friends," — who, like Tolstoi, preach "obedience to the 
 light within." You will continually find in the newspapers 
 notices like the following, which I copy from an Albany 
 journal : — 
 
 "The Rev. Anna H. S will address the men's mass 
 
 meeting at German Hall, at four o'clock: no boys under six- 
 teen admitted." 
 
 Thus granted entrance to ofifices, women necessarily held in 
 their homes a place which the conditions of the conquest of 
 the vast continent contributed to make all the more impor- 
 tant. Women were few in those frontier settlements which, 
 advancing continually westward, marked the stages of the 
 great democracy, in its progress from Atlantic to Pacific. 
 They were most necessary to the maintenance of this half- 
 savage life, in which men were called to struggle at once 
 against nature and against men. Treated without sufficient 
 
SOCIETY 77 
 
 consideration, the women could not have lived through it. 
 They would have died, as Lincoln's mother did, seized with 
 that mysterious prairie malady, that "milk sickness," which 
 never yields its hold. It was necessary to be careful and con- 
 siderate of them. 
 
 A singular sort of chivalry is thus developed, the signs 
 of which are found in the local character studies which the 
 Americans are so fond of writing, setting on the stage, and 
 playing. One type continually recurs in these pieces, that of 
 the Westerner, rough and loyal, who chews, drinks, and talks 
 a frightful dialect through his nose, but who, where a woman 
 is concerned, is capable of the most remarkable flights of 
 honor. I have nowhere found this singular hero better repre- 
 sented than in Boston, in a comedy entitled In Mizzoura, 
 and by an actor named Goodwin. This cross between a cow- 
 boy and Don Quixote saved the life of a rival, who was on the 
 point of being lynched by a mob. With his facetious and 
 intent features, his tobacco distended cheek, his far-stream- 
 ing jets of saliva, his harsh voice, his hat on the back of 
 his head, and a sort of automatic passivity of manner, the 
 comedian was the very incarnation of the sentimental and 
 kindly countryman; and I found an amazing contrast between 
 the applause with which the public greeted his generous deeds 
 and the ease with which they accepted the idea of lynching. 
 Both these things are a part of their customs. 
 
 By all sorts of influences like these that special creation, 
 the American woman, is elaborated. These are the roots by 
 which the frivolous and capricious independence of the mil- 
 lionaire's daughter sinks deep into the springs of the national 
 life. In the strangely perplexing relations between American 
 men and women there is a still deeper reason, at least so it 
 appears to me, and one which is wholly physiological. But 
 when we have to do with the laws which rule the mutual rela- 
 tions of the sexes, we always have to come back to physiology. 
 
78 OUTRE-MER 
 
 If, for example, the Orientals have reduced their women to 
 
 a frightful state of slavery and degradation, it is because their 
 
 -love for them is strongly sensual, and in all sensuality there 
 
 is a basis of hatred, because there is a hidden taint of animal 
 
 J. 
 
 jealousy. If the Latin races, while according a greater liberty 
 
 -to women, yet instinctively revolt from the idea of their inde- 
 pendence and personal initiative, it is because, under all our 
 refinements, we are a little like the Oriental. Sensuality and 
 the despotism of jealousy are at the foundation. If, on the 
 other hand, the English accord more liberty to their women, 
 it is because climate, race, religion, have more tamed the 
 ardor of their natures. The sera jiivenum Venus of Tacitus 
 is as true of young Oxford men as it was of the young Ger- 
 mans of the first century. All who have closely studied the 
 young men of America will say, with one consent, that in this 
 respect they are like young Englishmen, or still more cold. 
 
 Merely to reflect upon the conditions under which the 
 country has grown up, is to see that it must logically be thus. 
 The incessant toil into which these men must have thrown 
 themselves, in the effort to wrest the land from nature and 
 from the Indians, the nervous tension due to the stress of 
 competition, bad cooking, the absence of wine and the use of 
 intoxicating liquors, religious fervor and political ardor, and 
 a score of other causes, have checked the development of this 
 people on the side of the senses. Art and literature are recent 
 things ; neither, then, has the emotional imagination been 
 fed. A trifling fact is singularly significant. I am assured 
 that in all the United States there is not an entirely nude 
 statue. Only yesterday the Bostonians, so cultured, so lib- 
 eral, so in love with art, refused to accept for the fagade of 
 the Public Library two children done by the powerful sculptor 
 St. Gaudens, because they were not clothed ! The munici- 
 pality of Chicago forced another sculptor to put clothes upon a 
 Hebe designed for a fountain, which he had left undraped. 
 
SOCIETY 79 
 
 These circumstances combined have brought about this 
 result, that woman's charms have been given the second place 
 in the interest of men. This sense of charm, though lulled to 
 indifference, has become neither morbid nor unhappy ! That 
 species of cruelty which grows out of too great desire is 
 the true principle of the great inequalities of legislation in 
 which was manifested the secret desire of the male in defi- 
 ance of the female. In American sensibility, it simply does 
 not exist. It even seems as if this relative diminution in the 
 prominence given to the life of the senses has modified — 
 only slightly indeed, but none the less truly — the difference 
 of appearance between the two sexes. 
 
 I remember that at Cambridge, visiting the "Hasty Pud- 
 ding," one of the students' clubs, where they give amateur 
 theatricals, I had an opportunity to examine the photographs 
 of those of the young men who had taken women's parts and 
 wore their dress. There was a surprising similarity — almost 
 identity, indeed — between these portraits and those of their 
 sisters or cousins, tall girls, with narrow chests, falling shoul- 
 ders, straight backs, who have practised gymnastics and " high- 
 kicking," who can lift their foot as high as their head, and 
 jump from their own height without injury. It seems as if 
 the type of manhood, while taking on a finer nervous organi- 
 zation, had lost something of its primitive weight, and, on 
 the other hand, that the type of womanhood, vigorous, ener- 
 getic, and impulsive, had taken on a more resolute charm, 
 firmer, less voluptuous, and delicately masculine. 
 
 These are but suggestions, but they help to a better under- 
 standing of what makes, not the whole of a people, but its 
 real and permanent basis, — the physical existence of the race. 
 And though the social life be luxurious, artificial, and over- 
 loaded, such a race gives a basis of reality to the nation, or, 
 to make a more accurate comparison, it is the web upon which 
 may be embroidered the flowers of life. 
 
80 OUTRE-MER 
 
 This apotheosis of woman, which is the most characteristic 
 feature of "society" in America, is in the first place and espe- 
 cially the apotheosis of the young girl. The words are simple, 
 yet they need to be explained ; for it is probable that on 
 every point — except indeed that of honor — they express pre- 
 cisely the contrary in the United States and France. 
 
 That which first strikes the foreigner, who has heard so much 
 about American girls, is the absolute impossibility of distin- 
 guishing them from the young married women. The much- 
 commented fact that they go in and out entirely unattended 
 does not sufificiently account for this perplexity. Their identity 
 is much deeper than that. They dress in the same way, wear 
 the same jewels, have the same freedom of speech and of 
 smile, they read the same books, do the same things, possess 
 the same full-blown beauty, and,. thanks to the invention of the 
 " chaperon," there is no theatre, or supper party, or tea 
 where they cannot be present all by themselves upon the invita- 
 tion of any man of their acquaintance. The character of this 
 official surveillance may be estimated by the companion fact 
 that the young girl, in whose honor the "bachelor" gets up a 
 party, usually chooses the chaperon herself. The younger the 
 chaperon, the better she suits. The young widow and the 
 " grass-widow," whether separated, divorced, or simply apart 
 from her husband for the time being, is an ideal person for this 
 duty. It may also be said that the young girls whom you see 
 around a table at Delmonico's, in company with these young 
 men and the said chaperon, are as much at liberty as if they 
 had no one to answer for them but themselves. 
 
 This habit of unchecked self-government is manifest in the 
 singular serenity of their countenances. One of the most 
 charming men in New York, a poet of reputation, conceived 
 the clever idea of making a collection of miniatures in 
 which, with their permission, should be included all the noted 
 beauties of the city. I remember that when I passed a mag- 
 
SOCIETY 81 
 
 nifying-glass over the glass behind which smiled a hundred 
 refined and inscrutable faces, I sought in vain to distinguish 
 those who were married, and I could not. What more, indeed, 
 can marriage bring a girl when it comes ? Duty ; a husband to 
 submit to, children to bring up, a house to look after. The 
 young girl feels the weight of none of these chains to-day. 
 She knows it, and that she is enjoying her best days. Once 
 married she will not have one whit more freedom, and she 
 will have fewer opportunities to amuse herself Therefore, 
 more often than not, she will marry late. If it is not entirely 
 the end of things for her, as for the young man in Paris who 
 decides to give up his bachelor life, it is the entering-wedge of 
 abdication. And many of them do not shut their eyes to this 
 fact. 
 
 " We must amuse ourselves before marriage," one of them 
 said to me, with a smile. " Who knows what will come after- 
 ward?" 
 
 The divorce cases reported from time to time in the news- 
 papers prove this young woman's good sense to be equal to her 
 beauty. For my part, after having closely studied human con- 
 ditions in Europe and here, I think that a young man from 
 twenty to twenty-five has the best chance of happiness by being 
 an Englishman of good family, studying at Oxford ; and a young 
 girl by being born an American, of a father who has made a 
 fortune in mines, railroads, or land speculations, entering New 
 York or Washington society under good auspices. 
 
 At the first glance this absolute freedom makes all the young 
 girls look alike. They are the model after whom many authors 
 — some of them very distinguished, but none of whom has 
 taken the trouble to come here — have composed the type 
 which has become classical with us, — the American woman of 
 the romance and the th^tre. Our writers manufacture her of 
 the simplest possible materials, — very bad manners upon a 
 background of simplicity ; there you have the walking doll. 
 
 G 
 
82 OUTRE-MER 
 
 Nevertheless, it is only a doll, and the two elements of which 
 it was made appear to me to be equally false. 
 
 The American girl, when we see her in France, may often 
 appear to us ill-bred, because we compare her with our own 
 conventional type of young girl, which, let me whisper, is not 
 very close to the truth either. Seen near at hand and in her 
 own home, you are better able to understand that this freedom of 
 action may quite as probably be associated with a good, as with a 
 bad, education. After a very few weeks, you learn to distinguish 
 quite clearly between those who are " fast," as they say, and 
 those who are not ; between her who takes pleasure in arousing 
 the interest and awakening the desire of a man and her with 
 whom moral famiharity is impossible, still less physical familiarity. 
 
 As for simplicity, when we Frenchmen apply the word to 
 young girls we always take it for granted that there is only one 
 question in the world for them, — that of love. We implicitly 
 admit that that is the essential fact of their existence, as of all 
 women's existence. We ask ourselves, what they think about it, 
 what they know about it, and our measure of their innocence, of 
 their virginity of soul, if I may so speak, is entirely based upon 
 the answer. It is always understood that their acquaintance 
 with the things of real life accords with this single answer. Such 
 a test is not applicable to the American girl, because with her 
 as with the American man of from twenty to thirty years, the 
 question of love is relegated to the background. The question 
 whether or not she will be married in accordance with the 
 desires of her heart, whether or not her life will be a love 
 story, has very often not the slightest place in a girl's thoughts. 
 Even for those who seem the most intent on pleasing, and who 
 make the most of their personal attractions, — there are fewer of 
 them than Frenchmen suppose, more of them than Americans 
 will admit, — it is still true that nine times out of ten their rela- 
 tions with a man are merely a fact of social Hfe. It is simply 
 a way of gratifying their self-love, of becoming what the news- 
 
SOCIETY 83 
 
 papers call "Prominent people in society" by the number of 
 their adorers. This love of admiration has not the danger 
 here that it would have elsewhere, because, on the one hand, of 
 the reserve of men in America ; on the other, of the girl's 
 thorough understanding of the masculine character. They 
 began at so early an age to be on intimate terms with men, 
 that, so far as they are concerned, they are in the position of 
 the children of a circus rider with horses. One girl, speaking 
 to me of a common acquaintance, a Spanish woman married 
 in Rome and very unhappy, said : — 
 
 " She does not know how to manage her husband." 
 
 And she told me how this woman's rival had gone to work 
 to attract and retain her unfaithful husband. The sort of intel- 
 ligent innocence which such remarks take for granted is not 
 very intelligible to us. A diplomat who spent several years 
 here, and to whom I repeated this conversation by way of 
 ascertaining its precise import, summed up his own impression 
 of them — which is severe — in the words, " They have a chaste 
 depravity." He supported his epigram by anecdotes con- 
 cerning " engagements," as they say here. 
 
 " I have known," he said, " many young girls engaged to 
 men whom they had not the slightest intention of marrying. 
 They liked them as lovers, but they did not want them as hus- 
 bands. I have known others who for months have kept secret 
 a serious engagement, in order to retain the attentions which 
 are denied to an 'engaged girl.' A girl's engagement is, nine 
 times out of ten, what an interesting situation is to a wife, — 
 something to be concealed as long as possible, and admitted 
 only when it can be concealed no longer." 
 
 For my part, I see in these httle facts, which I have reason 
 to believe true, nothing which proves either profligacy or per- 
 versity. They are a sign that the American girl is, before all 
 things, a reasoning creature, fitted both by nature and educa- 
 tion for self-guidance. 
 
84 OUTRE-MER 
 
 "What is the matter with you?" one of my compatriots, 
 who had stopped in New York on his way to Chicago, asked 
 one of these young girls. He had sat beside her at two suc- 
 cessive dinners, and had found her very singular the second 
 time ; quite different from the evening before. 
 
 " I am a little nervous," she replied. " Some one came to 
 see me at five o'clock, and acted in a way I don't like. I shall 
 be obliged to give up my flirtation with him and I am sorry. 
 He is such a bright fellow ! " 
 
 How shall I translate this word " bright," to which the 
 Americans give so much of meaning, to which they add so much 
 of quick adaptability and effective power ? How, also, shall I 
 understand the mental processes of a modest girl who extends 
 such confidences to an acquaintance of yesterday? Frankness 
 hke this appears to me precisely a proof of a simplicity which 
 we are ill-fitted to understand. To recur to the comparison 
 lately used, I am sure this child attached little more importance 
 to the " bright fellow's " lack of breeding, than she would have 
 attached to the stumbling of a pony which she had " badly 
 managed." He has broken' his knees and can't be used again. 
 What a pity ! " He was such a bright pony ! " A girl who, 
 corrupt or impassioned, would attach an extreme importance to 
 love matters, either does not speak of them or speaks in another 
 tone. 
 
 Precisely because the American girl's imagination does not 
 play around sentimental problems, she has far more shades of 
 variety in her character than her compeers in Europe. The 
 latter do not expect their true development until their heart 
 has spoken, and the influence of a man has begun to mould 
 them. The American girl exists by herself. She knows it and 
 wifls it so. She is proud of it. She has nothing in common 
 with the Galatea of the pagan myth who receives all from Pyg- 
 malion, from the embodiment of her beauty to the fire of her 
 soul. Her individuality is already complete when she arrives 
 
SOCIETY 85 
 
 at marriage — at the latest possible moment, as I have already 
 said, if her parents have ever so little fortune. She proposes 
 to choose a husband who will take the place of these convenient 
 parents, in the matter of indulgence and also of wealth. She 
 only half counts upon the generosity of her father, who is not 
 obliged to dower her, and who, once she is married, may reduce 
 her allowance to an absurd figure. One girl, a blonde with 
 great half-mocking blue eyes, — blue eyes which are both 
 tender and tantalizing, and a delicately-formed nose, at once 
 sensitive and scornful, told me between smiles that showed 
 beautiful teeth, in which there was not a speck of gold : — 
 
 " Mamma says that love is like a toothache. So far I have 
 no need of a dentist. I shall never marry any but a rich, a 
 very rich, man. The rest may come as it may, or not at all. 
 At this moment I have a suitor who is worth five millions. So 
 there is no hurry." 
 
 And then she added, thoughtfully : — 
 
 " I should like, above all things, to be a widow. I have 
 always thought how nice it would be to lose my husband on 
 my wedding-day. I should have less reason to mourn as I 
 should know him less. I should like to see him struck with 
 lightning as we come out of the church. It is so nice to be a 
 young widow ! " 
 
 This lively little creature — she was nineteen years old, — 
 libelled herself with all the charm of a witty girl posing before a 
 French novelist, " French novelist," the two words have always 
 had a vague aroma of scandal here. But her paradox only lent 
 weight to her real thought ; namely, that she would do well to take 
 time before she bartered her present lot for one more uncertain 
 and more dangerous. Many of her companions think as she does. 
 It is for this reason that they willingly remain single till they are 
 twenty-five or twenty-six years old, and in these long years of 
 unchecked independence, each one follows her own tastes, each 
 her own fancy, her own nature, indeed, oppressed by so Httle 
 
86 OUTRE-MER 
 
 constraint. Hence it results that the individuality of each 
 nature is amply developed. Innumerable types also work 
 themselves out, which a traveller of a few months' experience 
 is utterly unable to distinguish in even the most general way. 
 Those which I am about to sketch are, perhaps, not the most 
 happily chosen. They have at least the merit of having been 
 studied from life. 
 
 The most artless of these young-girl types, and to my mind 
 the most touching, for reasons which I will explain, is the 
 Beauty. There are two or three in every city, and their suprem- 
 acy is so well recognized that you are continually receiving 
 such invitations as " Pray come to tea to-morrow afternoon, to 
 
 meet Miss , the Richmond beauty." I say Richmond at 
 
 random ; in its place put Savannah, Charleston, Albany, Provi- 
 dence, any city north or south that you please. To merit her 
 title, the Beauty must indeed be lovely with that radiant bright- 
 ness which extinguishes all other women at a ball, a dinner, or 
 the theatre. She must be very tall, very well formed, the hnes of 
 her face and figure must lend themselves to that sort of repro- 
 duction of which the newspapers and their readers are so fond. 
 She must also know how to dress with magnificence, which here 
 is inseparable from elegance. 
 
 Once recognized, though she may not be more than twenty 
 years old, she enters upon a sort of ofiicial, almost a civic, ex- 
 istence. In the newspaper columns devoted to " Social Gossip," 
 the types spontaneously form her name, so often have the com- 
 positors set it up. She is as necessary a part of every grand 
 dinner and ball as the roses at a dollar apiece, and the cham- 
 pagne brut. Her own city cannot suffice to her, or, rather, she 
 would not be fulfilling her mission if she did not represent that 
 city in New York, Washington, Newport, at the races, the 
 regattas, all the events where, as on a stage, American society 
 displays itself. She is, in fact, a social actress and a champion 
 
SOCIETY 87 
 
 of her order, like a master of billiards or chess. Let us be more 
 ambitious, — like a pugilist, like Jim Corbett the Californian ! 
 
 For her successes to be perfect, she must compete for her 
 place "abroad," and play her part as leading social lady in 
 Paris, London, Rome. When she returns from Europe with 
 her crop of laurels, she still does not lay down her arms. She 
 has a record to hold, and the day when she shall be assuredly, 
 incontestably, excelled by a rival, it will be with her as with the 
 Boston boxer, the hapless J. L. Sullivan, who no longer counts 
 since he has been once beaten, — as with the Teutonic and 
 the Majestic since the Campania has made the passage from 
 Europe in five days sixteen hours and a few minutes. It is all 
 over — they belong to the past. 
 
 Behind the Beauty, to keep up the insane expenses of a life 
 always in full dress, in the most senselessly luxurious circle in 
 the two hemispheres, is a father who most likely is never seen, 
 who divides his life between his office, his club, and sometimes, 
 in certain cities, the bar of the best hotel. His daughter, to 
 whom he makes an allowance which would suffice for the 
 trousseau of a princess, is dear to him by a complex senti- 
 ment into which enters less of affection than of pride. He 
 sometimes passes entire seasons, not to say years, without see- 
 ing her when she crosses the ocean. Even when she is in the 
 United States and at home, the meals which he takes with her 
 could be counted. Nevertheless he loves her, but by such a 
 displacement, such a projection of his personahty as Balzac 
 described, with the blemish of his habitual extravagance, when 
 he pictured the friendship of Vautrin for Lucien de Rubempre. 
 
 " He was myself, young, and brilliant," said the convict. 
 " From the depths of my cell I put on his coat. I drove 
 in his tilbury ; I entered drawing-rooms with him." 
 
 Probably the business man, laboring over railway plans and 
 manufacturing projects, accompanies his daughter by a similar 
 imagination. His money goes about in this young girl ; that is 
 
88 OUTRE-MER 
 
 to say, his will, his labor, all that is most personal to himself. 
 Whether he marries her to some noble Italian, Englishman, or 
 Frenchman, or whether he refuses her to the nobleman, — the 
 American father's vanity may take on either of these forms, — 
 she serves to prove to him his power. He has this daughter just 
 as he has a twenty-story "building" which bears his name, a 
 picture gallery mentioned in the guide-books, as he has his 
 stocks. " I know my social value," said one of these girls. 
 She spoke of herself as of a certificate of New York Central, or 
 Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy stock. Social value, — this is 
 , probably the best definition of this singular creature, whose 
 i existence consists — in the heart of a democracy — in under- 
 going as much representative etiquette as if she were maid of 
 honor to a princess, or herself a princess in a court that was 
 always making festival. Speaking of one of these girls, whose 
 health was failing in the midst of her social victories, and who 
 has since died of them, a very acute woman dropped this 
 word, to which I shall add nothing, so perfectly does it seem 
 to me to express that which must be the last calamity of such 
 a lot : — 
 
 " I always longed to condole with her upon her toilettes ! " 
 
 A second type, less rare than the professional beauty, but 
 still less common than many others, is the young girl with 
 ideas. This class may be divided into two groups, — the 
 convmced girl and the ambitious girl. Like the Beauty, this 
 girl lives in society with that sort of extravagance so difficult 
 to avoid in America. She also figures in the daily procession 
 of the fashionable carnival ; only she is not, like the other, 
 at the head of the procession. She has not attained to this 
 incontestable and somewhat mechanical success. For that 
 matter, she does not desire it. She is a girl who has laid 
 down for herself a special programme, and is occupied in car- 
 rying it out with a regularity and perseverance that she allows 
 
SOCIETY 89 
 
 nothing to interrupt. Sometimes tliis is the case of the con- 
 vinced girl. This programme is in the purely moral order, 
 and of a very high type. For example, she has said to herself 
 that marriage being a contract, the man ought to bring to it 
 the same loyalty as the woman, the same pure past, the same 
 innocence ; and that she will not engage herself to any one who 
 has more past experience than she herself. This puritan rigor 
 of conscience would seem strange in a setting of such frivolity, 
 if you did not recall to mind that a never-failing current of 
 religious ardor flows in the veins of these descendants of the 
 exiles of the Mavflozver or the companions of Penn. 
 
 Or, again, the girl with ideas decides to take part in pohtics. 
 For this two things are required, — that some person nearly 
 connected with her shall hold some high position or be working 
 to that end ; and that she herself have time to direct or aid 
 that person ; she also is working for that. Such is the thor- 
 oughly American peculiarity of her character. She is a realist 
 and insists upon having the reality of that power of which she 
 will have the semblance, through a father, a brother, a husband. 
 She strains every nerve to make the two former senators, mem- 
 bers of Congress, ambassadors ; she will endure the same toils 
 to enable the latter to occupy a similar situation, perhaps to 
 bring him to the White House ; and at the same time she 
 labors that she may be, when the time arrives, a perfect instru- 
 ment for the service of this ambassador or president, making 
 herself familiar with politics and administration, attending the 
 sessions of legislatures, watching the workings of the electoral 
 machine, following the complications of the European chess- 
 board. 
 
 Such a one is both earnest and ambitious. There is another 
 type that is ambitious only. This girl has made up her mind 
 that her name shall be written in the golden book of the Eng- 
 lish peerage, that she will marry a lord. For many years she 
 has been preparing herself for this, losing no opportunity of 
 
90 outre-mi:r 
 
 gaining entrance to the upper circles of English society, mean- 
 while occupying herself with overcoming the obstinacy of her 
 father, whose opposition to international marriages is a matter 
 of principle, — o{ jingoism, to use the Anglo-Saxon equivalent 
 of our French chauvinisine, — and also a matter of judgment. 
 So many of these unions have turned out badly ! None the 
 less, the young girl will succeed at last in joining the small pha- 
 lanx of American peeresses ; the nervous tension of her expres- 
 sion is my warrant for that, and so is the decided curve of her 
 hps, with the vigorous little chin. And once having attained 
 to the British Olympus, she will need to be taught nothing 
 either of people or of customs — she, whose grandfather began 
 life in a Httle restaurant in Chicago, before the fire ! 
 
 An ambitious girl who is less gifted, especially if she is 
 less rich, cheerfully becomes a "bluffer," to borrow once 
 again a significant term of the national game of poker. She 
 went to Europe last year with the idea well fixed in her pretty 
 brown head to play the same game with some rich man oi^er 
 there that so many European adventurers have come over 
 here to play upon rich girls. What could be fairer? She 
 knows that her father's fortune will not endure investigation, 
 and she knows, too, that every one else knows it and that the 
 brilliant parties given in their mansion on Fifth Avenue 
 deceive no one. The "bluffer" has told herself that her 
 beauty will make a sensation in London and Paris; that she 
 will easily turn some simple head; that her would-be husband 
 will take her luxurious life, her fine clothes, above all, the 
 fact that she is an American girl abroad, as authentic wit- 
 nesses of millions. She has had before he illustrious examples 
 of successful bluffs of this sort. Unluckily, she has chanced 
 upon a young man who, though very elegant and well-con- 
 nected, has come to the end of his own resources, and being 
 reduced to expedients has resolved to "bluff" some rich 
 foreigner. The two actors are mutually deceived, and the 
 
SOCIETY 91 
 
 young man, coming to New York to press his suit, has 
 departed, after explanations which must have been most 
 deliciously amusing! Unhappily, comedies of this kind 
 are played without spectators. 
 
 Another character more frequently assumed is that of the 
 tomboy. She has generally been to Europe — for that 
 matter you must always ask this question with regard to every 
 American girl. She there became conscious of her individu- 
 ality, as a philosopher might say. She knows that she is 
 "the American girl," and she wants to be even more so than 
 she is. She makes game of you in her own character by 
 exaggerating it beyond all bounds of probability. She will 
 tell you how, in Paris, in the Rue de la Paix, a gentleman took 
 her for what she was not and followed her. She found the 
 adventure "great fun." 
 
 You feel it incumbent upon you to excuse the indiscretion 
 of your compatriot? 
 
 "Stupid thing 1" she replies; "he didn't so much as speak 
 to me." 
 
 This is the girl who opens her doors to a class in "high- 
 kicking," the art of lifting one's foot as high as possible. 
 She holds the record of six feet three inches, none of her 
 friends having been able to excel her. 
 
 "What a pity that you can't see me kick! " she says to you: 
 "without bending the knee, you know." 
 
 This is the girl who, dining with a young married friend, 
 without her mother, asks you for cigarettes, smokes four at a 
 time, — and exclaims: — 
 
 "To think that I have to come to Jessie's to get a few puffs 
 of straight-cut." 
 
 She has the street-Arab in her make-up, but the American 
 street- Arab; not Gavroche, but Gallegher. I refer the reader 
 to Mr. Richard Harding Davis's clever story, that he may ap- 
 preciate the difference between the innocence of Parisian and 
 
92 OUTRE-MER 
 
 the coarseness of Americiii blackguardism. Compare one 
 of their pantomimes with one of our street singers. The 
 American girl when she undertakes to be masculine is discon- 
 certingly daring in her speech. 
 
 "What do you think of the little trousers with which the 
 virtuous women of Philadelphia and Baltimore have clothed 
 their statues? " 
 
 I saw one of my French friends start at this question sud- 
 denly put to him in a drawing-room of virtuous New England. 
 Another of them found himself growing interested in one of 
 the innumerable Mays whom you meet at all the balls and 
 afternoon teas. One of May's friends — it happened to be 
 the smoker of cigarettes — said to him saucily: — 
 
 "Well, when is the marriage coming off? She is very 
 nice, you know, very nice ! It is a pity that she has nothing 
 pretty but her face. Yes," she went on teasingly; "we slept 
 in the same room a whole week in the country," and a 
 minute description followed — "hollow chest, projecting 
 shoulder-blades, thin legs, no hips — nothing but hair — hair 
 — up to there." 
 
 And she bends her leg and points to the bend of her knee 
 with her mocking laugh like a schoolboy who should describe 
 to you some creature whom he had met on the Boulevard 
 Saint-Michel on a holiday evening. 
 
 Another, feeling bored one evening at a formal dinner, 
 wrote a few lines on the back of her menu, folded the card, 
 and sent it to an officer of our marine on his way to Chicago, 
 whom she had known just three days. 
 
 "I love you," she wrote. "What more will you have?" 
 She went into fits of laughter over the expression of the 
 man's countenance at the absurd joke of this make-believe 
 declaration. 
 
 Another, invited to tea by Miss May's lover, and not suc- 
 ceeding in getting her mother's permission, wrote to him. 
 
SOCIETY 93 
 
 "If I were a French girl they couldn't treat me worse. That 
 is all the good it does to be an American," and then by way 
 of postscript, "You know that if you insist, I will come all 
 the same." And this was not a mere mode of speech. 
 
 The tomboy is a sort of young woman who in general excels 
 in all sports, wears tailor-made gowns, walks erect, plays 
 billiards, and finds much less pleasure in being courted than 
 in devising some new excitement, such as a ride at full speed 
 on the cow-catcher of a locomotive. I have met the daughter 
 of a director of a great railway, of whom this was the favorite 
 amusement. She had covered miles upon miles of the prairie 
 — squatting on the metal platform above which puffed the 
 machine, and by the expression with which she exclaimed 
 "How exciting!" I could see how her nerves must have 
 thrilled with the rush of speed and danger. 
 
 This is the physical tomboy, if one may so speak, in con- 
 trast with whom arises the more serious face of the intellec- 
 tual tomboy; the girl who is up to the times, who has read 
 everything, understood everything, not superficially, but 
 really, with an energy of culture that could put to shame the 
 whole Parisian fraternity of letters. The trouble is that nine 
 times out of ten this mind, which is capable of assimilating 
 everything, is incapable of tasting anything. It is an iron 
 stomach, like that of Didymus, the commentator of the deca- 
 dence, whom the Alexandrians called the Scoliast, with entrails 
 of brass — with no palate. Though like all the others she gets 
 her gowns from the best houses of the Rue de la Paix, there 
 is not a book of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Renan, Taine, 
 which she has not studied, not a painter or sculptor of whose 
 works she could not compile a catalogue, not a school of 
 poetry or romance of which she does not know the principles. 
 She subscribes impartially to the Revue des Deux Mondes and 
 the gazettes of the latest coteries of the Latin Quarter or 
 Montmartre. Only she does not distinguish between them. 
 
94 OUTRE-MER 
 
 She has not an idea that is not exact, and yet she gives you 
 the strange impression as if she had none. One would say 
 that she had ordered her intellect somewhere, as we would 
 order a piece of furniture, to measure, and with as many 
 compartments as there are branches of human knowledge. 
 She acquires them only that she may put them into these 
 drawers. This is the most striking illustration of the misdi- 
 rected effort from which this civilization suffers, and the proof 
 that effort can replace nature only to a certain point,. I 
 remember that as we were leaving the palace of one of the 
 Chicago millionaires, Forain said to me in a voice fairly 
 quivering with the frantic longing of a sensitive artist for a 
 glimpse of simple human nature : — 
 
 "Oh, for a concierge's lodge! What would I give to see a 
 concierge's lodge ! " 
 
 Before the intellectual girl one longs to cry : — 
 
 "Oh, for one ignorance, one error, just a single one. May 
 she make a blunder, may she prove not to know ! " 
 
 In vain. A mmd may be mistaken, a mind may be igno- 
 rant, but never a thinking-machine ! 
 
 A new type now comes into view, that of the coquette, for 
 she too exists — the feminine and compliant coquette, who is 
 somewhat like what we know in Europe, though with decided 
 shades of difference. 
 
 First there is the collector, she whose wiles are exercised 
 upon several persons at a time, usually four, for a variety in 
 jealousies, — two somewhat elderly adorers, and two very young 
 ones. In a parenthesis I may observe that it is a striking char- 
 acteristic of the United States that a man's age appears not to 
 have the same importance to the American as to the French 
 girl. Arnolphe need not here envy Horace the charm of his 
 twenty-five years, so far as Agnes is concerned. The proof is 
 the readiness of young girls to marry rich old men, and the 
 usual happiness of such unions. 
 
SOCIETY 95 
 
 My diplomatic friend insists that calmness of temperament 
 alone explains this anomaly. This hypothesis is scarcely to be 
 reconciled on the other hand with that admiration of "looks," 
 of the physical beauty of man, which, on its part, explains 
 certain elopements of which the papers occasionally speak. I 
 think it more correct to recognize that an American woman's 
 love of admiration is no more than other things a matter of 
 impulse. Will is her guide here too, and leads her to as much 
 satisfaction in turning an old head as a young one. The proof 
 of this element of intention is found in her way of going to 
 work. She almost always uses compliment, but so obvious, so 
 terribly downright, that you know not how to take it. It is a 
 way of asking you for as much in exchange which, those say 
 who know, you may make as extravagant as you like. They 
 will not believe much that you say, but they will like it. 
 
 " I do love the French so ! " said one woman in my pres- 
 ence. " They know so well how to pay compliments ! They 
 go at it in such a way that you believe that they really mean 
 it." And they readily add: "Write to me. Tell me what 
 you think of me. " 
 
 It is this admiring interest that the "collector" desires to 
 arouse and keep alive. It is enough for her; she is always 
 ready enough to be displeased if the correspondence thus sug- 
 gested should go so far as a declaration, or if this admiring 
 interest became bold enough to risk a caress — unless indeed 
 the "collector" herself becomes equally interested. For, 
 unhappily, my friends assure me, there is a type of young girl 
 who still is modest, who yet permits herself to receive trinkets, 
 jewels, even pairs of horses, from the admirers whom she 
 keeps on a footing of Platonism ! She does not go often so 
 far, but contents herself with summer flirtations with men 
 who are rich enough to give her the use of their carriages 
 during the season. 
 
 This singular variety, this virgin nature which remains pure 
 
% OUTRE-MER 
 
 by calculation, while still taking advantage of her beauty for 
 the benefit of her own whims, appears less odious here than 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The financial relations of man and wife are very singular in 
 this country, where the wife most frequently bears to her hus- 
 band the relation of disbursing agent, hardly ever seeing him, 
 receiving from him a profusion of money, which she lavishes 
 by herself alone upon luxuries which her husband never 
 enjoys. He is never there, unless in the form of checks! 
 
 The species, happily, is rare, so rare that I speak of it only 
 by hearsay, while, on the other hand, I have often met the 
 sentimental coquette, her who has the excuse of believing her- 
 self to be "desperately in love " with the man with whom she 
 flirts. The extravagant speech, so characteristic of America, 
 makes use of such expressions to designate the mild passion- 
 ettes, which are at least so far original that they are indulged 
 in by these romantic persons with a self-possession in which 
 all the energy of the race is revealed. When the American 
 girl has been attracted by a young man, she does not content 
 herself, as our schoolgirls do, with timidly dreaming about 
 him. She always has some obliging friend whom she de- 
 spatches to him. 
 
 " Miss N is very anxious to make your acquaintance. 
 
 Come, and T will present you to her." It is regularly another 
 girl who thus plays the part of go-between. She goes farther. 
 "Why don't you pay attention to Nannie? She is charming, 
 I assure you. I think you would please her." 
 
 She doesn't think it — she knows it; for Nannie has made 
 her her confidante and entrusted her with this message. But 
 Nannie, with her romantic daring, is a reasoning child. Who 
 has said that the Americans are like pins, always held by the 
 head? After a certain time she will perceive that she was 
 mistaken as to the intensity of her feelings, especially if a 
 marriage which pleases her becomes possible. Once married 
 
SOCIETY 97 
 
 to another and quite happy, if she ever meets the young man 
 of her little passion, she will say to him : — 
 
 " How foolish I was ! But how I loved you ! " 
 
 And in this reminiscence there will be so much of frank 
 good-fellowship that the idea of resuming with the married 
 woman the interrupted romance begun with the young girl 
 will not occur a second time to the man who is the object of 
 this singular confidence. 
 
 With respect of these types, which nearly all lend them- 
 selves to satire, it is only just to sketch another figure, which 
 IS also to be found in this country of the "always too much," 
 that of the well-balanced girl. The charming personality of 
 the young girl who is all propriety and harmony is of all 
 countries and all times. Moliere modelled his Henrietta 
 after her, Dickens his Agnes, Zola his Denise. That which 
 distinguishes her in America is the precocity and universality 
 of her experience. Usually, in London as in Paris, the very 
 well-balanced girl is, above all things, a child who has been 
 well cared for, closely watched, whose life has been carefully 
 regulated, whose education is narrow. She has either made 
 the best of very painful circumstances, or else has undergone 
 a very rigid discipline. 
 
 Here, on the contrary, she has preserved her natural poise 
 in the midst of the most lavish, unrestrained, and compli- 
 cated life possible. But neither her father's wealth, nor the 
 luxury in which she is wrapped, nor the world-fever by which 
 she is swept along, have been able to prevail against her judg- 
 ment and reasoning "faculty. By herself, she has distinguished 
 between all the sensations born of her surroundings, recog- 
 nized those which are sound and those which are unsound, 
 chosen the former and repelled the latter. She has moulded 
 for herself a character entirely in accord with her social posi- 
 tion, and yet individual and peculiar to herself. 
 
 To a girl like this, we know by instinct, no test would prove 
 II 
 
98 OUTRE-MER 
 
 dangerous, no accident of fortune find her other than she ought 
 to be. So clearly do we perceive her to be energetic, clear- 
 sighted, and gentle, that we understand that the vigor of her 
 race, so unrestrained in every one else, is in her kept under 
 control, in her reaches its limit. The absolute freedom of 
 feminine manners in this country has not destroyed in her a 
 single one of the graces of her sex, and these graces multiply 
 with such vigor as will convince her husband, not alone of 
 her irreproachable fidelity, but that she will be a support in 
 trouble, of whatever nature. Like all the others, she is a 
 highly finished person, self-made, and sufficient to herself, 
 but with enough of intelligent good-nature to understand 
 another person who is near her, to receive him, help him, and 
 associate herself with him. 
 
 That this young girl is not very rare in the United States 
 proves that, if the principle of unrestrained freedom of action 
 has produced grave faults, it has also produced new shades of 
 moral beauty and charm. This creature, a mixture of femi- 
 nine delicacy and virile will, attracts, surprises, entices, com- 
 forts us. We respect her, and she moves us. We are grate- 
 ful to her for existing, as for one of the noble things of the 
 world; and we could dream — so perfect is she — of having 
 her as a part of our lives, as confidante, counsellor, friend, — 
 I was about to say, and I am sure that it is the best eulogy, — 
 as comrade. 
 
 Well or ill balanced, coquettish or sentimental, learned or 
 reckless, designing or simple, the young American girl is 
 before all things else a whole little universe, formed and 
 developed entirely apart from masculine influence. It would 
 seem as if the difference of spirit, of habits, almost of species, 
 between her and her father, which I have already noticed, so 
 entire as to be incredible, must inevitably result in some 
 terrible moral catastrophe. If such are rare, it is because 
 
SOCIETV 99 
 
 here, more than anywhere else, they practise the sensible and 
 humane maxim, "Live and let live." Nevertheless, this ex- 
 treme liberty is saved from friction only by the avoidance of 
 familiarity; with the natural result — of great importance for 
 the young girl, and still more for the young wife — that home 
 life is less known in the United States than in any other 
 country. 
 
 A thousand signs indicate this sort of disintegration of the 
 domestic hearth; in the first place, the singular facility of 
 travelling, and especially the number of rich people who lead 
 that hotel life which is so nearly unintelligible to Europeans, 
 and especially to the French. 
 
 " We call Rochester our home, but we have spent ten win- 
 ters here," said a much-admired young woman. As these ten 
 winters spent in New York correspond with ten summers at 
 Newport, as many autumns at Lenox, and probably several 
 springs in Paris, it may be imagined how much of a place the 
 real home has in the life of such a family This singularly 
 movable manner of life becomes more pronounced as one 
 travels westward. The story goes that some cities in the far 
 West are entirely composed of wooden huts, grouped around 
 an immense hotel. 
 
 It is in the hotel, that caravansary furnished with the ex- 
 travagant luxury which newly made rich people delight in, 
 that is sketched the first rude outline of that social life which 
 you will find in all its glory in the great centres on the Atlan- 
 tic seaboard. The family live in a hotel with their private 
 drawing-room, which they adorn with pictures and draperies, 
 and often with their own furniture. 
 
 One must have sojourned in one of these hotels and dined 
 with these people to be able to realize how entirely the mem- 
 bers of these families live side by side rather than with one 
 another. They eat, indeed, at the same table, but no one ever 
 waits for another. The wife or the daughter is getting up from 
 
100 OUTRE-MER 
 
 the table when the fiuher or the husband conies in to breakfast, 
 kinch, or dinner. It is a very commonplace, but very expressive 
 token of that which is the basis of American family life, — every 
 one for himself and by himself. 
 
 The young girl has this principle written on her innermost 
 heart. Everything conspires to impress it upon her, and she has 
 too fully accepted it not to know, when she marries, that this rule 
 is to govern her own household as it did her father's before her. 
 She is far enough from expecting, as our girls do, to find in the 
 man she marries one with whom she will share every thought, 
 a friend who will train her mind, her heart, her whole being. 
 For that matter, one cannot say of her, as we say in French, 
 that in marr\ing she becomes a woman {femme). She was 
 that before she married, in her ideas, her character, her freedom, 
 her habits. The difference is that on the one hand the possibih- 
 ties of the future will be fewer for her, and on the other, that she 
 will be of less account. With us the passage from girlhood to 
 wifehood is an event. Here it is quite the other thing ; it is a 
 resignation. 
 
 Why is the young married woman less courted than the young 
 girl in the United States ? This is the first question that forces 
 itself upon the foreigner after a few weeks' residence. Is it 
 that Americans respect marriage more than we do ? Is it that, 
 their manners being simpler and purer, the young man's heart 
 revolts at the bitter emotions, the cankered sadness, of unlawful 
 love even in the moment of happiness? Is it because time is 
 wanting for the deep-laid, far-reaching processes of seduction? 
 Is it the hatred of falsehood, so strikingly characteristic of the 
 Anglo-Saxon? Certain it is that in society you almost never 
 hear an allusion to such connections as abound in Paris, and 
 even in London. American conversation always avoids the 
 fine of demarcation between coquetry and intimacy, between 
 the surroundings of a fault and the f.iult itself. 
 
SOCIETY 101 
 
 " Such things do not exist in the United States." So said 
 one and another of my women friends here, and when I de- 
 murred, adducing the conduct of such and such women with 
 such and such men, as appearing to me to be indisputable evi- 
 dence, they would answer : — 
 
 " These women only want to be talked about, because that 
 is the way people do in Europe. Only, instead of going on 
 secretly, they make everything as public as possible, precisely 
 because there is nothing serious." 
 
 The foreigner can only reply by the favorite word of doubt 
 of the most sceptical and least American of people, " Sara^ 
 
 Two reasons, very different in character, however, make it 
 evident a priori, so to speak, that the married woman must 
 be more carefully guarded here than in the Old World. The 
 first, which should neither be exaggerated nor underrated, is 
 the reserve capital of puritanism which, in the past fifty years, 
 has declined from year to year, almost from month to month, 
 but has not entirely disappeared. One of the most eloquent 
 magistrates of Massachusetts, Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
 has said in one of those brief and impressive speeches in which 
 he excels : — 
 
 " Even though our mode of expressing our wonder, our 
 awful fear, our abiding trust in face of life and death and the 
 unfathomable world has changed, yet at this day, even now, we 
 New Englanders are still leavened with the puritan ferment." 
 
 This is true in New England, which still continues to be the 
 moral leaven of America. Now we must bear in mind that for 
 two hundred years the Mosaic law, which punished adultery 
 with death, was written in the codes of New England. The 
 first mitigation of this stern law was simply to brand with the 
 letter A the persons convicted of this crime. Such ferocities 
 of legislation may be done away with, but they leave behind 
 them, in public opinion, traces not to be lightly effaced. The 
 campaign of Dr. Parkhurst, last winter, against the prostitutes 
 
102 OUTRE-MER 
 
 of New York, and the raids carried out at his instance upon 
 these dwellers in the " Tenderloin," — the name given to the 
 disreputable part of Broadway, — attests that the harsh, reform- 
 ing spirit of ancient times is not yet dead. It suffices to prove 
 that the easy Parisian custom of accepting, while ridiculing, the 
 triple family alliance, is not yet that of the United States, 
 
 The second reason is less historic and less ideal. It inheres 
 in that extraordinary facility of divorce which rigid moralists 
 groan over. If they are right from the point of view of the 
 greatest good, they are surely wrong from the standpoint of 
 the least evil. Here, again, the Americans have obeyed their 
 instinct for seeing things as they are, and are guided by 
 facts, which they admit without discussing them. They start 
 out from this perfectly simple idea, which, however, our Latin 
 minds have not yet admitted, that divorce offers no menace to 
 happy unions, and that it is greatly to public and private interest 
 that the more quickly and easily the unhappy ones are broken 
 the better. 
 
 This ground taken, there was as it were a rivalry between 
 the States as to which should do most to facilitate divorce. 
 It is a standing joke, that the brakemen used to cry, at the 
 stations in Chicago, " Twenty minutes' stop for divorce ! " It 
 is a truthful charge that in certain Western codes the rupture 
 of the marriage tie is not much more complicated than the 
 purchase of a piece of ground. In most of them a six months' 
 residence enables you to take advantage of their divorce laws ; 
 in a few, North Dakota for example, ninety days are enough. 
 
 Intemperance, a sentence to prison for two years, voluntary 
 absence for one year, adhesion to an adverse religious sect, on 
 the part of either husband or wife, — these are a few of the 
 grounds of divorce which I select at random from the various 
 articles of these codes. Not a week passes but you may read 
 
 in the papers that Mr. X or Mrs. Z has gone to such 
 
 or such a State to pass the time necessary to establish a resi- 
 
SOCIETY 103 
 
 dence, after which they will be free to return to their former 
 condition and form new ties. These villegiatures for the purpose 
 of divorce are among the gayeties of the more advanced spirits. 
 
 " I used to know Mrs. V well," said a Washington girl to 
 
 me. " When we had a box in the New York Opera, we were 
 always meeting on the train. It was just the time when she 
 was going every week, for a few days, to the house in Dela- 
 ware that she had hired for her divorce ! " 
 / From this faciUty of freedom from ill-advised bonds, it 
 results that those unions which remain appear to be highly 
 irreproachable, as do also those which are made after the rup- 
 ture of a first marriage. There is, indeed, no reason why an 
 ill-assorted union should continue. This is not ideal, to be 
 sure ; but when you look carefully into it, you come at last K.6 
 the conclusion that this flexible legislation does not create 
 an unwholesome social system. Men and women become 
 accustomed frankly and openly to start over again when they 
 have made a mistake, and that is always better than the 
 organized falsehood so common with us, which equally de- 
 grades husband, wife, and lover. But perhaps all three of 
 them would find the solution offered by the United States 
 cruelly inconvenient in its so-called convenience. 
 
 With the door to liberty thus ajar, ready to fly open at a 
 push, how shall the young wife, so developed, so sufficient to 
 herself, so energetically trained both to will and to do, how 
 shall she submit herself to the moulding influences of the 
 companion whom marriage has given her? She was inde- 
 pendent before; she is independent still. I mean, thinking 
 for herself, directing her life according to her own ideas, and 
 continuing her self-development with the same determination 
 that was hers before, without letting herself be moulded under 
 the imprint and according to the ideas of her partner. That 
 is the true epithet for marriage, — not indeed always, but very 
 often. It is a social partnership, to which the man brings for 
 
104 OUTRE-MER 
 
 capital his labor and his money, and the woman her beauty, 
 her art of dress, and her social talents. 
 
 Then come the children, who, with us, are the vital question 
 of a household, its final reunion, its salvation. It is not thus on 
 Anglo-Saxon soil. The idolatry of father and mother, which 
 are the key to the French family — its weaknesses, the equal 
 division of the family inheritance, its warmth also and its unity 
 of interest, — this idolatry, a little morbid but very tender, is 
 replaced in English and American countries by a more virile 
 and colder vigilance, which does not stir the inner fibres of the 
 heart, or at least which stirs them with a different thrill. My 
 French friends of this part of the world are very severe on this 
 point. They tell me that the hope of motherhood is carefully 
 concealed as long as possible by the young wife, who blushes 
 for it as for some animal function almost humiliating and to be 
 concealed. They repeat as very characteristic the remark of 
 an old lady who, when told that one of her young friends had 
 just given birth to twins, exclaimed : — 
 
 " How vulgar ! " 
 
 They tell me of this and that society woman who has spent 
 ten months on a. stretch in Europe, without distressing herself 
 about her children, left to the care of relatives or friends. I do 
 not know whether such desertions are the exception or the 
 rule, and in any case I put little faith in anecdotes. In history 
 they are all false, in literature all calumnious, and where social 
 life is in question they are almost all exaggerated, without those 
 shades of individuality which explain the anomalous or those 
 circumstances which justify it. But, on the other hand, I 
 believe in statistics, and those of divorce appear to me more 
 conclusive. Fathers and mothers who are not brought together 
 by their children cannot love them much, and, on the other 
 hand, if the direct education of the child by its father and 
 mother were more frequent, the independence of the young 
 man and the yoimg girl would not be what it is. 
 
SOCIETY 105 
 
 As the American marriage appears to be above all a partner- 
 ship, so the American family appears to be more than anything 
 else an association, — a sort of social camp, the ties of which 
 are more or less strong according to individual sympathies, 
 such as might exist between people not of the same blood. I 
 am certain, not from anecdotes but from experience, that the 
 friendship of brother and brother, or sister and sister, is entirely 
 elective. So it is with the relations between father and son, 
 mother and daughter. A young Frenchman much in love with 
 a New York girl said to me in one of those moments when 
 the coldness of the woman you love drives you to be cruelly 
 frank : — 
 
 " She has so little heart that she went to the theatre five 
 weeks after her mother's death, and no one resented it." 
 
 I knew that he was telling the truth. But what did it prove ? 
 What do the inequalities permitted by the laws of inheritance 
 prove ? Nothing if not that our natural , characteristics, in- 
 stincts, sensibilities, are not the same as those of the people of 
 Hhis country. They have much less power of self-giving, much 
 
 ore of personal reaction ; and especially a much stronger will. 
 Their will rules their hearts as well as their minds. This seems 
 to us less tender. But are we good judges? 
 
 
 We must continually keep in mind this general want of 
 association in family life if we would in any degree understand 
 the sort of soul celibacy, if we may use the term, which the 
 American woman keeps all through her married life. No 
 more in this second period of her life than in the first, does 
 love bear that preponderating part which seems to us French- 
 men an essential characteristic of the lot of woman. When 
 a Parisian woman of forty reviews her life, the story that mem- 
 ory tells her is the story of her emotions. To an American 
 woman of the same age, it is more often the story of her 
 factions, of what she calls, by a word I have before cited, her 
 
106 OUTRE-MER 
 
 experiences. She gained, between the ages of eighteen and 
 twenty-five, a conception of her own self, which was imposed 
 upon her neither by her traditions — she has none — nor by 
 the instructions of her parents — they never gave her any — 
 nor even by her own nature ; for it is characteristic of these 
 easily " adaptable " minds that their first instincts are chaotic 
 and undetermined. They are Uke a blank check, which the 
 will undertakes to fill out. But, whatever the will writes upon 
 it is written in letters that will never be effaced. Action, 
 action, always action, — this is the remorseless, but unchanging, 
 devise of such a woman. Whether she seeks for a place in 
 society, or is ambitious for artistic culture, or addicts herself to 
 sport, or organizes " classes," as they say, for reading Browning, 
 Emerson, or Shakespeare with her friends, whether she travels 
 to Europe, India, or Japan, or remains at home to have some 
 young girl among her friends " pour " tea for her, be sure that 
 she will be always and incessantly active, indefatigably active, 
 either in the lines of " refinement " or of " excitement." 
 
 With what impressiveness these women utter both these 
 words, which we must not weary of returning to ; for they, per- 
 haps, sum up the entire American soul. They are bandied 
 about in conversation like two formulae, in which are revealed 
 the persistence of this creature, which, born of a stern race, 
 and feeling herself fine, wills to become finer and ever finer ; 
 who, reared amid democratic surroundings, wills to become 
 distinguished and ever more distinguished ; who, daughter of 
 a land of enterprise, loves to excite continually in herself the 
 sensation of overstrained nerves. 
 
 When you see ten, fifteen, thirty, fifty like this, the character 
 of eccentricity which you first found in them by comparison 
 with the women of Europe, disappears. A new type of feminine 
 seduction is revealed to you, less affecting than irritating, enig- 
 matic and sHghtly ambiguous by its indefinable blending of 
 supple grace and virile firmness, by the alliance of culture and 
 
SOCIETY 107 
 
 vigor, by the most thrilling nervous sensitiveness and the stur- 
 diest health. The true place of such a creature in this society 
 appears to you also, and the profound reason why these men, 
 themselves all action, leave these women free thus to act with 
 total independence. If it is permitted to apply an old legal 
 term to creatures so subtle, so delicate, these, women are 
 the delegates to luxury in this utilitarian civilization. Their 
 mission is to bring into it that which the American has not time 
 to create and which he desires to have : The flower of elegance, 
 something of beauty, and, in a word, of aristocracy. They are 
 the nobility in this land of business, a nobility developed by the 
 very development of business, since the money which is made 
 in the offices comes at last to them, and manipulated by their 
 fingers is transfigured, blossoming into precious decorations, 
 made intellectual in plays of fancy, — in fact, unutilized. 
 
 A great artist, foremost of this epoch by the ardor of his 
 efforts, the conscientiousness of his study, and the sincerity of 
 his vision, John Sargent, has shown what I have tried to ex- 
 press, in a portrait which I saw in an exhibition, — that of a 
 woman whose name I do not know. It is a portrait such as 
 the fifteenth-century masters painted, who, back of the indi- 
 vidual found the real, and back of the model a whole social 
 order. The canvas might be called "The American Idol," so 
 representative is it. 
 
 The woman is standing, her feet side by side, her knees 
 close together, in an almost hieratic pose. Her body, ren- 
 dered supple by exercise, is sheathed — you might say moulded 
 — in a tight-fitting black dress. Rubies, like drops of blood, 
 sparkle on her shoes. Her slender waist is encircled by a 
 girdle of enormous pearls, and from this dress, which makes 
 an intensely dark background for the stony brilliance of the 
 jewels, the arms and shoulders shine out with another bril- 
 liance, that of a flower-like flesh, — fine, white flesh, through 
 
108 OUTRE-MER 
 
 which flows blood perpetually invigorated by the air of the 
 country and the ocean. The head, intellectual and daring, 
 with a countenance as of one who has understood everything, 
 has, for a sort of aureole, the vaguely gilded design of one of 
 those Renascence stuffs which the Venetians call sopra-risso. 
 The rounded arms, in which the muscles can hardly be seen, 
 are joined by the clasped hands, — firm hands, the thumb 
 almost too long, which might guide four horses with the pre- 
 cision of an English coachman. It is the picture of an energy 
 at once delicate and invincible, momentarily in repose, and 
 all the Byzantine Madonna is in that face, with its wide-open 
 eyes. 
 
 Yes, this woman is an idol, for whose service man labors, 
 which he has decked with the jewels of a queen, behind each 
 one of whose whims lie days and days spent in the ardent 
 battle of Wall Street. Frenzy of speculations in land, cities 
 undertaken and built by sheer force of millions, trains launched 
 at full speed over bridges built on a Babel like sweep of 
 arch, the creaking of cable cars, the quivering of electric 
 cars, sliding along their wires with a crackle and a spark, the 
 dizzy ascent of elevators, in buildings twenty stories high, 
 immense wheat-fields of the West, its ranches, mines, colos- 
 sal slaughter-houses, — all the formidable traffic of this coun- 
 try of effort and struggle, all its labor, — these are what have 
 made possible this woman, this living orchid, unexpected 
 masterpiece of this civilization. 
 
 Did not the very painter consecrate to her his intense toil? 
 To be capable of such a picture, he must have absorbed some 
 of the ardor of the Spanish masters, caught the subtlety of the 
 great Italians, understood and practised the curiosities of 
 impressionism, dreamed before the pictures in basilicas like 
 Ravenna, and read and thought. Ah, how much of culture, 
 of reflection, before one could fathom the secret depths of 
 one's own race. He has expressed one of the most essential 
 
SOCIETY 109 
 
 characteristics of the race, — the deification of woman, con- 
 sidered not as a Beatrice as in Florence, nor as a courtesan as 
 at Milan, but as a supreme glory of the national spirit. This 
 woman can do without being loved. She has no need of 
 being loved. What she symbolizes is neither sensuality nor 
 tenderness. She is like a living object of art, the last fine 
 work of human skill, attesting that the Yankee, but yesterday 
 despairing, vanquished by the Old World, has been able to 
 draw from this savage world upon which fate has cast him a 
 wholly new civilization, incarnated in this woman, her luxury, 
 and her pride. Everything is illuminated by this civiliza- 
 tion, at the gaze of these fathomless eyes, in the expression 
 of which the painter has succeeded in putting all the idealism 
 of this country which has no ideal; all that which, perhaps, 
 will one day be its destruction, but up to the present time is 
 still its greatness, — a faith in the human Will, absolute, 
 unique, systematic, and indomitable. 
 
r 
 
 BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 
 
 Back of the social and feminine world, as a support to its 
 independence and individuality, in America, as everywhere 
 else, stands man. But one feature distinguishes this civiliza- 
 tion; the men of this country belong to a single category. 
 In the United States, where there is no nobility, no squire- 
 archy, almost no military, no diplomatic corps, and the 
 smallest possible administrative body, society, in both senses 
 of the word, belongs to the business man, an immense class, 
 which includes the hotel manager and the politician, the 
 former sinking his eight hundred thousand dollars in the 
 furnishing of his hotel, the latter managing his own election, 
 and adopting or rejecting laws with the methods of a contrac- 
 tor. At the present time, the business man has even drawn 
 the rural population under his control, and forced them into 
 the whirlwind of his activity, far apart as the two classes are 
 in all other countries. The extent of the territory, and the 
 arrangements for railway transportation of cattle and grain in 
 immense quantities, have brought them under the domain of 
 companies of all sorts who, for their part, have "under- 
 taken " to feed all America. 
 
 One of the most significant proofs of this particular fact 
 is the daily disappearance of the New England farmer, that 
 delicious local personage, whose simple and genuine manners 
 has furnished an inexhaustible object for the studies of so 
 many romance writers, male and female. Incapable of strug- 
 gling, isolated and single-handed, against the strong competi- 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 111 
 
 tion of the West, these farmers emigrate toward the prairie, 
 and you continually find advertisements in the newspapers, 
 offering for sale their modest homesteads, with descriptions 
 like the following, which I transcribe without changing a word. 
 
 " S , Massachusetts. For sale. A farm of sixty acres : 
 
 mowing, eight acres; pasture-land, eighteen; forest, thirty 
 to forty; tillable ground, twelve. Almost all the hay crop can 
 be cut by machine. One-story house, five rooms, somewhat 
 out of repair. Small barn, in good condition. Good well, 
 near the house, and running stream back of the barn. Twenty 
 apple trees, twelve fruit trees of different varieties. Railway 
 
 station at L , six miles distant; postoffice at S , one 
 
 mile. Price, four hundred dollars; one hundred cash, the 
 balance at four per cent interest." 
 
 What a drama of rustic ruin may be descried back of these 
 modest figures ! and behind the details of this humble inven- 
 tory what a laborious and almost idyllic existence ! I have 
 met analogous conditions far away in the South, among the 
 survivors of those colonies of non-slaveholding whites, whom 
 the blacks contemptuously call " crackers." I have before my 
 eyes as I write the picture of a wooden house in the depths of 
 the pine forests of Georgia. It is inhabited by an old man 
 of seventy, with his daughter, his sons, and his sons' children ; 
 boys with legs as muscular as their arms, running about bare- 
 footed among the horses. 
 
 These people had the proud courtesy of families who have 
 never known any superior, having had neither vanities nor 
 needs. The old man remembered having heard that his great 
 grandfather came from France — from Brittany, he thought. 
 The Christian name of Rene, handed down among them, at- 
 tested to this far-away origin. Their light blue eyes, Celtic 
 eyes, shone with the light of honor. On their table was nothing 
 which was not the product of the soil and of their own labor. 
 
 " We have everything except coffee and tobacco," they said ; 
 
112 OUTRE-MER 
 
 " even wines." And they produced, with the pride of a Rob- 
 inson receiving the Spanish captain, a pale red liquid, — grape 
 juice, sweetened with cane sugar, and poured, in the absence 
 of bottles, into a tin sauce-pan. Cows, goats, pigs, pastured 
 freely around the house. The guns, hung over the door, had 
 the lustre of weapons often used. 
 
 It seemed as if I saw before me the primitive pioneer of the 
 sort that abounded a hundred years ago. It is with them as 
 with the bisons, the last head of which is jealously guarded in 
 the Yellowstone Park. He has disappeared, and is being re- 
 placed by the agricultural laborer, who is nothing but an instru- 
 ment in the hands of business men, whom, from one end of 
 this vast country to the other, you will find busily occupied in 
 changing and developing its character. In the upper station 
 they give it a peculiar elegance by the luxury of their palaces 
 and villas, their wives and daughters. In the lower, they feed 
 the nation by enrolling men in their service. 
 
 *' I assert," said one of them the other day — Mr. Chauncey 
 Depew, an orator of the highest ability, who would perhaps be 
 president, if the democracy of America did not set itself against 
 this plutocratic system — "I assert that a railway president ren- 
 ders an enormous service to the community. He has twenty 
 or thirty thousand men under him, representing with their fam- 
 ilies from one to two hundred thousand souls ; and their wel- 
 fare, not physical only, but mental, social, and moral, depends 
 almost absolutely upon him." 
 
 A packing business like that of Armour in Chicago, for 
 example, furnishes daily employment to eleven thousand em- 
 ployees. The generalissimo of this industrial army is often a 
 man who at twenty years old was living in a " lean-to," that is, 
 a hut of planks leaning up against a rock or a wall. He is not 
 forty years old and he is " worth " five millions of dollars. In 
 a few years more he will be worth ten, fifteen, and so on, till 
 he dies of heart disease in his yacht cabin, or his private car, 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 113 
 
 father-in-law of a lord or grandfather of young Italian princes ; 
 but under his nickname of Jim, Tom, or Billy, famiharly re- 
 gretted or cursed by his workmen according as he has made 
 himself loved or hated by them. 
 
 This is a truly new type of personage, impossible to find any- 
 where else, and whom one must picture to oneself from small 
 to great, — for the series is infinite, — in order really to under- 
 stand what there is most original in this strange people. In 
 the vigorous natures of these business men there is a vein of 
 technical genius which no observer, however penetrating or 
 imaginative, would hardly have expected. 
 
 They tell me that another portrait painter — for the Ameri- 
 cans have an extravagant passion for portraits and busts — 
 was commissioned last year to paint one of the most celebrated 
 of Wall Street speculators. Despairing of ever obtaining a sat- 
 isfactory sitting, so full of business were his model's hours, the 
 painter finally took his material to the business office of this 
 gentleman, whom he painted in his characteristic attitude, with 
 the paper strip of the " ticker " in his hand, upon which second 
 by second were automatically inscribed the fluctuations in the 
 value of stocks. It was an accurate symbol of what we men 
 of art, or of abstract thought, succeed in getting when we study 
 one of these builders of enormous fortunes. We see a gesture, 
 an absorbed countenance, the tension of a prodigious energy, and 
 that is all. What the manipulator of money feels while looking 
 at his figures, the particular action of a mind of this quality in 
 travail of combinations, why one triumphs and another comes 
 to shipwreck, are all problems which so far remain insoluble. 
 
 I have just mentioned the name of Mr. Chauncey Depew. 
 In a collection of his speeches, published this very year, I 
 find a singular expression on the " unequalled genius " of the 
 first Vanderbilt, the celebrated Commodore. The few instances 
 which the orator brings to his support of his assertion manifest, 
 indeed, such a superiority that no one thinks of being surprised 
 I 
 
114 OUTRE-MER 
 
 at the epithet. We admit with the speaker, that an intellectual 
 force has been at work there, as remarkable as that which wins 
 battles, governs Parliaments, makes or unmakes treaties. But 
 he understands this force, because he has worked beside it, 
 under it, with it. To us who have not done so, who cannot 
 have that practical vision, his professional talent remains unde- 
 finable and unattainable. 
 
 A single resource is left us : to gaze with all our powers, 
 through the ideas awakened by the sight, upon the work pro- 
 duced by these business men, the scene amid which their 
 activities are carried on, the plans which they executed ; and 
 venture a few conjectures upon the sort of human nature which 
 this work, this setting, these plans, must take for granted. Many 
 a time in the course of this journey I have tried this experi- 
 ment, particularly in a too short Western trip, or at least to 
 what was lately the West, Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis ; for 
 every five years the frontier of civilization draws farther west- 
 ward, and the time is approaching when the people of Colorado 
 will be offended at not being considered Eastern people ! What 
 does it all matter — East, West ? These are but words. The 
 prodigious reality is the growth of the three cities whose names 
 I have just written, the added ages of which do not amount 
 to more than a century and a half! When you reflect that 
 behind this inordinate growth, this almost instantaneous pas- 
 sage from a desert to a city of two hundred thousand, five hun- 
 dred thousand, eight hundred thousand inhabitants, one always 
 comes face to face with the energy of the business man, the 
 prejudices of the man of letters cease to influence you. I 
 hope that there will not be too many traces of it in these 
 sketches taken from my journal, and the two or three psycho- 
 logical theories which they comment upon. 
 
 Chicago m an autumn morning from the tower of the 
 Auditorium. — It is two hundred and seventy feet high, and 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 115 
 
 it crowns and dominates a chaotic cyclopean structure which 
 connects a colossal hotel with a colossal theatre. One's 
 first visit on arriving should be here, in order to get the 
 strongest impression of the enormous city, lying black on the 
 shore of its blue lake. 
 
 Last night, when the conductor called out the name of the 
 station at which I was to leave the train, a frightful storm, 
 such as one experiences nowhere but in America, was delug- 
 ing the whole country with cataracts of water, and between 
 the station and the hotel I could see nothing but the outlines 
 of gigantic buildings hanging, as it were, from a dark sky 
 streaked with lightning, and between them, small wooden 
 houses, so frail that it seemed as if the furious wind must 
 scatter their ruins to the four quarters of the tempest-tossed 
 city. 
 
 This morning the sky is clear, with a soft, warm clearness, 
 washed clean by the rain. It brings out all the more strikingly 
 the dark coloring of the city, as it is reflected back from the 
 deeper azure of Lake Michigan, ploughed with steamboats 
 like a sea. Far as the eye can reach Chicago stretches away, 
 its flat roofs and its smoke — innumerable columns of whitey- 
 gray smoke. They rise straight upward, then stoop to heap 
 themselves into vapory capitals, and at last meet together in 
 a dome above the endless avenues. 
 
 It needs but a few minutes for the eyes to become accus- 
 tomed to the strange scene. Then you discern differences of 
 height among these levels. Those of only six or seven stories 
 seem to be the merest cottages, those of two stories are not 
 to be distinguished from the pavement, while the "buildings" 
 of fourteen, fifteen, twenty stories, uprise like the islands 
 of the Cyclades as seen from the mountains of Negroponte. 
 
 A mighty murmur uprises from below like that of no other 
 city. There is an incessant tinkle of locomotive bells, that 
 seem to be sounding in advance the knelL of those they are 
 
116 OUTRE-MER 
 
 about to crush. They are everywhere, crossing the streets, 
 following the lake shore, passing over the river which rolls its 
 leaden waters under soot-colored bridges, meeting and cross- 
 ing each other's tracks, pursuing and overtaking one another. 
 Now you distinguish an elevated road, and there, beside the 
 railways on the level of the street, you see other trains on the 
 avenues, three or four cars long, but without locomotive. It 
 is the cable system. And there are steamers lowering their 
 yards and coming to anchor in the harbor. 
 
 Yes, the scene is strange even to unreality, when one re- 
 minds oneself that this Babel of industry grew out of a tiny 
 frontier post, — Fort Dearborn. The Indians surprised it and 
 massacred the garrison about 1812. I am not very far beyond 
 my youth, and yet how many men have I known that were 
 alive then, and how near that date is! In 187 1, that is to 
 say, later than the Franco -Prussian War, there was fire writh- 
 ing around this very place where I am standing this bright 
 morning. The irresistible devouring force of one of the most 
 terrific conflagrations mentioned in history transformed this 
 entire plain into a burning mass which still smoked after many 
 days had passed. 
 
 "Where this tower now stands," said my Chicago guide, 
 concluding the epos of that awful event, "you might have 
 stood in a bed of ashes, with not a single house between the 
 lake on your right hand and the river on your left." 
 
 I looked from one to the other, the river and the lake, as I 
 heard these words. That month of October, 187 1, was more 
 than near to me; it seemed as if I could touch it, as if I were 
 still in it. I could tell the names of the books that I was 
 reading then, the articles that I was writing. I could remem- 
 ber how I spent almost every day. I realized with an almost 
 physical accuracy the length of the years since that date, — 
 twenty-two. How few hours that makes, after all ! and I 
 leaned again over the balustrade of the tower, gazing down 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 117 
 
 upon this prodigy, stunned with the thought of what men have 
 done ! 
 
 Men ! The word is hardly correct applied to this perplexing 
 city. When you study it more in detail, its aspect reveals so 
 little of the personal will, so Httle caprice and individuality, in 
 its streets and buildings, that it seems like the work of some 
 impersonal power, irresistible, unconscious, like a force of 
 nature, in whose service man was merely a passive instrument. 
 
 This power is nothing else than that business fever which 
 here throbs at will, with an unbridled violence like that of an 
 uncontrollable element. It rushes along these streets, as once 
 before the devouring flame of fire ; it quivers ; it makes itself 
 visible with an intensity which lends something tragical to this 
 city, and makes it seem like a poem to me. 
 
 When, from this overhanging tower, you have gazed down 
 upon this immense volcano of industry and commerce, you go 
 down to look more closely into the details of this exuberant 
 life, this exhaustless stream of activity. You walk along the 
 sidewalks of streets which bear marks of haste, — here flag- 
 stones, there asphalt, yonder a mere line of planks crossing 
 a miry swamp. This want of continuity in road material is 
 repeated in the buildings. At one moment you have nothing 
 around you but " buildings." They scale the very heavens 
 with their eighteen and twenty stories. The architect who built 
 them, or, rather, made them by machinery, gave up all thought 
 of colonnades, mouldings, classical decorations. He ruthlessly 
 accepted the speculator's inspired conditions, — to multiply as 
 much as possible the value of the bit of earth at the base by 
 multiplying the superimposed " offices." 
 
 One might think that such a problem would interest no one 
 but an engineer. Nothing of the kind ! The simple power 
 of necessity is to a certain degree a principle of beauty ; and 
 these structures so plainly manifest this necessity that you feel a 
 strange emotion in contemplating them. It is the first draught of 
 
118 OUTRE-MER 
 
 a new sort of art, — an art of democracy made by the masses 
 and for the masses, an art of science, where the invariabiUty of 
 natural laws gives to the most unbridled daring the calmness 
 of geometrical figures. The portals of the basements, usually 
 arched as if crushed beneath the weight of the mountain which 
 they support, look like dens of a primitive race, continually 
 receiving and pouring forth a stream of people. You lift your 
 eyes, and you feel that up there behind the perpendicular wall, 
 with its innumerable windows, is a multitude coming and going, 
 — crowding the offices that perforate these chffs of brick and 
 iron, dizzied with the speed of the elevators. You divine, you 
 feel the hot breath of speculation quivering behind these win- 
 dows. This it is which has fecundated these thousands of 
 square feet of earth, in order that from them may spring up 
 this appalling growth of business palaces, that hide the sun 
 from you and almost shut out the light of day. 
 
 Close beside the preposterous. Babel-like building extends a 
 shapeless bit of ground, undefined, bristling, green with a scanty 
 turf, on which a lean cow is feeding. Then follows a succes- 
 sion of little wooden houses, hardly large enough for a single 
 family. Next comes a Gothic church, transformed into a shop, 
 with a sign in great metal characters. Then comes the red and 
 pretentious ruin of some other building burned the other week. 
 Vacant lots, shanties, churches, ruins, — speculation will sweep 
 over it all to-morrow, this evening perhaps, and other "buildings " 
 will spring up. But time is needed, and these people have 
 none. These two years past, instead of completing their half- 
 finished city, they have been amusing themselves in building 
 another over yonder, under pretext of their exhibition. It is 
 entirely white, a dream city, with domes like those of Ravenna, 
 colonnades like those at Rome, lagoons like Venice, a fair of the 
 world like Paris. 
 
 They have succeeded, and now the most composite, the 
 most cosmopolitan of human mixtures fill these suburban and 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 119 
 
 elevated railways, these cable cars, coaches, carriages, which over- 
 flow upon these unfinished sidewalks before these wildly dissim- 
 ilar houses. And as at Chicago, it seems that everything and 
 everybody must be larger, more developed, stronger, so from 
 block to block in the middle of these streets are posted, to 
 maintain order, enormous mounted policemen, tall as Pome- 
 ranian grenadiers ; gigantic human barriers against which break 
 the seething eddies of this multitude. Most of them are Ger- 
 mans ; their red faces are unformed as if hewn out with a 
 hatchet, as if hastily blocked out, and their bullock-like necks 
 and shoulders make a striking comment on divers facts of the 
 daily papers, which continually tell of some " hands up " 
 performed in the taverns, the gambling-houses, or simply in a 
 carriage, or on the tramway. 
 
 " Hands up ! " It is the classic command of the Western 
 robber, as he enters, revolver in hand, his first business to 
 make sure that you have not yours. How many times has it 
 been uttered in the suburbs of this city, the meeting-place of 
 the adventurers of the two worlds? How many times will it 
 yet be uttered? But the spirit of adventure is also the spirit 
 of enterprise, and if the size of the policemen of this surpris- 
 ing city attests the frequency of surprises attempted by these 
 ruffians, it completes its complex physiognomy; different, 
 surely, from every other since the foundation of the world, 
 a mosaic of extreme civilization and almost barbarism, a 
 savage existence only part discerned through the abruptness 
 of this industrial creation. In short, it is Chicago, a mira- 
 cle that would confound the dead of seventy years ago, if they 
 were to return to earth and find themselves in this city, now 
 the ninth in the world as to population, which when they 
 were alive had not a single house. 
 
 One of the enormous branches of traffic of this city is in 
 meat. The Chicago folk are a little ashamed of it. In earlier 
 
120 OUTRE-MER 
 
 days they would talk to you of their packing-houses, with that 
 artless pride which is one of the charms of great parvenus. 
 It is the simplicity natural to an elemental strength, which 
 knows itself strong and loves to exercise itself frankly. They 
 are tired now of hearing their detractors call them the inhabi- 
 tants of Porkopolis. They find it a grievance that their city 
 is always "identified," as they say here, with that brutal 
 butchery, when it has among its publishing houses one of the 
 vastest marts of books in the world, when its newspapers never 
 let any incident of literature or art pass without investigating 
 it, when it has founded a university at a cost of seven mil- 
 lions of dollars, when it has just gathered together representa- 
 tives of all forms of belief, at its remarkable Parliament of 
 Religions, — a phenomenon unique in the history of human 
 idealism! Chicago aspires to be something more than the 
 distributor of food, although last year a single one of its firms 
 cut up and distributed one million seven hundred and fifty 
 thousand hogs, a million and twenty-five thousand beeves, and 
 six hundred and twenty-five thousand sheep. Its enemies 
 seek to crush it under figures like these, omitting to remem- 
 ber that the Chicago of the abattoirs is also the Chicago of 
 the "White City," the Chicago of a museum which is already 
 incomparable, the Chicago which gave Lincoln to the United 
 States. 
 
 On the other hand, these abattoirs furnish material most 
 precious to the foreigner who desires to understand the spirit 
 in which the Americans undertake their great enterprises. 
 A slaughter-house capable of shipping in twelve months, to 
 the four parts of this immense continent, three millions five 
 hundred thousand dressed cattle is worth the trouble of inves- 
 tigating. Everywhere else the technical details are very diffi- 
 cult to grasp. They are less so here, the directors of these 
 colossal manufactories of roast beef and hams having discov- 
 ered that the best possible advertisement is to admit the 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 121 
 
 public to witness their processes of working. They have 
 made a visit to their establishments, if not attractive, — physi- 
 cal repulsion is too strong for that, — at least convenient and 
 thorough. On condition of having your nerves wrung once 
 for all, these are among the places where you shall best see 
 how American ingenuity solves the problems of a prodigiously 
 complicated organization. 
 
 I therefore did like other unprejudiced tourists, and visited 
 the "stock yards" and the most celebrated among the "pack- 
 ing-houses," as they are called, — cutting-up houses, rather, — 
 which is here in operation; the one, indeed, the statistics of 
 whose operations I have but now quoted. This walk through 
 that house of blood will always remain to me one of the most 
 singular memories of my journey. I think, however, that 
 I owe to it a better discernment of the characteristic features 
 of an American business concern. If this is so, I shall have 
 no reason to regret the painful experience. 
 
 To reach the "Union Stock Yards," the carriage crosses an 
 immense section of the city, even more incoherent than those 
 which border on the elegant Michigan Avenue. It stops 
 before the railways, to permit the passage of trains running 
 at full speed. It crosses bridges, which immediately after 
 uprear themselves to permit the passage of boats. It passes 
 by hotels which are palaces, and laborers' houses which are 
 hovels. It skirts large plots of ground, where market-gar- 
 deners are cultivating cabbages amongst heaps of refuse, and 
 others which bear nothing but advertisements. How shall I 
 deny myself the pleasure of copying this one, among a hundred 
 others : — 
 
 " Louis XIV. was crowned King of France at the age of five 
 
 years (1643), X 's pepsin had been crowned with success 
 
 as a remedy for indigestion before it had been publicly known 
 a single year." 
 
122 OUTRE-MER 
 
 The advertising fields give place to more houses, more rail- 
 ways, under a sky black with clouds, or smoke, — one hardly 
 knows which, — and on both sides of the road begin to appear 
 fenced enclosures, where cattle are penned by the hundred. 
 There are narrow lanes between the fence, with men on horse- 
 back riding up and down. These are the buyers, discussing 
 prices with the " cowboys " of the West. 
 
 You have read stories of the "ranches." This adventur- 
 ous prairie life has taken hold upon your imagination. Here 
 you behold its heroes, in threadbare overcoats, slouch hats, 
 and the inevitable collar and cuffs of the American. But for 
 their boots, and their dexterity in guiding their horses by the 
 knees, you would take them for clerks. They are a proof, 
 among many others, of the instinctive disdain of this realistic 
 people for the picturesque in costume. That impression 
 which I had in the park in New York, almost the first day, as 
 of an immense store of ready-made clothes hurrying hither 
 and thither, has never left me. And yet, nothing can be less 
 "common," in the bad sense of the word, than Americans in 
 general, and these Western cowboys in particular. Their 
 bodies are too nervous, too lithe, under their cheap clothes. 
 Their countenances, especially, are too intent and too sharply 
 outlined, too decided and too stern. 
 
 The carriage stops before a building which, in its massive- 
 ness and want of character, is like all other manufactories. 
 My companions and I enter a court, a sort of alley, crowded 
 with packing-boxes, carts, and people. A miniature railway 
 passes along it, carrying packing-boxes to a waiting train, 
 entirely composed of refrigerator cars, such as I saw so many 
 of as I came to Chicago. Laborers were unloading these 
 packing-boxes; others were coming and going, evidently in- 
 tent upon their respective duties. There was no sign of 
 administrative order, as we conceive it, in this establishment, 
 which was yet so well ordered. But already one of the engineers 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 123 
 
 had led us up a staircase, and we enter an immense hall, 
 reeking with heavy moisture saturated with a strong acrid 
 odor, which seems to seize you by the throat. We are in the 
 department where the hogs are cut up. There are hundreds 
 of men hard at work, whom we have not time so much as to 
 look at. Our guide warns us to stand aside, and before us 
 glides a file of porkers, disembowelled and hung by their hind 
 feet from a rod, along which they slip toward a vaulted open- 
 ing, where innumerable other such files await them. The 
 rosy flesh, still ruddy with the life that but now animated 
 them, gleams under the electric light that illuminates those 
 depths. We go on, avoiding these strange encounters as best 
 we may, and reach at last, with feet smeared in a sort of 
 bloody mud, a platform whence we can see the initial act of 
 all this labor, which now seems so confused, but which we 
 shall shortly find so simple and easy to understand. There 
 are the pigs, in a sort of pit, alive, grunting and screaming, 
 as if they had a vision of the approach of the horrible ma- 
 chine, from which they can no more escape than a doomed 
 man whose head lies on the guillotine. It is a sort of mov- 
 able hook, which, being lowered by a man, seizes one of the 
 creatures by the cord which ties its hind legs together. The 
 animal gives a screech, as he hangs, head downward, with quiv- 
 ering snout and a spasmodic agitation of his short fore legs. 
 But already the hook has slid along the iron bar, carrying the 
 hapless victim to a neighboring recess where, as it slips by, a 
 man armed with a long knife cuts its throat, with a slash so 
 well aimed and effective that there is no need to repeat it. 
 The creature utters a more terrific screech, a stream of blood 
 spurts out, jet black and as thick as your arm. The snout 
 quivers more pitifully, the short legs are agitated more franti- 
 cally, but the death struggle only quickens the motion of the 
 hook, which glides on to a third attendant. 
 
 The latter, with a quick movement, cuts down the animal. 
 
124 OUTRE-MER 
 
 The hook slides back, and the carcass falls into a sort of canal 
 tank filled with boiling water, in which an automatic rake 
 works with a quick vibratory motion. In a few seconds it has 
 caught the creature, turned it over and over, caught it again, 
 and thrown the scalded carcass to another machine, which in 
 a few more seconds has shaved it from head to tail. In an- 
 other second, another hook has descended, and another bar 
 carries that which, four minutes ago, was a living, suffering 
 creature, toward that arched opening where, on coming in, I 
 had seen so many similar relics. It is already the turn of 
 another to be killed, shaved, and finished off. The operation 
 is of such lightning quickness that you have no time to realize 
 its atrocity. You have no time to pity the poor things, no 
 time to marvel at the cheerfulness with which the butcher — 
 a red-headed giant, with shoulders broad enough to carry an 
 ox — goes on with his horrible work. 
 
 And yet, even in its lower forms, life is something so mys- 
 terious, the death and sufferings, even of a creature of the 
 humblest order, are something so tragic when, instead of care- 
 lessly picturing them you look them thus full in the face, that 
 all spectators, and they are many, cease to laugh and joke. 
 For my part, before this coarse slaughter-house scene I felt 
 myself seized with an unreasoning sadness, very short but very 
 intense, as if, for a few minutes, the spirit of Thomas Grain- 
 dorge had passed before me, — the philosophic dealer in salt 
 pork and oil, so dear to my master, Taine. It suddenly 
 seemed as if I saw before me existence itself, and all the work 
 of nature, incarnated in a pitiable symbol. All that I had 
 often thought of death was as if concrete before my eyes, in 
 the irresistible clutch of that hook lifting those creatures, as 
 the overpowering force of destruction which is in the world 
 will one day seize us all, — sages, heroes, artists, as well as 
 these poor unconscious brutes. I saw them rushing, writhing, 
 moaning, their death agonies following fast on one another, 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 125 
 
 as ours follow one another, only a little more rapidly, — how- 
 little more, considering how fast time flies, and how small a 
 part remains for all that must be done ! And the way that we 
 looked in at this ghastly scene, my companions and I, was 
 in nothing different from the way with which others will one 
 day look on at our entrance into the great darkness, as on a 
 picture, a something exterior, whose reality, after all, concerns 
 only the being who undergoes it! 
 
 We went into the department reserved for the cattle. Here 
 the death struggle is different. No outcry, almost no blood ; 
 no terrified expectation on the creature's part. And the scene 
 is all the more tragic. The animals are penned by twos, in 
 stalls like those of a stable, though without the manger. You 
 see them trying, with their intelligence and their gentleness, 
 to accommodate themselves to the narrow space. They gazed 
 with their large, soft eyes — upon whom? The butcher, 
 standing in a passageway a little above them. This man 
 holds in his hand a slender bludgeon of steel. He is waiting 
 until the ox is in the right position. You see him gently, 
 caressingly, guiding the animal with the tip of his bludgeon. 
 Suddenly he uplifts it. It falls upon the creature's forehead, 
 and it sinks down in a lifeless heap. 
 
 In an instant a hook has lifted it up, blood pouring from 
 the mouth and nostrils, its large glassy eyes overshadowed with 
 a growing darkness, and within another minute another man 
 has stripped the skin from the breast, letting it hang down 
 like an apron, has cut open the carcass, and sent it by the 
 expeditious method of the sliding bar, to take its place in the 
 refrigerating-room. Thousands of them await here the time 
 for being carried and hung up in other rooms, also of ice, but 
 on wheels, ready to be despatched. I see the closing of the 
 last car of a train on the point of departure. The locomotive 
 whistles and puffs; the bell rings. On what table of New 
 York or Boston, Philadelphia or Savannah, will at last appear 
 
126 OUTRE-MER 
 
 this meat, fattened on the prairie pasture-lands of some dis- 
 trict in some Western State, and here prepared in such a way 
 that the butcher will have merely to cut it into pieces? It 
 will arrive as fresh, as intact, as if there had not been thou- 
 sands and thousands of miles between the birth, death, and 
 dismemberment of the enigmatical and peaceable creature. 
 
 If there was nothing but killing to be seen in this manufact- 
 ure of food, it would hardly be worth while to go through so 
 many bloody scenes for the sake of verifying, in one of its 
 lower exemplifications, what the philosopher Huxley some- 
 where magnificently calls "the gladiatorial theory of exist- 
 ence," the severe law that murder is necessary to life. But 
 this is only a first impression, to experience before passing to 
 a second, that of the rapidity and ingenuity of the cutting-up 
 and packing of this prodigious quantity of perishable meat. 
 I don't know who it was who sportively said that a pig that 
 went to the abattoir at Chicago came out fifteen minutes later 
 in the form of ham, sausages, large and small, hair oil, and 
 binding for a Bible. It is a witty exaggeration, yet hardly 
 overdone, of the rapid and minute labor which we had just 
 seen bestowed upon the beasts killed before our eyes; and the 
 subdividing of this work, its precision, simplicity, quick suc- 
 cession, succeeding in making us forget the necessary but 
 intolerable brutality of the scenes we had been witnessing. 
 
 An immense hall is furnished with a succession of counters 
 placed without much order, where each member of the animal 
 is cut apart and utilized without the loss of a bone or a tendon. 
 Here, with a quick, automatic blow, which never misses, a 
 man cuts off first the hams, then the feet, as fast as he can 
 throw them into caldrons, which boil and smoke them before 
 your eyes. Farther along, a hatchet, moved by machinery, 
 is at work making sausage-meat, which tubes of all sizes will 
 pour forth in rolls ready for the skins, that are all washed 
 and prepared. The word "garlic," which I see written on a 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 127 
 
 box in German, "Knoblauch," and the accompanying inscrip- 
 tion, transports me to the time of the Franco- Prussian War, 
 when each Prussian soldier carried in his sack just such pro- 
 visions, which had come from this very place. These products 
 of Chicagoan industry will be sent far enough beyond New York ! 
 
 Elsewhere the head and jowl are cleaned, trimmed, and 
 dressed, to figure in their natural form in the show window 
 of some American or European market. Elsewhere, again, 
 enormous receptacles are being filled with suet which boils 
 and bubbles, and having been cunningly mixed with a certain 
 proportion of cream will be transformed into margarine, re- 
 fined in an automatic beating machine of which we admired 
 the artful simplicity. 
 
 "A workingman invented that," said our guide. "For 
 that matter," he added, "almost all the machines that are 
 used here were either made or improved by the workmen." 
 
 These words shed light for us upon all this vast work- 
 shop. We understood what these men require of a machine 
 that for them prolongs, multiplies, perfects the acts of men. 
 Once again we felt how much they have become refined in 
 their processes of work, how they excel in combining with 
 their personal effort the complication of machinery, and also 
 how the least among them has a power of initiative, of direct 
 vision and adjustment. 
 
 Seated again in our carriage, and rolling away over the 
 irregular wooden pavement made of round sections of trees 
 embedded at pleasure in the mud, we reflected upon what we 
 had just seen. We tried to discern its intellectual significance, 
 if we may use this word in reference to such an enterprise. 
 And why not ? We' are all agreed that the first characteristic 
 of this enterprise is the amplitude, or rather the stupendous- 
 ness, of its conception. For an estabHshment like this to have, 
 in a few years, brought up the budget of its employees to five 
 million five hundred thousand dollars, that is, to more than 
 
128 OUTRE-MER 
 
 twenty-seven millions of francs, its founders must have clearly 
 perceived the possibilities of an enormous extension of busi- 
 ness, and have no less clearly perceived, defined, and deter- 
 mined its practical features. 
 
 A colossal effort of imagination on the one hand, and, on the 
 other, at the service of the imagination, a clear and carefully 
 estimated understanding of the encompassing reality, — these 
 are the two features everywhere stamped upon the unparalleled 
 estabhshment which we have just visited. One of us pointed 
 out another fact, — that the principal practical feature is the 
 railway, reminding us that the locomotive has always been an 
 implement of general utility in American hands. By it they 
 revolutionized military art and created a full-panoplied modern 
 warfare, such as the Germans were later to practise at our 
 expense. In the great national war of i860, they first showed 
 what advantage could be taken of this new means of mobili- 
 zation. The length of the trains they sent out during that 
 period has passed into legend. In fact, the establishment 
 which we have been discussing is only one particular case of 
 that universal use of the railway, which is itself only a partic- 
 ular illustration of that essentially American turn of mind, — 
 the constant use of new methods. 
 
 The entire absence of routine, the daily habit of letting the 
 fact determine the action, of following it fearlessly to the end, — 
 these characteristics grow out of the other, and this acute con- 
 sciousness of the fact also explains that sort of superficial 
 incoherence in the distribution of labor which we have already 
 noticed. Extreme clearness, perspicuity of administrative order, 
 always spring from an a priori theory. All societies and all 
 enterprises in which realism, rather than system, rules are con- 
 structed by juxtaposition, by series of facts accepted as they 
 arise. But how should the people here have leisure to concern 
 themselves with those small, fine points of administrative order 
 with which our Latin peoples are so much in love ? Competi- 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 129 
 
 tion is too strong, too ferocious, almost. There is all of war- 
 fare and its breathless audacity back of the enterprises of this 
 country, even of those most firmly established, like this one. 
 
 Our guide, who listens to our philosophizing without seeming 
 much to disapprove, tells us that this very year, in order to 
 elude a coalition of speculators in grain, which he explains to 
 us, the head of the house which we have just visited was forced 
 to erect in nineteen days, for the housing of his own wheat, a 
 building three hundred feet square by a hundred high ! 
 
 "Yes, in nineteen days, working night and day," he said, 
 smihng ; " but we Americans like ' hard work.' " 
 
 With this almost untranslatable word, — to one who has not 
 heard it uttered here, — our visit ends. It sums it up and 
 completes it with a terseness worthy of this people of much 
 action and few phrases ! 
 
 I visited in detail the building of one of the principal Chicago 
 newspapers, just when they were printing the Sunday edition, 
 — a trifling affair of twenty-four pages. I had seen in New 
 York also on a Saturday evening, the making up of such a 
 number, — that of the Herald. It had forty pages, and pict- 
 ures ! There was a m.atter of a hundred and fifty thousand 
 copies to be sent out by the early morning trains. When the 
 circulation reaches such figures as these, a newspaper is not 
 merely a machine for moulding public opinion, of a power 
 incalculable in a democratic country, it is also an inconceivably 
 compHcated business to carry on. Precisely because this busi- 
 ness differs radically from that which the day before yesterday 
 I was endeavoring to understand, I shall be the better able to 
 judge whether the general features which I there discovered 
 are to be found in all American enterprises. I can judge of 
 that more easily here than in New York, the number of copies 
 of the paper being somewhat less than in New York, and the 
 process of shipping more convenient to follow. 
 
 K 
 
130 OUTRE-MER 
 
 It needed not five hundred steps in these offices to make 
 evident to me the simultaneous play of those two mental ten- 
 dencies which appeared to me so characteristic the other day, — 
 the enormous range of invention, and the constant, minute, 
 ever-watchful adoption of new means. The American journalist 
 does not propose to himself to reach this or that reader, but all 
 readers. He does not propose to publish articles of this or 
 that kind, but of all kinds. His purpose is to make his news- 
 paper an accurate mould of all that actually is, a sort of relief 
 map, which shall be an epitome, not of the day, but of the 
 hour, the minute, so all-embracing and complete that to- 
 morrow a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, a million 
 persons shall have before them at breakfast a compendious 
 picture first of their own city, next of their State, then of all 
 the States of the Union, and finally of Europe, Asia, Africa, and 
 Australia. Nor does this ambition content them ; it is their 
 will that these hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, mil- 
 lion of readers shall find in their favorite newspaper that which 
 shall answer all questions of every sort which they may put to 
 themselves upon politics, finance, religion, the arts, literature, 
 sport, society, and the sciences. It is a daily encyclopedia, set 
 to the key of the passing moment, which is already past. 
 
 The meaning of this colossal project is shown naturally and 
 in every possible way in every part of the newspaper building. 
 Workmen and editors must be able to take their meals at any 
 hour, and without leaving the building. They have therefore 
 their own bar and restaurant. The printing of the pictures, so 
 dear to Americans, must not be delayed. The paper has its 
 type foundry, a regular smelting-shop, where the lead boils in 
 the coppers. The news must be gathered up to the last second, 
 like water in the desert, without losing a drop. The paper has 
 its own telegraph and telephone wires, by which it is in com- 
 munication with the entire world. At the time of the last presi- 
 dential election, a number of Mr. Cleveland's partisans came 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 131 
 
 together here, in one of the editorial rooms which was shown 
 me, and from there they conversed with the candidate, himself 
 in New York, receiving his instructions and giving him informa- 
 tion. And what presses ! Capable of turning off work which 
 thirty years ago would have required a force of how many hun- 
 dreds of men ! Two workmen are enough to-day. 
 
 I find here a press of the kind of which I saw a large size in 
 the New York Herald building, which, they told me there, turned 
 off seventy-thousand numbers in two hours. The enormous 
 machine is going at full speed when I approach it. Its roar is 
 so great that no voice can be heard beside it. It is a noise 
 hke the roar of Niagara, and the colossal strip of paper rapidly 
 unrolling as it is drawn through the machine gives an effect as 
 of falling water, or the eddying of liquid metal. You see a 
 whiteness gliding by, bent and folded by the play of innumer- 
 able bars of steel, and at the other end a sort of mouth pouring 
 forth newspapers of sixteen pages all ready for distribution. 
 The machine has seized the paper, turned and re-turned it, 
 printed it on both sides, cut it, folded it, and here is a portion 
 of a colossal number which without undue haste a child joins 
 with the other portions. 
 
 In presence of this formidable printing creature — it is the 
 only expression that will serve my turn — I feel again, as in 
 New York, a sensation as of a power which transcends the 
 individual. This printing press is a multiplier of thought to 
 an extent not measurable by any human arithmetic. There is 
 a singular contrast between the extreme precision of its organs 
 — as delicate and accurate as those of a watch — and that in- 
 definite reach of mind projection which Americans accept 
 as they accept all facts. To their mind amplitude calls for 
 amplitude by a sequence which it is easy to follow in the 
 history of journalism; having conceived the idea of a paper 
 of enormous circulation, they invented machines which would 
 produce copies enough, and, as their machines appeared to 
 
132 OUTRE-MER 
 
 them capable of producing a large number of copies, their 
 conception of circulation increased in parallel lines. There 
 can be no doubt that in less than twenty years they will have 
 found means of producing papers of which five hundred 
 thousand copies a day will be sold, like our Petit Journal, 
 only theirs wLU have sixteen, twenty-four, forty, sixty folio 
 pages. 
 
 This is the practical aspect of the plant; there is another. 
 In vain is a newspaper conceived of and managed as a matter 
 of business — it is a business of a special kind. It must have 
 a moral purpose, must take its stand for or against such a law, 
 for or against such a person; it must have its own individu- 
 ality. It cannot owe its individuality, as with us, to the per- 
 sonality of its editors, since its articles are not signed; nor 
 even, as in England, to the style and manner of the articles. 
 The "editorial," as they call the leaders, occupies too small 
 a place in this enormous mass of printed paper. And yet 
 each one of the great newspapers of New York, Chicago, or 
 Boston is a creation by itself, made in the image of him who 
 edits it, — usually the proprietor. In the same way the presi- 
 dent of a railway company is usually the principal stockholder. 
 
 Here, again, is a particular feature of large business enter- 
 prises in America and one which explains their vitality; a 
 business is always the property of a man, the visible will of 
 that man, his energy, as it were, incarnated and made evi- 
 dent. The formula which I just now used and emphasized 
 very happily expresses this intimate relation between the man 
 and his work. You will hear it currently said that Mr. So- 
 and-so has long been "identified" with such a hotel, such a 
 bank, or railway, or newspaper, and this identification is so 
 complete that if, on passing in a street car before that hotel 
 or bank, or railway station, or newspaper, you ask your neigh- 
 bor about it, he will always reply to you with a proper name. 
 From this it results that in all American enterprises there is 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 133 
 
 an elasticity, a vitality, a continual "Forward!" and also an 
 indefatigable combativeness. 
 
 I recognize this latter characteristic once again as I pass 
 through these oflfices, if only by the minute questions of my 
 guide as to the French press and our methods of securing a 
 superior literary criticism. They feel that this is our peculiar 
 excellence, and they long to have their own newspapers attain 
 to it. Every actual director of one of these great public enter- 
 prises is thus on the watch for possible modifications which 
 may distinguish his sheet from all others, continually working 
 it over and loading it down with more facts, more articles, 
 enrolling more people in its service, employing them to 
 better purpose. 
 
 Thus managed, the direction of such an enterprise becomes 
 a work of incalculable complexity. The power to which 
 these dictators of public opinion attain is so exceptional and 
 so real, its existence means so much that is dear to Ameri- 
 cans, — immense fortune and immense responsibility, enor- 
 mous labor to undergo and the continual manifestation of the 
 fact that the ambition of truly enterprising men continually 
 impels them into these lines. A city is no sooner founded 
 than papers begin to multiply. Some of them have their news- 
 papers before they are even founded. It still sometimes 
 occurs that the government gives up a large stretch of terri- 
 tory to an invasion of immigrants. At a given signal they 
 hasten thither, fall upon it, and each bit of land belongs to 
 the first occupant. That very evening or the next morning, on 
 the plain where wagons and tents vaguely indicate the outline 
 of a city, you will always find a liquor saloon, a postofifice, 
 a church, and a newspaper ! 
 
 Who knows that these wagons and tents are not the begin- 
 ning of a Minneapolis, a St. Paul, a Chicago? Who knows 
 that in twenty-five years this town will not have a hundred 
 thousand, two hundred thousand inhabitants, and the news- 
 
134 OUTRE-MER 
 
 paper as many readers? The insignificance of a beginning 
 never frightens an American who is planning for business. 
 Just as in meditating on the future of a business enterprise, 
 there is no possibility of extension which does not occur to 
 him, so no mediocrity disheartens him. He has before him 
 too many examples of gigantic results attained from very small 
 and humble beginnings. The greatest railway in the United 
 States, the Central Pacific, was founded by four men almost 
 without resources, two of whom were small shopkeepers in 
 'Frisco. They built the first sections of the line, mile by mile, 
 without money to go forward except bit by bit. Legend has 
 it that in certain cases they were obliged to lay the rails with 
 their own hands ! 
 
 While I am submitting these very general reflections to my 
 companion, as we pass through the halls, I observe a number 
 of men, nearly all young, bent over their desks and writing with 
 that absorbed attention which speaks again of "hard work," 
 the faculty of giving all one's powers to the present duty. 
 Others are receiving despatches which they immediately trans- 
 mit on writing-machines. There is none of that club atmos- 
 phere which makes the charm of Parisian editorial rooms. At 
 this hour, over there, the paper is nearly ready, and even while 
 the last touches are being added they talk.; they smoke ; they 
 play cards, dominoes, cup and ball. Here in this precocious 
 news-factory leisure is wanting, and the power to enjoy leisure. 
 
 To appreciate the difference between the two editorial of- 
 fices, one must set over against one another the two personali- 
 ties of the French and the American reporter. The principal 
 quality of the former is to be witty and clever. His articles 
 are signed, and, in consequence, his literary self-consciousness 
 is always somewhat mingled with the notes to which he makes 
 a point of giving his own peculiar touch. You know him as 
 mocking or sarcastic, caustic or pathetic. He is an artist even 
 in his work of ephemeral statement, and his best successes are 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 135 
 
 most generally in a sort of picturesque chit-chat. He has a 
 certain impressionism, and you will find in his " copy " some- 
 thing of the methods of the best writers of the day. The 
 American reporter remains unknown, even when he gives to 
 his journal news, to obtain which has cost him prodigies of 
 shrewdness and energy. As if to show him that the important 
 matter is not the quality of his phrases, but that of the facts 
 he brings, he is paid by the word. There is in him something 
 of the man of action, and something of the detective. Sensa- 
 tional novels naturally take for their hero this personage, whose 
 master virtue is strength of will. He must always be ready to 
 set out for the most remote countries, where he will be obliged 
 to play the part of explorer, and just as ready to descend 
 to the lowest social stratum, where he will need to act as 
 policeman. 
 
 In this strenuous school he may, if he has the gift, become 
 a writer of the first order. Richard Harding Davis, the creator 
 of Gallegher and Van Bibber, is a case in point. A man who 
 is himself a judge of style, having an extraordinary faculty for 
 language in his letters and public utterances — Bismarck — 
 goes so far as to insist that reporting, as Americans understand 
 it, is the best school for a man of letters who desires to picture 
 the movement of life. The opinion is of the order of those 
 uttered by the Emperor at St. Helena, very partial and full of 
 misunderstanding of the character of literary thought. It was 
 worth citing ; for it is very true that those improvised, almost 
 telegraphic, paragraphs, in which the fact appears in its strong 
 immediate clearness, often stand out in a relief which art cannot 
 equal. But it is an unconscious relief, over which the reporter 
 has had no anxiety. His anxiety is to be exact, and every means 
 is good that will secure accuracy. Many people are indignant 
 at his methods, and sometimes they are not wrong. Last sum- 
 mer I was passing through Beverly, near Boston, at the time 
 of the death of one of the most distinguished officers of the 
 
136 OUTRE-MER 
 
 Federal army. The corpse was to be carried to Baltimore, 
 and a funeral service was first celebrated in the little village 
 church. In the midst of the ceremony, a young man entered, 
 drew near to the coffin, gently raised the pall, tapped the cover 
 with his finger, and said softly : — 
 
 " Steel, not wood." 
 
 Then he disappeared, in the midst of universal surprise ; it 
 was a reporter. 
 
 These ruthless audacities of research are, however, performed 
 with a certain simplicity, almost ingenuousness. I have read 
 many " interviews " and many personal paragraphs, and, short 
 as has been my time in America, I could count those which 
 have in them anything wounding or even one of those humors 
 of the pen so habitual among the most insignificant paragrapher 
 of the boulevards. This sort of innocence of a press so auda- 
 cious in its investigations is explained, I think, first, by the 
 professional character of the reporter, and next, if I may so 
 speak, by that of the reader. The reporter holds it to be his 
 duty to give the reader the greatest possible number of facts. 
 The reader considers it his right to have these facts. In the 
 superabundance of positive details the place reserved for each 
 personality is too short to admit of an ill-natured insinuation. 
 The reporter no more has time to point an epigram than the 
 detective to whom I but now compared him has time to make a 
 practical joke upon the one he is questioning. He is much more 
 occupied in discovering " head-lines," a collection of which 
 would constitute the most humorous chapter of a journey to 
 the United States. Just now, on entering the room of the 
 newspaper reserved for necrologies, where all the biographies 
 of celebrated hving men are ranged in pigeonholes, I saw upon 
 the table a proof of an article prepared for a celebrated singer 
 who, at the moment, was very ill, with this " heading " : " The 
 crystal voice is broken. The bird will sing no more." 
 
 As the charming woman got better, the article joined the 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 137 
 
 thousands of similar paragraphs which are waiting their turn 
 among proofs of pictures representing buildings and men. 
 
 " Buildings may burn and men may die," said my guide, philo- 
 sophically. Seeing me amused by the fancifulness of these titles, 
 he drew my attention to one which would appear on the morrow 
 — the most surprising one, perhaps, which I have seen — " Jerked 
 to Jesus." It was the account of the hanging of a negro, a 
 " colored gentleman," for " the usual crime," as they euphe- 
 mistically say here, that of having outraged a white woman. 
 He repented on the eve of his execution and died Christianly. 
 I am not sure that the reporter who summed up this death in 
 these three sensational words is not himself a believer, who/ 
 distinctly saw in this event the entrance of a ransomed soul\ 
 into paradise. Certainly, thousands of plain readers will do so 
 by the mere force of this announcement. What would be the 
 head-Hnes if the matter in hand was not so vulgar an event as 
 this, but the arrival or departure of a pugilist, or his meeting i 
 with another prize-fighter ? -^ 
 
 "That is the incident which most swells the circulation of a- 
 paper," said my companion. "Why not?" he added; "we 
 Anglo-Saxons love a ' fight.' We like it in politics, and this is 
 why we must always see two ' leaders ' facing one another. 
 We like it in our enterprises, and that is why I can never be 
 content until I have made my paper the first in the United 
 States. We like it even when it is only a question of fisticuffs. 
 And I think our race will lose something the day when we are 
 too nearly cured of the latter. It will take time for that," 
 he added, with a smile that lighted up his countenance — a 
 smile in which I found, as among many business men of this 
 country, a little of the square solidity of the bull-dog. I am 
 not far from thinking, with him, that there is, in fact, an instinc- 
 tive education in the national amusements, ferocious as they 
 seem to be. Certainly, all that teaches the calculated ardor of 
 attack and the invincible self-restraint of resistance is useful to 
 
138 OUTRE-MER 
 
 men destined to live in a country where they everywhere meet 
 so intense an energy that, in ten years, this newspaper building, 
 these machines, the very paper itself, will be things of the 
 past, slow, unformed, behind the times. This is what a New 
 Yorker replied to my utterance of apprehension with regard to 
 crossing by the Brooklyn Bridge: — 
 
 " It is not possible that it will not fall some day," I said. 
 
 " Well," said he, " between now and then we shall have 
 built another, and this one will be out of fashion." 
 
 I went by one of the great Western lines, in company of one 
 of the directors, to St. Paul and Minneapolis. My object in 
 visiting the city that bears the name of the great apostle was 
 to pay my respects to its archbishop, Monsignor Ireland, the 
 most eloquent of the prelates who in these days are turning 
 the thought of the Church toward social problems. There is 
 something of Savonarola in the long, rugged face of this priest, 
 who finds in every kind of assembly an opportunity for giving 
 the word of life to the people. He said to me one day: — 
 
 "The Americans have this advantage : that people are never 
 surprised to see us in any sort of gathering. You could hardly 
 picture to yourself Monsignor of Paris at a banquet of the 
 city drainage department. It would be in staying away that I 
 should cause surprise. Such things give us many opportuni- 
 ties for making Catholicism understood." 
 
 And whatever the form under which Catholicism presents 
 itself, with whatever large magnificence of character, one needs 
 still to have read one of his sermons in order to understand — 
 to feel, rather — its vast significance. " The Church and the 
 age ! the age and the Church ! Let us bring them together in 
 closest union. Their pulses beat in unison. The God of 
 humanity is working in the age : the God of revelation is work- 
 ing in the Church. It is the same God and the same spirit." 
 
 And again : " What ! our Church, the Church of the living 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 139 
 
 God, the Church of ten thousand victories over heathens and 
 barbarians, over false philosophies and heresies, over defiant 
 kings and turbulent peoples, — the great, charitable, liberal 
 Church, athirst for virtue, ahungered for justice, — shall she 
 quail before the nineteenth century? Shall she fear any 
 century whatsoever? " 
 
 What words ! and those who are Christians by desire, as I 
 am, whose name is legion, how shall they not thrill to hear 
 them sounding forth over the modern world and over their 
 own hearts? The time has come when Christianity must 
 accept all of Science and all of Democracy, under penalty of 
 seeing herself forsaken by too many souls. She must perforce 
 construct a channel for these two springs, and who knows 
 whether the archbishop of St. Paul is not the workman pre- 
 destined to this task? Who knows whether he is not some day 
 to utter words like these from a yet higher place? There is 
 already one American cardinal, and why should there not soon 
 be two? Why should not a pope issue from this free nation, 
 in which the heads of the Church have become what the first 
 apostles were — men close to the heart of the people, to those 
 humble hearts in which so many irrepressible ideas are now 
 fermenting? These people believe their ideas to be con- 
 trary to the teachings of Christ. Prove to them, prove to us, 
 that they are not so, and that we may all retain the Ideal by 
 which our fathers lived, without sacrificing any of those ideals 
 which throb in us ! What a work for a fisher of souls of this 
 great race, and how this modern world, so sick of the nega- 
 tions that vex its incomplete knowledge, will spring to meet 
 the Church when many of its priests speak the language that 
 this one speaks ! In the shipwreck of European civilization, 
 in the tide of barbarity which militarism and socialism are 
 bringing upon it, here is the light toward which to steer. It 
 will not be a small part of this country's glory that this guid- 
 ing light was kindled here. 
 
140 OUTRE-MER 
 
 I was destined to meet the archbishop later, in New York, 
 and receive the same impression of his person that his ser- 
 mons had made upon me. This time, while I was on the 
 way to St. Paul to seek him, in the modest "office " which 
 he occupies under the shadow of his cathedral, he was at Bal- 
 timore, delivering one of his fiery harangues at Cardinal Gib- 
 bons's jubilee. Still I did not regret the long excursion — I 
 call it long, in memory of my French habits. Fourteen hours 
 in a railway car do not count in America. I was able to feast 
 my eyes, during this long journey, with the sight of the most 
 psychological landscape which I have seen in my wandering 
 life; a "business " landscape, if one may so speak, so entirely 
 has the imprint of speculation been stamped upon all the 
 banks of the Mississippi, the river celebrated by Chateau- 
 briand and Longfellow. 
 
 American energy has made this vast watercourse the natural 
 vehicle of an enormous traffic. The " Father of Waters " has 
 become a good-natured and docile servant, indefatigably 
 transporting the logs cut far away to the North, beyond St. 
 Paul and Minneapolis, by woodmen who have the large blue 
 eyes and blond rosy faces of good-natured giants. They are 
 immigrants from Sweden and Norway, who have come, to the 
 number of six hundred thousand, in the last ten years ! 
 
 Great rafts of huge tree-trunks glide along with the flowing 
 water, each one marked with a colored sign, which tells its 
 destination. The water, by turns green and transparent or 
 muddy and yellow, bears upon its bosom so many islands that 
 you can never distinguish the other shore. One side of the 
 stream is furrowed with lines of towboats, which are indefat- 
 igablv and incessantly hastening to transport the cattle and 
 grain of this mysterious, inexhaustible West. Vet it must one 
 day be exhausted, and one asks oneself what will become of 
 this people when they no longer have this immense reservoir 
 to draw from. 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 141 
 
 Meantime it was a scene of extraordinary activity, even 
 after Chicago and New York. The private car in which we 
 travelled had almost immediately been given its special 
 engine. The little extra train was perpetually obliged to 
 switch off to let the regular trains pass by, — cattle trains 
 almost exclusively. Our car, which is that used by the pres- 
 ident of the road on his travels, is not ordered with special 
 luxury, although, with its two sleeping-rooms, drawing-room, 
 dining-room, kitchen, and bath, it is a veritable house on 
 wheels, in which you might pass weeks and hardly know 
 that you were travelling. For that matter, how many people 
 never travel in any other way ! While at Newport, I heard a 
 young woman planning a similar journey. She was to take 
 her guests in her private car, and her sole regret was that the 
 station at Chicago was too noisy for a long sojourn. The 
 chief object of having a private car is the avoidance of hotels. 
 If, in the course of one of these fifteen hundred mile journeys, 
 the inhabitant of the private car happens to fall ill, a halt is 
 called until he gets well. This is the case with a politician 
 of my acquaintance, whom his doctor is treating for typhoid 
 fever, in a car of this kind, temporarily shunted on one of 
 the side tracks of some small Colorado town. Orders have 
 been given for the engines not to whistle when they approach 
 the place. Private cars are so numerous that such an incident 
 passes without notice. 
 
 The car in which I am travelling is a sort of office on 
 wheels, intended to facilitate the labors of the president and 
 directors, who desire to see with their own eyes how things 
 are going on their road. Here again I perceive the same 
 identification of the great business enterprises of America, 
 with certain individuals, which I had already observed in the 
 case of the newspapers. Almost all the great railroads, like 
 this one, are under the control of a very small number of 
 individuals. In certain cases a single man owns the majority 
 
142 OUTRE-MER 
 
 of the stock. In other cases, the entire stock is divided be- 
 tween four or five capitalists. At other times, the interests 
 ' represented by a group of capitalists are so great that the 
 remainder of the stockholders prefer to leave them entirely 
 ! free in the direction of the enterprise. Hence results that 
 character of autocracy in directing boards, which Mr. Bryce 
 so justly pointed out as the unique feature of American rail- 
 ways. Those who manage them are their absolute masters. 
 
 The necessity of direct supervision is another consequence 
 of this state of things. For that matter, competition is too 
 fierce to admit of that anonymity of routine administration of 
 which old Europe is so fond. An American railway represents 
 too many living interests. It is not merely a more rapid 
 means of communication, side by side with roads and canals, 
 for example. In nearly all the States it is the only means of 
 communication. 
 
 It not only runs between two existing cities, connecting 
 them by a shorter line, it is itself the creator of cities. Be- 
 tween Chicago and St. Paul a score of them have sprung into 
 existence, of which the station was the natal germ. Stores 
 ' ' were opened forthe benefit of the employees, then other shops 
 for the benefit of the first shopkeepers. If there is a mine in 
 the neighborhood, or the hope of a mine, grazing, or the pos- 
 sibility of grazing, immigrants come in flocks. If any natural 
 feature, such as a waterfall, permits a factory, industries are 
 established. Minneapolis had no other origin. The railway 
 P-issed the place. The falls of the Mississippi lent themselves 
 to a series of incomparable mills, and this was the starting- 
 point of one of the future capitals of the world. 
 
 One must not weary of the statistics which, as it were, make 
 evident this astounding productiveness. Minneapolis, liter- 
 ally founded but yesterday, in which no man now forty years 
 old can have been born, occupies to-day, according to popu- 
 lation, the one hundred and twenty-first place among the cities 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 143 
 
 of the whole world. It follows immediately after the Hague, 
 standing before Trieste or Toulouse or Seville or Genoa or 
 Florence or Venice or Havre or Bologna or Rouen or Stras- 
 burg. 
 
 It is not merely a fantastic paradox that brings these antique 
 names into juxtaposition with this name so barbaric in origin 
 
 — it is derived from a G reek and ^- Sioux word, and so 
 symbolical. A total rearrangement of the scheme of history 
 is shown in such unlooked-for displacements of the centres 
 of human activity. If we had not suffered the extinction 
 of our sense of the mystery which is hidden in all reality, — 
 even in coarse and vulgar reality, when it is fruitful to such 
 a degree as this, — we should recognize in it one of the 
 miracles of an epoch in which nothing except the perspec- 
 tive of age is wanting to thrill us through with admiration ! 
 
 To the business man, the unconscious worker of this mira- 
 cle, the establishment of a railway is simply a question of 
 speculation. According as these seeds of cities, scattered 
 thus from the funnel of an engine with the cinders and the 
 sparks, spring up or prove abortive, the surrounding district 
 will bring in millions of dollars or nothing. In most cases 
 the company has received its lands free, without laying out 
 a cent. Thus Congress granted thirteen millions of acres to 
 the Union Pacific, six millions to the Kansas Pacific, twelve 
 millions to the Central Pacific, forty-seven millions to the 
 Northern Pacific, forty-two millions to the Atlantic and Pa- 
 cific. Whatever these lands may become worth, so much will 
 the railroad be worth. It makes them fruitful, and they en- 
 rich it in return. It overlays them with an alluvium of 
 humanity, and this will tenfold, a hundredfold, enhance their 
 value to it. 
 
 Figures like these multiply themselves in the minds of the 
 "magnates" — so the great "railroad men " are called here 
 
 — as they look abroad from their private cars. They see a 
 
144 OUTRE-MER 
 
 new city blocking itself out, pushing out in lines of cheap 
 wooden houses, brought out in numbered sections and set 
 down on the surface of the ground. They ask themselves how 
 and when this embryo will come to life, grow, develop itself; 
 and then they return to the comfort of the "rockers " of their 
 moving drawing-rooms, colossal plans seething in their minds 
 the while. Each one of them is accustomed to a business 
 sphere as wide as that of a cabinet minister. He has already 
 made cities; he has made vast regions. All the qualities of a 
 great diplomatist have been necessary that he should carry on 
 the struggle, to-day against a rival company, to-morrow against 
 the governor of a State. He has conducted battles, formed 
 leagues. For business to go on as it does he must needs have 
 marshalled thousands of men into ranks, chosen the most 
 able among them, commanded them as Napoleon commanded 
 his officers and soldiers. 
 
 It is a power by no means decorative and honorary, 
 but real, active, working, with an immediate responsibility 
 held in check by success or the want of success. These 
 men are princes in the feudal sense of the word, and they 
 may generally pride themselves on having conquered their 
 principality for themselves. They can look back twenty years 
 and see themselves small shopkeepers, coal-dealers, hotel ser- 
 vants, brakemen. Such a life has its poetry, — not indeed 
 that which poets have sung, but poetry all the same, — and it 
 has its beauty, of the kind that Balzac would have loved. 
 
 The locomotive keeps on its way while these reflections 
 beset me, and the landscape unrolls before our eyes. Re- 
 mains of forests border the Mississippi, brilliant now with 
 the hues of autumn. The magnificence of the red tones, their 
 depth, their solidity, almost warm the heart. Once, in the 
 twilight, a part of the forest was burning upon the horizon. 
 A colossal flame curled up, illumining a range of mountains. 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 145 
 
 while the waters of the river, that reflected the sunset sky, 
 became adorable with rose and violet. For a few moments 
 invincible nature has its revenge and abolishes industry. In 
 the light of this suddenly transfigured landscape, I picture to 
 myself what this part of America must have been fifty years 
 ago, when trappers and Indians were in conflict on these fields 
 and in the woods along this river, which Longfellow has 
 sung : — 
 
 " Men whose lives glided on \\ke rivers that water the woodlands, 
 Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting the image of heaven." 
 
 It is in such scenes as this that one should read the now 
 old-fashioned romances of Fenimore Cooper, which in our 
 youth charmed us all, beyond the seas. I have just reread one 
 of the most celebrated, T/ie Patlifinder. Its style is in- 
 different, the plot is constructed of childishly improbable 
 events. The characters lack analysis and depth. And yet 
 the book possesses the first of all the virtues of a romance, — 
 credibility. This is due, in spite of its faults, to the evident 
 good faith with which the various characters are drawn, es- 
 pecially that of the guide, Leather-Stocking, who has passed 
 into legend even in Europe. 
 
 Under all the weaknesses of style and composition,- one 
 feels, as in the Scottish chronicles of Walter Scott, the reality 
 of local traditions collected at their very source. These 
 things cannot be imitated, and they never grow old. Behind 
 the imaginary story you perceive nature as it once was and 
 the American of the last century, on the eve of the War of 
 Independence, living all in the moral domain, with none of 
 the industrialism which now reigns over the whole scene. 
 
 That was a unique period, when the Puritan and this wild 
 nature came in contact, and its real hero was Washington. 
 England was close at hand, and the blood of its sons, emi- 
 grants to this new continent, had not undergone the prodig- 
 
146 OUTRE-MER 
 
 ious intermingling which has now transformed it. Cooper's 
 romances show the English rigidity of the American of that 
 day, and they also show the strenuousness of the war with the 
 Indians, side by side with the marvellous animal wealth of the 
 country now so despoiled of its large and small game. They 
 show the beginnings of the struggle with nature, which has 
 now been not only conquered, but violated and brutalized. 
 
 The reading of these books shows that the United States had 
 already exhausted an entire civilization — that of the pioneers 
 and hunters — before producing that of to-day. This new 
 nation has lived more in its one hundred years than all Europe 
 since the Renascence. Between the social condition de- 
 scribed by this Pathfinder, and that of which 1 am trying 
 to distinguish a few elements, there is assuredly more differ- 
 ence than between the France of the seventeenth century and 
 that of our day, notwithstanding the upheavals of our Revo- ' 
 lution. The plasticity of this singular country is such that 
 we may predict as great differences between the civilization 
 of this year of the Chicago Exposition and that of 1993; only 
 the sunset, the water of the river, and the sky will have re- 
 mained the same as to-night and as a hundred years ago. The 
 same stars will flash out overhead, and the same moon will 
 rise, bathing the vast, pale river and the dark forests. But 
 will it still light up files of trains such as rush past ours, fly- 
 ing eastward, carrying cattle and wheat, wheat and cattle, — 
 and money, always and ever money, to swell the enormous 
 fortunes destined some day to be shed abroad in the form of 
 dowry over some ruined palace of Italy, some impoverished 
 historic castle of England or of France? 
 
 St. Paul, where I arrive on a Sunday morning, is a huge 
 chaotic city, in part composed of the same wooden houses 
 squat upon the ground which are found in the infant cities 
 along the railway. But along a sort of macadamized terrace 
 
BUSINESS MEX AND BUSINESS SCENES 147 
 
 which overlooks the Mississippi, stand out a succession of 
 beautiful stone houses, not very high, of good architecture. 
 They form a whole street of private houses, like those in the 
 neighborhood of Hyde Park or the Avenue du Bois. 
 
 The mere exterior of these houses betrays in the men who 
 built them, who are all business men of this place, that habit 
 of ostentatious expenditure that seems to be so contrary to the 
 greed for wealth everywhere stamped upon the hard surface of 
 this country. The contradiction is only apparent. The 
 American loves to "make a dollar," as they say; but he is not 
 tenacious of it. What he most cares for in the conquest of 
 wealth is the excitement of activity, self-aflfirmation, and he 
 afifirms himself quite as much, if not more, by the lavish 
 ostentation of his expenditure. 
 
 This ostentation is sometimes very barbaric. It is often 
 very intelligent. Of this I have convinced myself by a visit 
 to one of the houses on "Summit Avenue," the elegant street 
 of this rough-hewn St. Paul. The gallery of paintings which 
 it contains is mentioned in the guide-books. It belongs to 
 the president of one of the great Western railways, a " self- 
 made man," if ever there was one. All who knew him twenty- 
 five years ago remember him as a small commercial employee. 
 After that he went into the selling of coal, and the freighting 
 of boats. The latter enterprise made him acquainted de visit 
 with the wealth of Montana and North Dakota. A railway 
 which had been begun in these regions was on the point of 
 failure. He bought the ruined line. To-day, thanks to con- 
 tracts that he was wise enough to make, by a series of trans- 
 shipments, this line has a through service from Buffalo to 
 Japan. This is the finished type of a great American busi- 
 ness enterprise, with its foundations laid in minute personal 
 experience and its results expanded by bold combinations to 
 the verge of unreality. 
 
 The interior appointments of this man's house are not less 
 
148 OUTRE-MER 
 
 typical. Pictures, pictures everywhere. Corots of the highest 
 beauty, among others the Biblis which figured at the Secretan 
 sale, Troyons, Decamps, a colossal Courbet, the Convidsion- 
 naires of Delacroix, and a view of the coast of Morocco, before 
 which I stood long, as in a dream. I saw this canvas years 
 ago, I have sought for it since in hundreds of public and 
 private museums, finding no book which could inform me who 
 was its present possessor, and I find it here ! 
 
 It is a little narrow beach, a rim of pebbly strand at the 
 foot of a steep cliff. Some Moors are rapidly making off with 
 a large bark. The village, a nest of pirates, shows white, 
 high up in a cleft of the hill. This collection of hovels 
 huddled in this lonely cranny, the wildness of the beach, the 
 haste of the sailors, the freedom of the great sea, intensely 
 blue under a burning sun, all sperk of adventure, surprise, 
 danger. There is realism and romanticism, brilliant color 
 and dramatic action in this picture by a thoughtful and 
 enthusiastic artist, always seeking for a subject of complex 
 beauty, in which the vagueness of a tragic mystery should be 
 mingled with splendor of execution. 
 
 What ground has this canvas covered between the painter's 
 studio and the gallery of a millionaire of the Western frontier ! 
 So I saw in Baltimore, in the collection of the "magnate" of 
 another railroad, the complete series of Barye pictures, a 
 "Christ asleep in the storm" by Delacroix, with an amazing 
 marine piece, a sea-green surf, wild and boisterous, under 
 a sky livid with violet hues. And Fromentins and Daubignys, 
 other Corots, Troyons, Decamps, Bonnats, — • all the glory of 
 France ! What sentiment impels these wealthy speculators 
 to gather into their own homes art treasures most foreign 
 to all that has been the business and passion of their whole 
 life? 
 
 I seem to discern here, first of all, traces of that dream of 
 culture, that longing for intellectual leisure, which always 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND T5LTSINESS SCENES 149 
 
 impresses me in persons thus saturated with practical energy. 
 I also recognize in it a purpose of good citizenship. They 
 have a very particular sort of love for the city in which they 
 live, which they have seen growing up, which they have some- 
 times even seen born, and which they desire to see in posses- 
 sion of all excellent things. A museum is such a thing, and 
 they give her one in their own house. Almost always the • 
 wills of these great men contain a clause which proves how 
 deep and widespread is the idea that "millions" bring civic 
 duty in their train. They give five hundred thousand dollars 
 to endow a library, a university, a museum for their city. 
 When such a one dies without having taken steps of this kind, 
 universal blame overshadows his memory. 
 
 For this reason every one of these industrial towns is proud 
 of its millionaires. I'he most ignorant coachman will point 
 you to their houses, give you the amount of their fortunes, 
 call them by their nicknames. It is understood that munici- 
 pal solidarity unites these potentates of the dollar to their 
 fellow-citizens of their own city. In fact, this unity of inter- 
 ests shows itself daily, materially. The same Mr. Chauncey 
 Depew whose remarks I have before quoted said to a reporter 
 these significant words: — 
 
 "A railway president in the United States is a great servant 
 of the people. He has under his orders twenty or thirty 
 thousand men, who represent a hundred thousand, sometimes 
 two hundred thousand mouths to fill; he holds in his hands 
 not merely the physical well-being, but the mental and moral 
 well-being of this multitude. He cannot do everything, nor 
 content everybody. But he can do much, and when he does 
 his best you will not find another man in a ' prominent posi- 
 tion ' who does more for the comfort and good citizenship 
 of large communities." 
 
 This warm civic ardor is one of the virtues of the American 
 business man of which we are least aware. With reservations 
 
150 OUTRE-MER 
 
 on the side of truth and that of "humbug," I believe it to 
 be the most sincere. 
 
 With eyes dazzled by the luminous poetry of Delacroix's 
 picture, I had some difihculty, on the way from St. Paul to 
 Minneapolis, in discerning the meaning of the landscape 
 which lies between the two cities. It is, however, most 
 expressive. The few miles of ground which separate them 
 are divided off into nearly equal lots, and everywhere you may 
 see the inscription "For Sale," indefinitely multiplied. In 
 fifty years the suburbs of the "Twin Cities of the West" — 
 as they call them here — will meet. 
 
 Soon the wooden houses begin to appear, then brick ones. 
 This is Minneapolis. Although the earlier houses are scat- 
 tered, like farms upon a mountain side, the streets are already 
 laid out and numbered. An electric tramway serves these 
 districts, which, notwithstanding the infrequent houses, con- 
 form to the ideal plan. It is like a design of a colossal city 
 traced beforehand on the very ground, planned, imagined, 
 estimated rather, its future needs to be served by this electri- 
 city. The sewers are dug, the fountains are playing, the 
 ground is drained It lacks only inhabitants. 
 
 Of these, however, there are a hundred and sixty-five thou- 
 sand in the built-up quarters, which form but a very small 
 portion of the city prospected by the business men of Minne- 
 apolis. Chicago counts more than a million souls, and they 
 have not the slightest doubt that their city will outrank 
 Chicago. They have taken precautions to that end, and have 
 bought all that they can buy of the adjoining land, dividing it 
 up for sale lot by lot. They have given the vital organ to 
 these yet-to-be-built suburbs, — the facility of rapid transit, 
 which permits each workingman to have his little house, — and 
 they are waiting, with a strength of hope so peculiarly Ameri- 
 can, occupied meanwhile with other speculations, which will 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 151 
 
 compensate them for the failure of this one, in the event — to 
 them improbable — of this one making shipwreck. 
 
 One of the great speculators of Minneapolis, he perhaps 
 who from the first day has most strongly believed in the future 
 of this city, takes me in his electric car — a private electric 
 car; where else shall we iind a whim like this? He proposes 
 to show me that he and his friends have foreseen not merely 
 the material greatness of Minneapolis, but have thought of its 
 artistic life. 
 
 The car slips along the wire with frightful speed. It has 
 not to stop for passengers. We have left the built-up quar- 
 ters, and almost immediately v/e pass the districts yet to be 
 built, with their imaginary streets, and their placards of " For 
 Sale " erected on posts. These placards are so numerous that 
 the suburb resembles the beds of a botanic garden destined 
 for the inhabitants of Brobdingnag. The car now skirts a 
 diminutive lake, whose bluish waters shimmer between slim 
 young trees. They have cut down, destroyed, burned, the 
 primitive forest, and this timid attempt at replantation seems 
 all the more to denude the landscape. 
 
 We reach a bit of better preserved woodland, which forms 
 the green border of a second lake. On the shore is one of 
 the most singular music halls that it has ever been given me 
 to see. Benches rise up in tiers, facing the lake. Above 
 they are divided into boxes; below they form a uniform 
 parterre. Wooden tables in these boxes and on the parterre 
 remind me that in Minneapolis the principal immigration is 
 Germanic. This place is evidently arranged for the folk of 
 the beer garden, — Germans, Swiss, Danes, Norwegians. A 
 huge raft is moored opposite the theatre, bearing a rostrum for 
 the orchestra. Concerts are given here on fine summer nights, 
 and when the public requests it the raft puts out into the 
 lake, to add the charm of distance to the pieces played. This 
 democratic adaptation of the dreams of King Louis of Bavaria 
 
152 OUTRE-MER 
 
 costs the humble folk who enjoy it ten cents for the tramway 
 and twenty-five cents for entrance — ^ no doubt "with ex- 
 penses," as the cafe-concert advertisements say! 
 
 All America shows in this place. The orchestra is composed 
 of good artists, who will be better from year to year with the 
 increasing wealth of the city. The view is exquisite on this 
 autumnal morning, veiled in haze above the yellowing trees and 
 the violet water. What must it be by moonlight, on the soft 
 nights of June? The idea is a fine one, a dainty caprice of 
 popular enjoyment. And it all has for its first principle a tram- 
 way speculation, which in turn rests on a speculation in land ! 
 
 The most humble realism, most devoted to the minute 
 ^'^observation of facts, joined to an audacity of imagination 
 which never flinches, which grafts projects upon projects, 
 which continually inflates enterprises already enormous, which 
 rises to more and more colossal combinations, — the most 
 ardent, most implacable individualism, as of a nobler sort of 
 beast of prey, devouring all the life around it, — or, if you 
 will, the tremendous rush of an overflowing river, absorbing 
 all waters, inundating all lands, sweeping over a country rav- 
 aged by its insatiable floods; and with all this a generosity 
 that never reckons, a magnanimity of civic passion that lav- 
 ishes millions in disinterested works, that expends itself in 
 tireless sacrifices for the common country; a plebeianism of 
 most recent origin, a modesty, often a meanness of birth, 
 family, education, powerless, it would seem, to mitigate the 
 necessity of bread-winning toil; and with it all the magnifi- 
 cence and ostentation of grand seigneurs, a taste for art, a 
 large understanding of intelligent luxury, a natural facility in 
 the management of the tremendous fortunes acquired but yes- 
 terday; such are the contradictory characteristics which even 
 a superficial analysis discovers in the complex figure of the 
 American business man. 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 153 
 
 Simply to note them in this brief summary serves to show ") 
 me that these traits are also those of the whole race, and in the / 
 lineaments of the potentate who reigns master over his rail- /^ 
 way, his factory, his newspaper, his mine, I recognize the \ 
 early colonist, with the moral lineaments which fortune has -^ 
 been powerless to change. 
 
 This colonist came here a hundred years ago, fifty years 
 ago, to find a foothold in this still new world, and he has been 
 forced to carry on the most open struggle, the least softened 
 by social conventions, — a struggle against people, against 
 nature, against himself, His flesh rebelled against the severi- 
 ties of the first years. The prairie was hostile. The neigh- 
 bors were severe, dangerous, merciless. The necessity of 
 action forced the man to observe and to accept no ideas that 
 were not clear and precise. This inexorable education cured 
 him of phrases, formulae, prejudices, and inaccuracies. So 
 much for the realism. 
 
 But the colonist's struggle had all possibilities before it. 
 Expatriations of this sort are not to be explained without 
 something of that madness of hope which desperate men find 
 in themselves in supreme moments, when the whole soul faces 
 about under a blow which leaves to it nothing of the past. 
 And once at this point, everything contributed to fan the 
 fever of hope in the exile's breast, — the incredibly fertile 
 soil, the mysterious gold and silver mines always to be discov- 
 ered, the prairie, absurdly rich in game, the indestructible 
 forests, and the daily example of gigantic fortunes amassed in 
 a few years. So much for imagination. 
 
 And still the influx of immigrants continued to be so 
 numerous, the struggle for life became so violent in this 
 horde of adventurers, — all men of poverty and energy, — 
 justice was executed in so summary a fashion, that it was 
 necessary indeed to have recourse to Faustreclit, that right 
 of the fist wiiich was the principle of order in the German 
 
154 OUTRE-MER 
 
 Middle Ages. Lynching is its last relic. So much for 
 individualism. 
 
 On the other hand, these same colonists found in this severe 
 existence a renewal of their personality. I'hey made for 
 themselves a future that had no past, and experienced a pas- 
 sionate gratitude to the free country which had permitted the 
 new beginning. This is the origin of American patriotism, 
 so different from ours. Tradition does not enter into it, since 
 the men, except a number so small that it may be counted, 
 have their traditions elsewhere. What they love in this new 
 country is precisely that it is new. They themselves create 
 its tradition. They are ancestors, and they know it. So 
 much for the glorification of civism. 
 
 Finally, these colonists were all plebeians, or were con- 
 strained to become such, since they must work with their 
 hands. Only, the vast extent of their domains, the fact that 
 they were dependent on no one, their consciousness of a re- 
 generated manhood, the habit of unchecked liberty to 
 originate, all conspired to exalt in them that pride which 
 the humblest American born in the country naturally mani- 
 fests. 
 
 Look well at this; the business man is no other than this 
 colonist, broadened, developed, enkirged. Never was the 
 law of heredity more visible than here, in this sublimated 
 transposition, if one may so speak. All the soul of the pioneer 
 of the early days appears again in the enterprises and caprices 
 of these millionaires; and as the same soul continues to stir 
 in the poor American who has not conquered destiny, a moral 
 likeness is established between the poorest and the most pros- 
 perous, a close and profound resemblance, which makes the 
 true coherence of this country. It is by this singular iden- 
 tity that it remains always one, in spite of many causes cease- 
 lessly working to disintegrate it. 
 
 These business men, who are occupied with constructing a 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 155 
 
 whole Western civilization out of entirely foreign elements, 
 naturally make it in the image of the American character. 
 Through them the national consciousness projects itself in 
 towns and enterprises so entirely alike that travellers com- 
 plain of it. They are all agreed in reproaching this country 
 for its cruel monotony. Some humorist or other has compared 
 American things to hothouse strawberries, big as apricots, 
 red as roses, and with no taste. 
 
 If there is any truth in this epigram, it is the fault of the 
 business men. Applying to all products everywhere the same 
 method of indefinite increase, multiplying the workman by the 
 machine, continually substituting hasty wholesale work for the 
 individual and delicate task, they have, in fact, banished 
 the picturesque from their republic. All these great cities, 
 these great buildings, these great bridges, these great hotels, 
 are alike. But what we have to ask of these things is not an 
 artistic impression, but an authentic report of the profound 
 forces of American life, and this document must be added to 
 the others, to confirm and complete them. 
 
 The particular feature manifested by business men in all 
 the enterprises of which these cities and landscapes are the 
 rude symbol, is in fact the same which the women manifest 
 in their elegance and their culture, the same that New York 
 society manifests in its extravagance, amusements, conversa- 
 tion, that New York streets manifest at a first glance, — a 
 feature so characteristic as to be national. It is a habit, 
 unique and unvarying, a habit carried to such an extreme 
 as to become the abuse of a single human power, — that of 
 will. It is obviously the very pivot of the machine, to 
 which everything else is subordinated. Observe some of 
 these great business men, after having closely studied their 
 work; you will soon discover that even their physical powers, 
 usually very robust, are entirely bent in this direction. 
 Whether they are thirty years old, or forty, or fifty, their one 
 
156 OUTRE-MER 
 
 ideal is "hard work," intense toil, which they demand of their 
 employees as much as of themselves. I am told that it needs 
 months to train English workmen — and they are the toughest 
 in Europe — to the strenuous application habitual in Ameri- 
 can shops. 
 
 The employer is himself in his ofifice from the earliest 
 morning hour, and does not leave it until the latest in the 
 afternoon. Most generally his only refreshment during this 
 long period is two sandwiches and half a dozen oysters from 
 a neighboring bar. After years of such toil his constitution, 
 however strong it may be, is seriously undermined. He is 
 obliged to stop. The kind of rest which his physicians pre- 
 scribe for him is a sufficient indication of the nature and 
 intensity of his fatigue. It requires six months of travel, 
 usually by sea, to patch up the overwrought, almost shattered, 
 machine. 
 
 Those who do not succumb carry the marks of immense 
 fatigue borne with immense spirit. They are giants; their 
 square-built frames have grown heavy by long sittings in their 
 offices, their faces are gray from exhausted vitality. The 
 expression of their countenances reveals a mind so continually 
 on the strain that it can no longer enjoy recreation. 
 
 Conversing with them, you find it explained why the papers 
 are continually announcing the sudden death of some million- 
 aire, struck down in his office, in a boat's cabin, or a railway 
 car. The words "heart disease" usually accompany the 
 death notice; it is a commentary that shows you the human 
 machine utterly worn out by the incessant expenditure of ner- 
 vous force. These manipulators of dollars are, in short, the 
 heroes of modern times, in whom the power of attack and 
 resistance is analogous, under very different forms, to the 
 power of attack and resistance of an old soldier of the Em- 
 peror. They die of it, after having lived by it, and having 
 lived by it alone. 
 
 I 
 
BUSINESS MEN AND BUSINESS SCENES 157 
 
 This is the greatness and it is the limit of this civilization. 
 Intellectual life is in the background, and in the background 
 also are the sentimental and even the religious life. The life 
 of purpose has sapped all the vigor of the individual. So 
 much is it hypertrophied that it seems sometimes to work 
 aimlessly and in a void. This is also the defect of the whole 
 social system. You feel everywhere that the Americans have 
 risen too superior to time, so that by a mysterious law they 
 are doing nothing that is destined to endure. All the pomp 
 of these Babel-like cities is destined to give way to something 
 else. The vision of this is already foreseen. These machines 
 are to give place to other machines, more simple or more 
 complicated. In ten years these hotels, with their thousand 
 pipes, their electric lights, their hot and cold water, their 
 swift elevators, their extravagantly magnificent furniture, will 
 have become "old-fashioned." Others will have taken their 
 place. 
 
 It is thus with everything, from writing-machines to for- 
 tunes, and so on indefinitely, it would seem; unless, indeed, 
 the America of workmen and speculators is itself to pass away, 
 as the America of the pioneers has done, and frenzied enter- 
 prise be succeeded by a civilization in which the central power 
 will be not the conscious and calculating will, but instinct, 
 habit, an inherited and disciplined nature. This final change 
 is, in any case, far distant. You understand why, on study- 
 ing a map of the United States and comparing the extent of 
 its territory with the number of its inhabitants. Americans 
 often indulge in the justified pleasantry of saying that if all 
 France were set down in the midst of Texas, a good deal of 
 Texas would stick out around the edges. It would be proper 
 to add that this immense Texas has not three million inhabi- 
 tants; Florida has not four hundred thousand, and it takes 
 fourteen hours by railway to pass through it, from Lake Worth 
 to Jacksonville. 
 
158 OUTRE-MER 
 
 Thirty out of forty States are in a like condition. This is 
 the secret of this civilization. It has not yet passed the 
 period of conquest. Its immense originality lies in this, that 
 its conquerors leaped with one bound to the refinement of the 
 most advanced civilization. A like phenomenon has not 
 elsewhere been seen, and it will never be seen again. This 
 is the reason why the leaders in this unique conquest — the 
 business men — do not resemble our brokers, laborers, manu- 
 facturers, engineers; the reason why Chicago is not like Paris, 
 or Minneapolis like Florence. I love best the cities of old 
 Europe, but I admire most the business men of the New 
 World. The work which they do by dint of sheer, unpre- 
 meditated resolution is not equal to the work which has been 
 elaborated with us for centuries, but the actual makers of this 
 country are examples of a more vigorous humanity. 
 
VI 
 
 THE LOWER ORDERS 
 I. The Workingmen 
 
 "Business is the labor of others," said a socialistic humor- 
 ist, amending a celebrated witticism. The epigram is only 
 half true in the United States, where the millionaires them- 
 selves are overwhelmed with work, quite as much so as the 
 most oppressed operatives on their railroads or in their mines. 
 It is so far correct, that the conduct of these great enter- 
 prises requires for its first element the toil of the laborer. 
 Behind the capitalist, however intelligent he may be, however 
 active and enterprising, there stands, therefore, theworkingman. 
 
 Premising that America is, above all things, a democracy, 
 this very personage is what constitutes its substructure. If 
 the civilization of this country is to be changed again, as so 
 often seems likely to be the case, it will change through the 
 workingman, as the France of '89, which rested upon the 
 peasant class, was changed by the peasant. From time to 
 time, strikes, which in any other country would be called 
 civil wars, seem in fact to presage one of those class conflicts 
 of which the issue is never doubtful. Ever since there have 
 been barbarians and civilized people, the more wretched have 
 always vanquished the more fortunate when it came to the 
 issue of battle. 
 
 At other times, and with the exception of such moments of 
 overstrained feeling, if you talk with laboring men, you will 
 find them ev idently happy in their work, performing it well, 
 
 159 
 
160 OUTRE-MER 
 
 with much of the independence of free citizens in their 
 rugged faces. They visibly have the calmness of energy, 
 amidst all the to and fro of pistons, the whistling of leather 
 straps, the screeching of steam, the panting of fly-wheels. The 
 expenditure of personal force is so intelligently economized 
 for them, so accurately supported by mechanical help ! You 
 know, on the other hand, that wages are much higher than in 
 Europe,— a dollar and a half a day, two, two and a half, four. 
 Vou know with what prudential societies the activity of these 
 people is surrounded. These societies are so numerous, so 
 well ordered, so ready to sustain the workman and his family 
 in so many circumstances, from loss of work to death ! Thanks 
 to one of these societies the man owns his own house. Thanks 
 to endowments of all sorts, the education of his children is 
 ensured. The tax of blood — that monstrous abuse of our 
 civilization — is spared to him and his sons. You return 
 again to this thought, which has determined so many emi- 
 grants to leave all, that America is the paradise of the common 
 people. 
 
 How reconcile two points of view, both of which are based 
 upon indisputable though radically contradictory facts? You 
 turn the pages of publications issued by working men and 
 women. The same contradiction appears still more strikingly. 
 In the programme of one of the associations that pass for 
 being the most advanced, you read, "Calling upon God to 
 witness the rectitude of our intentions." In a sort of hymn 
 in honor of the eight-hour day, ending with the line 
 
 "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will," 
 
 you three times meet the name of God, and three times find 
 His and Him printed with a capital letter. You conclude 
 therefrom that the natural desire for beneficent reforms is 
 associated, in the American workman, with a deep religious 
 instinct, and you decide that this characteristic fits in well 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 161 
 
 with the logic of the natural character. Wherever the dom- 
 inant element of a character is will, the most highly developed 
 sentiment is necessarily that of responsibility, and the relig- 
 ous life is its perfectly natural condition. 
 
 Take up another paper, also designed for workingmen, and 
 brought to your attention as typical, and to your amazement 
 you will find declarations in the style of the following: "Par- 
 adise is a dream invented by rogues, who wish to conceal their 
 crimes from their victims." "When the laborer perceives 
 that the other world, which people are forever telling him 
 about, is a mirage, he will knock at the doors of the rich 
 thieves, gun in hand, demanding his share in the good things 
 of life, and this without delay." "Religion, authority, state, 
 — all these idols were carved out of the same block of wood. 
 We will shatter them all." 
 
 What can we think of a social class of whom such opposite 
 accounts are equally true? That is a psychological problem 
 far too profound for me to solve. 1 get a glimpse of at least 
 a conjecture which may permit one to comprehend the co- 
 existence of ideas so antithetical in the laboring classes of 
 America. Much has contributed to this hypothesis, — pro- 
 longed study of conditions, visits to factories, the reading of 
 a quantity of reports, visits to innumerable workingmen' s 
 homes, interviews with especially competent persons. I shall 
 give from among notes taken in the course of an inquiry still 
 too short, only those which chime in with the familiar tone 
 of this travelling journal, which does not aspire to be a treatise 
 on political economy. 
 
 Conversations with two of the men who have most efficiently 
 pondered the problem of the social future of America, His 
 Eminence Cardinal Gibbons and Monsignor Ireland, appear 
 to me to have summed up with authority and superior clear- 
 ness the optimistic view of the future. Though they occurred 
 
 M 
 
162 OUTRE-MER 
 
 several weeks apart, I will transcribe them in succession, as 
 they are complementary to one another. 
 
 All French people know the names of these two apostles, 
 thanks to the works of M. de Meaux and M. Max Leclerc, 
 thanks also to the Abbe Klein's fine translation of a few 
 sermons preached by the archbishop of St. Paul. These two 
 prelates have been very active workers in the Catholic propa- 
 ganda in the United States, of which I have already spoken. 
 A few figures will permit us to measure it more accurately. 
 
 At the beginning of this century American Catholics were 
 in number about twenty-five thousand. A bishop and some 
 thirty priests sufficed for the service of souls. To-day they 
 count more than ten millions of members. Their churches 
 and seminaries continually increase. They have founded at 
 the gates of Washington a university which assures to their 
 teaching all the supremacy of the most modern knowl- 
 edge. Monsignor Keane is its rector. One of the grandest 
 figures of the dignified clergy of America is this rector, with 
 the vigorous countenance of the man of action, with vibrating 
 voice, gestures at times almost rigid,, and eyes of flame. 
 
 "All that we have done," he said to me, "we have done 
 through liberty. We have no relations with the State, and 
 we get along together very well. We are paid by our adher- 
 ents, and we like that. If they find us too severe," he added, 
 "and undertake to make us feel it, we support it without 
 pain ; for we like that, also, to do without superfluities and 
 display. When I was bishop of Richmond my diocese was 
 very poor. I lived in two little rooms and I was happy. 
 What we do not like is for the ministers of the Church to 
 maintain the style of a prince, to form a nobility. Such vani- 
 ties do not become the disciples of the Divine Master." 
 
 Such sentiments explain better than any commentary why 
 the clergy have gained a place against which the efforts of 
 intolerant fanatics like the A. P. A. cannot prevail. This is 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 163 
 
 the name of an anti-Catholic league recently formed here, 
 which calls itself the American Protective Association. Those 
 who compose it hate the Church with that strange hatred so 
 common among us. They well understand that in the United 
 States they must attack it upon the ground of liberty itself. 
 ^4fl this method they resemble the radicals of our country. 
 Their programme consists in representing Catholicism as in- 
 compatible with the duties of the American citizen. They 
 cite an article in the naturalization laws, which demands 
 the full, dispassionate renunciation of all fidelity to any 
 foreign sovereign. They add : " Do not Catholics themselves 
 proclaim themselves dependants of the Pope, who lives in 
 Rome? " 
 
 Neither the dangerous quibble of this reasoning, which 
 affects to confound the spiritual and temporal realms, nor the 
 diffusion by thousands of false documents, where the vener- 
 ated names of the archbishops of Baltimore and St. Paul appear 
 at the end of secret instructions drawn up with most adroit 
 perfidy, nor the astute appeal to the ancient hostility to popery, 
 so lively in the hearts of the descendants of the Puritans, — 
 no stratagem, in fact, has been able to prevail against the 
 evident warmth of civic energy displayed by this truly living 
 episcopate. Neither of these prelates has missed a single 
 opportunity to serve the people, to show himself a man of 
 his time and of his country. When the association of the 
 Knights of Labor was threatened at Rome, Cardinal Gibbons 
 and Monsignor Ireland had no hesitation in going thither at 
 once to defend it. When the organizers of the Exposition 
 had the idea of opening at Chicago that Congress of Religions 
 which, in spite of some unfortunate charlatanism in matters 
 of detail, will remain one of the noble symbols of our epoch, 
 the same Cardinal Gibbons consented to open it with a 
 solemn prayer. 
 
 In all circumstances their hearts beat in unison with the 
 
164 OUTRE-MER 
 
 heart of the nation. There is no merit in this. A constitu- 
 tion which permits them to practise their religion untram- 
 melled, to form associations and possess property without 
 check, to institute good works without opposition, and to 
 secure the recruitment of their clergy without sophistry, — 
 what more could they ask? With what enthusiasm would the 
 Catholics of France accept the suppression of the Concordat 
 with the budget of worship, under such guarantees ! And then 
 the clergy in the United States are really, closely, American. 
 The characteristics which distinguish this robust race, and 
 which I noted in connection with society, as well as with 
 business, are found with the same intensity in these bishops 
 and priests. In the first place, they have realism, the 
 keen positive vision of the fact. Read the two volumes in 
 which the cardinal has summed up Catholic dogma for his 
 fellow-citizens, especially the pages referring to divorce. 
 They have the hardy vigor of hope, and an enormous breadth 
 of plan. Listen to the archbishop of St. Paul : — 
 / "We have an admirable opportunity. In a hundred years 
 America will have four hundred millions of inhabitants. Our 
 work is to make this whole country Catholic ! " 
 
 Over and above this they have the great national virtue, 
 — determination. 
 
 "Our device," one of them said, "is do and dare!"" 
 
 W^ are pretty far here from the priestly functionary whom 
 the State wraps in swaddling-clothes for his protection, far 
 from those restrictive laws which forbid the religious orders 
 to own property, the vestries to administer themselves, the 
 clergy to recruit themselves freely ! Years ago I was dining 
 at the same table with Gambetta. It was shortly after the 
 war, and the Opportunist chief was speaking of the programme 
 which he should apply if ever he arrived at power. 
 
 "And the separation of Church and State?" asked one of 
 the guests. 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 165 
 
 "We should beware of that," quickly answered he whom 
 his friends then called "the tiger." "It would be necessary 
 to give too much liberty to the Church, and she would become 
 too strong." 
 
 Here in America I have thoroughly understood the signifi- 
 cance of this remark, which has remained in my memory from 
 early manhood. In uttering it, Gambetta followed the true 
 Jacobean and Caesarean tradition. That this powerful states- 
 man, the only one which the Revolution of 1870 produced 
 among us, should have thought thus in perfectly good faith, 
 proves better than many pages how widely different may be 
 the translations of the one word, democracy, into facts, laws, 
 customs. A constitution is nothing, except through the men 
 who obey it. 
 
 Memory has its freaks. Going one winter's day from Wash- 
 ington to Baltimore, where I was to see Monsignor Gibbons, I 
 was taken possession of by the picture of the former dictator 
 of Tours, because of this remark, which had fallen from his 
 eloquent lips between two whiffs of a very black cigar, in the 
 dining-room of a little basement of the Rue Linnseus. I was 
 asking myself what France would have become if that long- 
 winded orator, intelligent and capable of adaptation and edu- 
 cation as he was, had made this journey to America and seen 
 for himself all that the Church may yet to-day represent of 
 democratic fecundity and broad popular instruction where it 
 is free. 
 
 Then a strangely different picture rose up before my mind, 
 that of the brilliant and unfortunate Edgar Poe, who wrote his 
 "Raven" half a century ago, in the capital of Maryland, 
 which I see yonder. Although this poet's genius is spoiled 
 for me now by his terrible abuse of the artificial, by the almost 
 mechanical grouping of his thoughts, his sensitive nature 
 still touches me, and, above all, his sorrowful fate. I think of 
 
166 OUTRE-MER 
 
 the ever-new mystery of the constitution of the soul. That of 
 the poet found its principle of despair and degradation in the 
 society where that of the priest whom I am shortly to meet 
 found its ample development. The spirituality of the one 
 was its torture, the spirituality of the other made its strength, 
 in the same circle of the same civilization. 
 
 Yet at the first white view of Baltimore, as I walk along 
 these streets, I feelthat it is indeed, of all American cities that 
 I have seen, the one best adapted to the dreams of poesy. St. 
 Charles Street, somewhat narrow and close between its rather 
 low, white houses, has the charm of intimacy. It is quiet 
 enough around the square where Washington's monument 
 stands, and I recall the elegant Place Stanislaus of Nancy. I 
 have the impression, so rare here, but which they assure me I 
 shall have still more strongly in Philadelphia, of a corner in 
 some city which has endured, which will endure. I'hese sur- 
 roundings, less temporary, less pronounced, and more delicate, 
 harmonize with my expectation, with the approach to the 
 American primate, as the priests in the University of Wash- 
 ington described him to me. A few steps farther along the 
 quiet sidewalk of this street, which has no electric tramways 
 or cable cars, and I find myself before a palace of the same 
 simple style as the neighboring houses. The cupola of a 
 church dominates it. It is the cardinal's residence. 
 
 His Eminence received me in a simply furnished drawing- 
 room, adorned with the portraits of celebrated priests. Those 
 of Leo XIII. and Cardinal Manning are engravings, standing 
 on easels. Physically, Monsignor Gibbons is of the race of 
 ascetics, of whom it seems as if mortifications had left just 
 enough flesh to support the travail of the soul. 
 
 Though he is past sixty, he appears to be hardly fifty, so 
 erect is his slight and supple figure. I had caught a glimpse 
 of him the other day in Washington, in one of the galleries 
 of the House, wearing no token of his dignity except a purple 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 167 
 
 skull-cap on the back of his head. To-day, in his own house, 
 he wore a black cassock bordered with red, a cassock irre- 
 proachable in appearance, though not entirely new. Beneath 
 it his feet could be seen, covered with thick-soled, elastic 
 boots. Simplicity is everywhere stamped upon the surround- 
 ings of this man of prayer and action, — upon him and around 
 him. 
 
 The hands which project from the sleeves, with no show of 
 linen, are thin and delicate. The face, at once very thought- 
 ful and very calm, is long and deeply lined, with a somewhat 
 large nose, and a projecting upper lip, rigid, like that of the 
 portrait of Erasmus in the Louvre. It is the mouth of the 
 writer and the diplomatist rather than of the orator. Expres- 
 sion is to be looked for elsewhere, in the deep lines of the 
 cheek and in the eyes, of so clear a blue in an almost ashen 
 face. The eyes look out with an admirable expression, very 
 gentle and very firm, very clear and very straightforward, a 
 look of certitude. Modern psychologists have a somewhat 
 peculiar, but very accurate word, to designate those characters 
 in whom all powers seem to be subordinated to a central 
 energy, a scientific or artistic, political or religious faith, ac- 
 cepted unhesitatingly and without revision. They call them 
 the Unified. Seneca has already said, anticipating by his 
 discoveries as moralist our modern theories of mind : — 
 
 "If you have met a man who is one, you have seen a great 
 thing." 
 
 An inward disposition is not enough to secure so even a 
 balance. For that is required a very rare harmony between 
 circumstances and instinct, between surroundings and inward 
 impulse. This juxtaposition occurs in the cardinal to a 
 singularly exceptional degree. Speaking to me of his life, he 
 told me with the affecting gratitude of a believer who recog- 
 nizes the acts of Providence behind the fashion of the passing 
 world : — 
 
168 OUTRE-MER 
 
 " I have had a happiness very seldom known. I was born 
 here, baptized here. I made my first communion here, and I 
 was ordained priest in the same cathedral of which I am now 
 the archbishop." 
 
 And he went on to relate his first visit to Rome, where he 
 had a seat in the Council of the Vatican, the youngest of the 
 thousand prelates gathered in that assembly. He was bishop 
 of South Carolina, and had been barely five years a priest. 
 At that time there were only forty-five bishops in the United 
 States. 
 
 "I remember," he went on, "coming here to the first Bal- 
 timore assembly, when I was chancellor to the archbishop. 
 There are more than twice that number now. It is with this 
 as with conversions. They counted then. This year I have 
 had seven hundred in this diocese alone, which is very small. 
 The human soul needs food," he added in English, "and it 
 finds a perfect nourishment only in Catholicism." 
 
 He speaks very pure French, hesitating a little for words. 
 Listening to him you feel that his utterance would never be 
 brilliant, but his speech is so free from declamation, his mind 
 is so evidently at the service of a conscience in love with 
 truth, each phrase reveals so steady an effort to make the 
 expression tally with the thought, without extravagance or 
 feebleness, that an irresistible authority emanates from his 
 words, the same that was presaged by his countenance, gentle, 
 firm, and true. Quite naturally when he entered upon the 
 field of social problems, Monsignor Gibbons again changed 
 from French to English. It would seem as if we ought to be 
 able to use a foreign language with the greater facility the 
 more familiar are the ideas which we wish to express. Noth- 
 ing of the kind. The more we have thought of a subject, the 
 more precise our ideas, the more we require for their expres- 
 sion the language in which we formulated them. Perhaps we 
 must seek here for one of the reasons why so many superior 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 169 
 
 men experience singular difficulty in using for their own 
 thoughts languages which they understand and read perfectly. 
 
 " I never had any influence over the creation or the organi- 
 zation of the Knights of Labor," the cardinal replied to one 
 of my questions. "What I said on the subject at the time of 
 my visit to Rome was that the Church has no motive for con- 
 demning on the spot and on principle all associations of 
 laboring men. I have always thought, and I still think, that 
 workingmen have the right to combine to protect themselves 
 against the tyranny of their employers. I know the dangers 
 of these associations; to begin with, strikes; once united 
 they are so soon tempted to enter upon this way, which is not 
 good, and in which they have always been crushed; and then 
 intolerance and the persecution of their comrades who refuse 
 to join them. Notwithstanding these dangers, I believe that 
 the Church would risk the loss of too many souls by forcing 
 millions of these men to choose between their faith and a 
 society of which the principles are not in themselves to be 
 condemned." 
 
 "A revolution in the United States? " he said, in answer to 
 another question. " No, I do not think it possible. The 
 Americans have been often reproached for being first and 
 above all things practical. Before they dispossess a mil- 
 lionaire — a billionaire, if you will — of a single dollar, they 
 will realize that they are overturning the cornerstone of the 
 whole edifice, and they will pause. Our workingmen are 
 very intelligent, their ideas are daring but very just, and they 
 are quick to see the logic of things. They already under- 
 stand, in spite of the sophisms of agitators, that to attack 
 property in one form is to attack it in all forms. When the 
 Chicago anarchists were condemned, public sentiment, as 
 manifested almost immediately after by a vote, was in favor 
 of the judge who pronounced the sentence, and against the 
 governor of Illinois, who had manifested sympathy with the 
 
170 OUTRE-MER 
 
 anarchists. We have no such revolutionary ferments among 
 us as are upheaving Europe. Our workingman, when he will 
 work, gains amply the means of livelihood, — two, three 
 dollars a day. They will come in time everywhere to the 
 eight-hour day. More than this, they are not irreligious. 
 There is not an instance of a public man who is an avowed 
 atheist." 
 
 Upon my observing that I had, however, met at Harvard 
 University a large number of minds imbued with agnosticism, — 
 
 "It is true," replied' the cardinal, "that a movement of 
 this kind maybe recognized in certain very cultivated circles. 
 But it is confined to those circles, and Christianity is still 
 very vital, both in private and public life. Congress is opened 
 with prayer. The President never addresses the people with- 
 out pronouncing the name of God. The Sabbath rest is faith- 
 fully observed." 
 
 There was a passionate firmness in the archbishop's voice, 
 and a warmer light in his eyes when he spoke of religious 
 things; and he also, like Monsignor Keane, extolled the bless- 
 ings of liberty. 
 
 "Our great strength," he resumed, " is in having no alliance 
 with the State, and in the respect of the State for our indepen- 
 dence. We can the more efficaciously take part in public 
 affairs. under these conditions, and work for the good of all. 
 The State willingly aids us in matters of public order. For 
 example, in Baltimore, on the occasion of the last council, 
 the postoffice department opened a special office for the use 
 of the bishops. But, beyond minor details of this kind, the 
 State is not concerned with us. It is the public which takes 
 us into consideration. They are continually coming to con- 
 sult us. Thus, not long ago, in the matter of the Louisiana 
 lottery, I was requested to write a letter for the public press. 
 I wrote it, and I think it helped toward the suppression of 
 that scandal. The people love us, because we are their friends." 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 171 
 
 I interposed with tlie question if this was also the case with 
 the rich, and if, on the other hand, he did not foresee great 
 difficulties arising from the accumulation of such immense 
 fortunes in so small a number of hands. 
 
 " Yes, " he went on, " that is a grave problem. We must hope 
 that in time a better way of dividing the common wealth 
 will be found. This is why I said just now that my sympa- 
 thies are with the associations by which the workingmen 
 protect themselves. And I am not afraid of them, notwith- 
 standing formidable excesses, because our workingman — I 
 cannot say it too emphatically — is profoundly, fundamentally 
 sensible. In the first place, he has himself the chance of be- 
 coming the millionaire he so much envies. That often occurs. 
 Besides, even apart from this hope, he is instinctively liberal 
 and just. When the income tax was proposed, I had occasion 
 to talk it over with many of the laboring class. I found them 
 all opposed to the measure, and all for the same reason. They 
 did not approve of a measure which tended to espionage and 
 falsehood. They deemed it inquisitorial and immoral. Yes, 
 I have confidence in the people. I have confidence in their 
 love of truth. I had a very evident proof of it a few years 
 ago, when I published a little book showing Catholicism as 
 it is, entitled Tlie Faith of Our Fatheis. Two hundred 
 and fifty thousand copies were sold, and Catholics were not 
 tj>e larger number of the purchasers." 
 
 The prelate's serious countenance lighted up at the mem- 
 ory. I never felt more acutely than when I saw that proud 
 smile the broad separation between the petty self-gratulation 
 of the professional author, counting his thousands for vanity 
 or for lucre, and the manly joy of the champion of the faith, 
 who measures by the success of a book the service he has ren- 
 dered to the truth. Men of (iod give such teachings without 
 even knov^ing it. 
 
 With this beneficent impression closed an interview of which 
 
172 OUTRE-MER 
 
 I think I have usefully preserved the most important features. 
 As I crossed the threshold of the See House, I bore with me 
 the feeling that I had been talking with an excellent priest. 
 "That is really something," as an old priest said to me in the 
 Holy Land, showing me the view of Nazareth. After saying 
 to me, " I look every day upon this scene and I say to myself, 
 This is where Our Lord went about when he was a little child; 
 yes," he added, with emphasis, "that is really something." 
 
 Who was it wrote this profound sentence, in which all the 
 sublimity of the Christian priesthood is summed up: "God 
 gave the priest to the world. The priest's charge is to give 
 the world to God." 
 
 A few weeks later I was in the " hall " of one of the great 
 hotels in Fifth Avenue, New York. In the office clerks were 
 sorting mails, talking into telephones, stamping bills. Busi- 
 ness men were reading their letters, cigar in mouth. Others 
 were crowded around a little table, where a keen-eyed young 
 woman, pale from sedentary work, was playing with nimble 
 fingers upon the keys of a type-writing machine. They were 
 waiting their turns to dictate a letter. Others were awaiting 
 the descent of one of the three elevators that ply shuttle-wise 
 along the fourteen stories of the hotel. Others were passing 
 through a door beyond which could be seen reflected in a mir- 
 ror the bar counter, surrounded by persons seeking refreshment. 
 
 In the midst of the "hall" a man was conversing — a sort 
 of giant with powerful frame, one of those men of broad 
 shoulders, thick waists, large hands and feet, in whom nature 
 appears to have put the most vitality, and used, so to speak, 
 the most material. But the straight lapels of his frock-coat 
 showed that he belonged to the Church, and his violet collar 
 that he occupied a high place there. It was Monsignor 
 Ireland, Archbishop of St. Paul, whom I had vainly sought 
 the previous autumn in his diocese of Minnesota. 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 173 
 
 I should have recognized him if his name had not been 
 spoken, so much is he the visible embodiment of his elo- 
 quence. His large, long face, with its deeply marked feat- 
 ures, is lighted up with bluish eyes, almost too small for these 
 strong brown features. The grizzling of his hair and eyebrows, 
 naturally very black, betray the prelate's fifty-seven years 
 passed. The square chin gives evidence of a strong will, the 
 high nose of sagacity, the forehead has that slightly retreating 
 line which marked Mirabeau and Gambetta, two other great 
 orators. The mouth is admirably flexible and expressive. It 
 is an eloquent and persuasive mouth, with large lips that speak 
 of kindliness, though when at rest they are somewhat stern. 
 Notwithstanding his valor, the archbishop has passed through 
 too many struggles not to have sometimes longed to utter the 
 Nunc dimiitis of the wearied crusader. At that moment he 
 was all attention and good nature. I was to learn from him a 
 few minutes later that the personage with whom he was thus 
 publicly conversing was a reporter. 
 
 "I never refuse to see a journalist," he said, after explain- 
 ing this little American custom. "Only I warn them that if 
 they report me incorrectly, I will never see them again." 
 
 The archbishop's voice is guttural, almost harsh, a charac- 
 teristic common to many celebrated orators. One of his 
 admirers had told me that the opening words of his speeches 
 are sometimes painful to the ear, but soon it becomes accus- 
 tomed to his tones. Then he himself warms up, and the gift 
 of expressioli is so mighty in this man who was born to be a 
 public leader, if not an apostle, that you end by losing even 
 the harshness of his voice. What never-to-be-forgotten hours 
 I spent that morning, and that afternoon, and still another 
 day hearing him talk of America with profound patriotism, 
 of France with touching sympathy, of Europe with lucid and 
 high impartiality! Listening, I wondered at the flexibility 
 of his mind, in which there is all the excitability of the Celt, 
 
174 OUTRE-MER 
 
 — Monsignor Ireland, as his name indicates, is of an Irish 
 family, — all the logic of the Latin, — he was educated in the 
 little seminary of Maximieux in the diocese of Belley, France, 
 
 — and all the realism of the American laboring people. His 
 father was a carpenter, who came from Ireland to Minnesota 
 long before the city of which his son is archbishop had come 
 into existence. 
 
 I listened while this versatile and vivacious discourse passed 
 from the highest theological subjects to the humblest details of 
 practical activity. The archbishop told me how, at one time, 
 he had been obliged to oversee the seed-sowing of the immi- 
 grants of his diocese, who were too many and too ignorant 
 to make the best use of the homesteads they had taken 
 up. Then he replied to my intricate psychological questions 
 as to the nature of American piety, in which mysticism is so 
 promptly translated in terms of activity. He described his 
 first visit to Rome, and the sort of terrified surprise with 
 which the old cardinals looked upon him. Then returning to 
 the social problem upon which I had been questioning him, 
 as I had questioned the cardinal, he went on: — 
 
 "Our workingmen? No, I dread nothing from them. In 
 the first place, they are well disposed, and those of them who 
 are not well disposed have good sense. There is in America, 
 from top to bottom of the ladder, a much more conservative 
 spirit than Europe imagines. The dominating sentiment 
 everywhere, in the poor day-laborer as well as in the million- 
 aire, is respect for law. The laborer is not revolutionary. 
 He knows too well the value of what he has, to dream of a 
 social order which shall be absolutely different. But while he 
 accepts the existing order, he desires to protect himself from 
 it, — is he so wrong? And he proceeds by means of associa- 
 tions, — is he so wrong in that? That is in the race. Rich 
 men amuse themselves in clubs. Why should not working- 
 men organize in clubs too, and especially in societies for 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 175 
 
 their own protection? A great step was taken when the 
 several trade associations formed themselves into a larger 
 association. And again, why should they not? In this way 
 was formed the Knights of Labor. In my opinion, this is 
 well. Capitalists are beginning to understand that they have 
 to reckon with these great collective forces. What is the 
 result? They confer, and conference is the surest means of 
 coming to an understanding. For instance, this year the 
 directors of a Western railway, the president of which I know, 
 felt obliged to lower wages ; the profits of the company had 
 fallen too low. This is what took place. First of all the 
 president entered into conference with the representatives of 
 the engineers. These conferences lasted four days. The 
 men asked the reason of the reduction. They examined the 
 balance-sheet of the company. They learned what were the 
 figures necessary to the maintenance of their present wages. 
 These conferences with the president ended, they conferred 
 with their comrades. Finally, this body of workmen having 
 accepted the reduction, it was the brakemen's turn. You 
 would need to have been present at one of these interviews 
 to be able to appreciate the deep sense of equality that per- 
 vades this country. But, you see, the American business man 
 is too little removed from the time when he was himself a 
 workingman not to know, when he talks with his workmen, 
 with whom he is talking and what he ought to say to them. 
 These people do not deem themselves of two different races, 
 and that is much." 
 
 The archbishop was silent. He was about to touch frankly 
 upon a painful subject. In every word I had felt the thrill 
 of the plebeian apostle. By his origin the neighbor of the 
 humble, like the business men of whom he had been speak- 
 ing, he rejoices in the progress of the laboring people, and 
 suffers in their mistakes. He went on: — 
 
 "Nevertheless, our workingmen are touched by two grave 
 
176 OUTRE-MER 
 
 faults. The first and greatest is intemperance — unhappily 
 that of alcoholic liquors. For they drink practically no 
 wine. We have carried on and we are carrying on an un- 
 wearied campaign against this vice. We have not yet con- 
 quered. The second fault is extravagance. Our working- 
 men go too fast. They spend their money as fast as they 
 earn it. They want their daughters to be ladies. Go into 
 their houses: you will find carpets, pianos. It is not that 
 they care for luxuries; it is the profound feeling of equality 
 that urges them to make a show. It seems to them natural, 
 almost necessary, that luxuries should be within the reach of 
 everybody. Then when hard times come they are poor and 
 they suffer. Insurance is correcting this a little. Side by 
 side with the extravagant are the prudent. Many come at 
 last to buy a bit of ground on which to build a house, and 
 then they immediately buy the next lot for speculation. This 
 is why envy of capital does not exist among us. More than 
 this, our working people are chaste and they are religious. I 
 am told that in Europe concubinage is the scourge of the 
 poorer classes. There is nothing of the sort among our 
 people. I can sum up their virtues in one word : the hope of 
 the Church is in the working people. All who are Catholics 
 practise their religion. You will see them all communicate 
 at Easter almost without exception. This fervor of the 
 people is what gives us the magnificent opportunity of which 
 I am always speaking. 
 
 "Yes," he went on, "this immense country is new, free 
 from prejudices, and it increasingly feels the need of that 
 order in unity which is the distinctive mark of the Catholic 
 Church. The great problem in order that this unity shall be 
 manifested, that there shall truly be an American Catholic 
 Church, is that of language; there must first be one speech. 
 But many of our members are immigrants, Germans, Poles, 
 French Canadians. They come here speaking their own Ian- 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 177 
 
 guage, led by priests who speak no other hinguage. Here is 
 a real peril. If we insist upon the English language in our 
 dioceses, these priests will be left without a flock and these 
 people without priests. And yet it is necessary to compel 
 both people and priest to learn English, in order that our 
 Church be not dissipated in a series of local bodies and also 
 that we leave no ground for the accusation that we remain as 
 foreigners in the country. But what then ! it is an effort to 
 require it of the first generation, but the second will be com- 
 posed of true American Catholics. Here again we have had a 
 struggle. The Germans have petitioned Rome that the bishops 
 here should be of different nationalities in proportion to the 
 nationality of the immigrants. Now of ten million Catholics, 
 more than three millions are Germans. A third of the bishops 
 would then be Germans. That would be the end of the unity 
 of our Church. Happily, the petitioners mingled politics 
 with their request. That touched the patriotism of American 
 citizens. They bestirred themselves and we won. Ah, our 
 future is vast, very vast, if only we will be profoundly, reso- 
 lutely American and democratic. We have need of three 
 things: morality, and we have it; adherents, and immigration 
 is unceasingly bringing them; knowledge, and our universities 
 and seminaries are going to give it to us more and more. But 
 mark well, it is not the culture of yesterday that we need, but 
 that of to-day, of to-morrow, of the twentieth century." 
 
 And while the archbishop appeared already to see with his 
 clear eyes the triumphant morrow for which he has given his 
 life hour by hour, I called to mind his utterance in the cathe- 
 dral of Baltimore, of which all our conversation had been only 
 a commentary : — 
 
 "Christ made the social question the very basis of his teach- 
 ing. For this is the proof he gave of his divinity: The blind 
 see, the lame walk, the lepers are healed, to the poor the gospel 
 is preached f " 
 
 N 
 
178 OUTRE-MER 
 
 One of my French friends, to whom I read the report of 
 these two conversations, shook his head. For ten years his 
 duties have kept him in New York. He knows the United 
 States well, and he believes the country to be threatened, if 
 not with a catastrophe, at least with tremendous disturbances. 
 I should add that he is naturally a pessimist, very hostile to 
 democracy, and that he lives in a state of permanent rage 
 against the positivism and the impenetrability of American 
 society. 
 
 "I should like to have them here, your two archbishops," he 
 said, after a few petulant and mocking exclamations; " I should 
 just like to lay a few of these documents before their eyes." 
 And running through one of the cases on his desk he brought 
 out several files of papers. 
 
 "These are not ideas and phrases, here; these are facts and 
 figures which I have collected for a great work, which I shall 
 perhaps never write, and as they are all taken from reports 
 published by the Labor Bureau in the last ten years they are 
 incontestable. It is now January, 1894. Well, at the end of 
 last December, not twenty days ago, the official investigation 
 stated that, in the States of New York and New Jersey, the 
 number of men out of work amounted to two hundred and 
 twenty-three thousand two hundred and fifty. In Pennsylvania, 
 the number reached a hundred and fifty-one thousand five hun- 
 dred. Calculate, and you will not be beyond the truth, that 
 there are thus in this country more than eight hundred thousand 
 unemployed, as they call them. Add the two million women 
 and children who compose their families, and you will reach 
 the conclusion that at the present moment, in this terrible 
 winter, the Great Republic has upon its soil three millions of 
 human beings who are literally dying of hunger ! And they 
 would have me not believe in an approaching revolution, when 
 such armies of desperate folk are here ready to follow the first 
 agitator who knows enough to arouse them ! 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 179 
 
 "Add to this that all these starving people are enrolled in 
 some association, and that beside them swarms another army, 
 almost as wretched, — the workmen whose pay is little by little 
 reduced, and whose work is made almost intolerable by the 
 universal business depression. Here are more figures from the 
 same official list. Vou will find them, and others as con- 
 clusive, in the book which Madame Aveling — Karl Marx's 
 daughter, I think — and her husband have published, under 
 the title The Working- Class Movement in America. In Fall 
 River, for example, in the large cotton manufactories, the 
 average wage of the workingman is nine dollars a week; that 
 gives him a dollar and a half a day, while in New Jersey the 
 average comes down to a dollar and a quarter, and in the rest 
 of the United States to a dollar. At a first glance, these figures 
 seem rather high, and it is by bringing them forward that cer- 
 tain economists boast of the superior condition of the laboring 
 classes in America. But to appreciate what these six or seven 
 francs a day are really worth, you must make a comparative 
 table of the cost of living in different countries. 
 
 " The average rent of the American laborer is sixty-six dol- 
 lars a year, while the average rent of the Swiss laborer is twenty- 
 five dollars, and that of the German laborer twenty-two dollars. 
 The American laborer spends for fuel nearly thirty dollars, 
 while the Swiss laborer spends twenty, and the German ten. 
 Everything is in proportion. The wages which appear suffi- 
 cient from a European point of view do not represent the 
 support of a family. The labor of women and children results 
 from this state of things, and here the conditions are still more 
 severe. See, here are other figures. In Philadelphia, the 
 making of women's chemises brings sixty cents a dozen, nurse's 
 aprons thirty-five cents. A woman can make nearly a dozen 
 chemises or two dozen aprons in a day, working from half-past 
 five in the morning till seven in the evening. Better educated 
 women, employed in what they call "clerical work," in stores 
 
U80 OUTRE-MER 
 
 and offices, earn from five to six dollars a week. Out of this 
 they must pay their board and washing, and dress well in order 
 not to lose their positions. 
 
 "As to the children, these are the heart-rending statistics. 
 In Connecticut, of seventy thousand laborers, five thousand are 
 under fifteen. Of every hundred employed in cigar-making 
 in New York City, twenty-five are children. Now the work 
 in cigar factories is ten hours a day. In the cotton-mills it is 
 eleven. In Detroit, the small boys in the factories work nine 
 hours sixteen minutes, the little girls nine hours and ten min- 
 utes. Observe that these figures are taken in the States where 
 labor legislation is a prominent feature. And now," he added, 
 folding up his papers, " if you want these statistics to become 
 alive for you, you have only three very simple experiments to 
 make, none of which will keep you from your hotel more than 
 a few hours. Ask a newspaper editor to detail one of his 
 reporters to accompany you into the lower quarters of the 
 city: the first visit during the day, the second at night, the 
 third to the penitentiaries on the Islands. You will see 
 the refuse of this civilization, the pomps of which have so 
 dazzled you, and perhaps you will conclude that I am not 
 wrong in protesting against the optimism of two great bishops, 
 whose ideas about the working classes in the United States you 
 have sought. Like many good men, the dreams evoked by 
 their good wishes hide from them the hideousness of the 
 real." 
 
 I have followed my compatriot's counsels, although the 
 documents which he cited made no very profound impression 
 upon me. I have studied social problems too much to attach 
 great importance to official investigations. They are the same 
 as revolutionary inquisitions, and that is saying all. Both 
 proceed by extreme figures and, when all is said, the proof that 
 existing social conditions are endurable is that men continue 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 181 , 
 
 to endure. They permit frightful wretchedness, which springs 
 from causes too complex for the remedy for this refuse of 
 civilization, as my friend expresses it, ever to be formulated 
 with exactness. Whenever men have tried to apply radical 
 measures of reform to this infinitely complex organism, they 
 have added the injustice of disorder and its misfortunes to the 
 injustice of destiny. None the less, the revolutionaries are 
 right in dwelling with emphasis upon the too odious facts and 
 the brutal oppressions which constitute the social sin, the sin 
 of all of us. They prevent wretched egotism from sleeping, 
 either by terrifying us in the midst of our security, or by 
 awakening our humanity, and they urge us to remedies of 
 detail, the only ones which have even a little mended the lot 
 of the victims of a too severe competition. 
 
 I do not therefore regret the three excursions into the lower 
 strata of New York, undertaken in consequence of this conver- 
 sation. Although such experiences are very superficial, I think I 
 have gained from them a more accurate view of the conditions 
 among which the future of this unparalleled country is being 
 worked out. The hours spent in these three visits were short, 
 and the details which I was able to grasp were limited. l"he 
 reader will judge by the pages in my journal, to which I con- 
 signed each of these "experiences " on the spot, whether I am 
 mistaken in attaching some importance to their significance. 
 
 January ij. — Toward noon on a cruelly cold winter's day, 
 
 Mr. K and I boarded one of the green cars on Broadway, 
 
 which are still drawn by horses. In twenty minutes we had 
 quitted the New York which J know for a New York which I 
 do not know. Blocks succeed blocks, built after a still more 
 incoherent manner in this part of the town than in that in 
 which I disembarked five months ago. We changed cars at 
 the corner of First Avenue, and after twenty minutes got out 
 again^ and went on foot down a long street of dilapidated 
 
182 OUTRE-MER 
 
 houses. The cellar of one of them has a steep stairway, which 
 leads us to a sort of little "office," divided into two rooms 
 by an unpainted, unpapered board partition. One serves as 
 waiting-room, the other as office. 
 
 This is the central office of one of the workingmen's asso- 
 ciations, which abound in the United States. 'I'his one has 
 recently been founded by a young man, who happens at the 
 moment to be within. I shall call him Bazarow, after 
 the nihilist student in Turgenieff' s novel. Fathers and Sons ; 
 it will not be in contradiction with the remarks which we ex- 
 changed during this strange afternoon. He is a Russian Jew, 
 from the part that borders on Poland, who came to New York 
 six years ago, — an agitator by profession. He is rather good- 
 looking, with long, very light hair, v,'hich curls around a very 
 pale face. His prominent eyes are sea-green, the whites 
 dashed with minute threads of blood. His thick enunciation 
 has less of a foreign accent in French than in English. He 
 has but recently acquired the latter language, but he speaks it 
 with the extreme facility which belongs to his double origin, 
 — Slav and Semite. 
 
 This disturbing personage asked us to be seated, after hav- 
 ing looked at us with that searching glance which takes for 
 granted a possible spy, — the glance of all militant socialists. 
 However, he is all right with the law, and the certificate which 
 authorized him to found his association is displayed upon the 
 wall above the table, beside a small notice printed in Hebrew, 
 and marked with a death's head and crossbones. Apparently 
 he saw nothing in us to justify suspicion, for he continued to 
 sort the voluminous morning mail; but this time with the 
 ostentatious air of the over-busy official. He would read 
 names, dictate appointments, express surprise at not recogniz- 
 ing this or that one, consult his secretary. 
 
 The latter, a man of forty, sordid of dress and sorry of mien, 
 was occupied with counting out fifty cents to a workingman, 
 
. THE LOWER ORDERS 183 
 
 who meekly, with a sort of dogged passivity, held out a red 
 pass-book. The secretary exchanged a few words in German 
 with his gloomy client, then spoke in Russian to his chief. 
 I became aware of a pile of pamphlets on the table, destined 
 for the propaganda. They were the English translation of 
 a work by the Italian Mazzini, — The Duties of Man. I 
 opened it haphazard, and found a chapter upon God. This is 
 the point from which the revolutionary party sets out ! To 
 arrive where, their newspapers tell too clearly ! What they do 
 not tell clearly enough, that which such a place as this makes 
 perceptible and, as it were, concrete, is the international mix- 
 ture, the astounding fusion of races, which this company repre- 
 sented. 1 found here a corner of Cosmopolis, one of the 
 quarters, a suburb, rather, of this city of cities, whose founders 
 were exquisites like the Prince de Ligne, Lord Byron, Madame 
 de Stael, Beyle, and Heinrich Heine. These great artists and 
 noblemen sought in expatriation and travel that which would 
 make them the better enjoy the composite charm of the vast 
 modern civilization. It is one more proof that our habits and 
 our surroundings have precisely the meaning and value of our 
 souls. 
 
 Bazarow finished with his mail, and set out with us for the 
 police station. We were there to take a detective to accom- 
 pany us on our visit to the lower districts of the city. The 
 agitator himself expressed the desire that we should be thus 
 protected, and himself with us, against dangers which proved 
 to be entirely imaginary. But the slight detail showed better 
 than all the discourses how essentially this party of social 
 destruction, which to us conservatives appears to be so united 
 in its hatred of the established order, is at bottom divided 
 against itself. Our guide was afraid of being maltreated by 
 workingmen of another school of opinion. 
 
 His gait alone was enough, in this city of haste, to betray 
 
184 OUTRE-MER 
 
 the foreigner. It was the gait of the lounger, who walks with- 
 out aim, without haste, without directness. He wore a sack 
 overcoat, longer in front than behind, because of the books 
 with which his pockets were crammed. With his soft, shape- 
 less hat, his flannel shirt, his shiny trousers, he reminded 
 me of the Bohemians of literature who haunt the caf^s of 
 the Latin Quarter and Montmartre, with their indifference to 
 the external world, their aggressive thoughtlessness, and their 
 infatuation for ideas, and especially for words. 
 
 During the half hour which we spent going first to the police 
 station and then, the chief of the said station being absent, to 
 a bar for luncheon, Bazarow talked, talked, talked. His gar- 
 rulity was not without eloquence. Like all revolutionaries 
 whom I have known, he kept to generalities. He was lavish 
 of unverifiable, and therefore indisputable, theories of a vast 
 regeneration, continually interrupting himself with a "that is 
 my belief," enough to arouse an assembly of idiots to 
 frenzy. He announced certain precise opinions upon the 
 French peasant, whom he compared with the Russian peasant. 
 That he understood them both shows the extent and the 
 penetration of this revolutionary work, in its prepara- 
 tions for attacking the farm laborer, after corrupting the 
 factory hand. The name of Jerusalem having come up in 
 the conversation relative to the farm colonies which some 
 benevolent Israelites are undertaking in Palestine, Bazarow 
 exclaimed : — 
 
 " Jerusalem ! My father wanted to send me there ! But my 
 Jerusalem is here. My father," he continued with a sneer, 
 "would have made me a saint. I have become an infidel." 
 His large green eyes shot forth the strange glance peculiar to 
 soiTxe of his race, in which there is an infinitude of mystification 
 and of lost illusions. When you have seen the Jews weeping 
 at the foot of the Temple wall in Jerusalem, on Fridays, you 
 can understand what must be the scepticism of those who have 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 185 
 
 hoped for ages, whenever they cease to believe in the promised 
 Messiah, who, for them, has never come. 
 
 And, as if this man had heard my thought, he went 
 on: — 
 
 "There is a deep gulf between us and the men who believe 
 in the Bible, I know. There are those who pretend to be 
 socialists, especially Catholics, Archbishop Ireland, for ex- 
 ample. But Catholics, Jews, or Protestants, priests, rabbis, or 
 pastors, they all tell the people that they must accept the will 
 of God, that they must be resigned, satisfied. Well ! socialism 
 consists in teaching precisely the opposite, in demonstrating 
 that he ought to be in revolt, dissatisfied.'" 
 
 He uttered the profound remark at the very moment when 
 we were crossing the threshold of the restaurant, into which 
 
 Mr. K invited him, saying, with the incisive irony of a 
 
 true American,— 
 
 "We democrats like aristocratic public houses, don't we?" 
 
 We entered a dining-room, pretty sumptuously decorated, 
 indeed, with mirrors and colored glass. Business men, almost 
 all Jews, were taking a hasty lunch. One of them recognized 
 Bazarow and shook hands with him. It was one of the manu- 
 facturers for whom he had worked on his first arrival in New 
 York, and whom he had well-nigh ruined by a strike. 
 
 "He fought me quite openly," said the agitator, "and I 
 fought him openly. That is not a reason for not recognizing 
 one another." 
 
 He smiled, remembering the strike, episodes of which he 
 related to us while eating some fried oysters. He saw in it a 
 glorious campaign in favor of ideas which I hope he at least 
 believed to be true. He forgot the men it made more hungry. 
 For that matter, those are things that revolutionaries never 
 think of. When you investigate their mental make-up, you 
 always find that these are minds given to the abstract, for 
 whom human woe is simply the starting-point for a course of 
 
186 outri:-mi:r 
 
 reasoning. The theorists who talk of it the most are those 
 who have felt it the least ! 
 
 We returned to the police station. Our companion remained 
 at the door, and wisely, for the celebrated Mr. Byrnes, whom 
 we found at length, spoke of him in terms which would have 
 made the visit very painful if he had been present. This 
 superintendent of public safety, the best that New York has 
 ever had, is a sort of stern-faced giant, with firmly closed 
 mouth, and penetrating, almost compelling, eye. It is a 
 strange impression thus to exchange in a few seconds the 
 company of a declared revolutionary for that of a professional 
 officer of justice. You feel the necessity that every civilized 
 person shall take part in the implacable and incessant duel 
 of order against disorder, and, at the same time, the legiti- 
 macy, in a certain sense, of both sorts of people. I was 
 destined to feel this impression still more strongly. To escort 
 us in our tour through the land of poverty, Mr. Byrnes detailed 
 one of his best officers, whose real name I have promised to 
 conceal. I shall call him Clark, as I have called the Slavonian 
 nihilist Bazarow. 
 
 A man entered, short and thick-set, with the face of a mus- 
 tachioed Molossian, and a tenacious jaw beneath a square-cut 
 nose. His little black eyes seemed to be burning away back 
 near his brain, like those of beasts of prey. He was an 
 animal all muscle and all pursuit, his slightest movements 
 betraying the agility of a savage. Merely in looking at his walk 
 I understood why American romance-writers have a fancy for 
 taking detectives as the heroes of their sensational novels. In 
 a creature of this race, physical and moral energy are in a state 
 of perpetual ebullition, as among soldiers on a campaign. 
 Audacity, presence of mind, capacity that would suffice to 
 itself in all dangers, address, and art, showed themselves pres- 
 ent in this athletic policeman, and, with it all, the joviality of 
 a soldier. 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 187 
 
 We took leave of Mr. Byrnes, whose sharp eye softened as he 
 
 looked on "his man," and were soon downstairs. Mr. K 
 
 and I introduced Messrs. Clark and Bazarow to one another. 
 All the antagonism of two social species was suddenly revealed, 
 in the accidental meeting of these two men. The prominent 
 eyes of the revolutionist became insolent, with a sort of ironical 
 and terrified insolence, while the policeman's little short nose 
 wrinkled and shrivelled, like the muzzle of a bulldog about to 
 spring. The "Very glad to see you, sir," with which he 
 greeted the other, sounded like a growl. Then walking side 
 by side, their backs alone continued to call up the thought 
 of two worlds in conflict, the one with his trooper's figure, his 
 military overcoat, brushed and buttoned, his hat shining like 
 metal, his feet encased in strong boots, walking with a singular 
 firmness, while the other, by instinct and bravado, emphasized 
 his carelessness of attire, with his uncertain steps, his irresolute 
 hands stuck in the pockets of his torn and soiled trousers, his 
 indifferent, mocking, and indomitable air under his ragged 
 headkerchief. And yet they began to converse, with the good- 
 natured familiarity which seems to float in the air of this vast 
 democracy, and to be breathed in at every pore. 
 
 " It is astonishing that we should not have met before, Mr. 
 Clark," said Bazarow. 
 
 "And that I have not arrested you, my boy," replied the 
 other. 
 
 " Oh ! " said the Pole, " we know that Mr. Byrnes and his 
 men are not fond of men who are engaged in organizing labor, 
 and those men are not fond of Mr. Byrnes and his men, either." 
 
 There was pride and defiance in the foreigner's thick utter- 
 ance. We foreboded a dispute, and I asked Mr. Clark about 
 his life and profession. 
 
 "Well," he said, after a few words about his age and his 
 family, " my profession has the merit of always holding out 
 the hope of some little excitement. Last week, for example, I 
 
188 OUTRE-MER 
 
 had the muzzle of a desperate burglar's revolver in my mouth. 
 If he had fired, I should not have had the pleasure of making 
 your acquaintance and that of this gentleman." 
 
 He looked again toward Bazarow. I felt his muscles swell 
 under his overcoat. They tingled at feeling their prey so 
 near and not being able to fall upon it. His little eyes shot 
 forth a wicked gleam. For the moment the excitement of his 
 profession consisted in protecting the enemy upon whom he 
 could have pounced with such good will. Mastering himself, 
 he laughed and offered him a cigar. 
 
 While conversing thus, we had reached the heart of the dis- 
 trict the New Yorkers call the Bowery, from an old Dutch word 
 meaning farm. The street which we had entered might, with 
 all its sordid houses, have been a suburb of Rome or Naples; 
 for it was inhabited only by Italians. After having walked 
 for a few moments between these buildings, all whose signs 
 and notices were in Italian, we entered the first abode. It 
 consisted of two rooms on the level of the street, as small as 
 a boat's cabins. 
 
 Men and women, to the number of eight, were working 
 there crouched over their work, in a fetid air, which an iron 
 stove made still more stifling, and in what dirt! Not one of 
 them spoke English. I put a question to them in their own 
 language, and learned that they were from Catanzaro, in Cala- 
 bria. Four years ago, at this precise date, I was visiting that 
 lovely city, perched aloft where one can see the sea, and which 
 one reaches by climbing a hillside planted with cactus. Why 
 did not they stay there, pasturing their flocks and eating the 
 wild fruits that grow along the edge of the thorny green leaves 
 of the prickly pear? 
 
 Invincible hope brought them here, to this hole, for which 
 they pay eight dollars a month, the price of a year's rent in 
 their own country ! Instead of their window opening on the 
 wild, purple mountain, the deep green ravines, and the free 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 189 
 
 blue sea, they open their window, when they want to renew 
 the air, upon a court, cold and noisome as a sewer, into which 
 rain down the pestilent microbes from the linen of all the 
 neighbors, hanging overhead from ropes. 
 
 It is like this, indefinitely, all along this street, and how 
 many others? We visited a second house, where lived a second 
 family, composed of nine persons. 'I'his one came from 
 Caserta. The women and children are shivering in their 
 rags, in spite of the stove, always at white heat. With their 
 Southern faces, yellow — almost greenish — from the heat of 
 their natal sun, with their brilliant black eyes, these exiles 
 move you to pity. Two steps away, in the open air, — if this 
 harsh, pestilential cellar-fog can be called air, — girls from 
 Abruzzo, wrapped in thick shawls, are tacking coverlids. 
 Thin, and already worn out, in spite of their twenty years, 
 they look at you with a smile that is hungry and cold, — above 
 all cold, cold to the marrow of their bones, cold to their 
 blood, — and curse qiiesta bnitissima ierra, this hideous land. 
 
 We recognize the emigration enterprise, the exodus of 
 entire villages, the voyage from Naples to Gibraltar, then from 
 Gibraltar here, at cheap rates, in the hold or on the deck, 
 according to the season, on board of one of the vast steamers 
 the colored picture of which was displayed in the windows of 
 the wine shops along the street. Above it flaunts the an- 
 nouncement of the company, which is German. On the front 
 of another liquor saloon is the Savoyard cross. There is a 
 symbolism in the juxtaposition. Is it not to the work of the 
 Triple Alliance and their military folly that we must attribute 
 the flight of these unhappy wretches from their beautiful but 
 impoverished country? Even between these two wretched- 
 nesses, the agio does not let them alone. The sufficiently 
 ironical inscription, Banca Popolare, appears at a corner. 
 Blue bills of a hundred or fifty lire are displayed in a glass 
 case, tempting the hand. Our companions pause. 
 
190 OUTRE-MER 
 
 "Do you not think," said the socialist, emphatically, "that 
 it would be better to give all this money to the wretches whom 
 we have just seen? Besides, what if they should take it? " 
 
 "They will not," said the policeman, philosophically. 
 "The habitual crime in this ward is not theft. It is first of 
 all knifing, and prostitution also. They sell their women to 
 the Chinese over in the neighboring district. The law forbids 
 yellow women to live in the United States. But John " — this 
 is the American nickname for the natives of the Celestial 
 Empire — "John has a great liking for white women, and he 
 buys as many as he can with the money he earns or steals. 
 For theft is his crime, as drunkenness is that of the Irish. 
 Here is their street," he concluded. 
 
 , Italian signs had given place to illegible signs in characters 
 of the extreme Orient, and on the narrow sidewalk, which 
 here was clean, I heard the clicking of the thick wooden soles 
 of the yellow men. Short and fragile, with smooth faces 
 under their round hats, with black braids of hair rolled up 
 underneath in an oily chignon, they come and go silently. 
 Their bodies have no visible form under their wide-sleeved 
 blue blouses, and their small feet have still less under the 
 flapping of their loose pantaloons. This sort of delicate- 
 featured dwarfs, with their loop-shaped eyes, so black in their 
 copper-6olored skin, their high cheek-bones, the triangular 
 framework of their faces, and their flat noses, gives the impres- 
 sion of an invasion of beasts that would spread over all the 
 city, gain and gain and destroy everything. There is some- 
 thing of the serpent in their fiat faces, and an enigmatic 
 endurance in the expression, that seems to receive nothing 
 from the surrounding world. 
 
 Since we had left the Italian street, Bazarow appeared to 
 have himself become as impassible as these casual foreigners. 
 The revolutionary could not but hate them, for they are more 
 dangerous enemies to socialism than the most ferocious capi- 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS "191 
 
 talist, working for almost nothing, with a result always uni- 
 form, ever repulsed, never wearied, fifteen and sixteen hours 
 on a stretch. In them labor feels itself disgraced; and it is 
 constantly necessary to protect them from the wrath of their 
 competitors of the white race, whom they would ruin if they 
 were left free to do it. In proportion as the agitator grew 
 gloomy the detective became more jovial. He found these 
 people "great fun." He went into all their shops, handled 
 all their wares, clapped them all on the shoulder with his 
 broad hand, bursting into roars of laughter. 
 
 The little yellow men winked their black eyes with sly 
 humor. They offered us their wares, — tea enclosed in dainty 
 boxes, lacquers, stuffs, porcelains, all worthy of a bazaar of 
 the twentieth order. But they asked exorbitant prices, and 
 kept on smiling when we discussed them, without emotion 
 and without insistence. It is not commerce by which they 
 live in New York, it is laundry work. They undertake it at 
 such low prices that they have monopolized it; they need so 
 little ! 
 
 To observe their diet we went into one of their restaurants. 
 Prepared dishes, which showed minute handiwork, were wait- 
 ing on high round tables; stuffed oranges, first peeled and 
 then reclothed in their protecting skins, dressed onions, 
 hashes in green leaves, strange crudities betokening 'entirely 
 different stomachs, the gastric juice accustomed by a heredity 
 of a hundred centuries to dissolve other foods. Everywhere 
 the long straight pipes with their little metal furnace betrayed 
 the traditional vice, — the terrible taste for opium. 
 
 "You should come back at night to see them smoke; they 
 work by day. Between the two they have not much time for 
 mischief. If they alone were in New York, Mr. Byrnes would 
 not be so busy." 
 
 While the watch-dog of the police thus muttered, looking 
 again at Bazarow, the countenance of the latter cleared and 
 
192 OUTRE-MER 
 
 brightened. His ironical mouth began again to speak. We 
 were now in the midst of his adherents, for we had passed 
 from the Chinese to the Jewish quarter. These are mostly 
 Germans and Poles. Ah ! the invincible, the indestructible 
 race, which I find just like itself, just what I have seen in the 
 lanes of Tangier and Beyrout and Damascus, and on that 
 height of Safed, where, in the synagogue, the old rabbis com- 
 ment on the Talmud and proclaim the Liberator. 
 
 Whence came the poor Jews of this quarter? Through what 
 abominable Odysseys of persecution have they come, to set 
 out in this quarter of New York such displays as only they 
 and the Auvergnats have the secret of, — these stalls, where 
 the merchant finds a way of selling the unsalable, — old iron, 
 old buttons, old bits of wood, old rags? These indescribable 
 shops, with their refuse of refuse, encroach upon the side- 
 walk. The signs are now in Hebrew. Newsboys are offering 
 papers, also in Hebrew. There are swarms of children, attest- 
 ing that fruitfulness which the Book promised "as the sand of 
 the seashore." Many of these little ones have eyes of mag- 
 netic Oriental brilliancy, and we see it also in the eyes of the 
 women who are living in all this poverty. 
 
 Now Bazarow is at home. He moves among smiles and 
 salutations. He knows every one and every one knows him. 
 The uncertain steps of an hour ago become firm to guide us. 
 We follow him into several workshops, as much of men as of 
 women, where they vi^ork with the needle. We find there, 
 ranged under the oversight of the chief, the "boss," thin, 
 patient, masculine faces covered with hair, with enormous 
 noses, poor, hollow, feminine chests, shoulders sharpened by 
 consumption, girls of fifteen as old as grandmothers, who have 
 never eaten a bit of meat in their lives, — a long, lamentable 
 succession of forms of poverty. 
 
 We could hardly endure the air of these shops, where the 
 odor of ill-cared-for bodies mingled with the odor of spoiled 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 193 
 
 food, both being exasperated by the heavy odor of the stove. 
 We asked these slaves as to the wages they earned. Here the 
 figures given by the partisans of revolution became sadly 
 correct, a correctness which, thus certified, wrung the heart. 
 For a dozen of these little children's trousers, over which 
 these hunger-hollowed faces were bent, the contractor pays 
 seventy-five cents. The worker cannot make eighteen in 
 his best days, by not losing half an hour. Twelve shirts, that 
 consumptive women are hurriedly stitching, with needles held 
 in feeble hands with bent finger-nails, — yes, twelve of these 
 shirts, — bring thirty-one cents, and the worker must pay for 
 the cotton ! And even these prices are not sure. Within a 
 year wages have been lowered one-half. Who can say what 
 they will be to-morrow? Meanwhile, they must sustain life, 
 but how? Plates scattered over the tables make reply, filled 
 as they are with scraps that would disgust a famished dog. 
 These embittered lips bite into them with an avidity that 
 appals you. We saw a twelve-year-old girl lay down her work 
 to eat where she sits. She was so pale, so emaciated, that tears 
 would have come to our eyes though the agitator had not said, 
 in a declamatory tone : — 
 
 *' Is it not a shame to humanity? " 
 
 What could we reply, if not that when the strike came this 
 human wretchedness would not have even this bone to gnaw? 
 
 January i§. — About eight o'clock in the evening, a fellow 
 journalist of New York, Richard Harding Davis, came with 
 two friends to take me to the Bowery for a nocturnal expedi- 
 tion to succeed that by daylight. This remarkable author, 
 one of the first short-story writers of young America, is a man 
 of less than thirty years, with a strong face, square and hard- 
 featured, burned red by the sun, a snub nose and a square 
 chin. It is a typical face of this side of the water, beardless 
 and forceful, with the fine-cut features of a strong physiog- 
 
194 OUTRE-MER 
 
 nomy. There is extreme nervous tension, almost exhaustion, 
 in the lines around the mouth and the expression of the eyes. 
 And yet the dominant look is of youth and health. Back 
 of the overburdened journalist and romance-writer you can 
 detect the near presence of the "Princeton man," the student 
 who, six or eight winters ago, was captain of some great foot- 
 ball team ! 
 
 On leaving the University, Davis became reporter on a great 
 Philadelphia daily. This singular calling having put him in 
 touch with the lowest rabble of the worst parts of the city, the 
 picturesque qualities of these refractories awoke the artist 
 within him, and in a series of short stories he has pictured a 
 number of these socially doomed characters, of which one, to 
 which I have alreadj^ alluded more than once, Gallegher, is a 
 masterpiece. In him, with a few strokes, of matchless pre- 
 cision, he has painted the Gavroche of this country, the un- 
 tamable boy with nerves of steel and indomitable will, i^hom 
 you see in the tramways and railroad cars, rushing in by one 
 door and out at another, crying his wares, newspapers, novels, 
 or fruits, in a high-pitched voice. There is both humor and 
 tragedy in the fifty pages of this story, to which I refer the 
 reader who may be curious as to American customs. It is the 
 result of an observation terribly keen and yet pathetic, darkly 
 realistic and yet light-hearted. A sort of untamed whimsi- 
 cality works out in healthiness all that might have been atro- 
 cious in this etching from nature, and on this January evening, 
 when we were rolling in a carriage toward the Bowery, the 
 paradise of those whom in Paris we call escarpes, and in New 
 York " toughs " and " roughs," Davis was the very talker of his 
 story, a fanciful humorist, full of the freshest anecdotes of 
 these grotesque figures of vice and crime. 
 
 For example, he told us how the original boy who posed 
 for him as Gallegher went to the newspaper office in which the 
 sketch appeared, to demand his share of the author's rights. 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 195 
 
 He described himself, going out from his father's house in 
 Philadelphia, in evening dress, and meeting a thief with 
 whom, for the purpose of study, he had fraternized incognito 
 in a low gambling-house. The thief approached him with a 
 wink : — 
 
 " What are you doing here ? Are you butler in this house ? " 
 And as the writer amused himself with answering in the 
 afifirmative, he went on, — 
 
 " When you rob it, don't forget me. I'll be in with you." 
 On this good promise, with a hearty hand shake, the two 
 parted. 
 
 While he was charming us thus with his rendering of a 
 coarse conversation, mimicked with a sort of genius which ex- 
 plained to me his success as an author, that gift of his for 
 making his words flow and almost gesticulate, we arrived at 
 the central police station, where the other morning I had seen 
 Mr. Byrnes smile into the face of the courageous Mr. Clark. 
 We were to take another detective this evening, who, however, 
 showed the same broad shoulders and the same quiet intrepid- 
 ity as the former. Social species in these singular callings 
 work out a uniformity of type not to be surpassed by natural 
 species. 
 
 This one, like his colleague, professed an idolatry for Mr. 
 Byrnes and a passionate love of his calling. As a hunter of 
 big game never spares you a single one of the lions and tigers 
 that he has shot, and spreads out before you skin after skin, 
 showing you the bullet hole, so the policemen would have us 
 look over hundreds of photographs of criminals arrested in 
 New York during the last few years. The predominant char- 
 acteristics of these heroes of robbery and murder are a wander- 
 ing or a maniacal expression, and sadness. You can count the 
 laughing faces — and what laughs they are ! insolent, defiant, 
 sneering. Still less numerous are faces that reveal intelli- 
 gence. When it occurs, it is so concentrated, so visibly 
 
196 OUTRE-MER 
 
 turned in upon itself, so armed and defiant, that it frightens 
 you even in this impotent reflection, emanating from these 
 inert pictures. I think that if ever I meet them in life I shall 
 recognize the eyes of one of these photographs among others, 
 those of a man of thirty, condemned for forgery, whom the 
 detective gazed upon with undissembled admiration, murmur- 
 ing, "He was a great man." 
 
 As in memory I compare this collection of portraits with a 
 similar one of French criminals, which I have had in my 
 hands in Paris, it seems to me that those of this country are 
 more bitter, more sinister, more entirely unclassed, more 
 implacable, and especially more perverse. I sought in vain 
 among them for the features, so common in Latin countries, 
 of the man who has fallen through weakness — the near neigh- 
 bor of him who remains respectable through circumstances. 
 
 Are these things really so, or have I, in this view, taken up 
 with general theories, so natural to a traveller? Neither did 
 it seem to me that the collection of confiscated articles tend- 
 ing to prove criminality was made up as it would have been 
 made with us. Roulette tables alternated with revolvers, 
 night sand-bags with burglars' tools, counterfeiters' moulds 
 and dies with engraved plates for counterfeit bank bills. One 
 would say that thieves were more industrious here and — how 
 shall I express it ? — less occasional in their criminal acts. The 
 detective showed us a saw with which a celebrated criminal 
 had dismembered the corpse of his victim. To wring from 
 him a confession of his crime, another detective conceived 
 the plan of walking by night clothed in a shroud, and moan- 
 ing, up and down a corridor, which we also visited, on which 
 the criminal's cell opened. The murderer believed he saw 
 the ghost of his victim and confessed his crime. 
 
 "For all that," said one of our companions, in disgust, "it 
 was not fair play." 
 
 That is the true Anglo-Saxon cry, with all the innate horror 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 197 
 
 of the race for subterfuge and falsehood. Hearing it, I recall 
 to mind a similar indignation experienced by a young girl, in 
 whose presence was related a story of the delightful hypocrisy 
 of a Sicilian prince of the last century. Sick unto death, he 
 vowed to build a Chartreuse if he should recover. He did 
 recover, and to reconcile his devotion with his avarice he 
 hit upon the device of building in his park, at the gates of 
 Palermo, a pavilion in the form of a monastery, which may yet 
 be seen. The word "Certosa" still adorns the entrance, and 
 the half-score of cells are inhabited by the figures of monks, 
 but in wax, among which is found an Abelard occupied in 
 writing to Heloise ! 
 
 " What a shame I " was the only word which this charmingly 
 humorous anecdote called from the American girl's lips. She 
 saw in it only a want of conscience, and ignoble insincerity. 
 Our friend of this evening is not far from the same judgment 
 of the perfidy used in the matter of the dissector of corpses, 
 and I am sure he will not willingly give his hand to the in- 
 ventive policeman who devised this cunning trick. 
 
 Upon this discussion we went downstairs to the street, and 
 this time we went on foot. It was nine o'clock, and already 
 all the houses were closing. Nocturnal life exists only in 
 Paris. In New York, as in London, all the house-fronts are 
 dark long before midnight strikes. Only the "saloons" con- 
 tinue to blaze forth from the ground floors of buildings, large 
 and small. On the counters are prepared by the score such 
 ingredients as were wittily defined by a Bacchic poet of Louis 
 XIII. 's time, "spurs to much drinking." There are salted 
 biscuits and smoked fish, ham, and fried oysters. A betting- 
 machine stands in a corner, like the swivels that decorate the 
 wine shops of Paris, with this difference, that here they only 
 play for whiskeys or cocktails, and also that the ball is here 
 replaced by a whole poker deck. One of those ingenious 
 inventions which the American is never weary of inventing 
 
198 OUTRE-MER 
 
 causes these cards to come and go under glass each time that 
 a silver dollar falls into a slot arranged ad hoc. A "full" 
 appears, or a sequence, or two pairs, or a flush, or some 
 other figure, and this sufifices to give the poor devils who are 
 playing thus their evening dissipation, the illusory mirage of 
 such a game as they like. 
 
 They are standing in the blinding light of gas or electricity, 
 already, at this hour, so drunk they cannot move. Almost all 
 of them, even in this low part of the town, have that air of being 
 all but wtW dressed, which gave me the first day an impression 
 as of a whole city dressed from a shop of ready-made clothes. 
 How many have I seen, Americans of all classes, dressed in 
 this all but good, style, carrying a tiny valise of leather paper, 
 with a change of collar and cuffs ! In the morning they go to 
 the barber's, after taking a bath in the dressing-room of their 
 hotel bedroom. One negro brushes their boots, another their 
 hat and clothes. A narrow line of white linen at the wrist 
 and neck, and above the large Ascot necktie which hides the 
 shirt another line of white linen, and you have a gentleman 
 whose neatness will hold good till the midnight bar. 
 
 They end by going into one of these bars. From eight to 
 a dozen "gentlemen " of this type were discussing matters over 
 their glasses, in which preserved cherries were floating between 
 slices of lemon. For the moment they were intensely inter- 
 ested in comparing the chances of the Californian, Corbett, 
 and the Englishman, Mitchell, who were to have a match 
 at Jacksonville, Florida. A number of portraits of cele- 
 brated athletes, in fighting costume, which hung on the 
 walls, bore witness to the admiration of the saloon-keeper 
 and to his secret business. No doubt he arranges those 
 clandestine matches which Davis has so accurately described 
 in his Gallegher, tickets of admission to which cost a hun- 
 dred, or two hundred, dollars. He was a German, and 
 with his crafty bluish eyes, set in his broad, pallid face, he 
 
 ^' 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 199 
 
 glanced at the detective, who seemed not to know him, though 
 he knew him very well. Both indifference and a feeling of 
 equality spoke in that glance. With the secret history of 
 elections in the United States, who can tell whether a simple 
 saloon-keeper is not one of the chief suborners of votes for 
 the party in power? Was there some consciousness of this 
 strength in the calmness of this German, as also in the attitude 
 of the infamous customers of this obscure patron, who smoke 
 great cigars at half a dollar apiece, with all the serenity of the 
 gods of Lucretius? They appear to be little disturbed by the 
 moral campaign announced in the last few weeks. Two new 
 visitors came into the resort, and talked German with the 
 liquor-dealer. Decidedly, New York is not only the true 
 Cosmopolis of the idle and the dilettante, but a monstrous 
 crucible in which all the adventurers and the needy of the 
 whole world meet, mingle, blend together to form a new 
 people. What people? 
 
 Blend? Does this intimate mixture of elements, so far 
 from solvable, which we call "raee," really take place? As 
 far as the yellow race goes, we can boldly reply, no. What 
 strange power keeps these people so unsusceptible to surround- 
 ings, so capable of abstracting themselves from those around 
 them, — insulating themselves, if we may so speak ? I received 
 a new proof of this that very night, as I left that den to go 
 to the Chinese theatre, a few steps distant. 
 
 Upon the stage the actors, men disguised as women, all 
 painted and dressed, — painted in bright colors that lacquered 
 their faces, dressed in heavy stufl's, embossed, embroidered, 
 stiff and shining, — -act or rather mimic, with slow, infrequent 
 gestures, a scene in an interminable play. A stringed instru- 
 ment, harsh and monotonous, accompanied this phantom- 
 like representation with a moaning, creaking sound, \^'hat 
 did I say about gestures? During the half- hour that we spent 
 
200 OUTRE-MER 
 
 there the seven actors did not make twenty motions between 
 them. 
 
 The scene represented the interior of a pagoda opening 
 upon a garden, and called forth, no doubt, action enough to 
 sustain the interest of a public who utter not a word, and 
 neither laugh nor applaud. 
 
 There are five hundred of these copper-colored men in the 
 audience, motionless, in their working clothes, every one like 
 all the others, in his round hat, his braided queue of black 
 hair, his ample blouse of dark blue, and those everlasting ser- 
 pent faces, spanned by long, shining, inexpressive eyes. Not 
 one of them appears to observe our presence, although we 
 must have made some noise as we went down the passage be- 
 tween the seats toward the stage. You feel them to be for- 
 eigners, to a degree inconceivable — impenetrable and above 
 all unintelligible. These unresolvable differences show them- 
 selves in their choice of amusement and its quality; for our 
 amusements are ourselves, our individuality, our tastes, 
 whereas our labor often only interprets to us the slavery 
 of our surroundings. 
 
 This theatre, and the hypnotic automatism of the play, had 
 nothing in common with the sort of diversion which we 
 seek for in a play. And in the same way, the coarse atid 
 mechanical drunkenness on alcohol — our drunkenness — has 
 nothing in common with the intellectual poisoning by opium, 
 which is ever the favorite vice of these people. One must 
 see how some of them abandon themselves to the delights of 
 this terrible drug, immediately on leaving the theatre, to un- 
 derstand how this mania for stupefactives corresponds in these 
 natures to profound, and doubtless indestructible, instincts. 
 The two impressions complete one another with singular 
 power. 
 
 On leaving the theatre, twenty steps brought us to the door 
 of one of the cellar rooms which serve these maniacs as dream 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 201 
 
 caverns. By the light of a half-lowered gas-burner, we saw 
 an emaciated Chinaman lying on a matting which covered a 
 stone bench running around the wall. With supple fingers 
 he felt about in a pot filled with a blackish substance. With 
 a stout metal needle he adroitly and surely rolled up a thick 
 pellet, which he warmed at a flame. Then, with the point of 
 the same needle, without haste, with the same adroit and accu- 
 rate motion, he inserted the burning pellet in the metal bowl 
 of his pipe, and drew a few whiffs. The pipe was smoked 
 out, and he began operations over again, his eyes swimming 
 in a luxurious languor. Twenty such operations, and he will 
 be like the stout man whose figure is visible in the depths of 
 the cellar, bloated, livid, and motionless, deep in visions, 
 from which no human force could ravish him. 
 
 A smiling and supple personage — the keeper of the cellar — 
 runs hither and thither, preparing pipes and opium for other 
 customers, who are awaiting their turn to abandon themselves 
 to the charm of this mysterious and deadly ecstasy. The 
 solitude and taciturnity of this dissipation make the place 
 almost tragic. No loud voices, not even a word. There is 
 a solemnity as of initiation in the attitudes to which the devo- 
 tees of this artificial paradise abandon themselves, and this 
 debauch appears at once less vile and more criminal, less dis- 
 gusting and more incurable, than that on whiskey or brandy. 
 Certainly it is so different that a shudder, as of a nightmare, 
 creeps over us, and we leave this den with a sense of relief. 
 
 Chinese lanterns light up the lower end of the street with 
 their fantastic light. A turn of the corner, and they have 
 again given place to gas, and opium to alcohol. Now "sa- 
 loons" follow "saloons." A gigantic and obsequious police- 
 man, Whom the detective had picked up to guide us through 
 the opium dens, suddenly stops before a tall building, which 
 he points out with a gesture of pride. 
 
 "Well," he says, with most comical emphasis, "you may 
 
202 OUTRE-MER 
 
 be globe-trotters, but you will never find any place like the 
 Bismarck of New York. Do you want to go in? " 
 
 We assent, and he explains — Oh irony of human glory! — 
 that the Bismarck is simply a lodging-house at twelve, ten, or 
 seven cents a night. Immediately entering a dark passageway, 
 we saw him conferring with the doorkeeper of this dormitory 
 of poverty. The latter, after some affected objections, — the 
 prelude to a tip only too intelligible to one who knows the 
 lack of conscience of the American policeman, — permits us 
 to ascend a badly lighted staircase, pervaded with an abomi- 
 nable odor. A door opens on the first landing. We parley 
 again, and enter an immense room, heated almost beyond the 
 breathing-point by a colossal iron stove. 
 
 There, in a vapor hardly pierced by an occasional lamp, we 
 dimly see a double row of beds of rubber cloth, literally 
 heaped with human beings, some draped in remnants of rags, 
 others entirely undressed. 'Ihe wretches were all plunged in 
 that death-like sleep in which life yet renews its deepest ener- 
 gies. We could see by the position of their limbs that they 
 had not lain down, but fallen down, sunk down, exhausted 
 as they were. The soles of their feet, black with the mire of 
 the streets, told of aimless wanderings by sidewalk or street. 
 The emaciated faces of those who had unragged themselves — 
 one must create words to describe the nameless divestment of 
 these nameless tatters — followed us with their eyes, passively, 
 stupidly. We seemed to them the apparitions of a dream, 
 seen through the double vapor of this heavy air and of their 
 overwhelming lassitude. 
 
 Yet these sleepers are the favored ones. The sort of ham- 
 mock in which they are reposing must be a singular luxury, 
 since to procure such ease they have spent two cents extra. 
 Two cents' worth of bread ! Two cents' worth of whiskey, of 
 tobacco ! The lodgers of the floor above sleep on boards. 
 Those of the third story, on the floor — hard indeed, in its 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 203 
 
 pestilential promiscuity. But it is not the street, it is not 
 the January night, so cruel to poor exhausted flesh. This is 
 the thought that I distinctly read on the delicate, weary face 
 of a white-bearded old man, who had taken off his jacket, 
 seated on the floor of the last of the three dormitories, a veri- 
 table phantom of human want, never to be forgotten, with the 
 anatomy of his emaciated body, with tufts of grizzly hair on 
 the projecting ribs. 
 
 Looking at him, I recalled to mind that this very evening I 
 had been invited to a ball in one of the palaces on Fifth 
 Avenue. Without regret I had sacrificed that festivity to this 
 visit. The house rose up before my mind, decorated with 
 roses at a dollar apiece, illuminated by the dress of women 
 who bear on their persons twenty-five, a hundred, two hun- 
 dred thousand francs' worth of precious stones. The cham- 
 pagne which is poured out at the buffet costs five dollars a 
 bottle. And the roses will fade before any one has so much 
 as taken the time to inhale the sweetness of their perfume, and 
 not one of those diamonds and rubies has dissipated a sad 
 thought of those who wear them, and these lovely lips will 
 barely have touched the cups in which sparkles the monoto- 
 nous beverage. These contrasts between the frightful reality 
 of certain sufferings and the useless insanity of certain luxu- 
 ries, explain, better than the most eloquent theories, why, at 
 certain times, a rage simply to destroy such a society takes 
 possession of certain minds. 
 
 The extortionate policeman, who might have been detailed 
 to mount guard over that ball, as he has been charged to guard 
 the Bowery lodging-houses, is as proud of the excess of poverty 
 into which he initiates us as his Fifth Avenue colleague would 
 be of the ostentation of the festivity. He jocularly repeats 
 his former remark : — 
 
 " Well, have you seen anywhere in the world such a place 
 as the Bismarck?" 
 
204 OUTRE-MER 
 
 And standing on the threshold, breathing the free night air 
 with all the breadth of his robust lungs, he adds: — 
 
 "Now you know, gentlemen, how much a breath of fresh 
 air is worth." 
 
 Decidedly, this humorist is determined to earn his fee; for 
 perceiving that we are moved by the sight of that inauspicious 
 hostelry, he invites us to dispel these visions of sadness by 
 a descent into another cellar, inhabited by an Italian. " There 
 is always ?,ovcit jollification there," he says. 
 • The word is untranslatable, like the jolly from which it is 
 derived, and which signifies good-humored gayety, good- 
 natured practical jokes, a certain rough grace of good health. 
 Upon this, I ask him of what nationality are most of the 
 inhabitants of the Bismarck. According to him, Germans 
 and Irish predominate. Americans, properly so-called, are 
 rarely found there. For that matter, one might ahnost think, 
 on exploring the lower quarters of the city, that there are none 
 in New York, or else that they are all rich, so many are the 
 foreigners we have met to-night and the other night. We find 
 more foreigners in the nocturnal trattoria to which our guide 
 introduces us. But the promised jollification is limited to a 
 sight of an evidently embarrassed patron, irritated under his 
 constrained politeness. While the three compatriots with whom 
 he was conversing went on smoking their long cigars of chaff, 
 and emptying their fiasco of Chianti, without looking at us, 
 the big haggard man, with crafty eyes, assured us, in a tone 
 which suggested the penitentiary : — 
 
 " You may see everything in my house. I have nothing to 
 hide." He repeated "nothing to hide — nothing to hide," 
 four times over. What act of conspiracy, smuggling, or prosti- 
 tution had we interrupted by our entrance? The policeman 
 must have known, for he drew us out of the cavern with as 
 much eagerness as he had before used in urging us in. He 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 205 
 
 claimed to be at the end of his beat and we left him, to finish 
 this night of low investigation in a series of public balls and 
 beer-gardens. 
 
 January i8. — This morning, D , K , and I paid a 
 
 visit to the two islands in the East River, Blackwell's and 
 Ward's, where are the insane asylum and the penitentiary. 
 We were to meet Mr. Clark, the detective, who accompanied 
 us the other day, at the door of the Tombs. This is the 
 municipal prison of the city, containing also a police court 
 and a court of special sessions. New York slang has bap- 
 tized it with this funereal and symbolic title because of the 
 large and heavy Egyptian columns of the peristyle. 
 
 The calling of a detective does not lend itself to punctu- 
 ality in keeping appointments, and Mr. Clark is on duty. 
 He sends us word by one of his "policemen " that he will join 
 us later "if he gets through in time," which signifies that the 
 worthy bloodhound is on the scent; who knows, perhaps only 
 a few steps away, in one of these streets? Perhaps the crimi- 
 nal that he is tracing is still hurriedly treading these side- 
 walks with despairing step, casting searching glances over 
 the houses which seem to us so insignificant, but which to 
 him may prove an asylum or a place of destruction. 
 
 They stretch out in long rows, commonplace, enigmatic, 
 betraying no secrets that they may have, while another "car," 
 then an elevated railway, then another "car," carry us to 
 Bellevue Hospital. Close by, a small wooden wharf serves 
 as point of departure for the ferry-boat, which daily carries 
 to the islands the men and women under sentence and rela- 
 tives of the insane persons. A cell-like wagon arrives almost 
 at the same time as ourselves, bringing its load of convicts. 
 The people give it the classic nickname of "Black Maria." 
 Its occupants, who will not return until after months or years, 
 if ever they return, get down carelessly. They are swallowed 
 
206 OUTRE-MER 
 
 up in rooms arranged in the sides of the boat, while the deck 
 is crowded with poor folk, women especially, carrying baskets 
 filled with provision for some unhappy being, to whom this is 
 all that remains of joy! 
 
 The boat puts off. It is operated by men in brown uniform, 
 many of them negroes; they are working out here their purifi- 
 cation from a long sentence. 
 
 We begin to converse with the "boss," while the strange 
 floating house glides over the curling waters, that wash against 
 the boat with loud surgings. We pass other ferry-boats, tugs, 
 merchant vessels. A sharp wind is blowing, the sky seems as 
 if contracted by the cold tension of a black snow-cloud. 
 The shore line of the city is a shabby, so to speak soiled, 
 coast, with a leprosy of mean buildings and dark beaches, 
 where are collected the unclean refuse of the approach to a 
 capital. The "boss,'' whose trade it is to transport poverty, 
 folly, and crime along this scene of buildings and rubbish, 
 is a jovial old man, who serenely chews his quid and ejects 
 his streams of saliva while watching over his crew. He opens 
 for us two cabins, into which he has bolted the guests of the 
 "Black Maria." 
 
 That of the men contains about ten individuals. Their 
 debased and unexpressive faces do not even speak of the reso- 
 lution of "tramps," as they call the wayfarers whom one sees 
 trailing along the New York streets, picking up ends of cigars 
 with pride. The women seem more vivacious and more tragic. 
 There are seven: three Irish, three Germans, one negress. 
 The seventh alone is a true American. Of the unhappy creat- 
 ures who compose the crew, those who are not black are also 
 all Europeans. 
 
 The " boss " points out a Frenchman who has strayed in 
 among the others. He is from Picardy, and came to the 
 United States after the war. Why? He does not confess this 
 any more than the crime that brought him first to the peni- 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 207 
 
 tentiary and afterward to this boat. He tells us of his arrival 
 here, the first few years, his solitude, the too hard work — 
 he was a slater — the too implacable people. He is probably 
 telling the truth on these points; you feel that, by the severity 
 of his words. No trace of his fine national humor survives in 
 him, not even the mocking flattery by which the Latin takes 
 his last and useless revenge, when he is vanquished by too 
 severe civilization. He is really too thoroughly vanquished. 
 
 Perceiving his wretchedness in infamy, I regret less that the 
 figure of French immigration into this terrible country is so 
 low. Statistics figure it at fifty thousand four hundred and 
 sixty heads in the last ten years. On the other hand, America 
 has received during the same period, a million four hundred 
 and fifty-two thousand nine hundred and fifty-two Germans. 
 What a formidable sum of certain temptations, of probable 
 crime, is represented by such an afflux of adventurers ! One 
 shudders at it, when one examines some authentic examples 
 taken from life. 
 
 There is the same singular collection of foreigners, male 
 and female, between the walls of the two asylums for the in- 
 sane which we visited; the first on the more distant island. 
 Ward's, the second on the nearer, Blackwell's. But for this 
 peculiarity, which proves how disastrous is the over-pressure 
 of American life to nervous systems not native to the country, 
 these buildings are like others of the same kind in all lands. 
 I shall long see before me among the men a German from 
 Koenigsberg, who believed himself to be the old Emperor 
 William; with his curled moustache, he talked and swore, 
 marching up and down with threatening gestures. And among 
 the women I shall not soon forget a Norwegian, with soft, 
 sea-colored eyes, who sat at the piano and played a vague air, 
 a thousand times repeated. 
 
 Both buildings are kept with that perfect adaptation of ma- 
 terial convenience which distinguishes America and England. 
 
208 OUTRE-MER 
 
 The principle here, as I liad already observed when visiting 
 the Boston hospitals, is to assure autonomy to each establish- 
 ment. Each, from the least to the greatest, must suffice for 
 itself. Each must have its own bake-shop, its own laundry, 
 and its own laboratory for preparing its own medicines. 
 
 With this independence of each establishment there is 
 much more freedom of initiative. If there is an experiment 
 to try, an invention to apply, there is no need of going through 
 administrative red tape and awaiting an order from the cen- 
 tral power. Each one makes its own conditions, and this 
 absence of official supervision, so much admired by people 
 so highly centralized as we, may well have its disastrous as- 
 pects. We received that impression from a few words which 
 one of the doctors said to us with an air of triumph. We had 
 asked to see the violent cases. 
 
 "We have none here," he replied, 
 
 "How is that?" we asked. 
 
 "We have none," he repeated. 
 
 "But if those who are not violent should become so?" 
 
 "Oh," he replied, "we should soon quiet them." 
 
 "May we see your appliances? " 
 
 "We have no appliances," replied the physician, proudly, 
 "we believe that physical constraint is degrading to the pa- 
 tient; we prefer to use chemical restraint." 
 
 "They drug them to death," whispered K . 
 
 Was he right? After this we always imagined that we saw 
 in the eyes of those we met the numb stupor of opium or 
 morphine, although the doctor affirmed that both these sub- 
 stances are forbidden. A gloomy terror seemed to reign over 
 the asylum for men, while in that of the women we were 
 touched by an air of pleasantness, almost of gayety. 
 
 The halls and corridors were hung with flowered paper; 
 Christmas trees, with their fruits of stuffed cotton, still re- 
 mained from the festival of the preceding month. Bananas 
 
 1 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 209 
 
 of yellow cloth alternated with oranges of red plush. The 
 tender home instinct, imperishable in the heart of woman, and 
 that maternal instinct that abides even through insanity, had 
 suggested to the inmates a graceful and touching thought — 
 that of placing around the Christmas trees large dolls, dressed 
 in warm garments, to take the place of the children for whom 
 they had imagined themselves to be preparing their gifts. 
 And yet, with all the care they had taken thus to adorn their 
 place of confinement, they were truly prisoners, and they 
 knew it. All of them said in thought what one of them said 
 aloud, — a white-haired negress who was giving a warm cloak 
 to another. The latter laughed with pleasure at the warmth 
 of the garment. 
 
 "How happy she is," said one of our party. "What more 
 can she want? " 
 
 "To be free," replied the old blackamoor, and both paused, 
 the one in her kindly adjustment of the garment, the other in 
 her laugh, and looked toward the window, with the longing 
 eyes of a caged animaL 
 
 And how sad a reminder of liberty was the view from that 
 window ! the broad island plain, sterile and bare. Sorry trees 
 grew here and there in shapeless fields, greenish with a scraggy, 
 worn-out turf, across which meandered the gray lines of unused 
 paths. The clouds hung low in the sky; in the distance were 
 two barrack-like buildings. One is the workhouse, the charity 
 building, the other is the penitentiary. 
 
 We finished our day by a visit to this prison. Mr. Clark 
 was now our guide ; we found him waiting for us outside the 
 insane hospital. How did the police watch-dog know that we 
 were there — precisely there and nowhere else? We did not 
 particularly wonder at this small proof of his professional scent, 
 any more than at the carriage which he had found for us — 
 where ? — in this desert plain. 
 
210 OUTRE-MER 
 
 We had not been ten minutes in it when we began to see 
 convicts laboring in some earthworks. But for their uni- 
 forms of white, with broad dark stripes, we might have taken 
 them for workingmen at their ordinary task. Absorption in 
 work is so essential a characteristic of American life that these 
 convicts seemed not different from free workmen. Their 
 countenances were not more sad than those of engineers on 
 their locomotives, or smelters in their foundry. 
 
 The prisoners became more frequent as we drew nearer to 
 the huge building on the height. Arriving there, we had no 
 need to parley, as at the door of the Bismarck. Our guide 
 felt himself quite at home in these great barracks, of which 
 he is one of the most skilful purveyors. We followed him 
 through them, especially interested in the rows of cells, in 
 which we again perceived the spirit of the country. Their 
 strong iron gratings opened upon a broad passageway, afford- 
 ing the greatest facilities for surveillance. They are narrow, 
 high, and so arranged as to admit of two superimposed beds, 
 like those of a steamer cabin. A placard above the door bore 
 the names of the inmates, 
 
 I read a few of these, corroborating my recent observa- 
 tions ; most of them are not of this country. The terms are 
 short, — six months, a year, two years at most. In general, a 
 fine is added of one, two, or five hundred dollars. When the 
 convict has no money, he works out his fine at the rate of a 
 dollar a day. The fare is decent, almost comfortable when 
 one thinks of the bitter poverty of the Bowery. The men are 
 called up at half-past five ; at half-past six they have bread 
 and coffee, at noon they have meat, at half-past five bread, 
 soup, and coffee. At six they are locked in, with permission to 
 read until ten. 
 
 Their librarian was seated at a table in one of the galleries, 
 classifying tickets. Even in his convict's dress, his intelligent 
 and serious countenance, his white hands and quiet application, 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 211 
 
 attested the " gentleman." He, too, was a foreigner, an Eng- 
 lishman of excellent family, guilty of having enjoyed club life, 
 sport, gaming, and general elegance, by means of checks too 
 dextrously made. He was here employed in the work for 
 which he appeared to be best fitted, and this is the case with 
 all of them. 
 
 The workshops were, therefore, filled with workmen, who 
 do excellent work at a low cost. In pavilions surrounding 
 the central building there was a forge and a cabinet shop, 
 a shoe factory and a locksmithy, and so on through the whole 
 range of trades. We saw rows of tailors, painters, book- 
 binders, clockmakers, peacefully at work. They would have 
 needed only to have lived this way in their time of freedom 
 to be happy. And yet if their freedom were given them,, not one 
 of them, Mr. Clark assured us, would maintain in the slightest 
 degree the habit of work which they now seem to have formed^ 
 Most of them are recidivists who have taken, quitted, and 
 taken again the road to the disciplinary workshop, without this 
 active use of their hours of servitude in the least affecting their 
 perverse wills. 
 
 What part of their internal machinery is it that is so radically 
 perverted? In this land of all enterprises they have tried to 
 create, not very far from here at Elmira, a reformatory, a sort 
 of rural hospital, precisely that they may reach this hidden 
 spring. It appears not to have had much success, and hence 
 they are coming to the pessimistic conclusion that the best 
 solution of these problems, as of all that touch upon social 
 maladies, is simply an efficient police force. The thought is 
 too terrible, and yet it seems to be only too much in keeping 
 with human nature. Some men are born foxes, wolves, and 
 tigers ; others are born watch-dogs. I came to this view of 
 the fundamental duality of the human race while walking the 
 streets of New York behind Bazarow and Mr. Clark. It struck 
 me again as I heard the latter say aloud : — 
 
212 OUTRE-MER 
 
 *' Ha ! There is my quarry ! " And he pointed to a turner, 
 a young fellow of twenty years, broad-shouldered and sturdy, 
 with a coarsely vicious face. 
 
 " I arrested him with this hand," said Mr. Clark, opening 
 and closing his hairy hands. The convict leaned over his work 
 without appearing to recognize the detective, but he turned as 
 soon as Mr. Clark had walked on, and followed him with an 
 expression of mingled fear and hatred, speaking at the same 
 time a few words to his neighbor. But Mr. Byrnes's bulldog 
 cared no more for that than the dog that ran down one hart 
 and is chasing another cares for the former's furious or sup- 
 pliant glare. 
 
 I might extract hundreds of such pages from my traveUing- 
 journal. Will these suffice to make concrete the objection 
 urged by my New York friend against the somewhat official 
 and determined optimism of the two great Catholic arch- 
 bishops? At any rate, they will suffice to throw a full light 
 upon the fact which appears to me to dominate the entire his- 
 tory of the social movement in the United States, and to explain 
 its apparent contradictions. 
 
 This fact is the presence in the lower classes of a foreign 
 contingent so considerable that at certain times the American, 
 born in America, of American parents, seems to be a sort of 
 aristocrat ; too proud to serve any master whatever, too intel- 
 ligent to subject himself to small details of business, naturally 
 destined by virtue of his inventive genius, perseverance, will, 
 to draft into his service these hordes of immigrants whose labor 
 he unfeelingly uses and pays for. 
 
 This paradox hardly overstates the truth. To be convinced 
 of this it needs only to examine a table of statistics — in one of 
 the almanacs issued every year by the newspapers, for exam- 
 ple ; and these incontestable figures give a still more significant 
 import to this foreign contingent when one has just visited the 
 
 I 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 213 
 
 parts of New York where Italians, Germans, Irish, Poles, Jews, 
 and Chinese swarm and struggle in poverty. 
 
 In the first place, observe that this formidable immigration is 
 entirely of recent date. From 1789 to 1820 hardly two hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand colonists left Europe for the United 
 States, or only nine thousand men a year. The newcomers of 
 this period were very soon taken up into the American organ- 
 ism, which still possesses a remarkable power of assimilation. 
 But assimilation has its limits. And figures show the gradual 
 rising of the flood which by degrees passed these Um.its. 
 
 After 1820 the number of immigrants increased year by year 
 tenfold, almost a hundredfold. It reached twenty-three thou- 
 sand three hundred and twenty- two in 1830, eighty-four thou- 
 sand and sixty- six in 1840. The result of the events of 1848 
 and 1849 was to carry these figures in 1850 to three hundred 
 and sixty-nine thousand seven hundred and eighty-six. The 
 Franco-German War and the Commune reacted still more 
 strongly upon this invasion of the New World by the desperate 
 inhabitants of the Old. In the year 1872 four hundred and 
 five thousand eight hundred and six, in 1873 ^^^^ hundred 
 and fifty-nine thousand eight hundred and three expatriated 
 men came here to seek — what ? They themselves did not 
 know. 
 
 We must look at totals in order to gauge as a whole the 
 astounding phenomenon of a tide of men, or rather of nations, 
 breaking upon this continent. In the two decades before the 
 present one, the United States received from Europe, between 
 1871 and 1880, more than three million immigrants; between 
 1 88 1 and 1890, more than five and a half millions. The popula- 
 tion was therefore increased one-twelfth in these last ten years, 
 by means of foreign accession, and this accession was solely, 
 exclusively composed of workingmen. 
 
 Look through any guide-book you like, you will find that in 
 Chicago, out of about eleven hundred thousand inhabitants, 
 
A 
 
 214 OUTRE-MER 
 
 there are four hundred thousand Germans, two hundred and 
 twenty thousand Irish, ninety thousand Norwegians, Danes, 
 and Swedes, fifty thousand Poles, fifty thousand Bohemians. 
 In Milwaukee two hundred and five thousand, or more than 
 half the population, are Germans. There are a hundred and fifty 
 thousand Germans in St. Louis. Denver, which in 1880 had 
 thirty-five thousand inhabitants, now has a hundred and fifty 
 thousand, an increase of, say, a hundred and fifteen thousand, 
 all minors and foreigners. St. Paul and Minneapolis are 
 Scandinavian cities, and San Francisco is entirely peopled 
 with immigrants from all parts, including twenty-five thousand 
 Chinese. 
 
 In the face of such evidences of an interior invasion so 
 impetuous and so recent, we must see that the majority of 
 the newcomers cannot possibly be Americans except in name. 
 The United States did, indeed, assimilate the newcomers with 
 marvellous rapidity so long as work was chiefly in the fields, 
 while the great modern cities did not yet exist ; before 1 840 
 there was not a single city in America of more than five 
 hundred thousand souls. Especially when these newcomers, 
 immediately scattered abroad upon farms, did not form a 
 compact, almost solid crowd, as irresistible and formidable as 
 one of the elements. 
 
 This assimilating power was still miraculous thirty years ago, 
 when the War of Secession recreated and strengthened Ameri- 
 can self-consciousness in a community of discipline and danger. 
 One proof among a thousand may be given, — very slight but 
 very remarkable. Before this war the Germans, under pretext 
 of athletic meetings, had founded a group of revolutionary soci- 
 eties with the title Socialistischer Turnenbund. Before i860 
 they were all radical, international, and Germanic. At the close 
 of the war they had all, very naturally, become national and 
 conservative, in a word, American. But in the last thirty years 
 by what means can this assimilation have been exercised over 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 215 
 
 these serried masses hastily engulfed in the labor of great indus- 
 trial cities ? 
 
 All these, landed but yesterday, may, indeed, dye themselves 
 with Americanism, which for them generally means to drop off 
 the feeble remnant of moral prejudice which clung to them from 
 their previous life. They even learn to speak the language 
 brokenly, though the greater number of them continue to use 
 their native tongue. The proof of this is, that always in the 
 courts accused and witnesses are interrogated through inter- 
 preters. It would be folly to suppose that their ideas have 
 changed, their deepest aspirations been modified, their soul, in 
 fact, metamorphosed. Once upon the soil of the United States, 
 they remain the violent, desperate folk that they were upon the 
 steamer ; all the more that, in this country of their last illusion, 
 they have met the same necessity for work as in the Old World, 
 and a still sharper competition. They landed with all the moral 
 dispositions of which revolutionaries are made, and they have 
 remained revolutionaries, ready to follow those of their number 
 who have brought hither from Europe their fierce and feverish 
 Utopias, their furor for agitation, and their methods of organi- 
 zation. 
 
 Thus is explained the sudden development in this free 
 democracy of a socialism most incompatible with all the past 
 of the United States, with all their tendencies and their con- 
 stitution, bursting out in disorders as formidable as the recent 
 strikes of Chicago and California, in adventures as grotesquely 
 threatening as the formation of the Coxey army and its march 
 upon Washington. I^ook closely at it. These episodes pre- 
 sage not a social war, but a war of races. 
 
 The true American workingman — for he exists — is just 
 such a man as Monsignors Gibbons and Ireland depicted, 
 respectful to law, proud, above all, of the Constitution which 
 he loyally obeys, and without hatred of capital. At his side 
 
216 OUTRE-MER 
 
 swarms the immense crowd of workingmen of foreign race, 
 ignorant of the history of a country which is to them only 
 a last card to play against destiny, not understanding this 
 country, — I might say hating it for all the disappointments 
 they have undergone. 
 
 A few months ago, going along the Missouri, I was gazing 
 upon the former America of other days, through the America 
 of to-day, and the first struggle for extermination between the 
 redskins and the Anglo-Saxons of the last century. This first 
 outgrowth of civilization ends again in a conflict between men 
 of alien blood. Will the Grand Republic, issued from the 
 first Massachusetts colonists, so closely, so necessarily Anglo- 
 Saxon in language and laws, uprise, be broken and destroyed 
 by these foreign elements, these last few years, seeing that 
 she seems no longer to absorb and transform in the same way 
 as formerly? Class struggle is here only an appearance; at the 
 bottom is an ethnic duel, and one may follow its motions in 
 the history of the "labor movement," as they say here, detail 
 by detail, almost year by year. 
 
 One of the best-informed economists of this country. Pro- 
 fessor Richard Ely, has written this history with much con- 
 scientiousness and impartiality. Although he has placed 
 himself simply at the point of view of an analyst, the succes- 
 sion of facts, as he gives them, shows at once the alternation 
 of one current with the other, the American current and the 
 foreign, in this vast flood of the laboring inundation. Thus 
 also, at their confluence, the two shades of color in the waters 
 persist long without mingling. 
 
 Would you, first of all, see the American soul at its work? 
 See it struggling with those first experiments in communistic 
 organization which it attempted, and which in madness of 
 principle exceed the worst Utopias of the most extravagant 
 collectivism. You will find this soul here like itself, — all 
 will and in consequence, first of all, occupied with problems 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 217 
 
 of responsibility; — all action and in consequence, deeply, 
 thoroughly realistic in the details of its enterprise, even when 
 the final aim is a chimera. 
 
 For example, there is the community of Perfectionists at 
 Oneida, senseless as it was in its first conception. A graduate 
 of Yale founded it, in company with other graduates of the 
 same university. These young men were so exhilarated with 
 their absurd logic that they included free love in their scheme, 
 on the ground that exclusivism is no less culpable where the 
 person than where property is concerned. When you study the 
 practical regulations of a society whose principles are so con- 
 trary to the most profound instinct of human nature, you are 
 thunderstruck on seeing men, of doctrines so Utopian, become 
 psychologically most wise and accurate in their application. 
 To cite only one illustration, you will find mutual criticism 
 an organic feature of this singular community, the right of 
 public and reciprocal criticism, "in order," they say, "to 
 utilize the wasted power of observation which in the world is 
 squandered in gossip and useless slander." Look into the 
 financial result of their experiment, and you will be convinced 
 of their sagacious administration by the balance-sheet of their 
 final settlement. Having, in 1881, abandoned their plan of 
 reform and resolved themselves into a simple co-operative 
 society, their assets were found to be six hundred thousand 
 dollars for two hundred persons, or three thousand dollars 
 apiece. They had begun with the most insignificant capital. 
 
 So with another community, not less exceptional in its 
 principles, the Shakers of Mount Lebanon. Under their 
 religious mysticism, their ruling characteristic is a wise and 
 practical acquaintance with the true conditions of human life. 
 Daniel Fraser, one of the oldest of the brethren, used con- 
 tinually to say : — 
 
 "The two bases of morality are the cultivation of the soil 
 and hygiene." 
 
218 OUTRE-MER 
 
 Regular habits, a scientifically arranged diet, well-drained 
 houses, well-ventilated rooms, and a carefully supervised tem- 
 perature, — to these minute details their ethic condescends, 
 and to still more humble ones. "At Mount Lebanon," says 
 Professor Ely, " I learned to close a door so softly that no one 
 could hear the slightest sound. ' That is a lesson in Shaker- 
 ism, ' Daniel Fraser said to me; 'it is Shakerism reduced to 
 the finest point.' " 
 
 Here you recognize, under an artless form provocative of 
 smiles, a scrupulosity, a watchfulness over self, which is itself 
 only one instance of their acute sense of responsibility. You 
 find in it also the same innocent realism of conventual life by 
 which monks so quickly became rich from the smallest be- 
 ginnings. Everything holds together in such communities, 
 and such a degree of discipline can hardly exist without a 
 superior degree of the virtues of order and economy. Is not 
 this pretty far removed from the sphere in which modern 
 revolutions have broken forth ? 
 
 But the social experiments of the Perfectionists and the 
 Shakers were entirely isolated and arbitrary. The character- 
 istics of the popular soul in the United States are more clearly 
 marked in the development of the simple labor associations. 
 For these associations have really been the work of the laboring 
 men, a sort of stock of civic implements made by themselves 
 for their own interest and according to their profound needs. 
 
 Here the two currents are the more clearly visible, because 
 the second appeared at a considerable time after the first. 
 Until after the War of Secession, the societies founded by 
 workingmen, almost without exception, manifested the dis- 
 tinctive features of the Anglo-Saxon race, in its American 
 variety. First, there were the trades-unions, entirely pro- 
 fessional and local, like those of England; for instance, the 
 typographical union of New York and that of house carpenters 
 in Boston, founded in 1812, 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 219 
 
 The programme of the latter society falls into the line of 
 those minds of which Robinson will ever be the ideal type, 
 perfectly indifferent to vast general theories, but positive, 
 moral, with a very individual power of initiative in the ser- 
 vice of their own interests, and with ardent Christian convic- 
 tions. The charter of the carpenters shows that they combined 
 with intent themselves "to govern their own affairs, to ad- 
 minister their own funds, to study the inventions peculiar to 
 their art, to assist the unemployed by loans of money, to sup- 
 port the sick and their families," 
 
 If one had talked with these fine fellows of a universal 
 reform, if one had advocated a forcible reconstruction of the 
 relations of employers and employed, a crusade of labor against 
 capital, they certainly would not have understood the meaning 
 of such dangerous words. They desired, as laborers, to im- 
 prove their condition as laborers, because, in fact, that is the 
 only practical and moral way, at once conformed to the precept 
 to render to Csesar the things that are Caesar's, and at the 
 same time truly useful, with an immediate certain utility. As 
 to that, is not this the complete statement of the social prob- 
 lem : to improve the rich man as a rich man, the noble as a 
 noble, the commoner as a commoner, the workingman as a 
 workingman? 
 
 This spirit of Christian realism and patient progress con- 
 tinued to inspire the larger unions, which, after 1825, bound 
 together the men of the same trade in different cities, or the 
 men of different trades in the same city. In 1833, Ely Morse, 
 the president of the general trades-unions of the city of New 
 York, in a remarkable address, which was the first utterance 
 of American socialism, spoke only of "elevating the intellect- 
 ual and moral condition of the workers, diminishing the line 
 of demarcation between workman and employer, and better 
 administering the pecuniary interests of the poor." 
 
 Still this general trades-union society already foresaw the 
 
220 OUTRE-MER 
 
 danger of violent means, for one of the articles of the agree- 
 ment forbade that "any trade section should enter upon a 
 strike for higher wages until the motives of such strike have 
 been investigated by the central council." Such, indeed, was 
 the nationalism of American workmen at that period, that 
 one of their chiefs, Stephen Simpson of Philadelphia, in a 
 manual which at once became very popular, condemned with 
 a thoroughly puritan indignation European ideas and litera- 
 ture as the source of all the errors of the United States. An- 
 other prominent labor leader in the same way announced the 
 necessity of "checking foreign encroachments, and hindering 
 their pernicious influence upon the moral and political health 
 of the country." 
 
 In fact, the associations, which rapidly increased until i860, 
 were almost all thoroughly, zealously patriotic. They were 
 such not only in their names but in their claims, which never 
 looked to be anything like an overturning of existing condi- 
 tions. A more humane limitation of the hours of labor, a 
 more generous distribution of aid, greater facilities for edu- 
 cation, a more equitable scale of wages, — ideas as moderate 
 and reasonable as these continually appear in their constitu- 
 tions. 
 
 To realize these, the workmen always relied upon the most 
 practical means and those most in conformity with the true 
 Anglo-Saxon spirit of free action and liberty; they asked for 
 individual subscriptions, they advocated clever electoral 
 methods, they founded newspapers, they studied technical 
 questions. Thus the American hatters' association, founded 
 in 1854, is chiefly interested in the question of apprenticeship. 
 It undertook to limit their number, in order at the same time 
 to limit the number of workmen among whom work must be 
 divided. 
 
 Following the various lines of their effort and their propa- 
 ganda, one feels inspired with profound respect for so much 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 221 
 
 conscience in the search for the better, for so manly an accep- 
 tation of their lot, for such constant and clear-sighted energy. 
 One sees how much the Yankee of good stock was worth, is 
 still worth, — he upon whom the strong tradition of the early 
 New England colonists is imprinted; and one becomes clearly 
 aware of the sudden astounding deviation of this movement 
 by the second current, that which has made possible such 
 speeches as those of Mr. Debs at Chicago, denouncing one of 
 the great companies of the country, as a barbarian chief might 
 denounce a city to be sacked : " We will side-track Pullman 
 and his cars together," and accusing the government of military 
 despotism for a mere calling out of the police ! 
 
 Immediately after the War of Secession foreign influence 
 began to make itself felt, and at the same time immigration 
 began to increase from year to year. Even during the war, all 
 Americans by birth or affection being in the army, foreign labor 
 began to replace native labor. This substitution went on during 
 the period that followed, which was marked by an enormous 
 revival of industry. More and more hands were needed, and, 
 as the means of transportation were becoming more and more 
 easy, immigrants came in flocks. The Atlantic became the great 
 conduit through which flowed all the malcontents of old Europe, 
 especially of Germany. 
 
 The latter country, the true fatherland of revolutionary social- 
 ism, had already, after 1848, sent to America the first agitators 
 who had sowed upon this soil of realistic individualism the seeds 
 of an absurd overturning and a bloody Utopia. They were not 
 destined to germinate until twenty years later. A tailor of 
 Magdeburg, Wilhelm Weiteling, imprisoned in his own country 
 for carrying on a revolutionary propaganda, came to New York. 
 Aided by Henry Koch, another German, he immediately 
 founded a German revolutionary society, the Arbeiterbund. 
 A third German, Weidemeyer, a friend of Karl Marx, was not 
 long in joining them. These three men may be considered as 
 
222 OUTRE-MER 
 
 very remarkable specimens of a type now common in the 
 United States, the cosmopolitan agitator, who imports into a 
 country of which he knows nothing revolutionary theories 
 which he has constructed with reference to the abuses of 
 another. 
 
 Both the convictions and the characters of all three were 
 entirely matured when they arrived. Weiteling was forty years 
 old, Henry Koch thirty-two. Weidemeyer had passed his whole 
 youth in conspiring in his native land. None of their ideas 
 were American, and none of the manifestations which they 
 stirred up, without immediate result however, were American. 
 Thus it was that a club of communists being founded in New 
 York, under their direction, in 1857, they decided to celebrate 
 the next year — what anniversary? That of the insurrection 
 of June in Paris ! Several thousand men and women took 
 part in it ; they belonged to all countries except America. 
 
 This society, this festival, and this club were the prologue 
 of the great drama of internationalism which is being played 
 to-day from Boston to San Francisco. The very word inter- 
 national had hardly been pronounced then. Now, and espe- 
 cially since in 1872 the grand council of the International 
 Association of VVorkingmen was transferred to New York, it 
 may be found in hundreds of programmes and in thousands of 
 articles pubhshed by newspapers which are printed in several 
 languages. 
 
 Even when the word is not there, the international spirit may 
 be recognized by the essential alteration of the principles on 
 which the truly American societies rested. In the first place, 
 there are no longer any religious declarations. Whether the 
 leagues bear the name Socialistic Labor Party, or International 
 Workingmen's Associations, whether they are called Inter- 
 national Working People's Association, or Central Labor Union, 
 the S. L. P., like the I. W. A., or the I. W. P. A., and the 
 C. L. U., are all alike in the absence of Christian ideas. In 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 223 
 
 the chief, the arrogance of materiahsm has taken the place of 
 the half-mystical solemnity of the workingmen still imbued 
 with the spirit of the " Pilgrim Fathers." " The Church," they 
 say roughly, " seeks ultimately to make complete idiots of the 
 mass, and to make them forego an earthly paradise by promis- 
 ing a fictitious heaven." 
 
 With Christianity, humility of heart has taken its leave, and 
 with it, the noble submission to the fundamental laws of human 
 life, formulated once for all in the Decalogue. No doubt, 
 certain orators still repudiate violence in the means, though 
 holding up revolution as aim. It is enough, however, to look 
 at their practice to understand that the foundation of every 
 man's thought conforms to the terrible expression of the Pitts- 
 burg manifesto, " Destruction of the existing class law, by all 
 means : that is, by energetic, relentless, revolutionary, and 
 international action." 
 
 From this point there is to be no more slow and wise solu- 
 tions, no more of that intelligent and purposed positivism which 
 is the very essence of the American soul. From any traditional 
 point of view we have had the last of these calls to the grand 
 War of Independence which brought together both poor and 
 rich in a common pride of belonging to the freest of peoples. 
 The spoiled children of the party expressed the sentiment 
 which the others scarcely concealed, when, unfurhng the black 
 flag at Chicago in 1884, they cried : — 
 
 *•' This is the first time that this emblem of hunger and 
 despair has appeared upon American ground. It proves 
 that this people has come to the same conditions as other 
 peoples." 
 
 The Freiheit, one of their organs, put into brusque words 
 what the Internationalists think of America : " Judge Lynch is 
 still the best and least costly tribunal in this country." 
 
 In all these tendencies you recognize the obscene and vio- 
 lent socialism of Germany, from which issued Russian nihilism 
 
224 OUTRE-MER 
 
 and French anarchism. This it is that three million Germans 
 have brought with them within thirty years ; this is the spirit 
 that effervesces in monstrous strikes like that of Chicago. This 
 is what flowed like a destroying metal into the moulds of the 
 associations so solidly and practically formed by the first Trade- 
 Unionists. Thanks to German socialism, these associations 
 are bloated and deformed. Veritable armies, whose soldiers 
 do not know one another, have been organized under the pre- 
 text of labor federations. The generals who manoeuvre them 
 are foreigners or the sons of foreigners, perfectly indifferent to 
 the happy future of the country whose hospitality they have 
 received. Even societies like the Knights of Labor, which 
 keep the grand tradition of Christian ideahsm, have been urged 
 by their new chiefs in the direction of international revolu- 
 tion, and Mr. Debs could exclaim a few months ago, with a 
 pride which was at least American in its conception of the 
 " record " : — 
 
 " We are going to have the greatest railroad strike that the 
 world has ever seen." 
 
 This perverse ranter had a hundred and twenty thousand 
 men behind him. 
 
 Sometimes it happens that a newspaper artist sums up 
 in the happy hit of a caricature a whole political or social 
 situation. Thus a picture in Fun, toward the end of the 
 Chicago strike, brought together in three figures and a legend 
 the entire significance of the strike and all its lessons. The 
 traditional Jonathan is standing beside a rocking-chair, his 
 hand in his pockets, a dead cigar in the corner of his beard- 
 less mouth. He has even forgotten to finish his glass of whis- 
 key and soda which he has set down upon the counter. His 
 thin melancholy face with its high cheek bones, lengthened by 
 the legendary goatee, is profoundly meditative. On his waist- 
 coat are the thirteen stars representing the thirteen original 
 States, which are also seen on his silver coins. Facing him, 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 225 
 
 a colossal policeman has by the collar a personage who might 
 be a Russian peasant or a Bavarian workman, in a flannel 
 shirt, trowsers tucked into his boots, and a soft felt hat : " I 
 was obliged to arrest you, Debs. It was not a strike ; it was a 
 revolution." 
 
 Jonathan utters this remark with the serious phlegm of one 
 who understands and wills. What does he understand but that 
 the newcomers are about to carry on in his country a work 
 irreparably hostile to all his ideas, his conscience, and his past. 
 , What he wills, is to hinder at all costs, were he to die in the 
 attempt, such a disintegration of his country. The formida- 
 ble movement at Chicago may have been so far good. The 
 problem had been stated with such tragic clearness that it was 
 necessary indeed to affront it ; and it is to the honor of Mr. 
 Cleveland that he acted with regard to this Western affair, in 
 proportion to its importance, as Mr. Lincoln firmly acted with 
 the South. 
 
 This first episode is probably only a prologue. Looking 
 upon the map of the United States, and reflecting that between 
 Chicago and the Pacific all the cities of this immense country 
 are peopled with these newcomers, one sees the menacing 
 possibility of a scission between the two parts of the vast con- 
 tinent which will have nothing in common, neither memories 
 nor ideas, nor aspirations, nor even a language. Again the 
 image of Lincoln arises, with face like that of Jonathan in the 
 caricature, and you think that if he were to return to that 
 Chicago whence he went forth, and which has become so 
 terribly Germanized since his death, he also would utter the 
 word of conflict : — 
 
 "Obliged to arrest you." 
 
 Just as the question of slavery was only a battle-field for the 
 
 clashing of two contradictory civilizations, of the South and 
 
 of the North, it sometimes appears as if, at the present time, 
 
 the East and the West were also about to seek a field in which 
 
 Q 
 
226 OUTRE-MER 
 
 to measure their strength, or, rather, the America of Americans 
 and the America of foreigners. The Silver Bill was one of 
 these fields. The Chicago strike was another. • The social 
 question is a permanent one, upon which, perhaps, the deci- 
 sive battle will be fought. The grand formulae of social re- 
 forms have no more meaning nor any more sincere adherents 
 in the United States than in France. The infinite complexity 
 of a civilization is not modified at the bidding of even the 
 most justified of our revolts, or the most intelligent of our 
 theories. Except a few insane people, everybody in his inner 
 heart admits this too evident truth, though almost every one 
 says the contrary. 
 
 Under these problems, which every one knows are insoluble, 
 throb other forces, real and not to be resolved. The day when 
 excessive immigration shall have truly created two Americas 
 in America, the conflict between these two worlds will be as 
 inevitable as that between England and Ireland, between Ger- 
 many and France, between China and Japan. Not against his 
 employer will the American workman of New York and Phila- 
 delphia be led to make war, his employer and he will end by 
 acting together against the foreign workman. 
 
 To sum up, in this vast democracy a very peculiar form of 
 civilization has been elaborated, Anglo-Saxon in its origin. 
 Another is in process of elaboration, through cosmopolitan 
 associations, with nothing in common with the former. If the 
 second form comes, by way of too widespread strikes and too 
 violent illegalities, to a weakness of the whole national life, 
 a civil war will break out. 
 
 Pessimists insist that such war is very near. Optimists 
 point out that immigration, on the one hand, appears to have 
 diminished; on the other, that assimilation, though become 
 more slow and very difficult, yet goes on in an irresistible 
 way, and that foreigners are becoming fewer and a little 
 more Americanized every year, almost every day. They dem- 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 227 
 
 onstrate that Christianity continues to dispute possession 
 of the revolutionary masses with materialism, and that the 
 Protestant pastors rival our Catholic bishops in zeal when 
 it comes to the people. Was it not a Reform minister who 
 uttered this fine exclamation, which was at first attributed to 
 the generous heart of Monsignor Ireland : — 
 
 "Theologians say that the problem is to bring the masses 
 into the Church. As for me, I affirm that the problem is to 
 bring the Church to the masses. The Church is the leaven. 
 The masses are the dough which it will leaven." 
 
 Optimists add that in America all the capitalists are still 
 men thoroughly penetrated with the primitive energy, and 
 that, in case of need, they will know how to defend their own 
 interest, with a personal vigor very different from the spiritual 
 weakness of the nobles of 1789 or the indolent cowardice of 
 the small European landowners in 1894. As to the psychol- 
 ogy which perceives in American society an experience with- 
 out analogue, the years to come will be more interesting here 
 than anywhere else, because, after having established the truth 
 of all the novelties of this New World, we remain astonished 
 on perceiving that fundamentally it is going, under particular 
 forms, through the same crises as the ancient world endured. 
 If the social problem in the United States was only a question 
 of nationalities, is the political problem of Europe, armed to 
 the death, to end in anything else ? So true it is that thoughts 
 and constitutions, doctrines and systems, are only appear- 
 ances, under which are hidden a number of facts, always the 
 same since the world was made, always real and indestructi- 
 ble, like duration and extent, first and last; conditions of our 
 whole being and activity, our triumphs and disasters. And 
 perhaps among the facts which are most indestructible, most 
 real, the most essential is that of Race. 
 
228 OUTRE-MER 
 
 11. Farmers and Cowboys 
 
 To estimate more accurately the revolutionary strength of 
 international socialism in the United States, we must know 
 which side the immense agricultural population of the West 
 would take, in case of a decisive conflict — the farmers who 
 produce the wheat by which all America and all Europe is 
 fed, the drovers who feed the gigantic packing-houses of 
 Chicago with such a continual procession of cattle. 
 
 Here the foreign element is indeed found, but entirely sur- 
 rounded, diluted, corrected by the national element. When 
 an Eastern man goes West, it is seldom with the intention of 
 becoming a workingman. He prefers to take the chances of 
 a more speedy fortune with the independence which inheres 
 in the cultivation of such fertile land, such productive horse 
 raising,^ or in prospecting for gold. He becomes farmer, 
 cowboy, or miner. Thus is explained that abandonment of 
 the rural homes of New England, of which I have already 
 spoken. But if it is difficult to divine the real thought of the 
 workingman, even when we know the plan of the associations 
 to which he belongs, the newspapers he reads, the speeches 
 he makes and listens to, the leaders whose influence he is 
 under, how much more difficult is it to fathom the mind of 
 the gold-digger in his placer, the horseman in his tent, above 
 all, of the farmer in his circumscribed life, his long medita- 
 tions, and the almost vegetative darkness of his own conscious- 
 ness? 
 
 We should, at all costs, understand this last, for he forms 
 the very basis of this immense population. But by what proc- 
 esses shall we attain to a knowedge of him? We know that 
 his lot is hard, worse than that, exhausting and murderous. 
 Travellers who have studied the laborer of Kansas, Missouri, 
 
 1 The average of births, which is not more than 50 per cent in a state 
 of civilization, reaches 70, 80, and 90 per cent in the prairie. 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 229 
 
 Iowa, in his log-house, agree in describing him as put to the 
 severest strain of all the much-tried inhabitants of the New 
 World. The log-house, the little house of ill-squared trunks, 
 is built in a corner of the prairie, his vast domain, burned by 
 a torrid sun in summer and buried in snow in winter. The 
 principal ornament of the room is an engraving of the death 
 of Lincoln, — the last episode of a life begun like this, and 
 which went, according to the popular play upon words, " from 
 the log-house to the White House," from a hut like this to the 
 little white palace in Washington, by way of how many severe 
 efforts, continued, struggles, hardships continually renewed ! 
 
 The farmer, for his part, nourishes no such ambition, not 
 even for his sons. He wants to live and to have his farm pay. 
 He wears himself out in this struggle, and his wife dies of it. 
 The courageous creature has long kept to herself the palpita- 
 tions that rent her heart whenever she climbed to the garret 
 in the cold mornings, the cracking of her joints when she 
 lifted any burden, the shivering fevers of her sleepless nights.^ 
 The doctor lives several miles away, and each visit costs from 
 five to ten dollars. She goes on trying the patent medicines 
 advertised in her newspaper, following the advice of the neigh- 
 bors, above all, hiding her sufferings from her husband, till 
 she drops at last, and goes away, leaving him alone with his 
 children on the little demesne covered with mortgages. 
 
 And yet these farmers, who labor under such cruel condi- 
 tions, appear, when they have occasion to bring forward their 
 private opinions, to be as wise and as respectful of the rights 
 of others as'the strikers of Illinois and California are unreason- 
 ing and fierce. The widespread association by which they 
 guard their common interests, "the Grange," has always kept 
 itself sedulously outside of political movements. It assumes, 
 as its name indicates, to be at the service not only of agricul- 
 
 1 Cf. in Scribner''s Magazine for March, 1894, a striking picture of such 
 an existence, "The Farmer in the North." 
 
230 OUTRE-MER 
 
 tural laborers but of the entire agricultural class, — "the 
 Grange, or the patrons of husbandry." To say all in one 
 word, its merits are such that in the book by- Aveling, already 
 cited, appear the following significant words : — 
 
 " It may in time become leavened with the leaven of the 
 general working-class movement, but as it is at present con- 
 stituted the Grange is more likely to be a hindrance to that 
 general movement than a help." 
 
 What shall we conclude, if not that once again the land 
 has done its moralizing work? It has given man the great, 
 the unique virtue, in teaching him to accept himself, as he 
 accepts the order of the months, the slow growth of the har- 
 vests, the rain, the snow, the wind, the sun, all the apparent 
 and necessary wrongs of the seasons. 
 
 One characteristic of these Western farmers may be dis- 
 cerned at the first approach; it is a thirst, a hunger, almost a 
 fever of desire, to know, an intense, even violent, passion for 
 the things of the mind, which explains how so many remarka- 
 ble men in the United States have been farmers' sons. This 
 shade of character is so completely unexpected in these rough 
 men that at first one does not believe it when the Americans 
 tell you of it, some of them in complaint, some in admira- 
 tion. The former deplore the excessive seriousness of the 
 national character, which ends they say in a constant excess 
 of work, an absolute incapacity to enjoy anything, "to enjoy 
 himself," as they say. The others see in it the presage of that 
 sovereignty in the civilized world which is the secret dream 
 of all full-blooded Yankees. 
 
 Whatever conclusion may be drawn from it, the fact re- 
 mains. I have assured myself of it, not once but twenty 
 times, thirty times, only by studying the crowd which thronged 
 around the Exposition buildings in Chicago — now burned, 
 because to take them down would have been too slow a proc- 
 ess. When I visited them they were in the splendor of their 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 231 
 
 whiteness and their fleeting glory. With their capitals copied 
 from Rome and Athens, their slender domes, the chaotic 
 medley of their composite architecture, they gave the idea of 
 a dream city, a city of vision suddenly appearing on the bor- 
 ders of Lake Michigan vast as a sea, whose bright green 
 waters dashed against the columns of a gigantic portico. Yes, 
 it was truly a glorious scene in the fine days of early autumn, 
 raised up as by a wish, for the pleasure of this great nation of 
 toilers, called together there as to a meeting of joy and repose. 
 
 But, no. The multitude scattered along these walks and over 
 these lawns was more than all striking to a Parisian by the total 
 absence of both joy and repose. These people were neither 
 heedless nor lively. They went about examining the interior 
 and the exterior of the Exposition with a sort of blank avidity, 
 as if they were walking in the midst of a colossal lesson in 
 things. 
 
 "I don't care about seeing folks. I kin see folks to home. 
 I came to see what's made in the world." ^ 
 
 These words, overheard and reported by one of the chroni- 
 clers of this singular festival, were mentally uttered by all the 
 visitors. They were, for the most part, just these farmers, 
 come from the four quarters of the immense plain that stretches 
 from Montana to Kentucky and from Arizona to Wisconsin. 
 You could see them about two o'clock sitting on the ground, 
 with their families, around their State building, leisurely eat- 
 ing the provision of cold food which they had brought in a 
 pasteboard box. The coarse cloth of their garments, their 
 sunburnt faces, even their way of eating, without a table, and 
 with the ease of people accustomed to take their food in the 
 open air, — everything about them betrayed the fixed habits 
 of rural life. Their lunch finished, they began again their 
 indefinite, indefatigable walk, not of pleasure but of instruc- 
 
 ^ Scribner^s Magazine, March, 1894. 
 
232 OUTRE-MER 
 
 tion, application. How many of these rustic visitors have I 
 followed, as they went from the Hall of Mines to that of Elec- 
 tricity, or from the Transportation Building to the Woman's 
 Building, attentive, patient, obscurely reflective, and, it 
 seemed to me, even less interested in the machines, in the 
 prodigality of positive and material invention, than in the 
 exhibits that were more scientific, more useless, nearer to 
 the wide field of abstract speculation. 
 
 As I write these words, I see three of these personages — a 
 father and his two sons — motionless in a corner of the an- 
 thropological exhibit. They were looking at the colossal 
 mammoth, the enormous hairy elephant of before the deluge, 
 copied from that of St. Petersburg. All around them were 
 gathered the forms of animals and men that formerly inhabited 
 America, — races extinct or dying out, elk and caribous, 
 bisons and grizzly bears, Sioux and Apaches in their encamp- 
 ments, cliff-dwellers, those Troglodytes of the Grand Cafion 
 of the Colorado. 
 
 The farmer and his two sons took no notice of these things, 
 absorbed as they were by the colossus, the history of which 
 one of the sons was telling to his father. The latter listened 
 to the seventeen-year-old boy without taking his eyes from the 
 formidable beast, the silent giant, with his long recurv^ed 
 tusks. Did he feel the beauty of this ancient king of crea- 
 tion, so tall, so slight, so simple, nature's first success, very 
 evidently superior to the shapeless masses of the monsters, his 
 contemporaries, the plesiosaurus, the ichthyosaurus, the mega- 
 therion? What was this witness of distant ages, this traveller 
 in the forests of giant ferns, saying to the thoughtful colonist? 
 The boy ceased to speak ; the three men stood there without 
 exchanging a word. The grave countenance of the ignorant 
 father, the almost equally grave faces of the two better in- 
 formed boys, were bent forward with an expression of insa- 
 tiable curiosity. Did they, in their rudimentary condition, 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 233 
 
 feel that amazement, in view of the enigma of the world, 
 which is not so foreign to primitive minds as we in our pride 
 imagine, since it is these minds that have created the myths, 
 the poetry of legend, and, to say all in one word, the re- 
 ligions? 
 
 Did they ask themselves the reason of the rhythm of crea- 
 tion and destruction, which will carry us away in our turn, 
 after having carried away innumerable species? Why that 
 world before our own, the attempts and new attempts of 
 Nature, trying her powers, like a never-satisfied artist, in these 
 new beginnings, in which the indefinite power to produce for- 
 ever alternates with the impossibility of preserving? Is man 
 himself the limit of this evolution? His roots are so deeply 
 fixed in it, he is so distinct from it by the higher parts of his 
 being ! Thoughts, words, moral problems, what an abyss 
 divides these things from those ! What a miracle is the mere 
 astonishment of the thought in face of the miracle of destiny? 
 How new a thing, in this universe of blind instincts and un- 
 conscious needs! This gigantic elephant, but now the dispos- 
 sessed sovereign of our planet, did he ever look at another 
 creature with the thoughtful gaze with which this farmer and 
 his sons have enfolded him? 
 
 They begin at last to talk, without taking their eyes from the 
 admired animal, and I could hear in passing that they were 
 speaking of the Bible, pronouncing the name of Noah. Then 
 the squatter of to-day, like the men of a hundred years ago, in 
 burying himself in the prairie, carries with him the old book, so 
 dear to the Puritans, to be the companion of his solitude, his 
 work, and his thought. 
 
 It was written that I should see again the serious faces of the 
 father and his two sons, and that the same day I should collect 
 some very unexpected and still more significant information about 
 Western life. These vast fairs, which go by the pompous titles 
 
234 OUTRE-MER 
 
 of Universal Exhibitions, have at least this advantage, that they 
 bring about meetings elsewhere impossible, yet natural in this 
 Babel of people from all parts. I shall, therefore, simply nar- 
 rate both of these meetings, which, I may add, were purely 
 accidental. I do this with all the more pleasure, because it 
 gives me the opportunity to sketch, as if on the margin of this 
 travelling-journal, a rough draught of the most singular spectacle 
 which I have seen in America ; a session of the Parliament of 
 Religions, where I again met my three friends. 
 
 This Parliament was held in one of the halls of the Art Insti- 
 tute which stands, as it is quite in keeping that the Chicago 
 Museum should do, close by a railway station and a steamboat 
 landing. I went there one morning, deeply moved with the 
 expectation of a profound, religious impression. I received my 
 impression indeed, but entirely through the public ; the multi- 
 tude of humble folk, evidently working people, who crowded 
 the benches and chairs of the vast semicircle. With what 
 touching attention they listened, ready to receive the good word 
 — any good word. And with what surprise I recognized, seated 
 about ten chairs from me, the three persons who had so much 
 interested me by their way of contemplating the antediluvian 
 monster ! I felt a certain vanity of the astute observer, in per- 
 ceiving that I had not erred in attributing to these people a 
 regard for religious things. Their rugged faces wore the same 
 absorbed expression as before. Out of doors locomotive bells 
 were tinkling, trains puffing, steamboats whistling. Not one of 
 the fifteen hundred auditors gathered in this hall remarked the 
 strangeness of such noises at the door of this palace, just as no 
 one appeared to observe the astounding contrast which existed 
 between the true, simple, devout fervor of the audience, and the 
 sort of sacred parade that was going on upon the platform in 
 the rear, opposite a gigantic photographic apparatus set up in 
 the opposite side of the hall. 
 
 In fact, in spite of my good will, the feeling that, it was all a 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 235 
 
 parade forced itself upon me whenever I turned my eyes from 
 the crowd to the speakers' stage. There were thirty persons 
 sitting there that morning, — one of the last of the session: 
 first a Japanese in a coat of embossed silk, a dog-like face with 
 a pair of glasses across the flat nose and black moustaches 
 against a shining yellow skin. He was busily cutting the pages 
 of a pamphlet, without listening to what was going on, while 
 at his side an Indian robed in white, with very gentle, very 
 brown eyes in a face so swarthy that it looked burned, was 
 vaguely smiling in the visions of a half-sleep. A Chinese in a 
 blue robe, his body encased in a violet silk vest, and a black 
 cap with a red button on his head, was scanning the audience ; 
 his wizened little face was pale and thin, with a not too straight 
 nose. A Greek archbishop sat superb, with squared shoulders, 
 his long brown beard spread out over his gray almost yellowish 
 robe. Over it a black toga was draped, and the gold of the 
 chain from which hung his cross gleamed between the two stuffs. 
 He held a long, silver-headed cane in his hand, and his inexpres- 
 sive eyes shone with the brightness of a magician, set as they 
 were in a large face of a thick warm pallor and surmounted by 
 the high cap of a professor. 
 
 One of his priests sat beside him, a pappas, with long, ill- 
 kept hair, untrimmed beard, and delicate, sensual, ironical face. 
 Then came another Indian, twenty years old, perhaps, self- 
 sufficient in his ardent youth ; his dress intensely red, and his 
 turban intensely yellow. Around these Orientals were grouped 
 English pastors, rosy and shaven ; German professors, heavy- 
 bearded and sharp-eyed under their spectacles. A Frenchman 
 of delicate profile, but thin and worn, sat cross-legged, show- 
 ing feet elegantly shod in patent leather, with white jean gaiters. 
 A little in the background were two women : one, gray-haired 
 and fifty, with the abstracted and modest air of a poor school 
 teacher ; the other, young and beautiful, very dark, with cheeks 
 brown under their paint, her shoulders covered by a silk shawl 
 
236 OUTRE-MER 
 
 of mingled brilliant colors. Large gold cirplets jingled on her 
 wrists. And to make this composite exhibition as vulgar as it 
 was foreign, a fat, uncleanly man of forty-five, in the front row, 
 was fumbling at his nose with his fingers ; while a chairman, with 
 the voice of a showman, rose between two organ measures, to 
 introduce the speakers, with all the graces of an impresario. 
 
 I was wrong in looking thus minutely into the accidents of 
 this realization of a great idea, and my Western farmers were 
 right, like the other auditors, in seeing that idea beyond and 
 through these accidents. There was a moment when the three 
 heads were bent forward with more profound attention. A 
 speaker had risen, a celebrated minister of the Anglican Church. 
 He was a small man of about fifty, very thin and ruddy. The 
 black of his straight-cut coat and the white of his all-round 
 collar, without cravat, made his red face seem redder. He 
 began in a low voice, hardly audible. With a monotonous, 
 almost automatic, gesture, he indefatigably raised and lowered 
 his arm. By degrees, as he spoke, he warmed up, his body 
 straightened out, his foot beat the floor, his color grew more 
 purple, his voice deepened. For me, too, the absurdities of 
 the platform vanished. Here was that frenzy of religious 
 eloquence and passion which made Protestantism and its innu- 
 merable sects. When the words " Church of England " oc- 
 curred in his discourse, the orator's whole being trembled 
 with profound inspiration. You could hear it, could see it 
 thrill to the tips of his toes, as he raised himself upon them 
 in his earnestness. 
 
 " No ! " he once exclaimed; " it was not the English people 
 who made the Church, it was the Church of England that 
 made the English nation ! " 
 
 The.se words, uttered with furious emphasis, no doubt met 
 in his hearers a previously formed idea, a conviction that 
 national life must find its strength in religious life, for it 
 evoked a tempest of applause. I turned toward the father and 
 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 237 
 
 his two sons; they were clapping their hands, enormous hands, 
 that two hundred years ago would no doubt have applauded 
 the Lord Protector, and thirty years ago Lincoln, when he 
 uttered to the people the strange words announcing that the 
 war would last 
 
 "Until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid 
 for by another drawn by the sword." 
 
 These men, with their intense faces, have without doubt 
 drawn their tragic vision of divine justice directly from the 
 Bible. It alone explains their almost anxiously serious re- 
 sponse the other day to the reminder of the deluge, and to- 
 day to the representatives of their faith. If there are many 
 like them, the socialistic atheists may conquer the villages, 
 but they will never get any hold upon the fields of the West. 
 
 My curiosity with regard to these three men was so lively 
 that I believe I should have followed and tried to speak with 
 them if I had not myself been seized by the arm at the moment 
 the audience rose at the sound of the organ. I turned, and 
 found myself face to face with a celebrated Parisian physician, 
 whom, if his name had been spoken, I should have fancied 
 anyAvhere rather than at Chicago, — in his magnificent apart- 
 ment in the Boulevard Haussman, in the clinic of the Lari- 
 boisiere hospital, in his laboratory-at the medical school. He 
 had made the most of an official pretext of a hygienic congress 
 to cross the Atlantic and see American civilization with his 
 own eyes, object, as it had been, of so many capricious judg- 
 ments. In two words he had explained his journey to me, 
 and presented to me a great fellow of perhaps thirty-five, also 
 a Frenchman, who accompanied him, and whom by his thin, 
 clean-shaven face, his somewhat stiff attire, and the decision 
 of his glance, I took for a civil officer. 
 
 I had not taken five hundred steps with my two compatriots 
 before I found myself interested in this young man to such 
 an extent that I no longer regretted the mischance which had 
 
238 OUTRE-MER 
 
 made me lose sight of my friends of the anthropological ex- 
 hibit and the Parliament of Religions. I learned from the 
 doctor that the man before me was one of the most daring 
 adventurers of the West, such as for several weeks I have much 
 desired to see. M. Barrin-Cond^ — I will designate him by 
 this name — had in fact left France fourteen years before, to 
 start a ranch in the Rocky Mountains, and had lived there 
 eight consecutive years. The accident of a short excursion 
 having led him to Toronto, Canada, in the course of his 
 exile, he there met a young girl with whom he fell in love. 
 To marry her he had changed his mode of life, sold out his 
 ranch in North Dakota, and taken root in the city of his 
 fiancee, now his wife. He had founded a steamboat company, 
 which he administered with the same superior good sense and 
 energy as formerly his ranch; it had now monopolized the 
 major part of the traffic of the great lake. 
 
 It is rare, indeed, and most pleasant, to meet in a foreign 
 land a Frenchman in whom survives a spirit of enterprise 
 equal to that of the Anglo-Saxons, one so loves to convince 
 oneself by his presence that our race has kept the same qual- 
 ities of enterprise that once made it the great conquering 
 power; to talk over the country with a man who himself has 
 seen its lower side is deeply- interesting ! In short, I did not 
 leave the doctor and his companion the whole day long. I 
 was never weary of asking the latter about his life at Lance- 
 Head, — so his breeding-farm was called, from the sign with 
 which his horses were marked, — about the folk among whom 
 he lived, their manners, their ideas, and about his own ideas. 
 He answered me quietly, simply, with that accuracy of speech 
 that belongs to the man of action. There was in him some- 
 thing of the wild dignity that Cooper gave his " Leatherstock- 
 ing." But it was a Leatherstocking who had kept up with our 
 literature, having been careful, through all his rough life, not 
 to fall behind in intelligence. 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 239 
 
 1 remember that we finished this day — which on my part 
 had been one long interrogation, and on his a long response — 
 by an hour in an orchestra chair of one of the great Chicago 
 theatres. As if to make the occupations of this evening a 
 perfect contrast to those of the morning, chance would have 
 it that we saw Tarfufe given by Coquelin and his troupe. I 
 had been proud of my country while talking with M. Barrin- 
 Conde, and I was again proud on seeing this admirable piece 
 played as it was, even before a half-filled hall. And what 
 spectators'. Almost all followed the copy in a translation, 
 and we could hear the leaves of the pamphlet all turned over 
 at one time. But what mattered that to Coquelin 1 The great 
 artist seemed not even to know that there was a public. He 
 evidently played for himself, with the conscientiousness and 
 the care for his art which he would have displayed on the 
 stage of the Rue de Richelieu at his first performance. He 
 was still studying it, still studying himself, ever applying him- 
 self to reveal more clearly the moral anatomy of his character. 
 -And in Chicago, where all extravagances, all improvisations 
 prevail, Tariufe appeared finer than ever by its strong and 
 true simplicity, by the genius for moderation and delicacy, 
 which always kept itself at the level of a man, if one may 
 say so, neither above nor below, neither on this side nor 
 on that. There is something of Philippe de Champaigne 
 in Moliere, something of the vigorous but sober, ardent but 
 judicious painter in whose portraits you ever find something 
 to admire more deeply, and which never leave you anything 
 to take back on reflection. Although the doctor and I 
 had seen this piece thirtj' times, and had seen Coquelin in 
 this part at least ten times, we were as much taken by the 
 dialogue and the play as at the first time. As for the former 
 "cowboy" of Lance-Head, as he called himself, he entirely 
 ceased to speak during the whole play, between the acts in- 
 cluded. 
 
240 OUTRE-MER 
 
 "You do not know," he said, as we went out and walked 
 along toward Michigan Avenue, " no, you do not know how 
 much, how painfully, those who live as I have lived feel the 
 want of the intellectual stimulus of the theatre, and how we 
 value an evening like this. See here," he added, turning to 
 me, "you were laughingly asking me, after dinner this even- 
 ing, if I had not some time raided a train in the West, and 
 I did not answer you. The fact is, my friends arid I did at- 
 tempt nothing less one day, or, rather, one night, than to carry 
 off from one of the great transcontinental express trains — 
 guess whom? Sarah Bernhardt herself! She never knew 
 anything about it, however." 
 
 " And how many may you have been for such an expedi- 
 tion? " I asked. 
 
 "Oh, very few; but you need not think it is hard to stop 
 one of these important trains. When we were planning this 
 fine scheme, we tested it, — rehearsed it, — forgive the word, 
 since we are speaking of an actress. We learned that Sarah 
 Bernhardt was to pass through Green River, Wyoming, a week 
 later. We wanted to know if it would be possible to stop a 
 train long enough to carry out our project. There were eleven 
 of us knights of the ' round up ' as they say out there, all well 
 mounted, all with that sort of ardor for danger which in youth 
 so easily leads to a misuse of strength. We posted ourselves, 
 in broad daylight, at a place where the line made such sharp 
 curves that the express was obliged to slow up. It appeared 
 in sight. One of us galloped alongside of the locomotive, 
 guiding his pony with his knees, covering the engineer with 
 his rifle. I did the same on the other side. The engineer 
 stopped his train. Our comrades dismounted and went 
 through the train, with revolvers cocked, crying ' Hands up ! ' 
 We risked a terrible scrimmage if there had been a man there 
 plucky enough to draw his weapon. Luckily there was not. 
 While the terrified travellers were hurriedly opening their 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS • 241 
 
 valises to buy their liberty, the pretended robbers had already 
 remounted, and away we went, firing our pieces into the air." 
 
 "How about the police?" I asked. 
 
 "They were represented," replied M. Barrin-Cond6, "by 
 a sheriff who lived eighty miles off, and who, I think, is still 
 investigating the matter. And besides, — for everything in the 
 West has its grotesque side, and it all seems natural enough 
 when one is carried along by this life, — we were all masked, 
 or at least our faces were muffled in handkerchiefs. Though 
 the experiment was successful, we perceived one danger. 
 We wanted to play a joke, which I leave it to you to qualify, 
 but we did not wish to run the risk of killing or being killed. 
 We decided, therefore, to carry off Sarah Bernhardt from the 
 station itself. Her train was due at Green River at eleven 
 fifty-two. We were to rush into her car, carry her out by 
 main force, put her in a buggy, and gallop off at full speed. 
 Some of the party were to protect our retreat with their revol- 
 vers. One of us, a certain Sarlat, who is now a captain of 
 infantry in Africa, was charged to board the train at the pre- 
 ceding station. It was understood that he was to wave his 
 handkerchief at the door of the parlor car in which the great 
 actress might happen to be, for it would be necessary to act 
 promptly and to the purpose. Such an operation is always 
 a little dangerous in a village. 
 
 "Sarlat, therefore, set off, as it had been arranged, and we 
 waited patiently at the station, grouped on horseback around 
 the buggy. Perhaps if you had heard our remarks, you would 
 have decided that this unreasonable attempt was even more 
 ingenuous than unreasonable. No doubt our illustrious guest 
 would struggle. She would have hysterics. We should have 
 to bind her. But once at the ranch, we should make her 
 amends by our respect. She should be received like an em- 
 press. We should obtain her pardon and would live over again 
 a few days of France, getting her to recite for us the finest 
 
 K 
 
242 • OUTRE-MER 
 
 passages in her repertory. The train did not arrive till mid- 
 night, and then we saw Sarlat get down, with no handker- 
 chief in sight. Sarah Bernhardt had passed through the town 
 an hour earlier, by the Salt Lake City express." 
 
 This extraordinary story vyas told so naturally, it represented 
 customs so peculiar to the country, it showed such a curious 
 medley of delicate civilization and savage life, that I did not 
 rest until I had extracted from M. Barrin-Cond6 a promise to 
 send me some of his notes regarding his residence at Lance- 
 Head, his journal, if he had kept one, a few recollections at 
 least. He promised, but several weeks passed before I re- 
 ceived the papers I asked for, or even any news of the young 
 man. He had gone back home, and I went on travelling over 
 the vast Republic. I was persuaded that the documents of 
 which I had so unexpectedly learned would never reach me. 
 They found me, however, when I had given up expecting 
 them. Whether it was the pleasure of an agreeable disap- 
 pointment, — -we so seldom enjoy one! — or whether it was 
 really the originality of his confidences, it seemed to me that 
 they were worth transcribing just as they were, without com- 
 mentary. What analysis could be as valuable as the testimony 
 of the man of action, who has seen that of which he speaks, 
 not, like a learned man, in the pages of books, not in the 
 amateurish way of one who travels for pleasure, but as one 
 who could do no otherwise. 
 
 Perhaps, also, the place where I received the packet with 
 a Toronto stamp made me more than ever sensitive to the 
 picturesque quality of these pages. It was in October, in a 
 quiet, deserted hotel, among the fallen leaves, beside the 
 Falls of Niagara, which are still, in spite of the declamations 
 of guide-books, one of the noblest and most striking specta- 
 cles in this world. All that men may build around it, of 
 bridges, stairways, balustrades, all the paths they may make, 
 or the advertisements they may stick up, cannot affect the 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 243 
 
 inviolable and mighty beauty of these two great cascades. 
 How I loved the slow, soft slide, the monotonous fall of the 
 tremendous current over the edge of the rock, that here forms 
 a sharp right angle ! How 1 loved the deep wail, the com- 
 plaining murmur, — so much sadness in so much power, — and 
 the wavering mist, that cloud of humid incense that floats 
 above the lowest fall, rising, transparent in whiteness, above 
 the great green mass. Yes, and I loved it, in that season of 
 the year, the autumnal softness, the golden woods of Goat 
 Island, without a bird, with only this strange sobbing sound 
 to fill them and speak of the irrevocable end of summer, — 
 symbol of the inevitable flowing away of life! 
 
 As I walked about in these groves, so dishonored by adver- 
 tisements, I regretted the coming of the white man, the civi- 
 lized being, who is so much more destructive than the savage. 
 I thought of the cruel but simple-minded Indians, the yellow, 
 tattooed warriors, who respected nature and did not mutilate 
 her. I cursed the civilized man for having defaced this 
 admirable landscape with those factory chimneys, that pour 
 forth their black smoke toward heaven, and those wrought- 
 iron elevator towers". I felt the need of calling up before me, 
 in this scene of grandeur, a freer, more hardy existence, more 
 conformed to the mysterious and tragic beauty of this great 
 river, so suddenly precipitated into this gulf. 
 
 The narrative of the colonist adventurer of Lance-Head 
 doubtless met this wish. Nevertheless, reading the manu- 
 script over in cold blood, I still think that it does not need 
 such a setting, and I have no hesitation in copying it here, 
 hardly modifying it in any respect. The reader will judge 
 whether it would be easy or difficult to engage in revolution 
 men who live in the atmosphere of danger and conquest which 
 exhales from these unquestionably true notes. He will also, 
 it seems to me, more easily understand the reasons why energy 
 and will are here developed, even to hypertrophy. And per- 
 
244 OUTRE-MER 
 
 A 
 
 haps the incongruity of -the circumstances under which these 
 pages reached me, and which I have reproduced at the risk of 
 breaking the apparent unity of my own study, will give a truer 
 picture of all that is chaotic and arbitrarily connected in 
 American life. 
 
 You visit an exhibition where antediluvian monsters are 
 lighted up by electricity ; you attend meetings where religious 
 fervor alternates with charlatanism ; you see plays by Moliere 
 given by fine actors to an audience of barbarians, next door to 
 a theatre where Shakespeare's plays are given by English actors ; 
 you rub elbows with Kansas farmers and Parisians ; you go in 
 a Pullman car to scenes of nature, such as Chateaubriand 
 described, — and all these madly complex impressions group 
 themselves at last around a story told by a former volunteer, 
 once garrisoned for a year in some Httle provincial French 
 town, of his adventures in an unexplored valley of the Rocky 
 Mountains ! 
 
 A cowboy's story 
 
 My ancestors were originally from Florence, whence, about 
 1270, they, with several other GhibelHnes, emigrated to 
 Dauphiny. We were then called Barberini, though without 
 ever having had anything in common with the noble Romans 
 of that name. From Barberini we became Barberin, then, by 
 some means, Barrin. About the end of the twelfth century a 
 certain Raymond Barrin headed a troop of young men to hunt 
 out certain brigands that infested the district. " He fought like 
 a Cond6," every one said. The name stuck by him, and we 
 have kept it ever since. 
 
 Whether it was that I heard much in my childhood of the 
 ancestor whose name I bear, or whether it was simply the 
 inheritance of a restless race, always ready for action, certain it 
 is that while yet a youth I began to dream of adventures. 
 When, on quitting the regiment, I found myself once more in 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 245 
 
 my father's house, with no other prospect before me than to 
 grow old there, indolent and useless, the thought of such a fate 
 became physically insupportable. 
 
 Yet I loved my family, I loved our house, I loved Dauphiny, 
 its rugged mountains^ its clear sky, its peasants and their 
 accent, and, above all, the past which they represented to me. 
 I had always been a man of the former time, a devotee in every 
 sense you may choose to give to this word. You might have 
 seen me on the eve of departing for the United States going 
 to our village cemetery, kneeling upon our family tomb, and 
 picking up some of its pebbles ; I have them still. But nothing 
 could prevail against the appetite for action which consumed 
 me, urging me, though so young, to cross the seas. 
 
 I must add that being a Royalist by tradition and conviction, 
 it would have seemed to me a crime to serve the Republic. I 
 had no commercial acquaintance nor any capital that would 
 enable me to set up in business, while to think of marrying an 
 heiress was revolting to my pride. 
 
 In short, in November, 188-, I returned as a volunteer to 
 my regiment. By December my resolution was taken ; I would 
 seek my fortune in America. In February I embarked at 
 Liverpool with a friend of my boyhood, an Englishman, the 
 
 Honorable Herbert V , who had decided to go with me. 
 
 We took with us four stallions, two percherons, two Arabs, and 
 my regimental groom. We were going to set up a little stud 
 farm in the Black Hills of Dakota, and had been in corres- 
 pondence with a ranchman of that country, named Johnson. 
 Our entire capital for this enterprise was the support of this 
 man, whom it happened that some of Herbert's friends knew, 
 our four horses, and a draft for thirty thousand francs. I for- 
 got to mention our youth and energy. Many people have 
 begun under worse auspices. 
 
 The steamer, which from motives of economy we had 
 chosen, went partly by the aid of sail, so that we were seven- 
 
246 OUTRE-MER 
 
 teen days in reaching New York. The passage was pretty 
 rough, but I do not suffer from the sea, and as I had not only 
 to take care of my comrade and my groom, both of whom 
 were very ill, but also of the horses, I had no leisure for 
 melancholy thoughts at the beginning of my exile. The first 
 heartrending sense of expatriation took possession of me in the 
 tumult of the great American city, amid the crowd whose 
 language I did not know, and whom at first I found so uncouth, 
 so hostile, more than all, so different from what I was used to. 
 We were lodging in Brooklyn, at the recommendation of the 
 ship's captain that we might find good stabling near the railway 
 stations. Several days we spent in visiting the town, which 
 with its hastily-built houses, some so high, the others so low, 
 with their tall iron chimneys, and the fever of its populace, 
 gave us the impression of something wild and monstrous. To 
 fill up the measure of our wretchedness, our hotel was a verit- 
 able den of drunkenness and prostitution, where we came near 
 losing all we had the very first week of our arrival, as the result 
 of a stupid adventure. 
 
 Herbert and 1 had spent the first four evenings at the theatre. 
 The fifth, proposing to go to bed early, we had gone into the 
 bar-room to smoke awhile after dinner. Some women and a 
 few men were there. One of them, a great hulking fellow, a 
 former soldier, red-haired, wall-eyed, with a bulldog face, took 
 upon himself to talk loud to one of the girls, looking at us the 
 while. A coarse laugh that followed would have irritated me 
 even if Herbert had not at my request interpreted the fellow's 
 imbecile joke. He had said to the girl : — 
 
 "Get that Frenchman to take you. He must be a 
 
 They all are." 
 
 1 omit the insulting word he made use of. I sprang up, 
 roughly shaking off Herbert, who would have detained me, and 
 walked straight to the man. Seeing me coming, but trusting 
 to his strength, he began to defy me with a smile which I can 
 
 i 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 247 
 
 still see, with the shining of a gold-plugged tooth which he had 
 on the left side of his mouth. I gave him a blow of my fist full 
 in the face with such strength as to bring the "claret," as they 
 say in America ; that is, his face was bathed in blood. I had 
 practised boxing in the regiment and was very nimble, and I had 
 the good luck to avoid his return blow — he was slightly drunk 
 — and to hit him a second time in the stomach, throwing him 
 to the ground. I expected a scuffle, and drew back to face the 
 others when, to my surprise, they uttered a murmur of admira- 
 tion. The singular audience were applauding my pugilistic 
 talent. They carried off their friend, but that very evening the 
 proprietor of the hotel said briefly to Herbert : — 
 
 "The gentleman would better change his quarters. Jim 
 Russell is not the man to put up with that without taking his 
 revenge." 
 
 Although neither Herbert nor I was easily frightened, the 
 idea of being hindered at the very outset of our enterprise by 
 a low quarrel like this seemed to us so absurd that we decided 
 not, as our host had advised, to change our lodgings, but to take 
 our departure. The very next morning we took the conti- 
 nental express-freight train, with our horses and our luggage. 
 It would take seven days — a whole week — for us to reach 
 the town of Sydney in Nebraska, where we had appointed to 
 meet Johnson. It would have been easy to send our horses 
 by this train and ourselves to take the regular express train. 
 But our first impression of American life had thus been so 
 disagreeable that we thought ourselves in a barbarous country, 
 and would neither separate from one another nor lose sight of 
 our stallions for a minute. 
 
 We made the whole journey then, in the same car as the 
 beasts. This method of locomotion was so uncomfortable that 
 we paid no attention to the country through which we passed. 
 I remember nothing of this singular journey across the im- 
 mense continent as wide as Europe, except that at Chicago we 
 
248 OUTRE-MER 
 
 had to resist by force four " tramps," who entered our car in- 
 tending to hide behind our horses and " steal a ride " — that is 
 their expression. These wayfarers of the United States have 
 the habit of passing over incredible distances crouched on the 
 floor of a freight car. At the entrance to the towns they jump 
 off — a tramp must necessarily be something of a gymnast — 
 and get aboard of some other train just going out, having, if 
 possible, joined some more productive rapine to their theft of 
 a ride. In general, these poor fellows are inoffensive ; but not 
 being familiar with the picturesque features of American vaga- 
 bondage, we supposed ragamuffins who could board moving 
 trains to be dangerous robbers. I could laugh yet at the mem- 
 ory of the way they hopped over to the bank beside the track 
 at sight of the six revolvers that we pointed at them. We 
 should have deemed ourselves imprudent to have had only 
 one weapon apiece ! 
 
 Johnson, advised by telegraph, was indeed awaiting us at the 
 Sydney station ; but we were in fact only one stage nearer the 
 real end of our journey, — Custer City, two hundred and fifty 
 miles beyond. These miles we must cover on horseback, and 
 the seven days in the freight car had so shattered us that we 
 had not the courage to set forth at once. 
 
 At that time Sydney had the name of being one of the most 
 dangerous nests of thieves in the United States. The five 
 hundred inhabitants of the town — a veritable mushroom of 
 the railroad, which would have disappeared with it — spent 
 their time in a series of real battles, arming themselves with 
 guns and revolvers. We did not know this. But our new ex- 
 perience in Chicago had made us so wary that we resolved to 
 sleep on straw across the door of the stable where our Arabs 
 were lodged, for they had been quite too much observed as we 
 brought them in. It was well for us that we took this precau- 
 tion. Toward midnight, in spite of weariness, I was awakened 
 by a strange sound. I struck a match and distinctly saw the 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 249 
 
 end of a saw in the act of cutting the wood around the lock 
 that fastened the barn. I wrapped one of my hands in a hand- 
 kerchief and gripped the end of the saw, cocking my revolver 
 with the other, and uttering the only English oath that I knew 
 — you can guess what it was. The saw remained motionless, 
 and on the other side of the door I heard a click like that 
 which I had just made with my own weapon. 
 
 I aroused Herbert and my servant. Our three voices made 
 the robbers understand that we were in force. We heard re- 
 treating footsteps ; our horses were saved. But how could we 
 go to sleep again after this new alarm ? Our anxiety was so 
 great that we resolved to leave Sydney as we had left Brooklyn, 
 and not the next morning, not an hour later, but at once. We 
 saddled our horses with our own hands. We drew Johnson's 
 wagon from its shelter, put in our baggage, and harnessed the 
 horses. Thus equipped, we went out into the street to call up 
 to him in the hope of arousing him from his first sleep. He 
 had been playing poker and drinking whiskey all night, and 
 having by good luck won several hundred dollars, he was more 
 accommodating than we could have hoped. Besides, like 
 many Americans, he had a sentiment of national hospitality, 
 and was ashamed for his country of the robber-den where he 
 had met us. He was willing to go with us, and before dawn 
 we were on our way. 
 
 Our ride across the prairie lasted two long weeks, and I owe 
 to it the first pleasant impressions which I had experienced 
 since my departure from Dauphiny. This portion of the broad 
 territory that extends between Sydney and the Rocky Moun- 
 tains was not then the civilized country that it has since be- 
 come. At the present day several lines of railways furrow it ; 
 farms abound and the embryos of large and small towns. At 
 that epoch, from Sydney westward the vast prairie of Nebraska 
 presented no other trace of human life than passing cowboys. 
 
250 OUTRE-M L:R 
 
 driving before them some scattered herd. Ranch succeeded 
 ranch, with no road leading from one to another. The immense 
 extent of desert through which our cavalcade was moving ap- 
 pealed to us with a sort of savage charm, in which our feeling 
 of youth and of an unlimited future counted for much. The 
 desolate solitude inspired instead of saddening us, as our con- 
 tact with the foreign multitude had done. We no longer felt 
 ourselves weary, and we even drank with light hearts the abom- 
 inable alkaline waters that we scooped up from the crevices of 
 the ground — creeks, as they call them — to water our horses. 
 
 Our excitement increased as we drew near to the mountains 
 and entered the great forests of Douglas pines. The first 
 spring flowers were peeping through the grass. Transparent 
 running waters gushed out everywhere from fissures in the 
 quartz. The sky was blue and high above our heads ; and 
 besides, we were drawing near to Custer City, the town of 
 whose magnificence Johnson had been boasting ever since we 
 set out. We were looking forward to it as the Hebrews to the 
 Promised Land. Many a year has passed since then, years of 
 bitter struggle which count double and triple. Not one of their 
 sensations has effaced the intense strain of expectancy of that 
 April afternoon when our worthy friend led us up a hill at a 
 gallop, that he might proudly point us to the end of our hard 
 pilgrimage. He checked his horse, made signal to us to do 
 the same, and extending his arm he said : — 
 
 "There is Custer City." 
 
 I looked, my heart beating hard with hope. Why should I 
 blush to own to one moment of cowardice, the only one that I 
 knew in all my prairie life ? Tears that I could not restrain 
 suddenly gushed from my eyes — tears not of hope, but of 
 despair, tears wrung from me by atrocious disappointment, 
 the sudden collapse of all my high dreams. 
 
 A wretched mining-camp lay on the other side of the valley, 
 more miserable than the poorest hamlet in the Alps. And it 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 251 
 
 was to live there, in one of those hovels, in this remote corner 
 of the world, to struggle there, to die there, perhaps, that I had 
 left three thousand leagues behind me our little chateau in 
 Dauphiny, with its three square towers and its square donjon, 
 and in the chateau my mother, my sisters, everything that I 
 loved and that loved me ! 
 
 Then I looked at Herbert, and was ashamed that I, a French- 
 man, should have shown such weakness before this impassible 
 Englishman. He was Hghting his short pipe with the finest 
 possible coolness, although I saw well enough, from the trem- 
 bling of his hand, that the shock had been severe to him, also. 
 I have told you that I have always been a little religious. I 
 called to my aid the innermost forces of my soul. I offered 
 to God a prayer of thanksgiving for having protected me since 
 my setting forth, and asked him to protect me still. I put 
 myself into his hands, like a little child. My horse, El Mahdi, 
 pawed the ground, and neighed. It was his way of saying, 
 " Here is Custer City." I gathered up the reins, and, pressing 
 my knees against his flanks, set out at full speed for the city, 
 leaving my childish tears to be dried by the wind of my 
 headlong course. 
 
 So, under a glorious sunset, at the foot of Mount Calamity 
 Jane the " tenderfoot " Raymond died, on his first arrival 
 from Europe. And in his place arose the cowboy Sheffield, 
 — so named because of his knife-blade face, — he who wrote 
 these memoirs. 
 
 Some time later, about a month, I was quietly breakfasting 
 in Miller's bar-room, situated in the principal street, — Main 
 Street, — when a well-known miner, Big Browne, began to quarrel 
 with a cowboy who had left his ranch, Eddie Hutts. 
 
 Both drew their revolvers and fired at the same moment. 
 Browne fell stone dead. His opponent's ball had gone through 
 his head. But his ball had taken me square in the jaw, break- 
 ing the bone, and stopping near the artery. Miller, who pro- 
 
252 OUTRE-MER 
 
 fessed a particular esteem for Browne, has often, since then, 
 tried to excuse his friend, with the plea that the unfortunate 
 man had that morning taken a few too many " corpse revivers." 
 The Americans have a jolly lot of names for the various alco- 
 holic mixtures with which they delight to poison themselves : 
 " a widow's smile," " a sweet recollection," "an eye opener." 
 The most potent of all was the one used by Miller, the " corpse 
 reviver." There was some irony in the circumstance, since the 
 intemperance of that brute Browne nearly caused two deaths, 
 his own and mine. 
 
 I had sprung up when I found myself wounded, but I had 
 not strength' to take a step. Everything seemed to turn around 
 me, and I fell as if struck down by a blow. Consciousness 
 quickly returned, with that sort of lucid and unavailing atten- 
 tion that we have in dreams. I was lying on the ground near 
 Browne's dead body. I could have touched it by reaching out 
 my hand. Half a score of faces, all automatically moving 
 in the act of chewing tobacco, were gazing curiously upon 
 me, without any one thinking of coming to my aid. My 
 blood was still flowing upon the floor, and I was suffering 
 cruelly. I asked for a priest, but I spoke in French and no 
 one understood me. For that matter, the nearest was a hun- 
 dred and fifty miles away, and what need had I of a priest, to 
 die like Browne? One more or less doesn't count on the 
 prairie. 
 
 Seeing that not one of the men around me so much as 
 shifted the quid in his cheek, so indifferent were they to my 
 appeal, I began to shout, or rather to gurgle, the names of 
 Herbert and Johnson. Within a quarter of an hour my friends 
 both arrived, accompanied by an ill-favored personage in a 
 frock coat, with a ten days' beard, a battered silk hat, a white 
 necktie streaked with dirt, and diamond studs shining in his 
 frayed shirt. This was the celebrated Dr. Briggs, the princi- 
 pal physician in the Black Hills, a somewhat skilful surgeon, 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 253 
 
 though even the Americans thought him " rather fond of the 
 knife, you know." He was usually drunk at ten in the morn- 
 ing, but by good luck he was now sober. I had abundant 
 leisure to note the details of the picturesque dilapidation of 
 his costume; for having caused me to be laid upon the billiard 
 table he began to probe the wound, very gently, I must admit, 
 while drops of tobacco juice fell from his lips upon my face. 
 
 "Well!" he concluded, with a coolness hardly reassuring. 
 "The gentleman has had a lucky escape. The ball has just 
 grazed the artery. The bones will soon knit, but, as to the 
 ball, if he lets it remain it will by degrees wear through the 
 artery, and will suddenly burst sometime, causing internal 
 effusion and sudden death. If he prefers to have me remove 
 it, I can try, but I will answer for nothing. It is for him to 
 choose." 
 
 Herbert translated for me this redoubtable diagnosis. I 
 mentally performed my act of contrition and said that the 
 ball was to be removed. Before probing the wound, Briggs 
 had cleared the room of every one except Herbert and John- 
 son. He now called by name six of the men who were stand- 
 ing around the door, who ranged themselves, grave and in- 
 different, around the billiard table. 
 
 "Why?" I asked Herbert, who was still acting as inter- 
 preter. 
 
 "Well," replied Briggs, "these gentlemen are the first citi- 
 zens of the town, and they will testify that it is no fault of 
 mine if death occurs during the operation." 
 
 With these words I fell asleep under the sickish odor of 
 chloroform. When I awoke, I had a great slit in my throat 
 knd the ball in my hand. The best citizens disappeared, en- 
 chanted at having had this little morning " excitement." The 
 doctor received three hundred dollars. 
 
 A month later my jaw was well, but I had lost so much 
 blood that it was some weeks before I rejcovered strength. 
 
254 OUTRE-MER 
 
 As to Briggs, meeting him three years later at Rapid City, at 
 the time of a hotly contested election, he dragged me up to 
 the platform, exhibited me and my scar to fifteen hundred 
 loafers, and secured a brilliant victory over his opponent. It 
 appeared that I was his sole living witness to a successful 
 operation ! 
 
 This sample of the manners and customs then reigning in 
 Custer City will convince you that this abode of idleness, in- 
 temperance, and assassination did not keep us long. For that 
 matter, we could hardly make a living there. The smallest 
 necessaries of life were horribly dear, as in all mining towns. 
 For example, at Custer it never occurred to any one to ask 
 change for a nickel. The five-cent piece was the unit of ex- 
 penditure. It is hard to conceive of the ravages which such 
 trifles made in small incomes like ours. We resolved, there- 
 fore, to return to our original plan, and select a ranch, a wide 
 pasturage, watered by living streams, where we could devote 
 ourselves to horse breeding. 
 
 We had the luck to find almost immediately such a place as 
 we sought, and we named our little establishment Lance- 
 Head, because in digging the foundations of our house we 
 found an iron point, which had no doubt dropped many years 
 before from some Indian's arrow. With roughly hewn beams, 
 ill-planed boards, and wooden pegs, — nails were scarce in those 
 parts, — we managed to put up a sort of barrack for ourselves 
 and a stable for our horses. This work cost us no less than 
 six months' labor, during which we were too busy to concern 
 ourselves with the ranch itself. Now calculate : a fortnight's 
 voyage, five days in New York, seven on the railway, two 
 weeks on the prairie, come to more than a month. A month 
 of expectation, a month of illness, a month of convalescence, 
 make three months. Add to this six months devoted to our 
 wretched little building, and you have nearly a year since we 
 left our homes, — Herbert's in Derbyshire and mine in Dau- 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 255 
 
 phiny. And in the course of this time I had nearly died, we 
 had impaired our joint capital, and our sole acquisition was 
 this "log-house," this hut built with our own hands! 
 
 And we held this property only on condition of defending 
 it. The stream and pasturage had belonged to a former 
 proprietor, Bob, a well-known horse thief, called "Yorkey 
 Bob," from his native city. This rascal, by abandoning this 
 property, had forfeited all his rights in it. That, however, 
 was no reason why he should not undertake to fleece the new 
 occupants: and, in fact, having returned to Custer City, he 
 loudly proclaimed in Miller's "saloon" : — 
 
 " I shall soon settle up with those two European tenderfeet. 
 I'll teach them to enter upon my succession before my death ! " 
 
 This reassuring remark was reported to us by Dr. Briggs, 
 who lavished visits upon us. When my "savior," as he 
 freely called himself, had given us this so-called evidence of 
 sympathy, Herbert and I looked at one another. Each read 
 in the other's eyes a desire to mount at once and be the first 
 to settle accounts with this saloon bully. On the prairie one 
 soon comes to this theory of legitimate defence, — to attack 
 first and not be attacked. Very happily, we did not yield 
 to this impulse of preventive indignation. Herbert had the 
 presence of mind to concoct a test which should forever safe- 
 guard us from all threats of this kind. He took aim at an 
 unconscious pigeon that was cooing on the roof of the stable 
 fifty feet away, and brought it down with his revolver, 
 
 "You may tell Yorkey Bob what you have seen," he said 
 to Briggs, "and add that if ever I meet him, wherever it may 
 be, in a bar-room, in the street, or on the prairie, I shall do 
 as much for him." 
 
 He turned his back upon the doctor. This worthy stood 
 for a moment as if nonplussed, then spat at a distant point. 
 It is the American token of profound impression. I have 
 always thought that his purpose in coming had been to pro- 
 
256 OUTRE-MER 
 
 pose to the new proprietors, in the name of the old, a good 
 and iirm treaty of alliance, cemented by hard cash. However 
 that may be, Herbert's pistol-shot and his little remark 
 sufficed to discourage this intention. But for two whole 
 months we were on the alert, sleeping out of doors every night 
 for fear of a surprise. As to precautions by day, we could 
 not have taken more. The times were so troubled that if two 
 horsemen saw one another at five miles' distance on the 
 prairie, each would turn in the opposite direction. Strange 
 desert, which man sought to make still more deserted, and 
 where he dreaded nothing but his own kind! This was the 
 time when the Deadwood mail was looted about once a month, 
 the time when the carriage of the Lead City receiver, notwith- 
 standing its escort of six horsemen, was held up, and the one 
 hundred and fifty thousand dollars that it contained — seven 
 hundred and fifty thousand francs in gold bars — dispersed to 
 the four corners of Dakota and Wyoming. A flood of adven- 
 turers, the scum of all countries and all races, had over- 
 whelmed Deadwood, where a new lead of gold had just been 
 discovered. Human life, which the Yankees like to say is 
 "very cheap " among them, was really so cheap that to live in 
 the Black Hills was to be on campaign every day and every 
 hour. One soon adapts oneself to conditions that appear so 
 extraordinary. It is surprising how soon one becomes accus- 
 tomed to the thought of a violent death. It is the other death 
 — by illness — with which the imagination can never recon- 
 cile itself, at least mine cannot. 
 
 As for Yorkey Bob, he no doubt thought differently from 
 me on this subject, for he took great care, after the proof of 
 address given by Herbert, to keep clear of the two tenderfeet 
 from Europe. It was written that he should be killed, but in 
 a different manner. He again stole so many cattle in the 
 neighborhood of Custer City and near us, that the cowboys 
 determined to rid the town of so dangerous a character. One 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 257 
 
 evening, when he was quietly drinking in Miller's bar-room, a 
 treacherous cowboy lassoed him from behind, and threw the 
 end of the cord to a horseman who was waiting outside. The 
 latter set off at full speed, and Bob was strangled in a few 
 seconds. He had instinctively seized his left revolver (he 
 carried one on each side), and through all the frightful con- 
 sciousness of that mad flight across the plain his fingers never 
 loosed their hold. It was necessary to break them to get the 
 weapon from him. We happened by accident to be pres- 
 ent at this last episode of our enemy's death. I cannot 
 better explain to you the metamorphosis which this first awful 
 year had wrought in us than by telling you that we remained 
 indifferent to this summary execution. 
 
 Bob was regretted by one person only, a woman thief who 
 kept a hotel at Custer City, and whose lover he was. This 
 creature had a dexterity with the rifle of quite another sort 
 than that of Herbert. I have seen her, not once but ten 
 times, pierce a gourd at a hundred paces, sending her ball 
 through a hole already prepared for the cork, without even 
 grazing its edges. In every room of her hotel you might see 
 the following inscription, written up with her own hand in 
 enormous red letters : — 
 
 '^ Don't He on the bed with your boots on. Don't spit on the 
 blankets. Be a man.'''' 
 
 She had committed many murders, and with her man's 
 clothes and her continual oaths she was a fit companion for 
 Bob, whom she would certainly have avenged if she had known 
 his assassins. But enterprises of this nature were always carried 
 on with masked or mufifled faces, as I have already said with 
 regard to train robberies. For that matter, you can learn as 
 much from the newspaper reports. This summary justice was 
 more potent than legal justice as we afterward knew it, with 
 its judges and lawyers, costing much more than executive 
 committees such as the one which rid us of Yorkey Bob. 
 
258 OUTRE-MER 
 
 And take it all in all, the second sort of justice was much 
 less just. 
 
 After this new experience, we resolved to live more closely 
 on our ranch. No longer going into the towns but by way of 
 exception at long intervals, we at last had no other society than 
 that of cowboys, " grangers," and miners. Into these three 
 classes all the inhabitants of the prairie are distributed. All 
 three are alike in their aversion for civilized life, their energy 
 in enterprise, and their familiarity with danger. Their am- 
 bitions differ so far as to make them at times enemies. Each 
 class has its heroes, whose story is continually told with ever 
 new complications. Buffalo Bill is the hero of the cowboys, 
 Mackay of the miners, Lincoln of the grangers, because of his 
 early life. These classes form the vanguard of America, between 
 the ever-mounting tide of immigration on the one hand, and 
 the last redskins on the other. Or, rather, they did form it 
 in the recent and yet remote period of which I speak. For 
 every year the Indians draw further back and disappear, the 
 waste territories become more populous. In half a century, if 
 I live so long, I shall certainly see immense cities occupying 
 the prairie which I have known so vast and so free. 
 
 The proper domain of the great ranches is still at the present 
 time limited only by the boundaries of the Indian Reserva- 
 tions. The " Home-ranch," with its wooden houses and its 
 stables of earth, is built near a spring. A score of worthy vaga- 
 bonds live there under the authority of a chief, a " foreman," 
 who is naturally the strongest and most clever of them all — 
 I do not say the most courageous. They are all equal in 
 degree, or they would not be worthy of being cowboys. Fifty 
 thousand horses, cows, and bullocks wander free over Uncle 
 Sam's pasturage, and these boys pass the year in counting, 
 marking, and despatching them by rail to Chicago. 
 
 It is not an easy task to conduct a drove of three or four 
 thousand beasts across the prairie. A certain number of horse- 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 259 
 
 men precede the drove, others keep watch on the flanks, other, 
 gather in the stragglers. They must keep away from the rail- 
 roads, or an almost uncontrollable panic may set in. Returning 
 from Colorado, whence I was bringing three hundred and fifty 
 horses, it happened that I came upon a road just as a train was 
 passing. My horses had never seen a locomotive. A terror 
 seized them, scattering them in all directions, in a circumfer- 
 ence of a hundred miles. It took me fifty-five days to get them 
 together again. At another time a storm came up, one of those 
 prairie tempests, Hke a cyclone. The enormous living mass of 
 animals was driven into a single group, around which the cow- 
 boys galloped like a whirlwind. It was necessary to keep the 
 animals in this circle, hterally distracted as they were by the 
 thunder and hghtning. We succeeded by dint of discharging 
 revc' 'ers by the dozen over any head that should be uplifted. 
 Had the rotary movement been checked, the enormous herd 
 would have broken through on one side, and, like the wild bisons 
 of a former day, they would have trampled men and horses 
 under foot like so much chaff. 
 
 Such an occupation in such surroundings requires men of 
 invincible energy, ready for anything. I may add that the com- 
 position of a ranch-gang resembles nothing more than that of a 
 battalion of the foreign Legion of France. The refuse of the 
 civilized world naturally finds refuge in it. At Lance-Head we 
 had a German cook, one Italian and two French cowboys, and 
 among Americans such unclassed men as Billy, the son of a 
 Chicago pastor. He made us laugh till we cried, one evening, 
 with stories of his youth, entirely passed in one of those mixed 
 schools which have become the object of serious study by foreign 
 authors who come to write up the country. I wish that one of 
 those grave article-makers might have heard Billy describe the 
 drawing class, and his girl classmates, busy with models of the 
 principal masculine schools, while he devoted himself by prefer- 
 ence to feminine anatomy. 
 
260 OUTRE-MER 
 
 Among us were enigmatical personages who never spoke of 
 their past, — for example, another Frenchman, whose real name 
 I do not know to this day. He called himself Jean Bernard. 
 He was the most dextrous lasso- thrower on the prairie, and he 
 had a real passion, almost a mania, for danger. One day, to 
 make sure of not being thrown by an unbroken horse, he fas- 
 tened the reins to his wrists by slip knots, and set off at full 
 speed. Both his arms were broken in two places, and he would 
 still have hung on if Herbert had not stopped the horse with a 
 ball in the chest. 
 
 I never knew, either, the name of a Dutchman who went by 
 the single name of Frank. One evening, being drunk on whiskey 
 in a small Western town, he took it into his head to drive a score 
 of travellers out of the hotel at the muzzle of his revolver ; then 
 he barricaded himself in the house and sustained a regular 
 siege. The thermometer was twenty degrees below zero, so, 
 having kept on drinking to keep himself warm, he ended 
 by tumbling down behind the door like a slaughtered beast. 
 Thus ended his desperate prank, without the cost of a drop of 
 blood. It would have cost Frank dear if he had not been the 
 best fellow in the world when sober, and particularly the inti- 
 mate friend of another personage who also enjoyed legendary 
 authority, the Count of La Chauss^e Jaucourt. I one day met 
 this Belgian gentleman, who had long been lost to the sight of 
 his family, in the depths of the Indian Reservation. He was on 
 horseback, escorted by his two wives, two veritable " squaws," 
 who, like him, had their guns on their shoulders. He accosted 
 me with an expression of vanity, singular indeed under the 
 circumstances. 
 
 "You are the Frenchman of Lance-Head. I am the Count 
 of La Chauss^e Jaucourt, bachelor of letters and of science." 
 
 He looked like a highwayman, and I took good care not to 
 betray the least surprise. All these trappers are infallible 
 shots. But the apparition of this bachelor of letters between 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 261 
 
 these two savage women, dressed in skins and with face tanned 
 as yellow as those of his companions, long stayed in my memory. 
 "Shall I ever come to that? " I thought, and such a singular 
 result of my Western adventure appeared to me neither impos- 
 sible nor to be dreaded, so much was I daily more and more 
 overcome, saturated, intoxicated, with the charm of this free, 
 primitive Ufe. And I answered myself gayly, " Why not? " 
 
 Yes, a charm ! Even now it is the only word — taking it in 
 its original sense — that I can find to express the sort of 
 witchery which this existence exerted over me. Through all 
 the years it still exerts it. When I try to distinguish the 
 reasons of this all-powerful attraction I find, first, — a singular 
 enough feeling in a country where revolvers go off of them- 
 selves, — that I have never lived through days when I less 
 feared the future. I knew then a sort of serenity, I might 
 almost say, an incomparable security. I was fully conscious 
 of my courage and my strength. I knew that my cowboys 
 were as faithful as mamelukes. These desperadoes for the 
 most part found in themselves — once they were free of civili- 
 zation and of their past — a profound strength of personal 
 honor. 
 
 Did a rancher send me word by post, according to custom, 
 that such or such a mare had been seen two hundred miles 
 from Lance-Head, I had only to summon Frank, for example, 
 and beg him — we never give orders in the West — to hunt up 
 the strayed animal. He would assure me that he would find it, 
 and I felt no further anxiety. He would set out with three sad- 
 dle horses, his waterproof blanket, and his six-shooter. I was 
 sure of seeing him reappear one or two months later, and the 
 mare with him. He had given me his word. As to where he 
 had slept or how he had lived all this time, I never so much as 
 thought of asking. 
 
 With men of this calibre I lost the idea of the impossible. 
 I had lost it as far as I was myself concerned, so much did my 
 
262 OUTRE-MER 
 
 whole being superabound with youthful fire, fed by the open 
 air and by complete purity. The habits of this life were vio- 
 lent even to tragedy, and severe even to ferocity. But they 
 were not corrupt. I found a sort of interior poetry growing 
 within me, as I went about my solitary rides, poetry made 
 entirely from a deep communion with nature, and untranslat- 
 able into words. I became animalized with the cattle, or they 
 became humanized with me, as you prefer. I understood now 
 the language of horses, who talk with their ears and their 
 nostrils ; of the cows, who speak with their eyes, their fore- 
 heads, and, above all, their tails ; of the dogs, who speak with 
 their whole body, and whose thought changes so rapidly that 
 one can hardly follow it. I carried on real dialogues of signs 
 with these creatures, once mute to me. I carried on a still 
 more sublime and intimate dialogue with the great Being who 
 is above all things and creatures. When, at sunset, seated in 
 the saddle and about to set forth, I looked over the prairie, its 
 billows stretching away as far as the eye could reach, like a 
 motionless sea under a quiet breeze, I felt a sacred intoxica- 
 tion, an ecstatic ravishment that I was alive, that I felt myself 
 strong, that I had within me this horizon of light and solitude. 
 Almost involuntarily the prayer would break from my lips, 
 " Our Father which art in heaven." I would thank God for 
 the blessed gift of life, for the beauty of his visible work, for 
 the favors of my lot, with a thrill of my whole soul such as I 
 had never known before and have never known since. 
 
 After what I have lately told you I should stultify myself in 
 claiming that such effusions were general among the coarse 
 companions among whom I had been thrown. Nevertheless, 
 they all in their own way felt this presence of God, which is 
 nearest, it seems, in the midst of virgin nature. Whence 
 comes that sort of elevation of heart that continually appears in 
 the better ones among them, their fidelity to a promise, their 
 firm friendship, their virtues of endurance and loyalty, if not 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 263 
 
 from an influence like that to which we more consciously 
 yield ? In any case, this was my way of feeling, and I should 
 not have given a true notion of my life in those days if I had 
 not reported these emotions as well as all the rest. 
 
 When you have galloped for months and months over the 
 
 prairie, your free domain, the day comes when, passing near a 
 
 well-known spring, you observe a disturbance of the soil not 
 
 there when last you saw it. Near it you see the framework of 
 
 a covered wagon. A plough, a few instruments of cultivation, 
 
 and one or two lean jades picketed near by attest that an 
 
 emigrant has arrived with his meagre possessions. You urge 
 
 your horse in that direction, and in response to your vigorous 
 
 " hellos " you see a blanket thrown back that covered a hole 
 
 dug in the ground. A man's head emerges, and behind him 
 
 the heads of children, with the timid and weary face of the 
 
 mother in the background. It is a " granger." He must have 
 
 come this way on horseback last autumn. The place pleased 
 
 him. He went back East for his family and his goods, and 
 
 here he is. This hole in the ground, twelve feet by fifteen, 
 
 will shelter them all till he gets his log-house built. 
 
 " Hello, stranger ! " he says, "where are you from? " 
 
 "Where are you from, my friend? You are the stranger ! " 
 
 " I came from Nebraska — there are too many there to please 
 
 me. I shall be better off here." 
 
 The cowboy shrugs his shoulders. One granger is nothing. 
 But to-morrow there will be ten, and the day after a hundred, 
 — in a year thousantls. However, he dismounts from his 
 horse, and the two men begin to talk, coldly at first, then in 
 more friendly fashion. The cowboy tells the other where the 
 best hunting-grounds are. Both of them, squatted on the 
 ground, are busily whittling bits of wood. The woman remains 
 in her hole. 
 
 How many of these human mole-hills have I seen thrown up 
 on the prairie ! These hardy pioneers of the vanguard never 
 
264 OUTRE-MER 
 
 come from Europe ; they are Americans of the United States 
 or Canada, whom European immigration has pushed toward the 
 free West. Half farmers and half hunters, lean and taciturn, 
 bronzed as redskins, and hardly more civilized, they are flee- 
 ing from civilized Ufe, from cities and factories. They precede 
 the armies of woodsmen, and hardly interfere with the cattle- 
 breeders. Only a day comes when others follow their example. 
 The best pasturages are taken up. Fences are built every- 
 where, on which the ranch horses wound themselves. These 
 people take possession of all the springs. It is not rare to see 
 in the spring their cows with five or six calves — a wealth not 
 surprising when they live near a ranch where there are five 
 thousand head of cattle. In fact, they are not at all bashful to 
 make the most of their powerful neighbor in all sorts of ways. 
 So much so that the foreman one day decrees their expulsion. 
 Sometimes his cowboys resort to threats, sometimes to fire. 
 Most generally they simply drive the granger's cattle off a 
 hundred miles in the night. 
 
 Next morning the poor wretch wakes up and finds himself 
 ruined. He understands the situation, and makes up his 
 mind to depart. Or else he sets off to look for his cattle, — 
 an endless search. The process, perhaps, appears somewhat 
 summary, but it must not be forgotten that the Old Testament 
 is the model of law in the West, and newcomers must submit 
 to it. Besides, when it is a case of life or death for the ranch, 
 it is a case of legitimate defence, in which measures of this 
 sort are permitted. At least so it seemed to me when I was 
 there. In fact, as soon as the number of arrivals becomes 
 considerable, the ranch has nothing for' it but to give up and 
 move nearer to the Rocky Mountains. It has played its 
 part of vanguard and must begin over again, as far as possible 
 from the grangers, and as near as possible to the Indians. 
 
 As for the Indian, he is the cowboy's enemy only when the 
 war hatchet is dug up. This came near being the case a few 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 265 
 
 months after our arrival. The foreman of one of the ranches 
 had sown the prairie with quarters of venison filled with 
 strychnine, to poison the coyotes. Two Sioux ate one of 
 them, and died in frightful convulsions. Happily, the fore- 
 man was the friend of Sitting Bull, the hero of the massacre 
 of General Custer and his cavalry regiment. The chief kept 
 his tribe from rising. They used to be very useful neighbors 
 to us at the time when the county tax was levied. We would 
 drive three-quarters of our cattle into the Reservation, and 
 could then, in all honor, declare only a very small number of 
 animals. 
 
 I shall later explain to you how this apparently unhandsome 
 conduct was only a too legitimate way of escaping legalized 
 robbery. The Indians obligingly lent themselves to this 
 stratagem, having themselves much to suffer from the thefts of 
 government agents. And besides, their dread is not the free 
 cavalier, who lives on the prairie as they do, but the colonist 
 and the engineer. I knew Sitting Bull well, myself, who, by 
 the way, having given himself up, received a house from the 
 United States. He always slept before the door, outside, and 
 had never slept under a roof. I happened to be with him, 
 on a hill, the first time the whistle of a locomotive resounded 
 among the echoes of the Black Hills. He looked long at the 
 strange machine, then he squatted upon the ground, his head 
 in his hands. Two hours afterward, coming back to the 
 place, I found him in the same posture. 
 
 "Sitting Bull is old," was his sole reply to my questions. 
 "He would be with his fathers, on the other side of death." 
 
 It was impossible for me to get another word from him that 
 night. Did he divine that these two rails, crossing the prairie 
 as far as the eye could reach, must bring to his tribe, in this 
 last remote refuge of their independence, civilization, and in 
 its train a certain end? I think so. 
 
 He was a great chief, and his wish was not long delayed. 
 
266 OUTRE-MER 
 
 He was killed in the uprising of 1891, and I wish him all 
 peace "on the other side of death." When I think of the 
 Indians I knew in those days, his gaunt face, with its long 
 jaw, comes first before me, and that of a young woman, a 
 Utah, whom I met with her husband in the outskirts of Salt 
 Lake City. They asked me for tobacco, and devoured my 
 cigarettes, wrappers and all. The brave, displeased with his 
 wife, was proposing to kill her in some retired spot. In fact, 
 she never reappeared. Although I did not then suspect the 
 Ute's design, I have always reproached myself for not having 
 continued my explorations in their company, either by good- 
 will or by force. The thought of it did cross my mind in a 
 sort of presentiment. I should doubtless have saved the life 
 of that poor child. Her sad face, with its great, gentle eyes, 
 resigned in advance, has followed me for years. 
 
 Such events are rare, as I have already said, most happily 
 so. If the rivalries of sex were there to heighten the ferocity 
 of the quarrels over play or in drink, which strew the saloons 
 with corpses, the whole prairie would soon be depopulated. 
 On the other hand, one temptation is not rare, that of gold 
 or silver mines accidentally discovered in your neighborhood. 
 You hear the news from a chance passer-by. You do not be- 
 lieve it. You remember having talked with the man to whom 
 this good luck has happened. He has been prospecting for 
 a mine for years. You have jeered at him, like others, and 
 here he is, a millionaire. Other like cases come to your 
 mind, and you say : — 
 
 "Why should I not try, too? Who knows? I might have 
 the same luck." 
 
 It is the first attack of gold fever. However, the work of 
 the ranch recalls you to reality. You have horses and cattle 
 to sell. You must ride miles and miles. The fit passes over. 
 
 A few weeks later your cowboys are talking around the fire. 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS .u7 
 
 You listen to them. They are talking of another miner, who 
 has discovered another lead. You are seized again with the 
 same desire to go yourself to look for this gold that surrounds 
 you, hiding itself here and there all about you, under your 
 feet, perhaps. 
 
 After a few such fits the fever grows stronger. Some day 
 you take your revolver, some pork and flour, and set off over 
 the rocks, your eyes bent on the ground, your mind, heart, 
 will, bent on the ground, bound, dragged, hypnotized by the 
 magic word which you repeat to yourself along the wretched 
 roads, under burning sun or snow, "Gold! gold! gold! " 
 
 It is a contagious madness from which few escape. I was 
 affected by it like the others. I, in my turn, took up the 
 prospector's pack and set out. One of my cowboys had just 
 discovered a silver mine, and sold it for ten thousand dollars. 
 On the morrow of that sale I succumbed ! I can see myself 
 now plunging into the mountain defiles, trying, trying, contin- 
 ually trying, the rocks with my eyes, my hands, my pickaxe. 
 Miles succeeded to miles, and rocks to rocks. Everything 
 disappeared under the mirage of gold, — fatigue and appe- 
 tite, the sense of duty to the ranch I had left behind me, and 
 of my dignity as man. To-morrow I should find it! To- 
 morrow, and yet to-morrow ! For six days I went on this way. 
 I was "possessed." On the morning of the seventh day, as I 
 was saying the prayers I had neglected during this whole week 
 of possession, God in his mercy opened my eyes to my wan- 
 derings. If I speak of this solemnly, it is with purpose. I 
 have known, I still know, minds of the finest, energies of 
 the noblest, lamentably wasted in these desert depths, in pur- 
 suit of gold, which no disappointment, no reasoning, no trial, 
 can cure of their hypnotism. 
 
 One of these, Hopkins, told me of weeks that he had spent 
 among the crevices of the rocks, living on cold pork. The 
 least smoke would have given the alarm to Indians, who were 
 
268 OUTRE-MER 
 
 beating the prairie in all directions, searching for his scalp. 
 None the less, he went right on with his chimerical search, 
 during and after as before this time. When I became ac- 
 quainted with him he was opening a new mine. His shaft 
 had already gone down thirty feet. 
 
 " A very rich mine ! There are millions down there, mil- 
 lions like those of Mackay in the Bonanza. I only need capi- 
 tal to develop the lead. I have written to Chicago, they will 
 come — " 
 
 Poor old Hopkins ! He already saw his millions, touched 
 them, counted them. He was going to be rich, rich, rich ! 
 He would have giant machines, crushing the metal day and 
 night. What rapture overspread this thin, wan face, that 
 seemed to have taken on the color of gold by dint of dream- 
 ing of it, worn and hollowed by privation and pain, with his 
 eyes of flame, the eyes of the believer and the visionary ! 
 The west wind blew harshly through the wretched hut whose 
 leaky roof sheltered his dreams. And I, who for a moment 
 had known the same fever, 1 pitied his madness, and went 
 away softly not to recall him to reality. 
 
 If miners do not often discover mines like the Bonanza, 
 they at least wash out a little gold dust in their "placers," 
 and if they saved their earnings after the manner of French 
 peasants, they could grow old in prosperity. But the West is 
 not the country of savings-banks and small investments. It is 
 the country of adventurers, gamblers, and of the all or noth- 
 ing. Gold-seekers no sooner have a few hundreds of dollars, 
 cowboys no sooner draw their wages, than they hasten to spend 
 their money in the nearest town, a hundred, two hundred 
 miles away. 
 
 As for us, once a year we went to Deadwood and treated 
 ourselves to the luxury of the one box in the Gaiety Theatre. 
 One had small comfort there, in view of the fact that the 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 269 
 
 Spectators in the orchestra applauded the fine passages by 
 firing pistols at the singular pictures of the ceiling. I had 
 already paid dear for the knowledge of how easily a ball 
 may wander from its aim. The box offered fascinating attrac- 
 tions to the horrible dancing girls imported from Chicago, 
 who assassinated us with winks while executing figures with 
 their legs. 
 
 When we had thrown a sufficient number of dollars to them 
 upon the stage, they would come up, according to custom, to 
 kiss us and ask for a bottle of so-called champagne, which 
 cost six dollars and was not worth twenty cents. Often a 
 facetious cowboy would lasso them on their way from the 
 stage to our box, and this would give the public new occasion 
 for an explosion of applause, accompanied by a new fusilade, 
 in an atmosphere so charged with alcohol that it seemed as 
 if the matches with which the audience lighted their pipes 
 and cigars must set the whole room in a flame, like an enor- 
 mous bowl of punch. 
 
 The miner's life oscillates between pleasures of this order 
 and a chain-gang life in the mines, — those at least who keep 
 good faith in their illuminism. Others, more intelligent and 
 more cunning, attain to great fortunes by swindling processes, 
 the ingenuity of which would fill volumes. I shall content 
 myself with relating the adventures of a certain Parker, who, 
 in 1885, sold a mine for two hundred thousand dollars to Fris- 
 sel & Company — great bankers of one of the largest cities 
 of the West. Parker had sown his "placer claim " with gold 
 dust over a stretch of two miles, having buried more than 
 ten thousand dollars' worth of dust in the sand. 
 
 Never did capital bring in such interest. On the report of 
 two experts, grave men who came expressly from Boston, the 
 mine thus "salted" was pronounced to be of incalculable 
 wealth. Frissel & Company deemed themselves fortunate 
 to acquire such a treasure in exchange for the two-hundred- 
 
270 OUTRE-MER 
 
 thousand-dollar check which Parker demanded. The experts, 
 with their fat recompense, returned to Boston. Parker no 
 less generously recompensed the citizens whose testimony had 
 confirmed the existence of the placer. The more honest 
 among them had been content with holding their peace. " Let 
 him look out for himself ! " So says every one on the prairie, 
 though only two steps away from a man who is being plun- 
 dered. 
 
 As Frissel & Company never made a complaint, it is 
 probable that they are only awaiting an opportunity to sell 
 again this stream sown with gold, at double or treble what 
 they paid for it, to a society which will scatter its stock, 
 greatly reinforced by advertisements, among rich Europeans. 
 It will all end with a failure, in which the weak will suffer. 
 That is the law of life, as Americans conceive it. As to 
 Parker, his admirable bluff gave him even more prestige than 
 fortune. He is now one of the most influential citizens of 
 Omaha, — " so smart a man ! " — in a fair way to become sena- 
 tor. He owns four entire blocks of houses in a new city, and 
 has no doubt forgotten his own knavery, and also that cursed 
 Frenchman, Sheffield, who gave him a ball in the thigh from 
 his Colt, No. 44, one day when he was pouring forth in public 
 all the turpitudes of Frenchwomen, which he claimed to have 
 learned in Paris. I had aimed low expressly, not wishing to 
 kill my man, who, on his part, sent his ball on a level with 
 my ear. 
 
 Three months later, that pistol-shot came near costing me 
 dear. Parker, who had lost sight of me after our altercation, 
 met me one day in Custer City. He immediately had me 
 arrested for assault and battery. The affair came first before 
 the police justice, a certain Richardson, who happened to 
 be my grocer. I owed him more than two hundred dollars. 
 Besides, I had supported his election. I was honorably 
 acquitted by a judgment thus conceived: "Seeing that the 
 
 1 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 271 
 
 defendant's feelings received a more cruel wound than the 
 plaintiff's leg." 
 
 Under other circumstances I might have been obliged to 
 put in the hands of this same judge a large sum, which he 
 would have divided with Parker; and this possibility brings 
 me to speak of that which rules all business and hinders all 
 success in this Western country, naturally so rich and free, — 
 the bitter, implacable war between money and the foreigner, 
 particularly under two forms, which our French habits lead us 
 to look upon as protections, law and taxation. 
 
 The breeding of horses and cattle brought in my time thirty 
 per cent net on the prairie. Good pasturages, as deserted as 
 possible, where, like modern patriarchs, we let our innu- 
 merable flocks and herds increase and multiply; resolute cow- 
 boys, who never hesitated to hang a horse thief high and 
 short, or to repulse grangers and Indians by force, — these 
 .would have brought us in sixty per cent on our capital if we 
 had not had to reckon with these two leeches. 
 
 The tax upon capital forms the principal revenue of the 
 States. Declarations naturally tend to reduce it, and it would 
 be hard to reckon the number of false oaths given in the spring 
 of every year in the Western Territories. A special commis- 
 sion then sits, and rectifies at will three-quarters of these 
 declarations. Its decisions are based upon anonymous accu- 
 sations, which abound there as elsewhere, and chiefly on the 
 political affiliations of the tax-payers. If he is a friend, his 
 declaration is at once received. If an enemy, his estimate is 
 doubled, tripled, quadrupled. Finally, a surplus of five to ten 
 per cent is added to the total, according to the deficit to be 
 made up, which is the same as saying, according to the num- 
 ber of county treasurers who have succeeded one another in 
 office. What must become of a foreigner who, being pledged 
 to no party, is skinned by all? Only one ground of hope is 
 left him, — the difficulty the assessors may find in counting his 
 
272 OUTRE-MER 
 
 herds. We had at Lance-Head an Arabian stallion, who had 
 become a real wild beast in the midst of his wild stud. He 
 had half killed an inoffensive wayfarer who was crossing the 
 prairie not far from his favorite pasturage. These stallions set 
 upon all persons whom they do not know, with the fore hoofs 
 and the teeth. The terror spread abroad by this animal saved 
 us from assessment. The assessors were forced to trust to my 
 statements. 
 
 Not to perjure myself, as I have said, I sent my droves over 
 into the Indian Reservation at the time of making oath, and I 
 therefore had only a small number of cattle to declare. Not- 
 withstanding this precaution, our taxes were rated so high as 
 to amount to half our profits. For, three times during my 
 career of cowboy, the county treasurer made off with the bank, 
 so that in the end we had to pay a nine per cent surplus to 
 balance the budget. Am I right in affirming that false returns 
 became a legitimate defence in such a case? 
 
 As may be supposed, the ranchmen are not behindhand in 
 this matter. I can still recall the countenance of Fyffe, treasurer 
 in 1 88-, — now in the penitentiary, — when the foreman of the 
 Anglo-American Company solemnly declared that, in conse- 
 quence of the rigor of the winter, he had not a single milch 
 cow left. As a fact, the company possessed over thirty thou- 
 sand head. It must be added, that the said foreman had 
 had too many " corpse revivers " that morning. Fyfife was 
 petrified with admiration of such audacity. " What pluck ! " 
 he exclaimed, and at once accepted this astounding declaration. 
 Then a large bonus, offered by a rival company, made him 
 reverse his first decision, and with one stroke of the pen he 
 raised the declaration twenty thousand times. This roused the 
 cowboys to a simulated lynching, where he nearly left his bad 
 extortioner's skin. 
 
 How can one defend himself against persons of such a state 
 of conscience ? To what can one appeal ? To the law ? Every 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 273 
 
 little Western village has, side by side with its two or three 
 generals and twenty or thirty colonels, an equal number of 
 lawyers. 
 
 Ah, these lawyers ! The scourge of a country that has an 
 elective magistracy ! With their feet in the air, and their 
 cigars in their mouths from seven in the morning till nine 
 at night, they meditate on possible lawsuits. Not a quarrel, 
 not a difference, not a hasty word, but its echo reaches them, 
 and they throw themselves upon you with offers of gratuitous 
 services, with the enticing prospect of large damages. You 
 accept. The suit begins. Soon the confusion is such that no 
 one understands anything about it. Then your lawyer informs 
 you, with a long face and tearful eyes, that your suit is lost. 
 He tells you the reasons, which are precisely the opposite of 
 those that he brought forward to induce you to take this step. 
 The better to convince you, he takes you secretly to the judge, 
 who confirms the views of the estimable lawyer. However, a 
 compromise is possible. You subscribe to it, and leave this 
 hell. Costs, two hundred, three hundred, a thousand dollars, 
 according to your property. The amount is most amicably 
 divided between the two lawyers and the judge. I have seen 
 one of our compatriots, guilty of killing a robber who had first 
 drawn upon him, unable to secure the most just of acquittals 
 except by spending twenty thousand dollars ! 
 
 You are indignant, are you not? I used to grow indig- 
 nant over this frightful absence of professional honor. It has 
 exceptions, indeed, but very few ; and one finally becomes 
 accustomed to it, as to rain in autumn and snow in winter. 
 It is with the magistrates in these small Western towns, as with 
 doctors and dentists. A few more anecdotes before I conclude. 
 Herbert came home, one day, from Omaha, where he had been 
 to have his teeth attended to, with his mouth full of little holes 
 that the operator had dug in his teeth, after putting him under 
 gas. He suffered from them so much, that he went back and 
 
274 OUTRE-MER 
 
 had them filled with gold at ten dollars a cavity ! One of my 
 cowboys was wasting away in consequence of a course of treat- 
 ment prescribed by a doctor who had diagnosed a disease 
 of the stomach. He had been told to take daily a packet of 
 powders that seemed to us suspicious. We had the powder 
 analyzed, and found that the only object of this so-called remedy 
 was to prolong the sick man's malady. He had already paid 
 his poisoner a hundred dollars — two months' earnings ! 
 
 These moral blemishes, and hundreds more that I spare you, 
 are the inevitable consequences of the formidable conflict of 
 energy and ambition carried on upon the prairie. I was aware 
 of this necessity even when I was suffering the most from it. 
 When we found ourselves clashing with some more powerful 
 barbarity, Herbert and I would remind one another of a pic- 
 turesque sign in which we had seen the symbol of this budding 
 civilization. We had read in a railway station during a strike 
 of railway employees : — 
 
 " Passengers, this line is boycotted. You'd better buy an 
 insurance ticket, as this train will be run by a green engi- 
 neer." 
 
 Everywhere on the prairie we came upon tokens of the 
 " green engineer," and I would think of France, so beautiful, 
 so pleasant, so complete, true land of love even in its faults ; 
 and that it needed only to have left it to appreciate the charm 
 of living there, the charm that an American so well expressed 
 to me one day when I asked him what had most struck him in 
 Paris. 
 
 " Well, the finish of it," he replied. 
 
 And I have not returned to that dear France, and I do not 
 know that I shall ever return there. Where one's family is, 
 one's country is, and mine is now in that Canadian city on the 
 shore of that vast lake, stormy as a sea, where I went to repair 
 the losses which the last Indian insurrection inflicted on the 
 poor ruined ranch of Lance-Head. 
 
THE LOWER ORDERS 275 
 
 And now that I finish this account, which I may well call 
 posthumous, since the cowboy, Sheffield, is dead in his turn and 
 and has given place to Francis Raymond, a feeling of home- 
 sickness for the prairie comes over me. I feel how deeply I 
 loved that desert, so sad yet so attractive when one has passed 
 there years of exuberant hfe, revolver in hand, rifle on the 
 pommel of the saddle. I have my cowboy saddle before me. 
 I seem to hear the wind of those nights that I spent out of 
 doors ; the wind that, as in the early days of the world, spoke 
 to me so many mysterious words. I can see the immensity of 
 the steppe, here and there cut by canons where at noon the 
 does hide with their fawns ; the quiet streams where the pumas 
 come to lie in wait for the frail, delicate antelopes. I feel my 
 horse's hoofs rustling the tall, dry grass of Dakota. The wind 
 brings me the fresh vegetal aroma of the sage brush of Wyo- 
 ming. The whole great country lies outspread before me, wild 
 and dangerous, but free ; a country where I experienced that, 
 take it all in all, life is less painful there than anywhere else ; 
 a country of high emotions, where I was so near to nature, so 
 near to God ! I touch with trembling fingers the tanned 
 leather of this saddle, and I must needs conquer the insane 
 desire that takes me to be seated in it as formerly, to plunge 
 my spur into my brave horse as formerly, and to go farther, 
 always farther, westward — I, the father of three children ! 
 
VII 
 EDUCATION 
 
 When one has seen a certain civilization in some of its 
 fully developed representatives, and has formed an idea, 
 correct or incorrect, of its good qualities and its defects, its 
 value and its insufficiency, it remains to test these notions by 
 a counter experiment, if I may so speak. One must try to 
 see in the formative state these individual men or women, 
 whom one has already seen exercising their matured powers. 
 To put it more simply, the indispensable corollary of the 
 study of the life of a people is the study of the educational 
 processes of that people. The nature of the instruction given 
 by a country to its youth is doubly instructive; for on the 
 one hand it reveals the educator's conception of men, — 
 hence of the citizen, hence of the entire nation, — and on the 
 other hand it permits you if not to foresee, at least to have a 
 presentiment of what the future of the nation will be, when 
 once the children and youth thus brought up shall become the 
 nation in their turn. 
 
 For example, is it possible perfectly to understand England 
 without having understood Oxford, and the sort of semi- 
 nary of "gentlemen" established there many centuries ago? 
 You seat yourself on the turf of New College, at the foot of 
 the ancient ramparts of the city; in the close of Wadham, 
 near the apse of the chapel built by Dame Dorothea, whose 
 statue may still be seen, stiff and severe under the folds of her 
 robe of stone; on the edge of the pool of Worcester, where 
 De Quincey dreamed; in the grandly quiet park of St. John's. 
 
 276 
 
EDUCATION 277 
 
 Only to see the young barbarians, as Matthew Arnold called 
 them, playing tennis in the beautiful setting which owes 
 everything to the dead, only to follow them, as in their flannel 
 suits they seat themselves in a canoe and glide along the 
 venerable walls of these ancient cloisters; or on horseback, 
 trotting beside the grassy graveyards scattered everywhere in 
 this city, — all the future of this youth is unveiled to you. 
 The boy who has been in such surroundings during his im- 
 pressionable years must be, he cannot but be, just what in 
 fact nine out of ten Englishmen are : healthy and traditional, 
 capable of all endurance, of all physical daring, and deeply, 
 thoroughly conservative, even when he believes himself to be 
 a radical; respectful of the past in his most intense ardor for 
 individual action, because he has felt it too deeply, too much 
 realized its benefits, to be anything else. 
 
 On the other hand, you visit a French Lycee with its 
 barrack-like buildings, its narrow, hemmed-in playgrounds, 
 the promiscuity of its dormitories, the bare ugliness of its 
 studios and class-rooms. What more is needed to show you 
 that the young men there brought up must be physically im- 
 poverished, nervously overstrained, robbed of joy and spon- 
 taneity. Discipline, too little individualized to be intelligent, 
 must inevitably either cow or irritate him. He comes forth 
 from it either a functionary or a refractory, crushed or revolted, 
 nearly resembling the man careful only of his own interests 
 and the anarchist, two equally baleful types of the civilized 
 man, wasting himself either in feeble platitudes or in destruc- 
 tive insanity. Such is the fatal end of a system of culture 
 apprehended as the reverse of nature and tradition, first by 
 the men of the Convention and then by the Emperor, the most 
 ill-omened of all their ill-starred works, most calculated to 
 dry up, at its source, the energy and virtue of our middle 
 class. Here, as everywhere, education explains history, 
 because it explains customs. 
 
278 OUTRE-MER 
 
 It is not always easy to grasp the influence of a whole social 
 system upon the schools, and again of the schools upon the 
 social system. In the United States, in particular, the very 
 character of the nation makes it almost impossible to define 
 its system of education, spread as it is over an immense 
 extent of country and absolutely without central direction. 
 The power of states, of cities, especially of individuals, to 
 initiate action conspires incessantly to modify the innumer- 
 able centres of instruction which have spontaneously blos- 
 somed out upon this soil where social forces seem to have 
 a plasticity very like the plasticity of natural forces in the 
 youth of the planet. The chances are great that each educa- 
 tional building will be constructed on a different plan, for each 
 educator is apparently a man with his own ideas, and each 
 pupil even is an elementary personality. 
 
 I remember when I was in Newport being entirely non- 
 plussed by the question of a negro who waited upon me in the 
 hotel, a sort of black giant whom up to that time I had ad- 
 mired solely for his dexterity in carrying in the flat of his 
 hand a tray loaded with six or seven entire dinners. 
 
 "Is it true, sir," he asked me, "that you are going to write 
 a book about America? " 
 
 " Perhaps," I replied. " But why do you ask? " 
 
 " Because I should much like to have a copy to read this 
 winter in college." 
 
 "The negroes are so vain," said a New Yorker, to whom I 
 laughingly related this dialogue. " He wanted to make you 
 think he knew how to read." And he added, "Since you are 
 collecting anecdotes about the 'colored gentlemen' don't 
 
 forget this one. The other week Lord B , one of the first 
 
 nobles of England, was travelling beyond Chicago. At a cer- 
 tain station one of the Pullman car porters approached him 
 
 with the words, 'They tell me that you are Lord B .' 
 
 'Yes,' replied the other. 'Would you give me your hand?' 
 
 i 
 
EDUCATION 279 
 
 asked the negro. The nobleman thought this request showed 
 a touching humility. He extended his hand to the unhappy 
 son of slavery, who perhaps had formerly been himself a slave. 
 What did the darkey do but shake the nobleman's hand with 
 the proud remark, 'You know, Lord B , I am an Ameri- 
 can citizen and I propose to tell all my fellow-citizens that 
 the British aristocracy is all right ! ' " 
 
 My witty interlocutor was mistaken. It was not in bragga- 
 docio that the waiter in the Newport hotel had spoken of his 
 college. I had the proof of this when, in the course of the 
 winter, being in a little Southern city in which the newspapers 
 had made known my presence, I received a letter which I 
 cannot refrain from setting down here in all its artlessness, so 
 significant does it appear to me. 
 
 " I write you a few lines to let you know that I have suc- 
 ceeded in entering college as I hoped to do. I entered Janu- 
 ary I, and am getting along very nicely with my studies. My 
 wish was to take the full, regular course, but I am not able to 
 do so as I must support myself while in school. I must there- 
 fore content myself with the normal and scientific course. I 
 do not precisely know what I shall do next summer. I have 
 thought of going back to the hotel in Newport, but nothing is 
 decided. I am looking for a copy of your book when it is 
 finished." 
 
 What can be the spirit of a college on whose benches a 
 servant, twenty years old and more, may take his place for six 
 months in the year, between two terms of service, and the 
 fact not appear in the least exceptional? What must be our 
 opinion of the man himself, his demands of life, the thoughts 
 he exchanges with his fellow-students; what of an entire 
 society in which such features are of daily occurrence? Once 
 more measure the abyss that separates the Old World from the 
 New. And yet the very exclamation that falls from a for- 
 eigner's lips on meeting such incidents — "How American 
 
280 OUTRE-MER 
 
 that is!" is a proof that he recognizes a certain character 
 common to all the manifestations of this singular country, 
 however unlike they may be. 
 
 This unity it is that I would try to discover in the complex 
 problem of education, having special reference to certain 
 groups of very clearly defined facts. At the advice of some 
 of my friends, I have chosen the schools of Boston as suffi- 
 ciently representative types of primary instruction; Harvard 
 as representing universities for men and Wellesley those for 
 women; of technical schools, West Point, the military acad- 
 emy, the St. Cyr of the United States. The reason of this 
 choice is easy to give. Massachusetts has been for many 
 years the matrix, so to speak, of the figure from which the 
 genius of America has taken its moral and intellectual stamp; 
 it is therefore probable that the spirit and method of Ameri- 
 can teaching are more visible there than elsewhere. This is 
 why the Boston schools, and the universities of Harvard and 
 Wellesley, whether they are superior or inferior to thousands 
 of other schools and hundreds of other universities, are doubt- 
 less more striking and illustrative to a passing observer than 
 the others. On the other hand, West Point has this advan- 
 tage over other technical schools, that the human product, 
 such as is there made, must be pretty much the same in all 
 parts of the world, for everywhere war resembles war and 
 officer resembles officer. The similarity of the results to be 
 obtained permits us to understand better the difference in 
 methods. These are, if you like, four pretty strong meshes 
 in the vast tissue of instruction thrown over this whole great 
 country. Considering how they have been woven, the reader 
 will be able to judge of the probable value of the stuff. If he 
 wants more complete details, he will find them in the fully 
 attested works of M. de Varigny, in the acute observations of 
 the superior woman who signs herself Th. Bentzon, and 
 finally in the clever volume of M. Pierre de Coubertin, Les 
 
EDUCATION 281 
 
 Universites Transatlantiques. Upon West Point in particular, 
 Count Louis de Tarenne has written very interestingly in his 
 work, Qiiatorze mois dans P Amerique du no7'd, a repertory of 
 incomparably full and accurate facts concerning the United 
 States. I myself make no claim of doing more than set forth 
 here a hypothesis which fits in well with very many of the 
 facts so carefully collected by these conscientious and dis- 
 tinguished observers. 
 
 Let us try to imagine a traveller who knows absolutely noth- 
 ing of America and who lands in Boston with letters to a 
 prominent resident of that city. It is the time of full activity 
 in this old New England metropolis, consequently, it is winter. 
 The Bostonian comes to the traveller's hotel in a sleigh which 
 ghdes rapidly over the frozen snow. His first act is to take 
 him, with justifiable pride, to that central park which he calls 
 the Common, and which has the peculiarity little known in the 
 United States of dating from far back, — from 1636. Next our 
 man takes his guest by a network of streets, the crookedness 
 of which speaks of relative old age, to the " Old State House," 
 the scene of the Boston Massacre, the museum where, side 
 by side with a marvellous Japanese collection, are some very 
 singular relics, — a glass case full of boots and shoes, among 
 them a pair of boots worn by Napoleon at St. Helena. The 
 Bostonian will not fail next to show the river Charles, where, 
 it is said, are seen the finest sunsets in America, — the athletic 
 club, with its gigantic swimming bath in the basement, fed by 
 running water, — Beacon Street with its fine residences, and 
 Music Hall, where more music is given during the season than 
 in all the Conservatories of Europe. 
 
 More than once during these comings and goings the trav- 
 eller has questioned his guide as to one or another building 
 which has appeared to him larger, more pleasing, of newer and 
 more elaborate style than the others, and every time the Bos- 
 
282 OUTRE-MER 
 
 tonian has told him that it was a school. Without considering 
 it a matter of much importance, the traveller asks how many of 
 these schools there are in Boston. He knows already that they 
 are public and free, for his companion has made much of these 
 two points, but he finds it extraordinary indeed to be told that 
 there are six hundred and seven of them. Upon this he is 
 taken to the office of the superintendent of this immense edu- 
 carmg machine. The gentleman is absent on one of the tours 
 of inspection made necessary by his truly ministerial office. 
 But his secretaries are there, — women, of course, — and they 
 interrupt their playing on the type-writer to search the library 
 for divers pamphlets bearing on all sorts of educational prob- 
 lems : studies of the proper height of chairs and desks from the 
 hygienic point of view, reflections on methods of teaching, 
 statistics and criticism of courses and examinations, statistical 
 tables of teachers and scholars, calculations of expenses. 
 
 When the traveller on returning to his hotel, still pursued 
 by that figure six hundred and seven, begins the reading of 
 these apparently dry reports, he finds it impossible to stop. 
 He is taken possession of by them as by a unique sort of 
 romance. They are, in fact, the romance of a city, athirst to 
 know, hungry for culture, and which desires to learn and 
 understand through all its inhabitants, to saturate itself with 
 intelligence. This is one of the American fevers — this fanati- 
 cal, almost unhealthy longing for knowledge, but it is only 
 a phase of that grand and noble fever with which this whole 
 country is consumed, crude as it yet is, and chaotic and un- 
 formed; too recent, and yet homesick for civilization. 
 
 To measure accurately this effort after "more light" as the 
 dying Goethe said, you must analyze into its component parts 
 that figure six hundred and seven. These schools are sub- 
 divided into six grades, in accordance with the different ages 
 of the children, and also with the different courses of study. 
 First of all, at the very bottom of the ladder, if one may so 
 
EDUCATION 283 
 
 speak, there are thirty-six kindergartens, attended by nineteen 
 hundred and sixty children. Next come four hundred and 
 eighty-one primary schools, with twenty-five thousand pupils; 
 fifty-five so-called grammar schools, with more than thirty 
 thousand pupils; ten Latin or high schools, attended by three 
 thousand four hundred scholars; twenty-four special schools, 
 twenty-two of them held in the evening, with an attendance 
 of five thousand five hundred students; and finally a normal 
 school, destined to the maintenance of the members of the 
 teaching staff. This staff contains a thousand six hundred and 
 fifteen men and women, who hardly suffice for the immense ser- 
 vice which, during the first nine months of the present school 
 year— 1893 — represented to the city an expenditure of two 
 millions of dollars. Of seventy-three thousand one hundred 
 and seventy-six children or youth between five and fifteen 
 years, the total number in Boston, fifty-three thousand six hun- 
 dred and thirty-eight were at that date receiving, without the 
 cost of a centime, an instruction that extends from the first 
 rudiments to a culture which we reserve for our middle class. 
 
 And the city does not find itself satisfied with this amazing 
 result. Between 1889 and 1892 it built, furnished, equipped, 
 and opened, at its own expense, a new Latin school, four 
 grammar schools, seven primary schools; bought land for 
 three others, and spent, besides its ordinary estimate, another 
 sum of two million dollars in the work of improvement. 
 Such progress did not hinder the committee who reported 
 it from providing for new foundations in the year to come. 
 One observation among many others gives an idea of the 
 spirit with which these indefatigable propagators of knowl- 
 edge are animated. Speaking of the normal school, a re- 
 porter wrote in entire good faith : — 
 
 " It will be understood how necessary is this addition when 
 it is remembered that the building is in precisely the same 
 state that it was in fifteen years ago." 
 
284 OUTRE-MER 
 
 These lines from an official pen show better than any com- 
 mentary what the words "recent" and "old" signify on 
 American lips. 
 
 Upon this you close the bulky collection of documents. 
 Beneath the minute but indisputable details of these statistics 
 you have perceived a great social fact which is too much in 
 harmony with facts which you have yourself observed not 
 to be correct; namely, the profound vitality of civic feeling 
 in the United States. This prodigality of millions has no 
 other principle. It expresses the conviction felt by all citi- 
 zens in their inmost hearts, — that the community should 
 spare nothing to furnish to all its members the opportunity to 
 develop the gifts they received at birth. But what commu- 
 nity? Certainly not America; the government that sits in 
 Washington has nothing to do with these expenses. Not even 
 the State to which the city belongs; but the city itself, the 
 city which these youth see with their own eyes, which might 
 be pictured as a being to whom they are bound by ties of 
 flesh and blood. In consequence, these educational benefits 
 are not to these youth an anonymous gift, for which they 
 know not whom to thank, the studies they undertake are not 
 directed by a remote superior council of functionaries whom 
 they will never see. They see and know not only the admin- 
 istrators of this great system of municipal instruction, but also 
 the generous givers, who, to their public contributions, are 
 continually adding private gifts. All these direct influences 
 contribute to develop and exalt in them the same civic feel- 
 ing which impelled their elders to support and aid in the 
 great work of their culture, so that, once rich and great, their 
 constant care will be to aid their younger brothers in their 
 turn. 
 
 Here, as in France of the Middle Ages, as in Italy during 
 the Renascence, strong municipal life naturally produces 
 strong municipal virtues, and it produces them in the woman 
 
EDUCATION 285 
 
 as well as in the man, — a fact entirely in conformity with the 
 genius of the country, with its strong sense of equality. In 
 all this work of the schools it is curious to note to what de- 
 gree the woman rivals the male citizen in spontaneity and 
 generosity. To take only two or three most typical facts; it 
 is thus that in 1884, a lady of Boston, Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw, 
 submitted to the city authorities her project of opening some 
 rooms for manual traitjing in the schools. Her thought was 
 to found cooking courses and lectures on the care of a house 
 and its linen for the young girls and for the boys printing, 
 cabinet-making, and shoe-making. She has spent a great sum 
 in this work since 1884; the report tells us how much — a 
 million and a half of dollars. 
 
 Under the impulse of this entirely personal good will, two 
 cooking-schools were opened in 1885, and received one hun- 
 dred and fifty pupils apiece, and as Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw 
 was at this moment busy with the kindergarten, two other 
 Boston ladies undertook to go on with these two experiments, 
 "The first," says the report, with the pride of local patriot- 
 ism, "which have been established in America." In 1886 a 
 third cooking-school was opened under the same conditions. 
 The city has since accepted the charge of all of these, and 
 now the women are seeking for other enterprises to which to 
 devote their energies, time, and money. The committee 
 considered the experiment conclusive, and undertook to con- 
 tinue it in the name of the community for reasons which are 
 worth citing, since they also are stamped with that civism 
 which is at once so ardent and so sagacious. After showing 
 all the advantages which the art of cooking may procure to the 
 poor girl as well as to the rich, — rendering the one capable 
 of making her home more comfortable, fitting the other the 
 better to manage her servants, — the report takes a larger view 
 of the question, and, speaking of the place of manual training 
 in education, it concludes : — 
 
286 OUTRE-MER 
 
 "This training also serves to counteract one of the greatest 
 evils which threaten, the nation: the excessive disparity 
 between the rich and the poor. This disparity often results 
 from the scorn with which many people of means look upon 
 those who work with their hands. This is a false conception, 
 for which there will be no place if all children are brought 
 up to work with tools under the direction of teachers in work- 
 ing-clothes, at the side of school-fellows who, rich and poor 
 alike, work with the same tools. The result of this teaching 
 will be a higher citizenship.''^ 
 
 This higher citizenship, — the expression is hardly trans- 
 latable so little of the thing is found in centralized countries, 
 — this impulse to love one's city and make it beloved, this 
 pride in one's native place, and this care to make it ever 
 better, — all these are the secret of such generosities in educa- 
 tional things. They sometimes attain really fantastic propor- 
 tions. There is a citizen of Illinois who made a single gift 
 of six hundred thousand dollars to the University of Chicago, 
 on condition that others would increase the sum to a million. 
 The required four hundred thousand were subscribed the same 
 day. Thus a capital of five million francs was paid down in 
 a day, which the first giver doubled, for his own share, — say 
 ten more millions of francs. He desired, said a journalist, to 
 secure to his city a superior "standard" of higher education. 
 This American expression, which might make a companion to 
 the "record," is also difficult to translate. The "standard" 
 is the value of a manufacturer's mark, the tape by which you 
 measure the quality of the product. You find there applied 
 to the things of the mind, to literature and science, that which 
 makes the very basis of this mercantile Democracy — that 
 estimate by comparison, which these people still express by 
 the verb "to beat." Of a hotel or a view, a fine book or a 
 certain brand of champagne, of a great artist and a steamboat 
 enterprise, they say equally that it "beats anything in the 
 
EDUCATION 287 
 
 world." Perhaps this self-love, which we think somewhat 
 childish, is the condition of the astounding vitality of the 
 local centres from which comes the vitality of the whole coun- 
 try. Shakespeare somewhere speaks of one of those men each 
 of whose thumbs is a man. America is a country whose cities 
 are all prairies, a republic whose each city is a republic, an 
 immense corps of which each city is a corps. This energy of 
 the municipal unit may be known by a thousand signs. While 
 studying the processes of instruction, we feel that we are 
 close in touch with it. 
 
 Admitting that the school is an entirely local creation based 
 upon the good will of individuals, the methods of instruction 
 ought to be all ahke conformed, not indeed to abstract and 
 conventional theories but to the peculiar needs of the city, its 
 individual and encompassing hfe. A short tour of investiga- 
 tion suffices to show the traveller that in fact education is 
 minutely and systematically organized here with a view to the 
 adaptation of the individual to his surroundings. The teachers 
 are both men and women, but especially women. These zeal- 
 ous creatures earn nearly nine hundred dollars a year. Most 
 of them are unmarried, and though in constant contact with 
 male teachers "cases of scandal," as they say here, are ex- 
 tremely rare. These women teachers are, above all, moral 
 persons. Their sense of responsibility enables them to exert 
 an all-pervading influence over the children and youth whom 
 they instruct. Perhaps we may find here one of the reasons 
 for the peculiar respect in which women are held in America. 
 They are a part of the strongest and most tender impressions 
 of youth. 
 
 It is worth while to see these school-mistresses, most of them 
 pretty, teaching their classes, especially in the primary schools, 
 where girls and boys of ten to twelve years sit side by side. 
 They proceed mainly by questions put to the school at large, 
 the pupils asking permission to reply by raising the hand. 
 
288 OUTRE>-MER 
 
 The mistress chooses one, then asks another question, looking 
 up this or that one who is backward. It is very simple, very 
 animated, very pleasant. The great variety in the exercises, 
 none of which lasts more than half an hour, forbids fatigue. 
 In the beginners' classes, as also in the grammar grades, the 
 feature which most strikes a middle-class Frenchman, of gram- 
 mar school education, is the constant use of the concrete and 
 positive method. Modelling in clay plays an important part in 
 this method of instruction. In almost every schoolroom that 
 you may visit you will see a whole collection of figures modelled 
 by the children of both sexes, who follow you with curious 
 eyes, — simple objects made in the likeness of the humble re- 
 alities that surround them, a carrot, a loaf of bread, a biscuit, 
 a butterfly, a flower. Here are some busy with a lesson in 
 which they must draw and describe a potato that lies before 
 them. Others are busy copying some leaves. They must 
 identify the tree and give some positive facts about it. Others 
 have just finished some rather complicated woodwork, made 
 after patterns drawn with chalk upon the blackboard ; pigeon- 
 holes, boxes, pieces of carved wood that might be adjusted to 
 some machine. In all these details you recognize the same 
 principle ; to make the eye, the mind, and the hand work to- 
 gether ; to train the child to observe, and to regulate his thought 
 and actions in accordance with his observation. 
 
 After seeing these methods of education, you understand 
 better certain peculiarities of the American mind,^ its almost 
 total lack of abstract ideas, and its amazing power of recogniz- 
 ing reality, of manipulating it in the domain of mechanics as 
 well as in that of business. The aim is, to the most remark- 
 able degree, to confront these awakening minds constantly, 
 indefatigably with ikvtfact. The exercises which they choose 
 are the evident proof of this. Thus I have seen the pupils in 
 a somewhat advanced class occupied by way of written exer- 
 cise, in replying to a newspaper advertisement for employees. 
 
EDUCATION 289 
 
 When they are grown up, they will have such advertisements 
 to draw up. These things are facts, and this education bows 
 to facts. They will need to write letters relative to travelling, 
 and here is a class of little girls of twelve who have just been 
 dealing with the subject: "A trip to Europe." 
 
 I read two of the copies that the teacher is correcting. 
 The first is the work of a child who has never been abroad. 
 It is a very dry and meagre production, which, however, re- 
 veals a minute effort after accuracy. The child names the 
 ship on which she is supposed to have made the voyage. She 
 mentions the day of setting out, the length of the voyage, the 
 number of miles made each day, the name of a hotel in Liver- 
 pool and one in London. All these details are accurate and 
 real. She has heard relatives or friends mention them, and 
 she has retained them. The little girl of the second paper 
 has actually made the journey. She had observed and remem- 
 bered each daily event, the incidents, the meals, the conver- 
 sation of her mother and the stewardess. She had observed 
 the small size of the London houses and the air of " refined 
 gayety " of Paris. It is all told without effort and sometimes 
 with a good deal of naturalness. It seemed as if I were trac- 
 ing to its source that talent for conscientious and truthful 
 writing which in America even more than in England has 
 produced an enormous amount of feminine literature. The 
 attention here is carefully directed to the daily current of 
 events. Fifteen or twenty years hence this little girl will go 
 to the poles or to Egypt and her notes of travel will appear 
 in some magazine, if indeed she does not undertake some 
 monograph on art or history, science or literature, or if again 
 she does not try her hand at a ''short story," that brief and 
 sensational study of life, in narrative form, which is really the 
 summit of excellence in American literature. 
 
 Returning from these visits, you must take up the report of 
 the school committee, to read it with the picture before you 
 
290 OUTRE-MER 
 
 of these boys and girls with their spirited, resolute faces, 
 these masters and mistresses with their lively, familiar ways, 
 these light and well-ordered schoolrooms, these well-stocked 
 laboratories — all this little world of study in which nothing 
 calls up the thought of discipline or constraint. You will 
 receive the fullest light on the whole system of instruction by 
 reading the part of the report entitled "Examination Papers." 
 This is a list covering pages and pages of questions put to the 
 pupils in written or oral examinations. There is not one, 
 from the simplest to the most difficult, which was not de- 
 signed to put the child's mind in an atmosphere of positive 
 action, to connect it with facts by a firm and sufficient tie. 
 In the matter of spelling, for instance, the easiest dictation 
 exercises contain facts of domestic life or counsels of practical 
 utility. 
 
 "While I remain in the country this summer my time will 
 be occupied in active recreation." "John, come here. Did 
 you hear me quoting the old saying, 'A stitch in time saves 
 nine ' ? " 
 
 If the examination is in composition, subjects like these 
 are given: — 
 
 "Wanted : a young woman in a photographic gallery. Must 
 have practical and artistic experience and good references. 
 Address, Room 15, 154 Tremont Street, Boston, Mass. Write 
 the letter that you would write if you desired this place." 
 
 " Write a letter to some one you know who has never been 
 in this school. Describe the playground, the building, your 
 room." 
 
 "Write to a friend, giving advice as to her health, telling 
 her the things you have learned about the care of the body." 
 
 If it is geography, this is how they prepare children for 
 their future travels : — 
 
 "Sail from Cape Ann to Cork, with a cargo. What goods 
 would you take and what would you bring back? " 
 
EDUCATION 291 
 
 ** Make an excursion from San Francisco to Paris. Describe 
 the route. What articles would you bring back? " 
 
 Then follow an infinite number of questions upon climates 
 and products, both vegetable and mineral, and the division 
 of industries. 
 
 If the study is mathematics, mental arithmetic will occupy 
 the first place, of course, and all the problems will refer to 
 processes of buying and selling. 
 
 If it is history, all the questions turn upon the annals of the 
 great Republic, and especially on New England. 
 
 "When and by whom was Boston founded? Describe the 
 Tree of Liberty, the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea-party; 
 Describe a New England village, a Sunday morning in 
 colonial times. Give an account of the landing in Massa- 
 chusetts Bay and a short description of the leaders of the 
 first colony." 
 
 Evidently the pupil who is prepared to reply on all these 
 points has been educated with a view to becoming a business 
 man in a democracy and if possible, in a special city of the 
 democracy. The citizens who manage this vast organization 
 for civic instruction are finding, nevertheless, that in these 
 programmes there is too little room for the workingman. The 
 report sketches a project for a new school of mechanical arts, 
 more complete than any other. It will be called — no doubt 
 by this time it is already called — "The Mechanical High 
 School." The prospectus is summed up in these words, which 
 I transcribe textually : — 
 
 "For the first time in Boston the child who is to enter 
 industrial life will have, at the public expense, the same 
 opportunities for preparation which have long been given to 
 those who are preparing for business or professional life." 
 
 Having reached this point, it seems to me that these people 
 must have attained their ideal, which can be expressed in one 
 word: the complete identification of education and life. 
 
292 OUTRE-MER 
 
 You find the same ideal on your first view of a university. 
 I have taken Harvard for the type, precisely because, being 
 the oldest, it seems best to show the persistent tendency of the 
 American mind. In the first place, its history alone shows 
 how essential a characteristic of this mind is faith in indi- 
 vidual initiative and local vitality. It is the story of a con- 
 stant struggle for an ever more complete autonomy. It would 
 be interesting to put opposite it the history of an old French 
 university — that of Paris, Montpellier, Toulouse — as a test 
 of the degree of divergence between the two democracies. 
 With us, the contrary work has been done; institutions once 
 independent and powerful have been brought under the cen- 
 tral administration, the service of higher education has become 
 a state service. When there was a question, a few years ago, 
 of giving back an independent existence to these universities, 
 now absorbed in the university, one of the most eloquent 
 orators of the Republican party, M. Challemel-Lacour, main- 
 tained, with the support of our Senate — like him Republican 
 — that such a measure was opposed to all the work of the 
 Revolution. His Jacobinism saw clearly in this matter, and 
 no argument more strongly shows the wretched tyranny of the 
 work of '89, essentially hostile to all liberty, destructive of all 
 living energy. 
 
 As for higher education in America, it began where ours 
 ends. When in 1636 the University of Harvard — then of 
 Cambridge — was founded, the General Court of Massachu- 
 setts — that is to say, the State — establishing it by a vote, 
 this Court — consequently the State — reserved to itself the 
 right of control. The "overseers" or surveillants were at 
 this date the governor and magistrates of the colony, by vir- 
 tue of their office, and they had full power to administer the 
 funds of the college. But in a few words of the charter was 
 already indicated the future of the University: "All the 
 funds," it ran, "including gifts, legacies, and donations " — 
 
 i 
 
EDUCATION 293 
 
 From the first the founders foresaw that the co-operation of 
 private persons would be the principal support of their insti- 
 tution, and already in 1636 a Nonconforming clergyman, of 
 the name of John Harvard, — thus becoming the godfather of 
 the college, — made the first of a long series of gifts by virtue 
 of which the University to-day has a capital of twelve million 
 dollars — or sixty millions of francs. 
 
 The right of inheritance and possession carries as inevitable 
 corollary the right to administer one's possessions at will. 
 Therefore the first one hundred and fifty years of Harvard's 
 existence saw continual efforts on the part of the president 
 and professors or "fellows" to secure this second right. Not 
 until 1 8 14 did they obtain it, and then subject to the control 
 of the "overseers." It remained to secure that these should 
 themselves be incorporated in the University. 
 
 It is interesting to follow this attempt during these eighty 
 years. They began by modifying the law under which the 
 overseers were nominated. They thus became an indepen- 
 dent and self-perpetuating body. This independence was 
 already a guarantee of a sort of autonomy. A law was then 
 passed that the State of Massachusetts should not have the 
 right to modify the statutes of the University without the 
 united consent of overseers and corporation. A new step 
 forward was taken in 1843. The law of 1810 provided that 
 the board of overseers must include fifteen clergymen, all of 
 them Congregationalists. In 1843 it was provided that these 
 might be of any denomination, and in 185 1 the board was 
 authorized to dispense with clergymen altogether. In 1854 a 
 bill of still more liberal scope was introduced, giving all the 
 graduates of Harvard a vote in the election of overseers; but 
 this law was not passed until 1863. It contained, however, 
 this restriction, that the overseers thus chosen must be resi- 
 dents of Massachusetts. This restriction clause was abolished 
 in 1880 as the last vestige of injurious state supervision. 
 
294 OUTRE-MER 
 
 At the present time, being mistress of her funds, which she 
 administers according to her own judgment, mistress of her 
 methods of instruction, which she arranges at her own will, 
 herself naming her overseers and professors, this University, 
 which began by being doubly official, since it was under the 
 government also of the Church, has no longer to reckon with 
 any but her own members. She is free, in the deepest and 
 fullest sense of the word, and the statistics are there to show 
 that to this increase of independence corresponds an increase 
 of vital force. The number of students, which was eleven 
 hundred in 1870, was in 1893 two thousand nine hundred 
 and sixty-six. There were forty-one professors ; there now are 
 eighty-six. There were eighty-one tutors ; there now are two 
 hundred and ninety-four. The aid extended to poor students 
 amounted to twenty-five thousand dollars ; it is now eighty-nine 
 thousand. There were a hundred and eighty-four thousand 
 volumes in the library; there are now four hundred and 
 twelve thousand. Now translate these figures into concrete 
 realities ; they show that within the fifteen or twenty years 
 since the last thread was cut which bound together the State and 
 the University the affluence of hfe has doubled in this organism, 
 that its overseers have been more active, its professors more 
 diligent, its students more in earnest. Let our French fac- 
 ulties to-morrow be thus masters of themselves, not nominally, 
 but really, without minister or inspector or council to rule 
 them ; let them inherit and possess ; let them modify their 
 courses of teaching according to their own views and the needs 
 of their region ; let the teachers, chosen by their own colleagues, 
 feel themselves really in their own place, and the students, too, 
 and with all this let the great central schools be suppressed, to 
 leave to the universities their full range of influence, — and the 
 same causes would produce the same effects, and the intel- 
 lectual life of our provinces would suddenly awake. Alas ! we 
 are not travelling in this direction. 
 
EDUCATION 295 
 
 Harvard University is composed of the college, — properly 
 so called, — a scientific school, a graduate school, and six 
 professional schools. Two of these — the schools of law and 
 theology — are in Cambridge, like the college itself. The 
 four others, those of medicine, dental surgery, veterinary sur- 
 gery, and agriculture, are in Boston. The college students 
 are about two-thirds of the whole number. It is therefore 
 the college life that we must try to picture to ourselves in order 
 to understand the soul of Harvard, and the social type elabo- 
 rated during the four years of the full course, — the " fresh- 
 man," " sophomore," "junior," and " senior " years. These are 
 the names taken by the student from twelvemonth to twelve- 
 month, and they explain themselves. 
 
 Equality and activity, especially equality, are the essential 
 characteristics which emerge, on a first glance, over the sort 
 of life which these young people lead during these four years. 
 If the English proposed to send sons of the nobility to Oxford, 
 in order to create the complex type of the "gentleman," the 
 Americans appear, on their part, to have proposed to bring 
 together poor boys and rich boys in order to abolish, or even 
 to forestall, that prejudice against paid work which is, in fact, 
 the principle most destructive of democracy. To put our 
 finger on the distinction, I may transcribe here a letter quoted 
 by Mr. Frank Bolles, the treasurer of the University, which 
 by itself alone will, better than any analysis, make the reader 
 acquainted with the conditions under which the young Harvard 
 men pursue their studies. It is the detailed account, year by 
 year and figure by figure, of the methods employed by a poor 
 student to pay his own way through college. It will be seen 
 that the expenses of a student are pretty high, especially for a 
 comparatively small town such as Cambridge. But here we 
 see another American characteristic. Having the alternative of 
 diminishmg his expenses or increasing his work, the American 
 always prefers to increase his work. 
 
296 OUTRE-MER 
 
 The poor student, whose statement Mr. Bolles reports, fixes 
 his freshman expenses at three hundred and eighty-one dol- 
 lars, his sophomore expenses at three hundred and sixty-one, 
 those of the junior year at three hundred and ninety-five, and 
 those of the senior year at four hundred and sixty-two. He 
 had twenty-five dollars of debts when he entered Harvard. 
 He was, therefore, obliged to earn money, and a large sum of 
 money, during these four years, while at the same time pursuing 
 his studies. 
 
 The details of the methods he employed are very significant. 
 As freshman, he " made " three hundred and forty-six dollars, 
 thus divided : a prize of two hundred and fifty dollars, a loan 
 of fifteen dollars on his watch, seventy-one dollars earned by 
 type-writing for his fellow-students, eight dollars by selling 
 books, two dollars by tutoring. 
 
 As sophomore he used the same methods, except that, in 
 view of the smallness of the prize gained that year, he decided 
 to wait at table. His work as waiter brought him thirty-eight 
 dollars. It may be remarked that this is not an isolated case. 
 Many Harvard students gain by this means, especially during 
 vacations, the small overplus of resources which they require. 
 This student, in his second year, added to this business that of 
 preparing the brains of sheep for the lectures of Professor 
 William James, the great psychologist. 
 
 The third year, the junior, appears to have been easier. Tu- 
 toring brought him in more — one hundred and twenty dollars. 
 He got work in the library that helped to set him on his feet. 
 A large prize which he took in the fourth year put an end to 
 his difficulties, and he left college at the completion of his 
 studies, having met all his own expenses during the four years, 
 and put aside a small sum of money. 
 
 This is a perfect specimen of the American student, and Mr. 
 Bolles is right in concluding at the close of this letter : " A 
 young man who has gone through all this is certain to succeed 
 
EDUCATION 297 
 
 in any calling." He cites among possible careers, railway 
 service, journalism, book-publishing, political life, and teaching. 
 The elasticity of this programme of the future is simply in 
 conformity with the genius of a country where a man finds it 
 perfectly natural to change his profession at forty, fifty, or sixty 
 years. One consequence of this facility of guiding his life in 
 the most opposite directions is that the " poor scholar " is 
 unknown in the United States. The students who wait upon 
 their classmates, napkin on arm and dish in hand, and who will 
 presently be sitting on the same benches with them, attending 
 the same lectures and passing the same examinations, have, if 
 one may so speak, taken and given a lesson of destiny. They 
 know and they demonstrate that the man of energy accepts all 
 and conquers all, if only he will. Neither he nor his fellow- 
 students will forget the lesson. 
 
 Such letters give a sort of sketch, accurate though cold, of 
 one kind of life. To give it color, to change these true though 
 abstract details into a living picture, one must go himself to 
 Cambridge, and see with his own eyes the setting in which 
 such a career is possible and even normal. No excursion 
 could be easier. Hundreds of electric tram-cars connect it 
 with Boston by day and night. You cross the broad river 
 Charles ; then about two miles of a country all built up with 
 small wooden houses, with verandas, where the eternal rocking- 
 chair awaits the American's wearied repose. 
 
 The car is filled with young men and young women. Of the 
 latter, in this suburb of a student town, not a single one would 
 suggest the idea of a bad character. The demi-grisette, the 
 half-venal, half-sentimental mistress, who abounds in our Latin 
 quarter, does not exist here. The type that you have met in 
 these cars is chiefly that of a girl from eighteen to twenty-five 
 years old, thin and slight, with quantities of auburn hair, a deli- 
 cate, freckled face, bright eyes, and a smile that has a sort of 
 stern languor, telling of too much work, too much tension, too 
 
298 OUTRE-MER 
 
 much endeavor — not her own, but of her race, of a whole 
 long ancestry behind her. The well-kept teeth show white 
 between the parted lips, which droop at the corners. The 
 voice is harsh and slightly nasal. The neck is thin, and sug- 
 gests a thin body, the frail anatomy of which you guess at — 
 for it is winter — under the double-breasted coat, the knitted 
 jacket, the flannels, and the "combinations." The whole per- 
 son stands on india-rubber shoes, and is enveloped in India 
 rubber, suggesting the factory and the waterproof. 
 
 Where is this child going? Is she a student of the " Annex," 
 the portion of the University reserved to women? Is she a 
 dressmaker going back to her shop, a salesgirl going to her 
 store, a doctress going to her patient, a clairvoyant about to 
 give a private seance, an actress returning from a rehearsal? 
 This creature might equally well adapt herself to all situations, 
 exercise all callings, except that of trafficker in love ; and the 
 youths who sit facing or beside her, with books, or racquets, or 
 skates under their arm, according to the occasion, are also pre- 
 pared for all feats of daring, except an adventure of gallantry, 
 I am told that a certain number go into Boston for nocturnal 
 dissipation. It is possible. But in that case, this is a real 
 debauch, a lower phase of life, so coarse, so distinct from all 
 the rest, that the young man is degraded by it, and not cor- 
 rupted. The difference is great. The temporary household 
 of the Parisian student, with its daily intercourse and its 
 romanticism, bears witness to greater refinement, but it is far 
 more dangerous to the healthiness of future life. 
 
 The aspect of Cambridge on the winter day when I reached 
 it by the gliding of the rapid but commonplace car, was de- 
 lightful to see. The great red University buildings looked all 
 the redder against the white snow. The little wooden houses,. 
 in general the dwellings of professors, wore a pleasant look of 
 friendliness, gray and neutral between the white ground and 
 the red of the vast edifices reserved for Ubraries and museums 
 
EDUCATION 299 
 
 and students' rooms. The pines showed black against the cold 
 blue sky, and so did the leafless branches of other trees, slender 
 and fragile frameworks where sparrows were twittering. Purple 
 berries gleamed in the shrubberies, making gay this peaceful, 
 quiet scene of study. 
 
 There were students passing and repassing on the wooden 
 sidewalks, swept clean from snow. They were simply dressed, 
 and between their lips they held the short wooden pipe of 
 a shape special to Harvard. They go where they please and 
 do what they please. More independent than their contem- 
 poraries at Oxford, they are not even subject to the obli- 
 gation to be in at a fixed hour, which is the first servitude 
 of a Balliol or Christ Church man. The second is the neces- 
 sity of presence at table. Harvard men know no more of 
 this than of the other. They are not, like the English, set in a 
 sort of lay monastery, part cloister, part club, and part gym- 
 nasium. The rooms in which they live in the buildings set 
 down here and there in the neighborhood of Memorial Hall 
 are subject to no supervision. They live there as at a hotel, 
 giving no account of their actions. 
 
 There is a great diversity in the elegance of these rooms, as 
 well as in their price. Most generally two students live together. 
 One parlor serves them as study and two closets as bedrooms. 
 Two desks, two bookcases, two sets of furniture, divide the 
 study into two distinct domains. Everywhere are the inevi- 
 table rocking-chairs, and on all the window-seats of the guillo- 
 tine windows are small mattresses with pillows, where they 
 stretch themselves to read, to smoke, to look at the view. On 
 the walls are hung the medallions of clubs and photographs 
 that tell of the favorite pastimes of the owners of the room : 
 football teams, yacht crews, theatre scenes, views of Europe, 
 Egypt, the Holy Land. Almost all of them have been " abroad," 
 and the rest are going. In the most expensive rooms which, 
 like those in Claverley Hall, cost six, seven, eight hundred dol- 
 
300 OUTRE-MER 
 
 lars, the student lives alone, and usually the two little rooms 
 give the impression of a club man : almost no books, a slight 
 desk with folding cover, steady enough to scratch off a note 
 upon, but too fragile to support a dictionary or to work upon : 
 everywhere mementos of races, balls, and hunting. In this in- 
 equality of expenditure so ofTensive to us, we really find the 
 democratic spirit of America. What is equal with them is 
 respect for the individual. He is left equally free to spend 
 his money or not to spend it, to have it or not to have it. 
 Any regulation, however wise, would encroach upon this vig- 
 orous freedom of action which to them appears to be the 
 grandest of human qualities. On reflection we see that they 
 are right. Our system, which makes rich children and poor 
 children live in our schools under the same material con- 
 ditions, has for its most certain result to develop the most 
 furious envy when this identity of life suddenly ceases with 
 the young man's entrance into the world. This disastrous 
 influence has less chance of being born when there has never 
 been any such identity. 
 
 One of the most striking features of Harvard life, giving 
 the measure of the spirit of independent action, is the number 
 of clubs or societies which the students maintain by them- 
 selves outside of all administrative control. There are no 
 fewer than forty-nine of them, each one founded with a posi- 
 tive and definite purpose. To read over their lists and pro- 
 grammes is to pass in review all the interests of the American 
 student, his labors and his pleasures. 
 
 Some of these clubs, like the Porcellian, are the precise 
 image of a closed circle of New York or Boston. The club 
 derives its name and emblem — a boar's head — from a cele- 
 brated dinner given in 1791 by one of its members, at which 
 a whole pig was served as a roast. You observe, here again, 
 in the fidelity with which these young men adhere to the 
 comic surname, in the pride with which they show you some 
 
EDUCATION 301 
 
 last century's reviews on the shelves of their library, the con- 
 stant desire to overlay the present with the past. One of 
 them, who had passed some time at Oxford, used a very sin- 
 gular and suggestive expression to describe how much in a 
 new civilization is slight and superficial and thin. 
 
 "We feel the want of density so much here," he said. 
 
 The principal object of some other clubs, like the "Hasty 
 Pudding," is to give dramatic representations. The name of 
 this club, which also recalls a culinary whim, corresponds well 
 with the character of good humor everywhere imprinted on 
 the little house where it abides. Most of the pieces played 
 on the stage of the ground-floor are satirical buffooneries 
 composed by the students themselves. The spirit of these 
 lively boys is shed abroad on the walls in grotesque pro- 
 grammes, drawn with a certain power of gayety. I am told 
 that the club is expensive, each member being assessed fifty 
 dollars a year. At the time of my visit a broad-shouldered 
 young man, with the build of a boxer, his fine eyes hidden by 
 spectacles, was seated at the piano, accompanying himself in 
 singing a Yokohama song. He went to the Pacific islands 
 last year, and doubtless his companions will go in a year or 
 five or ten. There is quite a body of Americans in the extreme 
 Orient. Japan is so near — thirteen days from Vancouver, 
 fifteen from San Francisco. In this students' club I find a 
 tiny trace of this exotic influence. I found it in Washington 
 the other day when I sat at dinner beside a young girl who 
 was all absorbed in Buddhism, and in Boston where a very 
 distinguished doctor, who has been completely initiated, said 
 to me, drawing two concentric circles on the table : — 
 
 "Christianity is to Buddhism what this small circle is to the 
 large one." 
 
 And his conversation was filled with formulae of Hindoo 
 wisdom, which seemed all the more striking coming from 
 those stern and decided Yankee lips. 
 
302 OUTRE-MER 
 
 "There are many roads that lead to the mountain," he con- 
 cluded, speaking of the different religions, "but the landscape 
 around it remains always the same." "We are all living on 
 the surface of our being," he said again. 
 
 The young fellows of the Hasty Pudding have not got so 
 far as to plunge into these formulae beneath which lies the 
 abyss of the grand, but deadly metaphysical vision. But I 
 shall not be astonished if there is some day at Harvard a 
 Buddhist club, as already, beside the circles for pleasure and 
 for the theatre, there is a Christian circle, the St. Paul, and a 
 philosophical circle, the Harvard Philosophical Club, whose 
 purpose is thus described in the prospectus: "A genial and 
 pronounced individuality is as great a requirement for mem- 
 bership as to be deeply versed in philosophy." 
 
 Then there is a whole series of literary and secret societies 
 that by an artlessly humorous pedantry are called by Greek 
 letters: the Delta Phi society, the Delta Upsilon, the Phi 
 Beta Kappa, Pi Eta, Theta Delta, Zeta Psi. There is a 
 series of sporting societies, the Boat Club, the Cycling Asso- 
 ciation, the Cricket Club, the Football Club, the Baseball Club, 
 the Photographic Society, the Camera Club ; there are political 
 clubs, the Democ7-atic, and the Republican ; musical societies, 
 the Banjo Club, the Guitar and Mandolin, the Pierian. 
 There is a series of associations for the publication of serious 
 or humorous periodicals, the Lampoon, the Crimson, the Ad- 
 vocate, the Monthly. The youthful editors of these periodi- 
 cals would not be American if these enterprises did not 
 become real business undertakings. Last year, to give only 
 a single example, the Crimson brought in to its editor-in- 
 chief five hundred dollars, and a hundred dollars to each of 
 the other editors. I have looked over some of these sheets. 
 They are, in fact, real newspapers, filled with news interesting 
 to the University. I read in one of them an excellent criti- 
 cism of Le Mariage Forqe given by the members of the Cercle 
 
EDUCATION 303 
 
 Franqais and a discussion of a decree of the overseers. Ad- 
 vertisements abound, filling two or three pages. In the 
 Advocate I find a witty essay on " Feminology," which closes 
 by a quotation from Maupassant : ^'Cette canaillerie charmajite, 
 cette trojnperie raffinee, cette malicieuse perfidie, toutes ces per- 
 verses qualites qui poussent an suicide les amanis imbecilement 
 credules et qui ravissent les autres. ' ' 
 
 This quotation and a poem entitled Fleur du mal with the 
 last line "I hear the mocking laugh of Baudelaire," bear wit- 
 ness to the freedom of mind of these young men and the 
 boldness of their range of reading. This admiration for 
 French writers of the extreme Left is one of the features that 
 most distinguishes America from England. But it suffices to 
 converse with the men and women who profess it, to perceive 
 that their interest is entirely in the sphere of the intellect and 
 the will. It does not reach the deep sources of private life, 
 which are still simple and somewhat primitive. The un- 
 healthy complexity of our great artists is a subject of curiosity 
 to Americans of both sexes, a sort of moral bibelot, to be 
 looked at and handled like a cup of peculiar form which 
 nobody ever drinks out of. Here, especially in this whole- 
 some setting of Harvard, the difference of surroundings puts 
 these young men in the same mental attitude toward our con- 
 temporary authors that they have toward the Alexandrian 
 poets and the Arabian story-tellers. The realities of their 
 own life, which preserve their hearts from being poisoned by 
 the senses and their wills by dreams, are work and sport, 
 good fellowship and athletics, the intense attractions of the 
 gymnasium with its running track and its thousand appliances, 
 which include instruments to develop all muscles, even to 
 those of the fingers. They are safeguarded, too, by their 
 precocious aptitude for organization, which enables them to 
 administer for themselves such establishments as Memorial 
 Hall, where eleven hundred of them eat daily at an expense 
 
304 OUTRE-MER 
 
 of more than fifty thousand dollars a year. They handle these 
 sums with the wisdom and the strict probity which they will 
 one day apply to the management of their own property. 
 
 Again, we perceive that in the university as in the school the 
 Americans have sought and have obtained the perfect harmony 
 of education and life. Here again they have been guided by 
 facts. Their good sense has preserved them from the too 
 tempting imitation of European things. They have neither 
 built up a false English university, as might have been feared, 
 nor a false German university. But to look into the faces of 
 the students, so energetic, so virile, with an expression of 
 decided candor all their own, you feel that they have succeeded 
 in producing just the stamp of man which their democracy 
 needs. You feel also that they have not yet done away with 
 that trace of stern harshness natural to the son of a recent and 
 still incomplete nation. And yet Harvard is the most tradi- 
 tional of American universities, the most like Europe. How I 
 wish I had leisure to test my observations of it by the others, 
 above all those of the West, whose student cheers express a 
 singularly untamed joy of living. Here, for example, is the 
 " cheer " of the University of Illinois, " Rah-hoo-rah, Zip-boom 
 ah ! Hip-zoo, rah zoo, Jimmy, blow your bazoo. Ip-sidi-iki, 
 U. of I., Champaign ! " and that of the University of Indiana, 
 " Gloriana, Frangipana, Indiana ! Kazoo, Kazah ! Kazoo, 
 Kazah ! Hoop Lah ! Hoop Lah ! State University, Rah ! 
 Rah ! Rah ! " and that of Denver, " U, U, U, of D, Den-ver, 
 Ver-si-tee ! Kai Gar Wahoo Zip boom — D. U. ! " The 
 University of North Dakota follows with her cry, " Odz-dzo- 
 dzi ! Ri-ri-ri ! Hy-ah ! Hy-ah ! North Dakota ! " 
 
 I doubt whether the roar of a lion is more wild and blood- 
 curdling than these onomatopoean cries, issuing from broad 
 chests and robust wide-open lungs, suggesting health that would 
 suffice for years of hard work and bitter competition. Health 
 is the first of conditions in a country without a middle class, 
 
EDUCATION 305 
 
 where the rentier does not exist and where the student who 
 is rich to-day will to-morrow, by a freak of fortune, be the poor 
 engineer, the needy journalist, the business man in straitened 
 circumstances, the doctor without patients ; in fact, the man 
 compelled to struggle for life, as though he had never been 
 either freshman or sophomore, junior or senior. Let us not 
 be anxious about him. He is ready. 
 
 And they are ready also, the freshmen, the seniors and the 
 juniors of that woman's college, which rises at the edge of the 
 little Lake Waban, at Wellesley, near Boston, its great red 
 building in the shape of a Latin cross, with its brick villas and 
 its wooden cottages. A college ! How inadequately that word, 
 so sad and dreary in French, represents the freshness and 
 poetry of this oasis ! It is most truly a young girl's university, 
 a sort of realization of that fantasy of Tennyson's, " The Prin- 
 cess," concerning which Taine has written, "No jest is more 
 romantic or more tender. You smile to hear weighty, learned 
 words issuing from those rosy Hps. . . . Clad in hlac silk dresses, 
 with golden girdles, they listen to passages of history and prom- 
 ises of social renovation." 
 
 But that the toilettes of the lovely Wellesleyans are more 
 modern, these lines of the great philosopher might be placed 
 at the head of the catalogue of this singular institution. I say 
 singular, involuntarily taking the Gallo-Roman point of view, 
 which admits of no other means of education for women than 
 the convent or the paternal roof. The girls' school with us is 
 but a lay convent, without that which alone corrects its seclusion 
 and monotonous discipline ; namely, confession and com- 
 munion. In vain it bears the name of academy, after the 
 fashion of boys' schools ; it is radically, unalterably different. 
 Nowhere is the radical inequality between the two sexes, which 
 forms the very foundation of our society, more perceptible than 
 in the difference between the methods and the results of the 
 
306 OUTRE-MER 
 
 two modes of teaching. I have elsewhere tried to show for 
 what infinitely complex reasons Americans uphold the truly 
 democratic dogma of absolute equality between man and 
 woman. True to their great principle of accepting all the 
 practical consequences of the truths in which they believe, 
 they could not but make the education of both identical. In 
 the mixed schools that reform has already been realized so far 
 as primary and secondary education is concerned. Wellesley 
 is one of the most complete attempts to realize it in higher 
 education. 
 
 This attempt — like all those which the traveller finds in this 
 country, where the State is nothing — was due to private ini- 
 tiative. At the risk of being monotonous we must not weary 
 of repeating this observation. All things grow clear in the 
 United States when one understands them as an immense act 
 of faith in the social beneficence of individual energy left to 
 itself. This, so to speak, is the mystical basis of their realism, 
 the message that they bring to the world, and above all to us 
 French people, whom the most retrograde of revolutions has 
 for the last hundred years made the slaves of a centralized 
 state. Nor must we weary of telling of the moral dramas of 
 which those generous foundations are nearly always the out- 
 come. Here is the one to which Wellesley owes its birth : — 
 
 In 1863 there lived in Boston a distinguished lawyer, Mr. 
 Henry Fowle Durant. His portrait gives one the idea of a 
 face most refined, radiant, with an expression at once gentle 
 and bright. The somewhat stern line, observable in the faces 
 of so many Americans, is seen at the corner of the nostril. 
 The chin is rather long and prominent, the face absolutely 
 smooth, with that expression of fixed intensity which we find 
 among all who are compelled to self-restraint and self-com- 
 mand, such as doctors, clergymen, and actors. Those who 
 have known Mr. Durant speak of him as having a body so thin 
 and frail, so deUcate in its motions, that he reminded them 
 
EDUCATION 307 
 
 invariably of the words of the apostle, " He will be raised a 
 spiritual body." We may imagine from such details and from 
 small photographic likenesses one of those too sensitive organ- 
 isms which life touches very deeply, and which cannot support 
 it unless they interpose between themselves and reality an 
 abstract faith, in which they wrap themselves for protection. 
 In the year 1863 this tender-hearted man lost his only son. 
 The trial v/as so severe that instinctively he sought refuge in 
 religion. He became, says the biographer from whom I bor- 
 row these details, the most intense of evangelical Christians. 
 It was in this crisis of mysticism that the vigorous spirit of 
 positivism, always present in the American, showed itself. He 
 abandoned his profession as a lawyer, which no longer seemed 
 to him to be in accord with the ardor of his new convictions. 
 His wife and he began to consider what use they could make 
 of their fortune. Debating the matter, they conceived the 
 scheme of founding a university for women, the basis of which 
 should be the Bible. " Mr. Durant," adds the same biog- 
 rapher, " said strongly both in pubhc and private, that the 
 object of his college was to form learned Christian women. 
 Christian wives and Christian mothers." 
 
 In 1871 the first stone of the college was laid. It has now 
 had twenty years of activity. The sum expended by the 
 founder was more than eight hundred thousand dollars. Other 
 persons added to the endowment, and at the present time this 
 succession of private munificence has brought the property of 
 the college to the sum of $1,636,900. 
 
 When modern Americans talk of Christianity we are haunted 
 by the recollection of puritan fanaticism, but we err. They 
 understand thereby simply a rather small number of essential 
 principles which must be taken " for granted." This is the 
 expression which they constantly make use of, when they are 
 questioned regarding their moral or religious education. Their 
 fundamental realism causes them to consider as useless any 
 
308 OUTRE-MER 
 
 discussions which call into question these first postulates. So 
 far they are all naturally Christian, if we may say so. But 
 these doctrines once admitted, their tolerance is infinite. I 
 observe, for example, in the list of professions of faith repre- 
 sented at Wellesley sixteen different sects ; Congregationalists, 
 Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians, Reformed, 
 Quakers, Lutherans, Universalists, even Swedenborgians. This 
 diversity of beliefs goes to show in what spirit the Biblical 
 programme of Mr. Durant has been developed. One of the 
 teachers in the College has written : " What we should like to 
 suppress in this world is the frivolous and the ascetic woman." 
 Visiting the College yourself, and rectifying your observations 
 by conversation and the reading of the catalogue, you perceive 
 that everything here is arranged with a view to this double 
 result, — on the one hand, to form the minds of these young 
 girls by a thorough instruction equal to that of the young men 
 of Harvard or Yale, and on the other to adapt these girls to 
 the habits of elegance and comfort common to the prosperous 
 class in their country. If the religious Ufe is hidden beneath 
 this free regime it is only as the regulator of a machine is 
 hidden. 
 
 You enter the principal building and you find yourself in a 
 hall, resembling, with its green plants, its pictures, its statues, 
 its lacquered furniture, the interior of one of those sumptuous 
 New York hotels, in which entire famihes pass their seasons 
 year after year. You mount the wooden staircase, wainscoted 
 like that of a club. All along the corridors, which are also fur- 
 nished with statues, pictures, and plants, open the students' 
 rooms. They usually live two together, like the Harvard stu- 
 dents. They have two little sleeping-rooms and a common 
 sitting-room, which does not differ in the least from the sitting- 
 room to which every American woman who is at all refined is 
 accustomed. Photographs, flowers, furniture of light wood, 
 and lounges with cushions of chintz, printed in fanciful pat- 
 
 1 
 
EDUCATION 309 
 
 terns, show off the elegance of these dainty Uttle chambers, the 
 occupants of which, by the way, have nothing monastic about 
 them. They are constantly asking one another to tea. They 
 also invite young men. Every Saturday evening the gymna- 
 sium ceases to be an athletic club and is transformed into a 
 ballroom, to which they invite their friends from Boston and 
 Cambridge, as if they were hving at home with their parents. 
 They go and come, in and out of the house, without giving 
 account of their conduct. Some are rowing on the lake, others 
 riding on horseback, others driving phaetons. Others have 
 gone by train to Boston, alone, of course. They merely said 
 that they were going into town. No surveillance is exercised 
 over them during their absence. No questions are asked of 
 them on their return. Since they intend entering on life, to 
 become individuals capable of defending themselves, they 
 must be educated with this end in view. And, moreover, a 
 most equitable law which punishes the seducer equally with 
 the forger and the thief, would protect them even were their 
 own characters and those of the men whom they met in- 
 sufficient. 
 
 This Draconian code appears to us in France to savor 
 strongly of Pharisaism. It seems to us, also, that it must give 
 room for the detestable practice of blackmailing. The value 
 of laws is measured by their results, and the States where these 
 laws are in force are certainly those in which the personality of 
 women is developed with the greatest amount of energy and 
 happiness. Surely this shows progress beyond countries like 
 our own, where the relations of the sexes are still so grotesquely 
 unequal that when a case of seduction occurs it is the woman 
 who is dishonored, and the illegitimate child must be wholly 
 cared for at the expense of the mother, since the search after 
 paternity is forbidden. We shall have changed our regime 
 several times yet before we shall dare on this point, as on so 
 many others, to attempt one of those moral revolutions which 
 
310 OUTRE-MER 
 
 are as fruitful as political and social revolutions are vain and 
 criminal. 
 
 Are the girl students whose youthful grace is sheltered in 
 this elegant and comfortable Wellesley equal to the men, and 
 are they as well protected? Are they contented with their 
 lot, or do they long for still more liberty? Surely, if they 
 wish to criticise the system to which they are subjected, the 
 habit of public debate, as well as the quality of their instruc- 
 tion, admits of it. Nothing is more curious than the contrast 
 between the severity of their studies and the coquetry of those 
 palaces and cottages standing on the shores of that little lake 
 in that beautiful park. The entrance examination requires 
 a considerable knowledge of English literature, history and 
 geography, mathematics, Latin, Greek, and of one of the two 
 great living languages besides English — namely, French and 
 German. 
 
 There is no limit of age for this examination, so that pupils 
 of sixteen years may enter the college at the same time as 
 those who are much more advanced in life. They gave me 
 one example of a student of sixty years of age, already a 
 grandmother, who presented herself and was admitted. In 
 this country, where so many begin the work of life over and 
 over again, young girls do not consider it extraordinary to 
 have a companion of that age. There is no exclusive principle 
 as regards the entrance of students. They may be poor or 
 rich, daughters of millionaires or of very humble parentage. 
 So long as they are morally honorable, no one asks how they find 
 the means to pay the three hundred and fifty dollars per annum, 
 which is the cost of board. It often happens that a young 
 girl, quite ready for examination, takes a place as a cashier or 
 saleswoman in a store, as secretary in a hotel, or as copyist, 
 in order to make up the sum. Others serve their classmates 
 as dressmakers or milliners, take care of the rooms or carry 
 messages. Here, as at Harvard, this extra work is not only 
 
 1 
 
EDUCATION 311 
 
 tolerated but esteemed. It is a species of instruction in 
 equality, given by those who undertake the service to those 
 who can do without it, but who must nevertheless treat their 
 less fortunate companions with unvarying politeness and sym- 
 pathy. For that matter, after a very brief journey in the United 
 States one is no longer astonished at the consequences which 
 the democratic idea carries with it when constantly, indefati- 
 gably applied. Among the significant facts given to me by 
 the former cowboy, whose story I have transcribed, I neglected 
 to note this: One of his friends and he had hired a cook 
 while staying in a Western city, and this woman stipulated 
 in her engagement that once a week she should have the use 
 of her master's sitting-room to receive her friends. 
 
 A simple little fact of this kind proves well enough how 
 very intact mercenary occupation leaves the spirit of indi- 
 vidual pride among those who undertake it, even when they 
 are by extraction and education really inferior; all the more 
 so when there is really no inferiority. On the other hand, 
 one wonders when these Wellesley girls find time for supple- 
 mentary work, so full and so many are the courses. Here, for 
 example, is the Greek course, which a pupil in her first year 
 must have passed in order to become a sophomore, — cer- 
 tain speeches of Lysias, the Apology and the Crito of Plato, 
 five hundred lines of the Odyssey of Homer. In Latin 
 she has studied the works of Cicero, the Gennania and 
 Agricola of Tacitus, and one or two books of Horace. In 
 German she has mastered the general history of literature, the 
 first part of Faust and the dramas of Schiller. In French 
 her studies include Le Cid, Horace, Andromaque, Le Mis- 
 anthrope, L'Avare, and, among modern works, L' Abbe Con- 
 statitin. As regards philosophy, I cannot resist translating 
 some of the lines from the programme of a class: "Types of 
 ethical theory; psychological investigation of the laws of the 
 human mind as a propa2deutic basis for theories to account 
 
312 OUTRE-MER 
 
 for moral experience and to justify ethic methods. The doc- 
 trine of evolution applied to account for the motives of indi- 
 vidual conduct and the history of social and civil institutions, 
 customs, etc. ; the various types of ethics in the phases of 
 moral conduct as they are revealed by literature and art." 
 
 Consider that to this work is added what may be called 
 the work of the clubs. All the students are members of some 
 club or association — musical, like the Beethoven; literary, 
 like the Shakespeare, the Phi- Sigma, and the Zeta- Alpha; 
 political, like the Agora; or for the study and practice of 
 painting or sculpture, like the Art Society. Finally, nearly all 
 of them take physical exercise, as it is understood in America 
 — that is to say, as a calculated and carefully studied training. 
 In the last report of the president I notice six tables of a 
 strange description, which reveal in all frankness the tre- 
 mendously realistic spirit by which this College, in appear- 
 ance so paradoxical, is animated. The first is entitled "Girth 
 of Chest." It is a series of comparative columns showing the 
 average development of the chest obtained by twenty students, 
 taken at random, after five months of training in the gymna- 
 sium and on the river. From thirty-one inches these young 
 athletes passed to thirty-three. Two parallel columns show at 
 a glance the cessation of development of those who have not 
 exercised their muscles. The second table gives similarly the 
 capacity of the lungs, the third the strength of the arms, the 
 fourth the strength of the back, the fifth the depth of the chest, 
 the sixth the breadth of the shoulders. 
 
 At first this manner of treating the physiological develop- 
 ment of young girls, as trainers might treat that of their 
 horses, appears strange. Then you reflect that these young 
 girls who come here for instruction, are also destined, for the 
 most part, to become wives and mothers. It is, therefore, 
 advisable that they should be injured as little as possible by 
 cerebral overwork and that their physique^ should remain 
 
EDUCATION 313 
 
 sound in spite of intellectual effort. That object being ad- 
 mitted, the Americans employ the most efficacious method 
 simply and quietly. All that remains is to collect statistics of 
 the weight of the children to which these young women will 
 give birth when married. I seem to hear one of the woman 
 doctors who have made those instructive tables answer, " Why 
 not?" 
 
 Between a woman's university like Wellesley and a military 
 academy like West Point there should be, one would think, 
 the same difference which exists with us between the Convent 
 of the Sacred Heart, for example, and the School of St. Cyr. 
 A priori v^t say to ourselves that one should be strictly watched 
 over and the other but little. The Americans think exactly 
 the contrary. Accustomed as they are, not to deal in words, 
 but to see things as they are, they have said to themselves 
 that independence being, in their world, the condition of 
 woman's life, the colleges for young girls should accustom 
 their students to the practice of independence. Inversely, 
 discipline being the essential condition of military life, it 
 has seemed to them that a school of officers should be governed 
 with very strict severity, and it is for this reason that the 
 cadets of West Point have the right to only two months' holi- 
 day in their four years of study. It is for this reason also 
 that the list of "offences" punishable by bad marks is as 
 large at West Point as it is small at Harvard and at Wellesley. 
 There are no fewer than eight categories of these. Twelve of 
 the first receive ten bad marks each, forty of the second re- 
 ceive seven, seventy-six of the third receive five, one hundred 
 and five of the fourth receive four, and so until we reach the 
 forty-three faults of the eighth category, which receive one 
 bad mark each. 
 
 This apparent want of logic in a system which shuts up the 
 future soldiers to a discipline such as is applied to children, 
 
314 OUTRE-MER 
 
 while it leaves the future housewife with unlimited latitude, 
 is in truth logical, and, if you wish to trace the ideal portrait 
 of the officer of a democratic army, you will find that the 
 Americans have succeeded in ascertaining and applying with 
 incomparable common sense the laws that apply to formation 
 of that personage so abnormal in an essentially pacific and 
 commercial republic. 
 
 And, first of all, it is necessary that each officer should be 
 deeply, closely attached to the democracy, and that the entire 
 corps should be permeated with the democratic spirit. There 
 are numerous examples to prove that an army, large or other- 
 wise, has always a tendency to insulate itself in the country, 
 to detach itself from the nation and to make itself a thing 
 apart, and the possibility of a military despotism is always in 
 the future. The Americans have foreseen this danger, and 
 have warded it off by such a singular method of recruiting 
 their military school at West Point that at first sight it dis- 
 concerts common sense. On reflection one understands its 
 wisdom. They began by absolutely suppressing all compe- 
 tition for entrance. Each electoral district which nominates 
 a Congressman has a right to name a candidate for a cadet- 
 ship, and to that Congressman belongs the right of designat- 
 ing the candidate, whom the War Secretary nominates on that 
 presentation. Ten places "at large" are added, which the 
 President of the United States fills at his will. He reserves 
 them, as a rule, for the sons of soldiers or sailors. On this 
 list of candidates an entrance examination, or rather one of 
 qualification, exercises a kind of weeding out. Is it neces- 
 sary to add that politics almost wholly determines the choice 
 of Congressmen? Vainly do they try to escape therefrom, as, 
 for example, by offering for competition the place of a can- 
 didate which they have at their disposal. In fact, one-third 
 of those places remain unoccupied, in consequence of the 
 deficiencies of the youths whom the Congressmen present. 
 
EDUCATION 315 
 
 The person from whom I gather these details and those 
 which follow, one of the most remarkable officers of our army, 
 was astonished on visiting West Point at such an anomaly, 
 evidently so harmful to the service. 
 
 "There are in it two advantages," was the reply made to 
 him. "In the first place, this recruiting answers to the spirit 
 of equality which forms the very foundation of our democracy; 
 each district of the country shares the expenses, and it is, 
 therefore, right that each should share the benefits. If admis- 
 sion to West Point were thrown open to competition, the can- 
 didates coming from New England would necessarily beat the 
 candidates from the South and West, where the average of 
 development is feebler. In the second place, the present 
 procedure singles out in the lowest classes, if only as an 
 electoral bait, boys who, without this, would otherwise remain 
 destitute of instruction. It is a means, among thousands 
 of others, of giving the poorest the same facilities of culture 
 as the richest. And the statistics of the callings exercised 
 by the parents of the pupils testify that the method has suc- 
 ceeded. We count since the foundation, eight hundred and 
 twenty-seven sons of farmers and planters, four hundred and 
 ninety-five sons of merchants, four hundred and fifty-five of 
 lawyers, two hundred and seventy-one of doctors, only two 
 hundred and forty-six of officers, then the sons of all trades 
 — butchers, innkeepers, footmen, detectives, house servants, 
 washerwomen. There are many chances that an army com- 
 manded by chiefs who to such an extent are the issue of the 
 people, will not become an army of pretorians; there are 
 great chances also that those ofificers, thus aided by the Re- 
 public in the struggle for life, will remain faithful to the Con- 
 stitution. The written oath of allegiance which they take on 
 their entry to serve the federal power in preference to their 
 native State — without doubt as a provision in the case of a 
 new war, like that of the North and South — will cost them 
 
316 OUTRE-MER 
 
 nothing to keep. The United States have done too much 
 for them." 
 
 This democratic method of recruiting was, however, not 
 without its peril. If the aristocratic officer is a danger to 
 liberty, the officer without education is a danger to the army. 
 He destroys and dissolves it by his mere existence — at least 
 in time of peace, when he is not even placed in a position to 
 secure for himself the credit of personal valor. The Ameri- 
 cans have well understood this difficulty of origin, if we may 
 so say, and they have not overlooked it. Their self-respect 
 is too deep for them to accept, without trying to change, a 
 too evident inferiority, and they have remedied it, always 
 after their habitual method of accepting facts. Which is the 
 strongest of the influences that can induce a rather coarse 
 youth to control himself, and to train himself in the direction 
 of refinement? It is feminine influence. They have there- 
 fore asked themselves by what means they could bring woman 
 into the life of the cadets, and have bethought themselves of 
 constructing a hotel at the doors of the school, in that admir- 
 able landscape which is formed by the Hudson and the moun- 
 tains — the river with its deep waters flowing at the foot of the 
 plateau on which is West Point, and turning round it almost 
 at right angles, the mountains spreading themselves out 
 behind, their slopes covered with wild forests, and in the 
 distance the vast plains where Albany lies. Quite naturally 
 the beauty of the site, the comfort of the establishment, the 
 facility of access, and the purity of the air attract a great 
 number of gentlemen and lady visitors, the principal amuse- 
 ment of whom is to watch the cadets going through their exer- 
 cises and taking part in the entertainments which they give. 
 
 You arrive. The sound of military music draws you to the 
 esplanade. The young pupils of West Point are executing a 
 manceuvre in their elegant uniforms of light gray, with a triple 
 row of gold buttons. They go and come, while a number of 
 
EDUCATION 317 
 
 ladies watch them coming and going, and in the intervals of 
 the exercise you see them leaving the ranks to salute those 
 they know. The grass lawns, shaded with trees and gay with 
 flowers, where this parade, at once military and social, takes 
 place, give this scene the appearance of a garden party of a 
 unique kind. Those same ladies which grace it will be found 
 this evening or to-morrow at the dances which the cadets 
 themselves organize three times a week in summer and twice 
 in winter. 
 
 The observer whom I have already quoted, whose ofiticial 
 position prevents me from naming him, thus described one of 
 those balls to me : — 
 
 "An invitation was sent to all the visitors at the hotel. I 
 took care not to miss it. The entertainment lasted two hours, 
 from eight to ten. I was standing in the alcove of the window, 
 by the entrance, and, thanks to my incognito, I heard the con- 
 versations of the cadets, who came to cool themselves, without 
 paying any attention to me. Not a dubious word was uttered. 
 The cadets introduced one another to the girls. When one 
 of them did not dance a member of the committee wearing a 
 red sash, the badge of service, went and fetched a disengaged 
 youth and brought him to her. From time to time a cadet 
 and a young girl would leave the hall and promenade in the 
 dark for ten minutes or so. It seemed quite natural, and no 
 one smiled at it. Everything went on with ease and dignity." 
 
 Respect for woman and the refinement caused by that re- 
 spect, — these are the means which the Americans have boldly 
 employed to make those youths, recruited at random, the 
 "gentlemen" that officers must be. Regarding technical in- 
 struction they have followed their habitual method, which 
 consists in bringing the mind into direct contact with the 
 object. Thus they have reduced theoretic teaching to a 
 minimum. During three years out of four there is not a 
 single class of that kind. Each pupil receives in September, 
 
318 OUTRE-MER 
 
 the period at which the scholastic year commences, pamphlets 
 containing the matters which he must study. He prepares 
 these tasks by himself, and then the professor questions him. 
 There are eight or ten pupils in a room, with a master who 
 knows them all, and who is with them from week to week. 
 The exercise regularly done, the youths are enabled each 
 evening to apply what they have studied, and thus the abstract 
 work of the day is completed. As soon as the fine weather 
 comes, that is to say, from the first days of June to the first 
 days of September, even the abstract teaching ceases. The 
 cadets camp out. It is an object lesson which they receive 
 for three months in the open air and under conditions as 
 analogous as possible to those which would exist in real war. 
 Of their four years at West Point they have, therefore, spent 
 one entirely as though they had been with a regiment, but 
 in a regiment without promiscuity, without dangerous com- 
 panionship, and without the fetters of discipline. With great 
 wisdom the "adjutant" has been suppressed at West Point; 
 to the future officer he is nothing more than a semi-superior. 
 Graded cadets or real officers command with a fulness of 
 authority which carries with it at once more rigor and less 
 minutige. Thus, though the code of offences is, as we have 
 seen, extremely strict, punishments are rare. 
 
 When the question is of those machines for forming a cer- 
 tain kind of man, which we call a special school, the result 
 gives the measure of the value of the method. With its 
 strangely varied recruiting, with its individual education, with 
 its instruction, which would appear very commonplace to one 
 of the ordinary pupils of our schools, West Point turns out, 
 according to the best judges, an excellent corps of student 
 officers. Whatever be the arm of the service chosen, the 
 young man who leaves the academy must pass through a 
 school of application. P)Ut he arrives there sturdy and bal- 
 
EDUCATION 319 
 
 anced, trained to bodily exercises by gymnastics, fencing, rid- 
 ing, and, above all, by camping out in the open air, well 
 prepared for a superior education, by the positive apprentice- 
 ship which he has served. His teachers have taught him 
 nothing which he has not understood. Instead of making 
 him, as in many of the military schools of Europe, a scholar, 
 whom they will afterward ask to descend into practical details 
 of artillery and engineering, they have made him a manipulator 
 of cannons and a worker in the trenches, knowing that he can 
 become a scholar later, if he have the tastes and aptitudes, 
 which, however, is scarcely probable. On the other hand, if 
 the United States found it necessary to organize once again an 
 immense improvised army as it did thirty-five years ago, they 
 would find in the former pupils of this democratic and living 
 academy precisely the kind of officers whom they would need 
 to put the machine in motion. 
 
 American patriotism has one of its centres in this College, 
 the only one in the country which works in the opposite direc- 
 tion to universal decentralization, and in the direction of a 
 deep federal unity. This displacement of object and method, 
 which testifies once again to American adaptability, shows also 
 to what a degree these great realists are exempt from the evil 
 of doctrines, so pernicious to countries where traditions obtain, 
 and how much the servitude of ready-made ideas is repugnant 
 to them. Here again you find the great feature of the national 
 character, that active will, which holds itself in the face of the 
 social world as it will hold itself face to face with the physical 
 world, fearless in assertion and in daring. It is the necessary 
 rhythm of all effective resolution — the exact "lucidity" of a 
 glance over given conditions and their acceptance and adjust- 
 ment in view of a no less lucid project. Be it a question of a 
 bank, of a bridge, of a railroad, or of a school, American energy 
 proceeds always in the same manner. And the success attained 
 shows that the procedure is good. 
 
320 OUTRE-MER 
 
 In the word '* lucidity " we sum up this short inquiry, which 
 can evidently be generalized, but only with much reserve. 
 Lucidity being the aim, and the means, it is very probable that 
 these same characteristics would meet in all the other enter- 
 prises of public or private instruction, and in consequence there 
 would be that fundamental identity of education and life which 
 forms the common foundation of the four groups of instruction, 
 of which I have sketched the plan. If you search a Uttle into 
 this formula, it seems that many of the quahties and the defects 
 of this civilization are illuminated, and also several very deep 
 and too little known laws of human nature. And in the first 
 place, this identity of education and life explains the prodigious 
 development of the whole of this vast country, in which each 
 new generation on. reaching maturity has no further apprentice- 
 ship to serve. It is a common saying with us, heard even in 
 the speeches at the distribution of our prizes, that for collegians 
 a second period of education is about to begin with their liberty. 
 In fact, a youth of twenty years in France, who has brought his 
 literary and scientific studies up to such a point that he is 
 enabled to take his degree, is in no way equipped to earn 
 his living, still less to make his own fortune or that of his 
 family. Quite a new moral and intellectual drill is necessary 
 to train him to face the realities of his surroundings. The 
 decadence of our secondary education — to speak of nothing 
 else — is enormous. In America that decadence does not 
 exist. It cannot exist, and the type of the declasse is as 
 yet such a stranger to Americans that he is, I think, quite 
 incomprehensible to them. When his eighteenth or twentieth 
 year has been reached, a man in New York, Boston, or Chicago 
 is a made man. He will, without doubt, after fifteen or twenty 
 years of struggling, have more experience, a wider scope, and 
 a greater authority. But it will be only a difference of degree. 
 From the day he leaves school or the university he is complete, 
 prepared for the struggle of life. 
 
EDUCATION 321 
 
 The woman is in the same condition ; and this is why you 
 seldom meet in the United States those really young faces, in 
 the sense in which we understand the term, those faces in which 
 there is uncertainty, something unfinished, a beginning, a mere 
 sketch of the individual, who is, as it were, being fashioned 
 and modified. 
 
 Age is recognized in the freshness of the skin, the brightness 
 of the eyes and the teeth, the growth of the beard, the slender- 
 ness of the figure ; and one says, " That young man is not 
 twenty- two years of age, that young girl is not twenty years 
 old." But the faces of both these young persons are those of 
 persons who are thirty or forty years old, and their practical 
 activity is just as mature. 
 
 This precocity of initiative is indubitably one of the benefits 
 of the method, at least from the social point of view. Another, 
 which I have noted in the course of this analysis, is the greater 
 elasticity of the local centres, each town raising its future citi- 
 zens according to its needs, and, so to say, according to its 
 measure. With us a cabinet minister, taking out his watch, 
 could tell you what all the rhetoricians in all the academies of 
 France were doing at the time. 
 
 In America you have as many systems of education as you 
 have towns ; and it is certainly due to this fact that towns quite 
 near to one another, such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, 
 and Baltimore, each retain that originality which is so distinct 
 and that patriotism which is so separate. Therein lies, for a 
 democracy, a condition which is a sine qua non of political 
 health; and from that point of view, again, American education, 
 by working in the direction of local vitality, shows itself a supe- 
 rior machine for producing this healthy state. Democracy is, 
 in fact, according to definition, the government of the people 
 by the people ; that is to say, it is the empire of the majority. 
 In centrahzed countries the power which such a majority gives 
 to its representatives is too great, too absolute. They are 
 
 Y 
 
322 OUTRE-MER 
 
 capable of penetrating too deeply into individual lite ; and 
 past and contemporaneous history proves that in fact they 
 have always so penetrated, and that republics thus established 
 are Csesarisms of long or short duration, but always Csesarisms. 
 
 The tyrann)' of a ministry two months in power, or that of 
 an emperor who reigns eighteen years, is always a tyranny. 
 One of the greatest thinkers of France at the present moment, 
 and one of the least known, M. Louis Menard, has given its 
 formula in the following admirable aphorism : " A centrahzed 
 republic is not capable of living. Monarchy is the only logical 
 form of unity." 
 
 The federative system, which tends always to scatter the 
 power .of the local authorities, has the advantage of giving to 
 the individual a far larger number of probabihties of inde- 
 pendence and of rendering almost impossible the rise of a 
 dictature. If the organization of socialism continues to extend 
 in the United States, as is very probable, one of the surest 
 obstacles to its despotism — for the fact that it is collective 
 does not render its despotism any less hateful or iniquitous — 
 will be the vigor of the municipal centres. 
 
 It is, therefore, true to say that among the causes which 
 contribute to augment that vigor, and which tend to preserve 
 the country from revolution from below, as well as from subju- 
 gation from above, the school, such as it is understood in 
 America, represents perhaps the most powerful. 
 
 It is a conservative force, upon which the country will lean 
 in the day of danger ; and as the government of America is 
 at one and the same time an instrument of progress and con- 
 servatism, we can say that this is one of the most wonderful 
 machines of this country which has invented so many. 
 
 There are, however, in this system of education some very 
 serious inconveniences, which are to be recognized in the most 
 conspicuous defects of that society. \\'ords fail to express 
 them well, so deficient in certain delicate shades is the psycho- 
 
EDUCATION 323 
 
 logical vocabulary, made, as it is, for common use and observa- 
 tion. For want of more intelligible words I will say that this 
 education does not give a large enough place to the uncon- 
 scious. It is too precise, too positive, too clear. It lacks 
 uncertainty and, to put it in a word, it is too utilitarian. The 
 result is that this immense civilization has the appearance of 
 having been manufactured, of being maintained by an effort — 
 in fact, of working after the manner of a machine continuingly 
 wound up. We do not feel instinct enough, the almost invol- 
 untary expansion of a force which ignores itself. It is a 
 strange thing that this country, in which everything is done by 
 the people and for the people, has none of the characteristics 
 which we are accustomed to consider as the mark proper of 
 the popular soul. Nciivcte and timidity, clumsiness and credu- 
 lous simplicity, are never found in this civilization. It seems 
 to have no undercurrent, nothing taken for granted, for the 
 reason that everything is actual, realized, and grown up. This 
 is why, in spite of that immense culture, and what is better still, 
 that appetite for culture, there is as yet no purely American 
 art, no purely American literature, no purely American poetry. 
 The great artists, the great men of literature, and the great 
 poets in the United States — their names are known — remain 
 exceptional and solitary. They do not form part of the na- 
 tional life, precisely because that life is too voluntary, too self- 
 conscious, too intense, and education is constantly at work 
 rendering still more intense that self-consciousness and that 
 will. 
 
 Looking into it more deeply we recognize that in this the 
 Americans illustrate one of the most inevitable yet most un- 
 looked-for consequences of the democratic idea. With all 
 nations, poetry, to take that word in its broadest sense, has 
 always drawn its sap from the hearts of the people. What a 
 Homer, an ^schylus, a Virgil, a Dante, and a Shakespeare 
 express is the ideal elaborated during centuries by the ignorant 
 
324 OUTRE-MER 
 
 and the illiterate, by sufiferers too, by the great unknown crowd 
 of workers ; by artists and soldiers, laborers and sailors, country 
 women and women of the suburbs. Giotto painting his 
 frescoes, Michael Angelo carving his marbles, were sustained 
 by an obscure Italy beneath them, which did not know itself, 
 which did not understand itself, but which had a distant 
 glimpse of the unattainable, a far-away and vague ideal. It is 
 the " mystery " enveloped in that unconscious life of the peo- 
 ple, which completes itself and takes form in the consciousness 
 of these great men — mystery made up of misfortunes and 
 errors, of blind efforts and baffled ardor. 
 
 There is a deal of individual suffering, of defeated aspira- 
 tions, an immense and tragic failure of countless life-histories 
 in that embodiment of a shade of feeling, sublime or delicate, 
 tragic or touching, which we call a work of art. Those suffer- 
 ings, those failures, that ignorance, are just what democracy is 
 striving to do away with in the world. It desires that all should 
 have their part in the joy of living, of understanding, of express- 
 ing themselves. It is a legitimate, a generous ambition, but it 
 seems irreconcilable with the development of a certain idealism 
 which is but the revenge of the mutilated desires of a race. 
 Nemesis, the goddess of fatal compensations, is found here 
 again, as in all phases of human life. When we try to define 
 the intelligence too closely we mutilate it. When we limit 
 facts too severely, restrict them too much, handle them too 
 learnedly, we identify ourselves too much with them, and the 
 power of pure thought is by so much diminished. Purposing 
 too strongly, we destroy in ourselves instinct and replace it by 
 mechanism. Making instruction and education too general, 
 we interfere with the deep sources of the soul of the people, 
 whose reserves of unconscious poetry form the mystic aliment 
 of the future masterpieces of art and letters. If American 
 civilization has up to now lacked that aesthetic geniality, it cer- 
 tainly seems that the fault of it lies here, and that by one of 
 
EDUCATION 325 
 
 those ironies in which nature deUghts, this colossal effort at self- 
 cultivation, this fever of education, account for a great deal of 
 it. The future, however, may give a denial to this hypothesis. 
 
 The Americans have the right to say that they have at least 
 realized, through a most beneficent audacity, the most legitimate 
 purpose of democracy, the indefinite multiplication of the 
 chances of well-being and education. A Cambridge professor 
 expressed this in a touching manner one afternoon when we 
 were in his library looking at the engravings of the "Job" of 
 William Blake, the remarkable painter-poet, the precursor of 
 Rossetti and of Morris. Outside the snow was falling over the 
 pines, with their black boughs, and over the bare branches of 
 the other trees. Around us a score of scattered engravings and 
 as many pictures brought dear, sunny Italy into that dim and 
 silent Northern corner. My host had just expressed to me in 
 the presence of those objects — silent witnesses of past years of 
 travel — his longing for a land of beauty, where there are fewer 
 machines, fewer factories, fewer newspapers, fewer schools, but 
 touches of art everywhere, and everywhere traces of that innate 
 poetry which you find on a sunlit morning on a quay in Florence, 
 on a street in Pisa, at a turning of a road in Sienna. 
 
 "And yet," he said, " I would not be ungrateful to my coun- 
 try. I meet with many things which shock me." (He em- 
 ployed the more delicate expression, " which are offensive to 
 me.") " But in return I feel that a great number of people 
 are well off. I think that on this immense continent there are 
 few lives which have been absolute failures. That is an incon- 
 testable benefit of our democracy, and it is well worth while to 
 accept all its conditions." 
 
VIII 
 AMERICAN PLEASURES 
 
 Having exaggerated his nervous and voluntary tension to the 
 pitch of abuse, almost to vice, it is impossible that the Ameri- 
 can should amuse himself as we Latins do, who hardly conceive 
 of pleasure without a certain relaxation of the senses, mingled 
 with softness and luxury. The human animal remains the 
 same in those manifestations which are apparently most 
 opposed, and in our amusements we merely extend that 
 which makes the ordinary foundation of our life. The anec- 
 dote of Napoleon at St. Helena has often been quoted — that 
 he could not sit down at the whist table without at once trying 
 to win a rubber. With the cards in his hand he was once more 
 the audacious and reckless player who said one day, " The prince 
 was in me, in my indomitable spirit, which, in its ascendency, 
 put all Europe at my feet. The chances of destiny, it is true, 
 placed me on the throne. But even in a cloister I should have 
 always been the Emperor." He was so still, in the unconscious 
 fever of domination which impelled him to take all the tricks 
 on the pitiful green cloth of his house of exile. It is the 
 symbol of pleasure of all people and in all races. 
 
 This profound unity of national character is not recognized 
 at the first glance, but a little analysis quickly reveals it. In 
 France, for example, the dominant feature of national char- 
 acter appears to be excessive sociability. It began by creating 
 among us the misuse of drawing-room life, and consequently 
 the misuse of conversation, and then the taste for subtle, in- 
 genious, and abstract ideas. An entire modification of political 
 
 326 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 527 
 
 spirit followed, and, through the sad bankruptcy of 1 789, arose 
 a system founded on pure logic, in which the State devours all 
 the living force of the country, absorbs all its individuals, and 
 exhausts its impulse to action. As a result of this same excess 
 of sociability we lind a very low order of popular amusements 
 and a habit of lounging in the caf^s, which is so striking to one 
 arriving from an Anglo-Saxon country, and the privation of 
 which was for Valles the most insupportable form of his exile 
 in London. This same taste for sociability makes us like theatri- 
 cal pieces which are light, flimsy, and easy to understand, and 
 which touch in an easy and clever way upon the manners 
 of the day and the petty social follies which have already been 
 commented upon in the conversations of drawing-room and 
 clubs. This sociability is found again in our better newspapers, 
 filled with chatty Hterature, if we may so call it ; in our popular 
 fetes, with their open-air balls and their gossiping familiarity, 
 and at another pole, in our conception of gallantry. 
 
 The " woman of the town " with us is not only the paid 
 creature who ministers to the lewdness of man. If only she 
 is in the least witty, graceful, and lively, she very soon becomes 
 the comrade in whose company the man lingers with pleasure, 
 whom, if he is free, he installs in his home, and whom he will 
 end by marrying. All these phenomena, taken together, reveal 
 the close and secret tie which binds them to one another. 
 
 An essayist, knowing the United States thoroughly, would 
 have no trouble in establishing a similar co-relation between 
 American ideas, labors, and pleasures. Their pleasures seem, 
 in fact, to imply, like their ideas and their labors, something 
 unrestrained and immoderate, a very vigorous excitement, 
 always bordering on violence, or, rather, on roughness and 
 restlessness. Even in his diversions the American is too active 
 and too self-willed. Unlike the Latin, who amuses himself by 
 relaxation, he amuses himself by intensity, and this is the case 
 whatever be the nature of his amusements, for he has very 
 
328 OUTRE-MER 
 
 coarse and very refined ones. But a few sketches from nature 
 will explain better than all the theories that kind of nervousness, 
 and, as it were, fitful sharpness in amusement, if we can here 
 use that word which is synonymous with two of the least 
 American things in the world, — unconstraint and repose. 
 
 The most vehement of those pleasures and the most deeply 
 national are those of sport. Interpret the word in its true sense, 
 and you will find in it nothing of the meaning which we French 
 attach to it, who have softened the term in adopting it, and 
 who make it consist above all of elegance and dexterity. For 
 the American, " sport " has ever in it some danger, for it does 
 not exist without the conception of contest and daring. Thus 
 with yachting, which to us means pleasure cruises along the 
 coasts, means to him voyages around the world, braving the 
 tempest and the vast solitudes of the Atlantic, or else rivalries 
 of speed in which everything is taken into consideration except 
 human life. While I was visiting one of the private yachts at 
 Newport at anchor in the harbor, I noticed an entire arsenal of 
 guns and pikes hanging in one of the state-rooms between decks. 
 " It is in case we should go into Chinese seas and should meet 
 pirates," said the proprietor of this dainty travelling toy. An- 
 other, discussing before me the probabilities of speed between 
 the Vigilant and Valkyrie, two sailing yachts whose names were 
 fur weeks last autumn the subject of every conversation, said, 
 coolly, " We had to make the bulwark too low ; we shall be 
 lucky if we do not lose several men." There was no more 
 emotion in that statement than vain boasting in the other. It 
 was the natural expression of an energy that instinctively likes to 
 associate the idea of a play with that of a peril, and to which 
 a little tragic risk is as the necessary condiment to its most 
 innocent festivities. 
 
 Among the distractions of sport, none has been more fashion- 
 able for several years past than football. I was present last 
 autumn, in the peaceful and quiet city of Cambridge, at a 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 329 
 
 game between the champions of Harvard College — the " team," 
 as they say here — and the champions of the University of 
 Pennsylvania. I must go back in thought to my journey in 
 Spain to recall a popular fever equal to that which throbbed 
 along the road between Boston and the arena where the match 
 was to take place. The electric cars followed one another at 
 intervals of a minute, filled with passengers, who, seated or 
 standing, or hanging on the steps, crowded, pushed, crushed 
 one another. Although the days of November are cruelly cold 
 under a Massachusetts sky, the place of contest, as at Rome for 
 the gladiatorial combats, was in a sort of open-air enclosure. 
 A stone's throw away from Memorial Hall and the other build- 
 ings of the University, wooden stands were erected. On these 
 stands were perhaps fifteen thousand spectators, and in the 
 immense quadrilateral hemmed in by the stands were two 
 teams composed of eleven youths each waiting for the signal 
 to begin. 
 
 What a tremor in that crowd, composed not of the lower 
 classes, but of well-to-do people, and how the excitement in- 
 creased as time went on ! All held in their hands small, 
 red flags and wore tufts of red flowers. Crimson is the color of 
 the Harvard boys. Although a movement of feverish excite- 
 ment ran through this crowd, it was not enough for the enthusi- 
 asts of the game. Propagators of enthusiasm, students with 
 unbearded, deeply-lined faces, passed between the benches 
 and still further increased the ardor of the pubUc by uttering 
 the war-cry of the University, the "Rah! rah! rah!" thrice 
 repeated, which terminates in the frenzied call, '•' Haaar-vard." 
 The partisans of the " Pennsy's " replied by a similar cry, and in 
 the distance, above the pahngs of the enclosure, we could see 
 clusters of other spectators, too poor to pay the entrance fee, 
 who had climbed into the branches of the leafless trees, their 
 faces outlined against the autumn sky with the daintiness of 
 the pale heads in Japanese painted fans. 
 
330 OUTRE-MER 
 
 The signal is given and the play begins. It is a fearful game, 
 which by itself would suffice to indicate the differences between 
 the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin world — a game of young bull- 
 dogs brought up to bite, to rush upon the quarry ; the game 
 of a race made for wild attack, for violent defence, for implacable 
 conquests and desperate struggles. With their leather vests, 
 with the Harvard sleeves of red cloth, and the Pennsylvania 
 blue and white vests and sleeves, so soon to be torn — with the 
 leather gaiters to protect their shins, with their great shoes and 
 their long hair floating around their pale and flushed faces, 
 these scholarly athletes are at once admirable and frightful to see 
 when once the demon of contest has entered into them. At 
 each extremity of the field is a goal, representing, at the right 
 end, one of the teams, at the left the other. The entire object 
 is to throw an enormous leather ball, which the champion of 
 one or the other side holds in turn. It is in waiting for this 
 throw that all the excitement of this almost ferocious amuse- 
 ment is concentrated. He who holds the ball is there, bent 
 forward, his companions and his adversaries likewise bent down 
 around him in the attitude of beasts of prey about to spring. 
 All of a sudden he runs to throw the ball, or else with a wildly 
 rapid movement he hands it to another, who rushes off" with it. 
 All depends on stopping him. 
 
 The roughness with which they seize the bearer of the ball 
 is impossible to imagine without having witnessed it. He is 
 grasped by the middle of the body, by the head, by the legs, by 
 the feet. He rolls over and his assailants with him, and as they 
 fight for the ball and the two sides come to the rescue, it be- 
 comes a heap of twenty-two bodies tumbling on top of one 
 another, like an inextricable knot of serpents with human heads. 
 This heap writhes on the ground and tugs at itself. One sees 
 faces, hair, backs, or legs appearing in a monstrous and agitated 
 melee. Then this murderous knot unravels itself and the ball, 
 thrown by the most agile, bounds away and is again followed 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 331 
 
 with the same fury. It continually happens that, after one of 
 those frenzied entanglements, one of the combatants remains 
 on the field motionless, incapable of rising, so much has he 
 been hit, pressed, crushed, thumped. 
 
 A doctor whose duty it is to look after the wounded arrives 
 and examines him. You see those skilled hands shaking a 
 foot, a leg, rubbing the sides, washing a face, sponging the 
 blood which streams from the forehead, the eyes, the nose, 
 the mouth. A compassionate comrade assists in the business 
 and takes the head of the fainting champion on his knee. 
 Sometimes the unlucky player must be carried away. More 
 frequently, however, he recovers his senses, stretches himself, 
 rouses up, and ends by scrambling to his feet. He makes a 
 few steps, leaning on the friendly shoulder, and no sooner is he 
 able to walk than the game begins afresh, and he joins in again 
 with a rage doubled by pain and humiliation. 
 
 If the roughness of this terrible sport was for the spectators 
 only the occasion of a nervous excitement of a few hours, the 
 young athletes would not give themselves up to it with this 
 enthusiasm which makes them accept the most painful, some- 
 times the most dangerous, of trainings. A mother said to me, 
 speaking of her son, who is not fourteen years old : " He 
 adores football. He is already captain of his eleven. I should 
 not be anxious if he never played against any but little gentle- 
 men, but they have a mania for playing against common people. 
 It is in such struggles that dangerous accidents are always 
 to be feared." "What will you have?" replied one of the 
 professors of Harvard. " In the frenzy of the game they deal 
 each other some hard blows, it is true, and it is true, above all, 
 that the heroes of matches Hke that of to-day are victims. 
 The training is too intense. The nervous system cannot bear 
 up against it. But the feats of the champions keep the game 
 fashionable. Hence all the small boys in the remotest parts of 
 America take up this exercise, and thus athletes are formed." 
 
332 OUTRE-MER 
 
 ^ 
 
 He was putting into abstract form that which is the instinct of 
 the American crowd, an instinct which does not reason and 
 which shows itself in very strange ways. During the contest, 
 which I have attempted to describe, I heard a distinguished 
 and refined woman, next to whom I was seated, crying out, 
 " Beauty ! " at the sight of rushes that sent five or six boys 
 sprawling on the ground. 
 
 No sooner are such matches as these in preparation than the 
 portraits of the various players are in all the papers. The 
 incidents of the game are described in detail with graphic pict- 
 ures, in order that the comings and goings of the ball may be 
 better followed. Conquerors and conquered are alike inter- 
 viewed. From a celebrated periodical the other day I cut out 
 an article signed "A Football Scientist," wherein the author 
 sought to show that the right tactics to follow in this game were 
 the same as those used by Napoleon. What can be added to 
 this eulogium, when we know the peculiar position occupied by 
 Napoleon in the imagination of the Yankees? 
 
 It must not be thought that such intense enthusiasm for so 
 brutal a sport does not often arouse strong opposition. The 
 same spirit of initiative which urges entire crowds of Ameri- 
 cans to bow down in front of these semi-gladiators and to 
 idolize this violent display of physical energy drives other 
 Americans to raise a campaign against this uncontrolled and 
 uncontrollable violence. Leagues have been formed in favor 
 of and against the game. It is very possible that too numer- 
 ous accidents will cause certain States to pass legislative re- 
 strictions against the terrible game. When one has closely 
 followed a really ardent game, "with plenty of life and gin- 
 ger," as the reporter of a newspaper said, one can notice that 
 at a certain point of excitement the players are no longer 
 masters of themselves. As I write these lines I see once more 
 the figure of one of the champions of Pennsylvania after a dis- 
 puted point and the gesture of rage with which he threw the 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 333 
 
 ball which he had to give up. Between that display of anger 
 and a bad action there was too little distance, too little psycho- 
 logical breadth — to employ a pedantic and very exact scien- 
 tific formula. 
 
 However, such restrictions will no more cure the American 
 public of the passion for football than they have cured them 
 of the passion for boxing. When, last winter, Corbett and 
 Mitchell were to meet at Jacksonville, it was necessary to run 
 special trains to carry the partisans of one and the other boxer 
 to that fortunate city of Florida. There was not a newspaper 
 in which the physical condition of the two rivals was not men- 
 tioned morning after morning, hour after hour. The names 
 of the relatives and friends who assisted them, the furniture 
 of the hotel rooms in which they resided, the menu of their 
 meals, their reading and their thoughts — what details did 
 one not find in the columns of the newspapers! When I 
 went to Jacksonville a few weeks later, the fight was still the 
 subject of every conversation in the trains which ran through 
 the pretty little town, and people only stopped speaking of it 
 in order to discuss the next fight, which was proposed between 
 the Californian champion and Jackson, of Australia. Even 
 the election of the future President will not excite more popu- 
 lar feeling. 
 
 To obtain an idea of what such encounters must be, these 
 "prize fights," as they are called, wherein the fight only ends 
 when it becomes impossible for one of the boxers to continue 
 it, one must witness some contest regulated by an athletic 
 club, that is to say, in which the rounds are counted and the 
 blows are limited. The most interesting among those, the 
 details of which I followed, took place in Washington. It 
 was also the first at which I was present. 
 
 On the third floor of the club, in the gymnasium, a platform 
 was built at the height of a man's head, closed in with ropes. 
 All around a thousand spectators were waiting, some seated 
 
334 OUTRE-MER 
 
 on chairs, others standing in the gallery. Along the walls were 
 hung gymnastic implements, giving the scene a most appro- 
 priate framing. The electricity — it was nine o'clock in the 
 evening — lighted and chiselled the outlines of the impatient 
 faces of the votaries, and on the square platform a man was 
 nervously pacing up and down, the "referee," the arbiter of 
 the fight. He wore one of those jackets that are made here 
 which exaggerate the fashion and have a cut so ample, so 
 round, that it makes them resemble the shell of some vast 
 coleoptera. At last a murmur of satisfaction rises. The first 
 two boxers arrive with their trainers. They are covered with 
 big bath-cloaks, which they cast aside as soon as they get upon 
 the platform, and their bodies appear quite naked, thin, and 
 with knobs of muscles. They seat themselves upon chairs and 
 give themselves over with a singular passiveness to the care of 
 their trainers, who wash them, comb them, rub them like ani- 
 mals, while the personage clothed in the ample jacket an- 
 nounces the order of the fight, its duration, the number of 
 rounds, the weight of the champions, their names and their 
 country. 
 
 One is from Philadelphia and the other from Wilmington. 
 The first shows a black face, almost that of a mulatto, in the 
 centre of which is flattened out a broken and crooked nose. 
 The other is fair, with a square face, the nose also broken in 
 two places, making a mark on his face somewhat resembling 
 a death's head. He has extended his two arms, which he 
 rests on the two cords crossed behind him at an acute angle. 
 His muscles of marble gleam under the massage, which does 
 not even seem to move them. At last the toilette is finished. 
 Both men draw on their gloves. A gong sounds. They rise, 
 walk toward one another, shake hands, and the contest com- 
 mences. A sort of gurgle of pleasure escapes from the audi- 
 ence, an interrupted gurgle which will change by and by from 
 a sigh to a howl, as the fight becomes brisk or quiet. The 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 335 
 
 Philadelphian attacks with more vigor than his opponent, but 
 he is too nervous. His legs do not keep their balance. He 
 dances and hops, his arm moving in a mechanical and irreso- 
 lute manner, like a pair of hesitating pincers, advancing, 
 retiring, then advancing again, indefinitely. His adversary 
 has a better guard. He advances, he retires without moving 
 his body, and his cruel face, in which his eyes gleam, as it 
 were, from two blue hollows, is really like that of death. The 
 blows fall more heavily as the fight progresses. The bodies 
 bend to avoid them. The two men are furious. One hears 
 their breathing and the dull thud of the fists as they fall on 
 the naked flesh. After several blows of harder delivery, the 
 ''claret" is drawn, as they say, the blood flows from the eyes, 
 the nose, the ears, it smears the cheeks and the mouth, it 
 stains the fists with its warm and red flow, while the public 
 expresses its delight by howls, which the striking of the gong 
 alone stops. 
 
 It is the pause between two rounds. The boxers, again 
 seated, give themselves up, as before, to the care of their 
 trainers, who rub them like ostlers grooming a horse. The 
 seconds spring upon the platform, taking off their coats, and, 
 once in their shirt sleeves, begin to fan the unfortunate pugil- 
 ists, who are half faint from loss of blood, from blows re- 
 ceived and given, and from the intense nervous effort of the 
 fight. Another sound of the gong and the next round begins. 
 
 There were four such fights that evening, one of six rounds, 
 the second of eight, the third of five, the last of eleven, and 
 during the two hours and a half that this terrible scene con- 
 tinued not a spectator left his place. Not for a second did 
 the passionate interest, which fixed every face on the ring, 
 seem to be suspended. Scarce was a protest raised, when, on 
 the referee calling for the champions of the third contest, two 
 lads of sixteen appeared, the one broad-shouldered and lithe, 
 the other so meagre and slight of body, poorly developed and 
 
336 OUTRE-MER 
 
 fragile. A voice cried, "They are girls, not boys! " but that 
 did not prevent frenzied applause when the thin, undeveloped 
 boy was struck down at full length, the blood dripping from 
 his boyish face. 
 
 Merely time enough to carry him away, and another duel 
 began, this time between two old boxers, who seemed the 
 incarnation of two physical types; the one short and heavy, 
 almost fat, with red hair, the blood on the surface of his too 
 white skin; the other lank and very tall, all gall and nerve. 
 The sinister face of the latter, green under the blue of a 
 shaved beard, with the sly eyes of a tricky servant, relaxed in 
 a ferocious smile. I saw him towering above the other, tower- 
 ing above us all, while the agile and vehement precision of 
 his movements gave the idea of an invincible energy. After 
 eleven rounds, this olive-colored athlete was as dry as when 
 he put foot on the platform, while sweat, mingled with blood, 
 flowed from his adversary. It was a series of surprising 
 attacks and returns no less surprising, and when the two 
 champions had completed the eleventh round without either 
 having been ''knocked out," there ran through the assembly 
 an irresistible stir of sympathy for the feebler fighter, for the 
 short one who had defended himself with so much pluck. To 
 the giant was awarded the victory with loud acclamations; and 
 in the handshakings given to the other, there was admiration 
 and friendship. The vanquished but courageous fighter might 
 have asked anything of those men and they would have given 
 it to him, so greatly did they respect him for having so well 
 held an impossible position. 
 
 This term of "respect," applied to professional boxers, will 
 seem very strange, and yet it is the only one which describes 
 the prestige with which those heroes of pugilism are sur- 
 rounded in the United States. One of my lady friends here, 
 to whom I spoke of this enthusiasm, told me that she owed 
 her life to one of the most famous boxers of the West, and 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 337 
 
 under circumstances so singular that it is worth while to report 
 them in detail. She had dined and spent the evening in one 
 of the suburbs of the large town, which was then her home, 
 and was returning in her carriage when she had to cross a 
 street which was full of dangerous characters. She had fallen 
 into the turmoil of a monster demonstration after a prolonged 
 and unfortunate strike. Her horses were compelled to stop. 
 She put her head through the window out of curiosity, and an 
 overwhelming clamor at once saluted her appearance. The 
 gleam of electricity which lighted the streets had just struck 
 on some large diamonds which sparkled in her hair. This 
 sign of luxury, added to the aspect of the brougham, the livery 
 of the coachman and the footman, and the turnout of the 
 whole establishment, raised the indignation of this famished 
 crowd. Fists were extended, faces approached with insulting 
 words. "I had taken a long gold pin," said the young 
 woman, " and I was resolved to strike at the eye of the first 
 one who came too near." 
 
 At that moment, when she believed herself to be in extreme 
 danger, having only so feeble a weapon, she saw with terror a 
 colossal form break through the ranks of the crowd, pushing 
 people aside with so much authority that she took him for 
 one of their chiefs. " Don't be frightened at those foolish 
 people," said the man when he was near her, "I will see to 
 it. Tell your coachman to drive on." The young woman 
 once again leaned out of the window, but this time the ter- 
 rible shout was not raised, and she gave her orders to her ser- 
 vants, who sat motionless on the box, overcome with fright. 
 The brougham started, escorted by the unknown, who simply 
 rested his hand on the ledge of the window, the crowd separat- 
 ing to let the equipage pass. Once beyond the strikers, the 
 unknown saluted the lady. The coachman whipped up his 
 horses and started off at full speed. The footman was still 
 trembling all over as they reached the door of the house. 
 
338 OUTRE-MER 
 
 1 
 
 "You may imagine that I was anxious to know by whom I 
 had been saved," she continued, "but the two servants were 
 Irishmen, who had just arrived from Europe, and knew 
 nobody. The description which I gave to some of my friends 
 who were acquainted with the personal appearance of the 
 leaders of the strike did not answer to any of them. I had, 
 therefore, given up the hope of knowing the name of my mys- 
 terious protector whom in fancy I saw continually, with his thin 
 face, haughty and martial, his domineering look and the ease, 
 at once strong and supple, of his movements. 
 
 " But fancy, seven or eight weeks later, as my mother and I 
 were in a shop buying furs, a disturbance broke out at the door. 
 I saw my coachman off his seat and one of my horses on the 
 ground, and a man, totally drunk, fighting with the poHce. 
 I recognized my rescuer, and at the same time learned his 
 name and the wild exploit which he had just accomphshed. 
 
 It was John M. V , the celebrated boxer, who, under the 
 
 influence of alcohol, had bet that he would fell a horse with his 
 fist. Chance had it that this absurd wager brought him in front 
 of this store, and that he just happened to strike one of my 
 horses. I was able to acquit myself, at all events to a certain 
 extent, of my debt toward him by preventing them from pros- 
 ecuting him for his act, although there was little risk of his 
 being rigorously dealt with. He was too popular." 
 
 Beside the pleasures of sport we must place those of the 
 theatre. The two are not so far apart as might at first sight 
 appear. A passion for the play which results in respect for the 
 actors is general among the Americans, and we know what recep- 
 tion Mme. Sarah Bernhardt, Mme. Eleonora Duse, M. Coquelin, 
 and Mr. Irving have had among them — to mention only the 
 names of four famous artists, and not to speak of singers. Not 
 only the playing of these great actors interested the public, but 
 also their personality, and, above all, their ideas about art. 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 339 
 
 In every town in the United States there is a group of 
 amateurs whose study and dehght it is to discuss the more 
 or less inteUigent rendering of such and such a play or musical 
 work. I have said study, for even here the evidence of purpose 
 is visible. At Boston, for instance, you will find that the pro- 
 grammes of each of the celebrated concerts is accompanied by 
 a technical commentary, so accurate, so lucid, and at the same 
 time so erudite, that the pamphlet is in truth a chapter in the 
 study of musical history. At Chicago, when Coquelin was giv- 
 ing the representation of Tartufe, of which I have spoken, 
 the newspapers of the following day contained dissertations on 
 Moliere's comedy which were as scholarly, as analytic and as 
 critical as could have been the feuilleion of the Temps or the 
 Journal des Debafs. And yet, besides these evidences of a 
 fastidious taste and a superior dilettantism, you find this same 
 public accepting the most astonishing oddities. 
 
 I remember a gala night at the opera in New York, when 
 the music was sung by one of the actors in German and by 
 another in French, while the chorus replied in Italian, and no 
 English was heard. But is there not a secret harmony between 
 such apparently contradictory manifestations? If you go to 
 the theatre for pleasure, if you are a voluptuary of music and 
 an epicure of harmony, such things shock and annoy you. All 
 your enthusiasm cools in that displeasure, and you have the 
 uncontrollable desire to take up your hat and walk out. But 
 if you are conscious that you are studying the genius of a 
 master or the talent of an artist, you accept the performance, 
 though mutilated. You accept it, above all, if you are devoured 
 with that need of European assimilation which takes possession 
 of intellectual America not less than fashionable America. Not 
 being able to have the whole opera and all the Com^die Fran- 
 ^aise from the other side of the ocean, these people take what 
 they can — the very best, it must be acknowledged — and they 
 enjoy it, as the Enghsh can enjoy the frieze of the Parthenon, 
 
340 OUTRE-MER 
 
 which is in broken fragments and without cohesion. But their 
 double passion is satisfied, — that, in the first place, of cultivating 
 themselves, and, second, of having all the best actors of London 
 and Paris in New York, 
 
 We must look for the original American genius and the true 
 dramatic pleasure of the people in performances of quite a 
 different kind. The play which the authors of this country 
 excel in writing and the actors in playing is a kind of comedy, 
 almost without affectation and intrigue, entirely composed of 
 local scenes and customs, and mixed with pantomime. If the 
 now antiquated expression, " a section of life,'* could ever have 
 been applied to plays, it may be to these. They show all the 
 peculiarities of the different States, — sometimes the singular 
 customs of the South, as in the Nezv South, which I have 
 already analyzed ; at other times those of the West, as in In 
 Mizzoura, or those of the North, as in a play called A Tem- 
 perance Town, which I saw in New York. In the sub-title of 
 this last play — the most typical, perhaps, of all — we are told 
 that it " is intended as a more or less truthful presentation of 
 certain incidents of life relating to the sale and use of liquor 
 in a small village in a prohibition State." The great curiosity 
 aroused by this comedy lies in the fact that the sympathetic 
 personage is a drunkard. 
 
 " Is it worth while to destroy the abuse of drink in order to 
 install the triumph of hypocrisy?" asks one of the heroes in 
 the last act. Therein lies all the moral of this singular work, 
 in which, besides pathetic scenes, almost melodramatic buffoon- 
 eries of this kind are to be found. It is Christmas night. The 
 daughter of the minister, expelled by her father, is dragging 
 herself along the walls of the church in which her father is 
 preaching. Meanwhile a facetious drunkard places, on the 
 steps of the church, a large plank covered with snow, over 
 which, one after the other, all the members of the congrega- 
 tion fall as they come out. It is in such extraordinary contrasts 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 341 
 
 as these that the public seems to take wild delight. Laughter 
 is not, as with us, excited by the witty and somewhat free joke 
 with double meaning. It is cold-blooded and totally unex- 
 pected drollery which excites it. All of a sudden and in a 
 tragic moment, one of the artists accomplishes a clown trick. 
 He raises the hat from the head of his interlocutor with a kick, 
 as he performs a dangerous jump over a table. Then the scene 
 continues, these extravagances having done nothing more than 
 raise the wild laughter of the audience. To the eyes of the 
 stranger, unaccustomed to this mosaic out of real life, scenes 
 of local customs and of extravagant gambols, this epileptic 
 gayety savors of the bar, of the intoxication of alcohol, and of 
 incipient madness. 
 
 The oddest thing is that these players, who are in a measure 
 gymnasts and clowns, are extraordinary in the accurate sim- 
 plicity and realism of the serious portions of their parts. In 
 one of these comedies, which was called, I think, The Coun- 
 try Circus, I witnessed a scene of theft acted with incompar- 
 able perfection by three chance performers. One represented 
 the manager of the circus at his ticket ofifice, the second was a 
 negro asking for a ticket at that office, the third was a police- 
 man guarding the entrance to the theatre. The negro gave a 
 ten-dollar bill to the manager, who returned him only five dol- 
 lars' change. The negro complained. The manager bent over 
 toward the opening, cried, " Officer ! " and accused his victim 
 of theft, upon which the policeman collared the poor black, 
 and pushed him by force into the circus. Then, having 
 returned to the ticket office, he received two dollars from the 
 manager. The startled passivity of the negro, the cutting 
 banter of the Barnum, who was " letting him in," the brutal 
 and sordid duplicity of the policeman — the features were 
 marked as in an etching, the pantomime was rendered almost 
 intolerable by its truthfulness. 
 
 The negro and the policeman are, moreover, two of the fa- 
 
342 OUTRE-MER 
 
 vorite personages of the really popular farces ; another is the 
 chivalrous blackguard, whom I have already outlined. But the 
 unrivalled character is the " tramp," the professional vagabond, 
 in the toils of his two enemies, the policeman and the brake- 
 man. The struggle around a freight car, wherein the tramp 
 wishes to have a seat, or whence the brakeman expels him, is 
 the unfailing theme which lends itself to all sorts of tricks and 
 jokes. The tramp is, in fact, the great popular humorist. It 
 is he who gives their nicknames to the railroad companies, who, 
 for instance, baptizes the Baltimore and Ohio, the " B. and O., " 
 "Beefsteak and Onions." In one of the theatres in Washing- 
 ton I have known an audience rise in wild laughter at that joke. 
 The large box in front of the stage, one of the only four in the 
 hall, was occupied that night by a spectator who had placed his 
 feet on the velvet of the balustrade, and of whom one saw 
 nothing but the patent leather of his boots shining beneath the 
 electric light, and his swinging hand, a big, hairy hand, loaded 
 with rings. He manifested his delight by knocking his heels 
 against the red velvet, which served him as a support in his 
 comfortable position. Probably this man, who must have paid 
 fifteen dollars for his box, was one of those newly enriched 
 Westerners, who have tried twenty vocations, have made a fort- 
 une several times, and have kept company during their advent- 
 urous existence with people of all classes and of all descriptions. 
 Such individuals, and they constitute the foundation of the 
 American public, have too complete an experience of human 
 life not to expect exact observation in a comedy, and real 
 pictures of manners. On the other hand, though often without 
 scruple, they have retained, through their Odyssey of business, 
 a certain youthful, almost infantine, naivete, which is traceable 
 everywhere here. They are, besides, honest enough, and even 
 scrupulous in questions of love. 
 
 These local studies, interlarded with buffooneries, from which 
 all obscenity is eliminated, correspond to these various features. 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 343 
 
 And notice that the managers understand it well. Read this 
 puff which I copy from a programme : " The actors of this 
 troupe propose to act only native plays by native authors and 
 this one [follows the title] is essentially American in its scenery, 
 in its action, and in its aim. The characters are essentially 
 American, and the play breathes everywhere an American fresh- 
 ness which is in keeping with the greatness of America. There 
 is not in the piece a single bad character, man or woman. Not 
 a syllable is uttered which could bring a blush to the most 
 modest cheek. This piece attacks the vices of dissipated 
 society and the miseries which are the outgrowth of the con- 
 centration of civilization in the great towns. No soiled dove 
 beats its soiled wings here ; there are no brigands in dress 
 clothes flying round in search of prey. ..." All was true in 
 this announcement, which was only incomplete on this point, — 
 that the piece ended without any reason having been given for 
 the exhibition of a family of acrobats. 
 
 I have turned over the leaves of a great number of illustrated 
 comic newspapers, those which friends in New York have 
 pointed out to me as the best. The Americans dote on these 
 publications, which are to be found in all the halls of the hotels, 
 in all the railway carriages, and on the club tables. Without 
 exaggerating the importance of these pamphlets, we must 
 recognize in them, in every country, a certain documentary 
 value. They characterize the humor of the race and its delight 
 in mockery. Besides, you will find in them a thousand details 
 of habits, described off-hand, their exaggeration rendering them 
 still more perceptible to the traveller. On running through a 
 collection of several numbers of some of these papers, a first 
 observation is forced upon one ; namely, the entire absence 
 of those nude drawings which form the perverse prettiness of 
 similar periodicals in Paris, and the no less remarkable absence 
 of allusions to marital misadventures. One might believe, in 
 noting this absence, that neither gallantry nor adultery existed 
 
344 OUTRE-MER 
 
 in the United States, or that, if they exist, it is in such a shadow 
 of secrecy that they escape even satire. Do not suppose, how- 
 ever, that the caricaturists profess to be particularly prejudiced 
 in favor of marriage. But when they see its defects, it is espe- 
 cially from the point of view of the budget, as is fitting in the 
 country of the "almighty dollar." 
 
 Family Hfe is too costly and the men must work too hard. 
 This is their principal grievance. Here, for example, is a 
 wedding reception. The drawing-room is full of people who 
 are comphmenting the newly married couple and the parents. 
 " I congratulate you on the marriage of your daughter," says 
 one of the visitors. " I see you are gradually getting all the 
 girls off your hands." And the father answers, " The misfort- 
 une is that it costs so much to keep their husbands." " Your 
 men work too hard in America," said a foreign count to a girl. 
 "Yes," she replied, " they have to maintain their titled sons-in- 
 law." When it is not the father who works himself to death, it 
 is the husband. Here on a Christmas night appears a certain 
 Popleigh, aged before his time, thin and bent, his arms full 
 of presents, which tell of his numerous family. A gentleman 
 wrapped up in a comfortable fur coat, a cigar in his mouth, 
 gazes at him sarcastically. " It is Mr. Singleton," says the 
 legend, simply, " who was a rejected suitor for the hand of the 
 present Mrs. Popleigh." Even aside from the question of 
 money, this nation does not seem to believe that an American 
 marriage is a very fortunate operation. Listen to this dialogue 
 between a husband and his wife. She : " After all, what 
 have you at the club, you men, that makes it so attractive to 
 you, and which you have not at home?" He: "My dear, 
 we have not at the club what we have at home. That is the 
 attraction." It is the bankruptcy of the happiness of the man. 
 As for the happiness of the woman, she herself does not expect 
 it. "Yes," repUes an engaged girl, with her eyes dreamily 
 fixed on the skies, " I am very happy. At least, I suppose so. 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 345 
 
 There is but one great bother. Once married, I shall no more 
 be able to flirt." 
 
 This mocking remark is but a commentary on a very real 
 fact, which I have attempted to explain; namely, the social 
 sovereignty of the young girl in the United States, and if a 
 thousand little signs had not pointed out that sovereignty to 
 the traveller, he would find the proof of it in the caricatures. 
 The young girl appears as often in these papers as Lorette in 
 the albums of Gavarni, as the fast woman in those of Grdvin 
 and as the marcheuse of the opera or the sidewalk in those of 
 Forain. As those three great masters have felt the graceful- 
 ness of the Parisian woman at three different epochs, so the 
 American artist feels with an incomparable delicacy the beauty 
 of the young girl of his country. There she is, smiling, 
 dreaming, talking, on horseback, alive, in fact, with her fine 
 figure, her well-developed shoulders, her daring elegance, her 
 white teeth) her eyes wide open on the world — too wide open, 
 for they see too clearly. Listen to the conversation which 
 the artist attributes to these admirable persons, and you will 
 be edified by their intelligence. Here is one of them who 
 has seated herself on a deck chair near a young man as beauti- 
 ful as herself. With deep emotion, she clasps her hands and 
 says, replying to a question which one can guess: "Yes, 
 but you are very poor, Tom, and I have no money. With me 
 my face is my fortune." 
 
 Another is taking a country walk with an adorer who is say- 
 ing with bitterness, " If I were rich you would marry me at 
 once." "Ah, George! George!" she replies. "The devo- 
 tion which you show me breaks my heart." "What do you 
 mean? " "That you have often praised my beauty, but until 
 now I did not know how much you recognized my good sense." 
 These realistic girls, just as the most realistic men, know 
 that marriage is an association where their partner will ask 
 them to bring money — a great deal of money. Two of them 
 
346 OUTRE-MER 
 
 are chatting, doubtless on the Newport landing-stage, for one 
 of them wears a yachting-cap, the other a sailor hat with a 
 colored ribbon. Vessels are passing out at sea. "I heard 
 that your father had sold his yacht?" queries one. "Yes," 
 replied her friend; "in these hard times it is a rather heavy 
 expense." "Then," replies the indiscreet friend, "the news 
 that you are going to be married is doubtless not true." 
 Further, the handsome young men, companions and accom- 
 plices in the flirting of these pretty children, do not conceal 
 from them their interested motives. 
 
 "Would you have loved me had I been poor?" asks one 
 of them of a fine young fellow of twenty-two or twenty-three 
 years of age, who replies, clasping her to his heart : — 
 
 "Ah, darling! I should not have known you." 
 
 And you do not feel over-indignant at seeing money con- 
 stantly mixed up in affairs of the heart. The heart is so little 
 in question. The caricaturist takes care to let you know it. 
 Engagements which are tied and untied so easily do not enlist 
 the hearts of the elegant dolls which the society man and 
 girl are. 
 
 "Ah, dear," murmurs a Perdita, raising her beautiful, half- 
 veiled eyes, with their long lashes, to the lips of an elegant 
 cavalier, "tell me truly how much you love me." 
 
 "You are my favorite betrothed," he replies, seriously, "the 
 only one that I love." 
 
 And there are a great many chances that she will see a deli- 
 cate flattery in this singular declaration, for she herself does 
 not attach a very deep significance to the word "betrothal," 
 at least if we are to believe this other dialogue between two 
 young girls who are exchanging confidences. 
 
 "They told me that you were in love with him," says one. 
 
 " No, no," replies the other, quickly; " it was not so serious 
 as that. We were only engaged ! " 
 
 She has doubtless heard — or he has heard — that the stocks 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 347 
 
 held by his father — or by her father — have gone down con- 
 siderably and everything has been broken off. Had they 
 acted otherwise, society would have thought them very silly. 
 
 " Do you know that Mr. and Mrs. Brown-Smith must find 
 things very amusing? " says Perdita to her friend, Penelope. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Why? Both of them wished to marry for money, and 
 neither of them has a cent. They have lots of fun laughing 
 at each other." 
 
 "Lots of fun." There is the best summing up, not only 
 of the situation, but of all these caricatures. Nothing less 
 resembles the sharp and grim acerbity of our own humorists. 
 In this chaffing of young girls, which might so easily be cruel, 
 there is much jovial good-humor. The same may be said in 
 regard to the caricatures of the lower classes — notably, the 
 tramps, the negroes, and the Irish. Indeed, poverty is more 
 intolerable in the United States than elsewhere, in a climate 
 so severe in winter, so burning in summer, and amid crushing 
 competition. Listen, however, to this vagabond, whom a 
 piece of money, given by a generous passer-by, has enabled 
 to enter a bar, where he is standing in front of a free-lunch 
 table : — 
 
 "Haven't you eaten enough?" cries the proprietor, over- 
 come by the sight of the ham, salted fish, bread and butter, 
 and fried oysters disappearing in the abysses of that rag- 
 bedecked stomach, 
 
 " Do I look like a man who has eaten enough? " replies the 
 vagabond, sneeringly. 
 
 One of his feet is shod with a slipper and a gaiter, the other 
 with an elastic boot. A check scarf is bound round his chin 
 and protects the swollen cheek, the eye at once insolent, jeer- 
 ing, and knavish like himself. This impertinent joke shows the 
 tone of the rephes ascribed by the caricaturist to these tramps, 
 whom he willingly shows us, one smoking, another reading a 
 
348 OUTRE-MER 
 
 newspaper with spectacles on his nose. Their idleness amuses 
 him without making him indignant, and he does not consider 
 it right to characterize them with sinister legends such as 
 Gavarni found for his Virelocque. 
 
 Nor does the caricaturist develop the worst and most atro- 
 cious features of the negro, — the criminal sensuality, ferocity, 
 and perfidy of the former slave. No. He makes merry joy- 
 ously over his vanity and his familiarity. He has drawn one, 
 for instance, entering his master's room wearing a pair of check 
 trousers of the same material as the coat of his master. And 
 the latter says to him : — 
 
 " Look here, Tom, I have told you already not to wear on 
 week days those trousers that I gave you when I wear the rest 
 of the suit." 
 
 And Tom replies : " Why, boss, are you afraid they will 
 take us for twins? " 
 
 We can imagine the happy smile which parts the big lips 
 that show the jester's white teeth. He is about to say, as one 
 of his brethren said to one of my friends who had been stop- 
 ping in a country house where he was the servant : — 
 
 " Come soon again to see us, you are such a palatable gentle- 
 man." 
 
 So in regard to those terrible Irishmen, so astonishing with 
 their poetry and their cruelty, their patriotic flame and vindic- 
 tive rage, their eloquence and drunkenness, their spirit of 
 enterprise and disorder, it is noteworthy that the caricaturists 
 only show the drunkenness and disorder. One time it is an 
 Irish servant-girl whom they depict, saying in her brogue to 
 the inspector of immigration : — 
 
 " Oi'm a French nurse." At another time a maid of the 
 same race, whose mistress asks : — 
 
 "Have you swept the room?" replies, "Yes, ma'm, I've 
 swept everything under the bed." 
 
 We can see that the space beneath the bed has become a 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 349 
 
 perfect cavern of refuse, where all the leavings of the house 
 have been dumped. Sometimes it is an Irishman coming 
 home perfectly intoxicated, whose state the sketcher repre- 
 sents by multiplying the head of his wife seven times, as she 
 looks at him and out of her seven mouths says : — 
 
 " If you saw yourself as I see you, you would be very much 
 disgusted." 
 
 "And if you saw yourself as I see you," replies the drunk- 
 ard, ''you would also be very much astonished." 
 
 Sometimes it is domestic quarrels, in which everything 
 gives way, the man 'assaulting his wife with a chair and she 
 retorting with a fiat-iron. And policemen, themselves Irish- 
 men, preside at this carnival of tramps, negroes, and Irishmen, 
 drinking hard and hitting like the others, and shouting, "Take 
 that ! " as they progress with their game of head-breaking. 
 
 No bitterness spoils the joviality. One would imagine that 
 for these observers life in the streets and in the drawing-room 
 is really a clownish pantomime. With that they are very exact 
 — their drawings without imagination come very close to 
 reality. Scarcely do they change the phiz of the tramp, the 
 mouth of the Irishman, the big mouth of the negro, the self-im- 
 portance and vacuity of expression of the "dude," to employ 
 their slang word. One guesses that they are good-humored 
 people, very lucid, very positive, writing and sketching for 
 lucid, positive, and good-tempered readers. The dark mis- 
 anthropy of a Gavarni or a Forain makes you suffer as you 
 laugh. It entails long reflection and nerves worn with thought 
 and powerless for action. The American belongs to a world 
 which is too active, too hasty, and on certain sides, too healthy 
 for such poisoned irony. 
 
 It is curious to compare the sarcasm of political caricatures 
 with the innocent and altogether indulgent gayety of the carica- 
 ture of manners. These same sketchers, who show themselves 
 simple and light caricaturers of the ridiculous characteristics 
 
350 OUTRE-MER 
 
 and vices of every-day life, develop, when it becomes a matter 
 of party, a species of frenzy, and of hatred which can hardly 
 be surpassed. The nomination of an ambassador who does 
 not suit them, the adoption of a bill against which they are 
 carrying on a campaign or the rejection of a bill which they 
 are upholding, a hostile candidature, -a stirring speech, — these 
 are to them occasions for severe blows, the hardness of which 
 contrasts in the most unexpected manner with the good temper 
 of the sketchers of manners. You suddenly feel calumny 
 and its bitterness, anger and its insults. From amusing and 
 easy fantasy you fall into the depths of the harshest polemic, 
 without wit, and without fear of making personal allusions of 
 the most grossly insulting kind. It seems to me that both 
 phenomena are logical and well in keeping with what may be 
 seen everywhere among Americans. So far as regards the 
 affairs of every-day life they are good fellows — amiable, open, 
 easy. But as soon as they have to do with a business ques- 
 tion, they are as keen and energetic in the defence of their 
 interests and in the conquest of yours as they were found easy 
 and generous before. The reason is that then they were 
 amusing themselves; now they are fighting. 
 
 Politics is one of the most important businesses of a country 
 where each triumph places all public ofifices at the disposal of 
 the party. It is a matter which interests not merely a small 
 number of ambitious people, but an enormous number of citi- 
 zens enrolled under the republican and democratic banners. 
 Their antipathies must be gratified, their enthusiasm stirred, 
 their passions served. 
 
 In all countries where universal suffrage is the rule, it be- 
 comes necessary to speak to the people by means of pictures. 
 They see everything as a whole, and naturally like coarse and 
 striking things. The colored caricatures which are set forth 
 on the first pages of the illustrated newspapers satisfy their 
 taste. As the editor of a Chicago newspaper said to me, they 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 351 
 
 always like a fight. The fight here takes the form of pictured 
 burlesque, but the burlesque is ordinarily so exaggerated and 
 so plainly unjust and prejudiced that it becomes offensive. 
 Wishing, for instance, to lampoon a perfect gentleman, who 
 was simply guilty of having been nominated to a high position 
 by Mr. Cleveland, the caricaturist represented that distin- 
 guished man with grossly travestied features, writing under- 
 neath such phrases as "Cleveland's nominee for "; or 
 
 again, "If Abraham Lincoln were to meet Mr. So and So in 
 the flesh, his first impulse would be to take him by the collar 
 and throw him into a mud-hole." 
 
 Such means of combating an adversary may succeed with 
 electors of the lowest class. They are far from clever; for, 
 according to Talleyrand's profound remark, "Everything 
 exaggerated is insignificant," For this reason, the Ameri- 
 cans succeed well in caricaturing social customs, treating 
 them lightly and inoffensively, and, for a like reason, their 
 political caricatures, with few exceptions, are but common- 
 place. 
 
 The American goes into all recreations — sport, the theatre, 
 burlesque — with the same spirit which we have seen him bring 
 into society, into social problems, into education. He shows 
 himself clear-headed and positive, with a singular mixture of 
 good fellowship, tenacity, practical realism, and exuberant 
 social health and spirits. Students of human nature, who have 
 reflected upon the laws of the equilibrium of human faculties, 
 will not be astonished that in this country, where the practical 
 spirit is so developed, there should be a place for other pleas- 
 ures, which, for want of a better expression, I shall call the 
 pleasures of mysticism. In no country more than in America 
 do spiritual mediums find a better reception, nowhere do the 
 occult sciences gain more adepts, nowhere is there a larger 
 number of persons ready to be initiated into their mysteries. 
 One of the most celebrated professors of Cambridge, who has 
 
352 OUTRE-MER 
 
 made special study of the reason why his countrymen feel this 
 interest in the supernatural, said to me : — 
 
 "There are among us many minds who have no interest in 
 science, but who believe in direct and personal communica- 
 tion with the unknown world. Science teaches that truth is 
 one, and always the same, independent of the individual; these 
 people, on the contrary, are convinced that there is a constant 
 revelation by Providence proportionate to the needs and 
 merits of all. When I made their acquaintance, brought up 
 though I had been in orthodoxy, I thought them mad." 
 
 "And now?" I asked him. 
 
 "Now," he replied, "like Hamlet, I think that there are 
 many more things in this world than are dreamed of in our 
 philosophy." 
 
 This frame of mind in a truly superior man, who ended by 
 telling me that he believed in the possibility of communica- 
 tion between the living and the dead, is not exceptional in 
 America. A traveller, interested in psychology, would find in 
 the large number of those whom they call here spiritualists, and 
 who really are mediums, a most interesting subject of study. 
 
 Here, in place of that analysis, which would furnish the 
 material for a volume, is a sketch of a visit to a woman who 
 is one of the most celebrated in the United States for the gift 
 
 of double sight. Mrs. N lives in the outskirts of Boston, 
 
 in a condition of ease, which she owes to her singular power. 
 How far is that power imaginary? How far is it real? How 
 sincere is it? How much is charlatanism in this strange 
 creature? These are questions which I cannot answer. Since 
 a great number of Americans believe in her, it is worth while 
 to describe a visit to her house, as a contribution to my in- 
 quiry into the habits of thought of this country, so fruitful in 
 surprises. 
 
 My companion in this visit was Mr. H , an Australian, 
 
 who is particularly interested in questions of this nature, and 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 353 
 
 who himself believes absolutely in the good faith of Mrs. 
 
 N . We met on a cold winter's morning at one of the 
 
 stations of Boston. Nothing was more American and less in 
 accordance with the character of our expedition than the res- 
 taurant which we entered, to warm ourselves before setting out, 
 with its hot soups, its large plates of fried oysters, its atmos- 
 phere of tobacco, and its population of smokers and chewers 
 making themselves drunk on cocktails at eight o'clock in the 
 morning ! 
 
 The aspect of the car which we finally took was not more 
 appropriate as a preparation for spirituality. It was full of 
 people of all conditions, who had come to Boston to work, 
 and who were dressed in such a way as one sees only here, 
 which makes it impossible to guess the social rank of the man. 
 With small movable tables before them, they were all playing 
 
 cards "for fun," as H told me, — "for the pleasure of 
 
 passing the time." Thirty games of whist were played, while 
 the train was running through a snow-clad country, all white, 
 and studded with small wooden houses with wooden verandas, 
 the charm of New England. This harmless gambling-room 
 on wheels gives you the idea of a people who have time to 
 spare, a great deal of time. The faces of the players wear an 
 expression at once of freedom, fatigue, and strength. The 
 moment is one, so rare in America, when the foreigner feels 
 a lull, an apathy, beneath the apparent fever. There is always 
 apathy beneath all activity; but to perceive it one must be in 
 sjrmpathy with it. Paris to a Frenchman coming from the 
 country, seems to be a town of intensest movement. To a 
 Londoner, on the contrary, the Place de la Concorde and the 
 boulevards give an impression of luxurious, semi-tropical idle- 
 ness. But one who goes from New York to London, finds the 
 old English city, in its turn, strangely tame, strangely peaceful, 
 and, I was going to say, strangely backward. These expres- 
 sions, however, correspond to a reality less real than we imag- 
 
354 OUTRE-MER 
 
 ine. We cease to be aware of what we always feel; that is, 
 what we know very well, but had forgotten; once aroused to 
 a certain degree of energy, we maintain ourselves there with- 
 out effort. So these hard workers amuse themselves, between 
 two crises of hard work, as calmly as a French rentier in a small 
 town, who spends the whole afternoon, between a morning 
 and evening of utter idleness, in front of the green cloth, at a 
 game of "piquet voleur " ! 
 
 Mr. H and I alight at a country station. Low hills, all 
 
 covered with snow, close in the horizon around the shed 
 which serves as a station house. A sleigh awaits us, drawn by 
 a shaggy horse, which is driven by an old man, accompanied 
 by a large dog. It is the vehicle which the "seer" sends for 
 her clients. There is no sham about her, nothing which 
 savors of humbug or advertisement. Her seances are a pro- 
 fession with her, and she practises it with a bourgeois simplic- 
 ity, with the same absence of surprise, which is one of the 
 most striking characteristics of the American. Whatever may 
 be the strangeness of his fate, he accepts it without seeming 
 more surprised at it than he is at yours. 
 
 Here we are, then, gliding in this sleigh, up one slope and 
 down another. We slip along over the snow between the 
 scarce-awakened little wooden houses, fo the last one, sepa- 
 rated from the street by an asphalt path, a sort of black abyss 
 hollowed out in the whiteness of the snow. Footprints indi- 
 cate that more than one person must that day have knocked 
 at the door of this modern sorceress, to whom we in our turn 
 are coming. Still the seance is expensive, — ten dollars. 
 But of all passions, that which reasons the least is the super- 
 natural, when it has possession of us; and we cannot but be- 
 lieve that this passion is in the blood of the race, since we 
 are close to Salem, that little seaside town, the theatre, just 
 two hundred years ago, of a terrible persecution for witchcraft, 
 in which twenty persons were condemned to death ! 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 355 
 
 Heaven be praised, contemporary manners and customs are 
 
 gentler, and Mrs. N 's quiet home runs no risk of being 
 
 troubled by a like inquisition to that of the terrible Protestant 
 ministers of 1692. A little girl receives us, all smiles, and 
 conducts us into the parlor, saying that her mother has had a 
 great many sittings during the past few days, and that she is 
 very tired. The furniture of the room is just the same as 
 that of hundreds of others of the same class which I have 
 seen. On the wall a picture of Christ bearing the Cross, 
 on the table a Bible, bear witness to the owner's religious 
 sentiments, and volumes of poetry — Tennyson's Princess, 
 Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, Moore's Lalla Rookh, 
 — testify to the purity of her literary tastes. She appears 
 presently, — a woman apparently thirty-five years old. The 
 outline of her features seems almost elastic, doubtless owing 
 to the extraordinary suppleness of the muscles of her face. 
 Her complexion is fair, bloodless, pale, and lighted up by 
 eyes so strangely bright and so fixed, that on looking into the 
 contracted pupils, so dark and brilliant, you feel an undefina- 
 ble uneasiness. She is, however, very unaffected, and when 
 she speaks it is with a soft and languid voice. 
 
 She tells you that she is not equal to the demands upon 
 her, that her trances tire her too much, also that she has given 
 a great number of ineffectual sittings, so greatly are her nerves 
 overtaxed. And, in truth, when one sees her entering into 
 her "trance," as she calls it, it is easy to understand what 
 such an organism must expend in vitality under such an 
 experience. 
 
 With the shutters closed, and every light extinguished, 
 except a candle under the table, she unfastens her hair, settles 
 herself at ease in her loose garment, and takes the hands of 
 one of us. Some minutes of silence and expectancy pass, and 
 then she begins to wail and twist her fingers, which escape 
 from the grasp and wander into her hair. She sighs heavily, 
 
356 OUTRE-MER 
 
 deeply, with sighs that seem to come from her innermost 
 being J her bowed head bends forward more and more, her 
 entire body is contorted, as though she were fighting against 
 an attack. Then comes a pause. She sleeps. Her open 
 palms reach out to feel the face, the shoulders, the arm of 
 the person in front of her, and she begins to speak in a changed 
 voice, with an Irish accent. Her veritable "self " has disap- 
 peared, giving place to another. She has ceased to be Mrs. 
 
 N , living near Boston, Massachusetts, and has become a 
 
 certain French doctor, who died at Lyons. 
 
 "A strange man, that doctor," said some one to me, who 
 had attended several seatices of this Yankee pythoness. " You 
 know him, he knows you. He is useful to the last degree, 
 pleasant, always at your service. He is a parasite, who 
 seems to wish to excuse himself for living at the expense of 
 another, and at the same time he is something of a fraud." 
 
 I never could find out whether the person who said this was 
 serious or joking. I imagine that the American who interests 
 himself in these phenomena of double sight, does not him- 
 self know. What attracts him in such experiences is the sat- 
 isfaction of that need of excitement which follows him through 
 all the vicissitudes of fortune, and which is ever as intense as 
 upon the first day. Then there is a certain nervous want of 
 balance, from which many persons suffer here, — a reaction of 
 the inveterate realism of the world around them; above all, it is 
 the undying instinct of the heart of man — more alive in these 
 natures, more genuine and more intense than in others — to 
 pierce that veil of mystery with which human life is enfolded. 
 By a sort of compensation, wherein a philosopher would recog- 
 nize the great law of the correlation of forces, the sense of 
 mystery becomes more acute in a country where everything is 
 too evident, too definite, too voluntary. 
 
 One of the most striking traits in the psychology of men 
 of action is the presence in them of a vein of superstition, 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 357 
 
 the more evident as they are more resolute and thoughtful. 
 Napoleon was a startling example of this. Men of action 
 such as the Americans are, and of action so intense, could 
 hardly fail to have their own kind of illuminism, and why 
 should I not acknowledge that, in the course of seances, such 
 
 as Mrs. N gave us that day and on another occasion, 
 
 it is impossible not to admit certain phenomena, which, in 
 fact, remain entirely inexplicable from the purely natural 
 point of view. 
 
 A traveller's diary such as this is hardly the place for a dis- 
 cussion of problems so complex as the question whether it is 
 possible for thought to communicate with thought without the 
 
 intermediary of a sign. Mrs. N was holding my hands, 
 
 and at the same time touching a small travelling-clock, which 
 had belonged to some one she could not possibly have known, 
 — a sculptor, who killed himself under particularly sad cir- 
 cumstances of temporary madness. How did she know this, 
 how learn even the profession of the former owner of the clock, 
 and of his madness, and even of the details of his suicide? 
 Was there a communication between my mind and hers, united 
 by the personality of that mysterious Lyonese doctor? Did 
 my hands, which she held in hers, reveal by shakings percepti- 
 ble to her hyper-acute nerves what my impression was after 
 each of her words, and had she in her sleep preserved a power 
 of being guided by these small signs? Or, rather, — for it is 
 always well to reserve a place for scepticism, — was she an 
 incomparable actress, who guessed my thoughts solely from 
 the tone of my questions and answers? 
 
 But no. She was sincere. The psychologists who have 
 studied her in her trances know too well the character of mag- 
 netic sleep by mechanical means, which do not cheat. All 
 that I can conclude from the really extraordinary details which 
 she gave me, a passing stranger, about one who had disap- 
 peared, and of whom I had spoken to no one with whom 
 
358 OUTRE-MER 
 
 1 
 
 she was acquainted, is that the spirit has methods of knowl- 
 edge unsuspected in our analysis. I remember that one of 
 the American Buddhists whom I had met here said to me : — 
 
 " In Europe and the East you give an enormous, immoder- 
 ate, and unique importance to demonstration, which is but 
 organized sense vitality. There is something else." 
 
 When he spoke thus, we were seated at the table of a club, 
 toward the end of a repast which had been prolonged by the 
 conversation of twenty guests. Around us were bottles of 
 'Apollinaris and whiskey, green mint in glasses with cracked 
 ice, and boxes of cigars, all symbolizing that which is least 
 ideal, least mysterious in civilized life; and this strange man 
 went on to speak of the far East, of its religions, with their 
 atmosphere of dreams, of the wisdom of those people, and of 
 their inaction. Who knows but that certain powers of mysti- 
 cism, to-day almost abolished in the modern world, will again 
 wake up, and certain faculties of the mind temporarily para- 
 lyzed, begin to work again; who knows whether our humanity 
 will not see again a period analogous to that of the Alexan- 
 drians and the Gnostics, or, more correctly, of the Brahmins? 
 It would be one of the greatest ironies of nature if a future 
 awakening of the so-called occult sciences should have one of 
 its starting-points in America. 
 
 At all events, researches in morbid psychology have no- 
 where been pushed further than here, and for this reason alone 
 it is worth while to tell of this visit to the hermitage of Mrs. 
 
 N . When she awoke from her sleep, she seized my 
 
 companion and myself, each by the arm, with a tragic gesture. 
 Thus she remained some seconds, clearly without recognizing 
 us. Then a kind of pale smile came over her tired face. 
 The "seer" gave way to the simple person of New England, 
 who offered us tea with a voice which had become soft 
 again. She seemed to have completely forgotten — indeed, 
 she had completely forgotten — the singular doctor with the 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 359 
 
 Irish accent, who had gone into some country far from ours. 
 Vanished, but where? Chimera of her imagination? Inven- 
 tion of her will? Supra-sensible reality? Who can unriddle 
 this enigma? 
 
 It would be unjust, in these few notes on American recrea- 
 tions, not to mention the lively interest which the cultivated 
 people of this country — and they are legion — profess for the 
 pleasures of the intellect. I have already tried to note, as 
 regards conversation in society, the part their intelligence 
 has to play in it, how much the will has to do with it, resulting 
 in what I have called the "point of view." When Americans 
 turn toward the intellectual sidexjf life, then the words of the 
 anchorite of the Middle Ages become true. Their ear is 
 really not satisfied with hearing, just as their eye is not satis- 
 fied with seeing. 
 
 Through his intense and ever-active curiosity, the Ameri- 
 can, that son of a recent nation, has reached that condi- 
 tion of mind which we are in the habit of considering as the 
 supreme vice and the last refinement of a century of decay, 
 namely, dilettantism. I have found this condition of mind, 
 which consists in entering through thought into the most diffi- 
 cult and contradictory forms of life, adopting them in order 
 to study and understand them, in a higher state of development 
 in the United States than anywhere else. I have concluded 
 from it that we moralists of old Europe are very wrong in 
 attributing to this condition our sentimental degeneracies and 
 the maladies of will, which really belong with the senility of 
 our society. Everything is pure to the pure, says a proverb, 
 often incorrectly interpreted. It is also true that in the moral 
 domain everything is healthy to the healthy and unhealthy 
 to the unhealthy. This is a conclusion most frequently forced 
 upon me in the course of this journey. It is at once consol- 
 ing and cruel, — consoling because it diminishes our own and 
 our fathers' share of the responsibility for the maladies with 
 
360 OUTRE-MER 
 
 which we see Europe afflicted, and cruel — but do I need to 
 say why ? 
 
 This dilettantism of the cultivated Americans is recognized 
 more particularly in the literary clubs, clubs which they like 
 to call Bohemian, although between the true Bohemianism 
 and these organizations, with their practical comfort, there is 
 all the difference between a hotel of the new style, with elec- 
 tricity, hot water, and elevators and a pension bourgeoise of 
 the rue de la Clef. 
 
 One of the most representative clubs which I saw was the 
 Tavern Club, of Boston. It occupies three floors of a small 
 house, the interior partitions of which have been knocked 
 out, in order to form large rooms. The ground-floor serves 
 as a smoking-room and ante-chamber, and the first floor is a 
 dining-room. Above is a kind of hall where music is played 
 and private theatricals given. 
 
 This club corresponds well enough to certain societies that 
 formerly existed in the Latin Quarter, — such as the Hydro- 
 paths, whose founder, the poet, Emile Goudeau, has written a 
 clever and lively history of it in a small volume entitled Ten 
 Years of Bohemianism. I may remark in passing that this 
 book, which has attracted little notice, is, according to my 
 mind, a most exact contribution to the history of the habits 
 and the ideas of our literary youth between 1870 and 1880. 
 The literary youth of Boston, young writers, young painters, 
 and young musicians, founded this Tavern Club. The fol- 
 lowing are some of the features of difference which I have 
 noticed while frequenting this club and similar ones in New 
 York and elsewhere; they appear to me to characterize well 
 enough the particularly healthy state of American dilettan- 
 tism : — 
 
 I. The respect of the young for their elders, and also the 
 respect of the elders for the young. The president of the 
 Tavern Club, for instance, is the distinguished Professor 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 361 
 
 Norton, of Cambridge, and when the chib gives its monthly 
 dinner, white-haired judges, bankers, doctors, are there, seated 
 at the table with all the youngsters. The American who is 
 concerned with intellectual life no more hesitates in the pur- 
 suit of novelty than one engaged in business in the pursuit 
 of fortune. You will hear an aged collector of pictures 
 discussing with a stripling about to start for Paris the works 
 of Degas or of Gustave Moreau, with the same supple- 
 ness of intellect which another will develop in speaking to a 
 writer of romance of Flaubert, of the brothers de Goncourt, 
 or of Maupassant. There is a great deal gained by this inter- 
 course of men of various ages with one another. 
 
 But is it not rather an effect than a cause? The oppositions 
 of taste and the disagreements between men of different ages 
 which exist among us arise from the totally different ways of 
 living of these classes. I imagine that the young Parisians 
 of to-day are not very different from those whom I knew 
 when I was under thirty. We were in a revolt against our 
 elders in all that concerned sentiments and habits. It is not 
 so in America, where literary and artistic tastes are purely 
 intellectual. I have already remarked, in regard to Harvard, 
 that a liking for French writers of the Extreme Left is both 
 frequent and innocent. Just so we see one of Ch^ret's adver- 
 tising sheets, representing the Moulin Rouge, decorating the 
 walls of the Tavern Club, alongside a copy of "The Spinners," 
 of Velasquez, that picture in which a woman's throat is painted 
 with such power. The little figure of the Parisian gutter 
 woman has here just the value of those pretty little Greek 
 courtesans who have become the statuettes of Tanagra ! 
 
 2. The profound knowledge of foreign literatures and arts. 
 The few names which I have quoted are so celebrated, that to 
 mention them alone proves a certain amount of reading, but 
 these people utter these and twenty others, with references 
 which reveal not a superficial reading acquaintance with 
 
362 OUTRE-MER 
 
 them, but serious and conscientious study, — I will not say a 
 complete comprehension. For the best-informed dilettan- 
 tism is often a little uncertain when it applies itself to writers 
 of a foreign country. 
 
 I thus heard at Oxford one of the most exquisite critics of 
 our age, the regretted Walter Pater, speaking to me in the 
 same sentence of Flaubert and Feuillet, as the two French 
 prose writers that he liked the best, associating in similar 
 admiration and for the same reasons two styles, the difference 
 between which, absolute as it is, he did not perceive. At 
 other times these impressions of foreigners are singularly 
 suggestive, and show us unexpected depths in the works of 
 our own country. 
 
 At a dinner at one of these clubs, a guest had just quoted 
 the witty saying of old Professor Jowett, of Oxford, the master 
 of Balliol : " It is not lasciate ogni speranza which is written 
 over the door of hell, but rather, 'here they read French 
 novels, ' " when another guest rose and proposed a toast to 
 Zola, with the sentiment that sympathy for the sinner is the 
 soul of that great romance writer's works, and describing this 
 as one of the most beneficent and humane sentiments in an era 
 in which the influence of surroundings on the development 
 of personality has been recognized by science as a fundamen- 
 tal law. 
 
 "If we do not join to justice pity for those who are the 
 victims of it, what place do we give to justice in our universe? " 
 
 I wish that the enemies of the admirable author of Ger- 
 minal z.wdi La Debacle who reproach him for giving foreigners 
 a bad impression of French literature, had been present at 
 that banquet and heard that defence uttered amid the ap- 
 plause of all, in one of the most respectable cities of New 
 England. 
 
 3. The absence of every element of libertinage in conver- 
 sation and in the mind. This is the true sign of great Intel- 
 
 1 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 363 
 
 lectuality. This quality admits of breadth of apprehension, 
 as may be seen by the example which I have just quoted. I 
 am sure that the very sincere severity shown to certain French 
 writers by excellent judges in France is owing to the fact that 
 sexual life occupies an exceptionally prominent place in our 
 habits. We very rarely find an inhabitant of the Latin coun- 
 tries who can consider a book which treats of the passion of 
 love with absolute independence of judgment. His imagina- 
 tion is either tickled or disgusted. When, on the contrary, 
 an Anglo-Saxon can free himself from hypocrisy and cant, 
 all serious study of the human soul, daring as it may be, 
 seems to him legitimate. I had noted this feature, so little 
 observed and yet so logical, while talking of Baudelaire with 
 the youths of Harvard. But I could quote twenty examples 
 of it, derived from a quality which is entirely to the honor 
 of that great democracy, at times so coarse, namely, the 
 worship of talent. 
 
 Though it is by no means exceptional, I have nowhere rec- 
 ognized this rare and delicate sentiment more than in Boston. 
 It is the contrary which is the exception ; namely, that spirit 
 of disparagement evinced by derogatory anecdotes in which 
 so much envy is concealed. I could mention certain houses 
 that are veritable museums of literary piety, one, among 
 others, all the windows of which open out on the Charles 
 River. The aged lady who lives there, the wife of an editor, 
 
 Mrs. F , has made her house one of the most significant 
 
 museums which I visited. I saw there a portrait of Dickens 
 as a young man with long, flowing hair, a feminine face, 
 almost the pendant of the admirable head of George Sand, 
 painted by Delacroix, with deep black eyes, which used to 
 light up the severe cabinet of old Buloz. 
 
 Letters and manuscripts of the great man lay around, show- 
 ing one of those cramped and nervous handwritings which 
 revealed the abuse of "copy." The mistress of the house 
 
364 OUTRE-MER 
 
 described him to me as he sat in that same room after his 
 reading, exhausted by his nervous effort, merry, however, 
 and full of anecdotes. 
 
 The last time he came to the United States nothing amused 
 him so much as the artless form of flattery devised by a 
 mother of a family who had asked him to dinner. He arrived 
 and found a child in the first room. 
 
 "What is your name?" asked the writer. 
 
 "David Copperfield," replied the little boy. 
 
 "And yours?" asked Dickens of another who entered. 
 
 "Oliver Twist," was the reply. 
 
 "And I am Little Dorrit," said a small girl. 
 
 "And I am Florence Dombey," said another. 
 
 Dickens was very much out of health when this adventure 
 occurred. Gout made every movement painful, and the results 
 of overwork had already begun to make his remunerative read- 
 ings very arduous. However, in relating this story he showed 
 all the gayety of his first visit to the United States, 
 
 Opposite his romantic head, is the lined and thoughtful 
 face of the powerful analyst, Thackeray. A slip of paper is 
 fastened below, on which we read, traced in microscopic 
 characters, this brief adieu : — 
 
 "Good-bye, Mrs. F , good-bye, my dear F , good- 
 bye to all. I go home." 
 
 He had been a month in America, occupied with engage- 
 ments of extreme importance. Toward Christmas the desire 
 to see his children got the better of him, and this note tells 
 of the abruptness of his departure. On the walls is also a 
 portrait of Carlylewhen young, and it is very like Carlylewhen 
 old, in the depth of the eyes below the curve of the brow, in 
 the shape of the forehead, and the firmness of the jaw. That 
 forehead and that chin is all Carlyle. There is a lack of 
 human nature in that strong physiognomy, too set, too self- 
 willed. This is one of the faces that offend those who look 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 365 
 
 at them, that defy the spectator, and arm themselves with 
 outward arrogance to conceal the feeling of inward security. 
 
 For my part, I prefer the high and serene beauty of Tenny- 
 son, that Virgil of the Isle of Wight, who has so well known 
 how to collect its waters around his garden of dreams. The 
 fairy of this little museum of relics told me of a promenade 
 she had had with the poet in a real garden in Surrey, where, 
 having inhaled the sweet aroma of the violets, he said to her 
 in his deep voice : — 
 
 "Down on our knees, these are violets." 
 
 And he did as he had said, in order that he might relig- 
 iously gather the fragrance of the flowers without picking 
 them. 
 
 I like also the portrait of noble Emerson, with his thin 
 face lighted up by his high ideal — and what writing is his, 
 passionate, inspired, from one end of the line to the other! 
 Other autographs in an immense collection showed the writing 
 of Longfellow, half slanting, very firm, very clear, always the 
 same; and the simple and strong handwriting of Lowell. In 
 thought I go back ten years, and again I se.e his face, with 
 its long beard and simple expression, as it appeared to me at 
 the Rabelais Club, in London. Little did I suspect then that 
 he would die so soon, and that I should be turning over his 
 manuscripts in his native town, chatting about him the while 
 as of one whose recollection is piously preserved, among many 
 others. 
 
 That piety, that literary cult impressed me, touched me. 
 I find in it a desire to have celebrated men for friends, but, 
 after all, such a desire is in a measure right. It is legitimate 
 to love glorious men, whose superiority we feel through their 
 reputation; especially when one does not maliciously draw 
 attention to their faults for the petty pleasure of humiliating 
 that superiority. Americans may have many faults, but they 
 are certainly neither small nor mean. 
 
366 OUTRE-MER 
 
 Another feature of intellectual dilettantism, in the particular 
 phase which it takes in America, is the search for sensations 
 by travelling, and by travelling in a large and audacious way 
 bewildering to our European imagination — at least it would 
 have been so if Pierre Loti had not somewhat accustomed us 
 to the most distant journeyings. But Loti remains alone 
 among us. I am not sure that criticism would permit even 
 him those wanderings in Japan or Oceania, if the great writer 
 had not the excuse of his calling to offer for those expe- 
 ditions, which he tells of with the grace of a poet sensitive 
 even to painfulness and delicate almost to morbidness. To 
 an American artist, on the contrary, those journeyings through 
 the vast world in quest of a little fresh beauty seem so natural 
 that neither the public, nor himself, even thinks of noticing 
 their dangers and eccentricities. I remember hearing an 
 American writer say to me : — 
 
 "I shall return to Japan next year for the flower season," 
 just as simply as he would; have announced to me a trip from 
 Paris to Saint-Germain, i 
 
 This passion for long journeys is so common that it has 
 modified the system of holidays for professors in the most 
 unexpected manner. They have every seven years a full year 
 of holiday, which they call the "Sabbatical year," and which 
 they employ in visits to Europe, to Africa, or to Asia, accord- 
 ing to the needs of their studies or their"! curiosity. 
 
 Nowhere have I more strongly felt thte influence of travel 
 upon the intellectual American than in New York, in the studio 
 of the admirable painter — who is too little known among us 
 in spite of his French name — John La Farge. The man him- 
 self, who is no longer very young, with his refined face and 
 white skin, as though dried up by internal heat, with his rest- 
 less eyes in strongly outlined, drawn eyelids, gives a good 
 impression of one of those nervous activities which no effort 
 satisfies, which no experience appeases, and which are ever 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 367 
 
 searching and in motion. He has invented a new process for 
 stained glass; he has exercised himself in decoration and illus- 
 tration, in painting in oils and in wax, in vast altar pieces, 
 such as the grandiose and delicate "Ascension" of the Fifth 
 Avenue Episcopal Church, and in pastels, and only a few 
 months ago he was travelling about through the Pacific Islands 
 — Samoa, Tahiti, the Fijis. 
 
 "We wanted to go very far," said he to me. "Japan is too 
 near. They have the telegraph there. The Pacific always 
 means two months without news." 
 
 That is the longing of the artist, tired of conventional life, 
 tired of the railroad, of the telephone, of all that facilitates 
 business and saves time, hungering after novel sensations, 
 and above all devoted to his art; valiantly, heroically resolved 
 to live only for his thoughts, during days and days; and while 
 that cold, snowy January afternoon was freezing the town, those 
 islets scattered on the map became alive, bright, and green 
 for me in pictures and water-colors of this refined painter, 
 whose smallest works show him to be of the race of Fromen- 
 tin, the visionary, who thinks his feelings — a rare power. 
 Here are branches too green, at the edge of a too blue sea; 
 the veins of the leaves seem saturated with water, and tell 
 of the eternal humidity of the air. Banana trees rear their 
 straight trunks, bearing their long supple leaf -blades. Cocoa- 
 nut trees wave their palms in the ceaseless Pacific wind, 
 the wind that goes, like the immense swell of the wide ocean, 
 from one pole to the other. The burao, a large tree with a 
 knotted trunk, spreads out its broad leaves like those of our 
 fig trees. Flowers everywhere, above all, the flat-petalled, 
 full-blown corollas of the strange hibiscus. In this scenery 
 of nature low hovels are seen, with thatched roofs and open 
 sides, along which fall flexible mattings. 
 
 Men and women pass between those trees at the edge of the 
 sea; some dancing with crowns of roses; others, hidden by 
 
368 OUTRE-MER 
 
 branches, cowering on the earth in wait to commit murder; 
 others carrying on their shoulders light skiffs ; others em- 
 barked in similar boats going forth to fish. And around them 
 is that trim landscape, cleaned, almost combed. 
 
 "The savage," says the painter, profoundly, "is the old- 
 fashioned gentleman, the gentleman of tradition, who does 
 everything according to custom, and who does not wish to 
 change his habits; " and, showing a young girl, who is shoot- 
 ing a canoe across an apparently fearful cascade, he adds: 
 "She is not frightened; for there is not a turn of the ground 
 which she does not know, not a pebble which has not been in 
 the same place for centuries, out of the water and under the 
 water. In that country, when you hurt your foot, you say, 
 'Sure enough, my grandfather told me there was a stone on 
 that road ! ' " 
 
 Above all, the bathing scenes are charming to behold. 
 Wide rivers flow through the woods, and women throw them- 
 selves into the water, blue with the reflection of the sky, with 
 noble, antique immodesty. Children play in the surf of the 
 ocean. The wave breaks on reefs, and, in places where it 
 drags along the coral bottom, its green shade becomes so pure 
 and so intense that it takes the coloring of a precious stone. 
 At other times, at sunset, it is quite rosy. The brown and 
 lissome nudity of the savage is outlined on this blue ocean 
 with the fineness of an antique bronze. 
 
 You feel the soft and caressing atmosphere, where the 
 human animal is happy in an almost vegetative felicity, where 
 it is languid as a plant. Tahitian women, sitting around the 
 fire, which lights them up fantastically, their bodies clothed 
 in long dresses of light material, with straw hats on their 
 small heads, seem to be playing at winter, while other groups 
 make up scenes of Biblical or Hellenic grandeur: a blind and 
 naked old man, led by a child; a dark youth galloping on 
 horseback, at the edge of the sea; dances, — bacchanalian, I 
 
AMERICAN PLEASURES 369 
 
 was about to say, — where the thick foliage of the wreaths worn 
 by the wild female dancers recalls the festivals in the ravines 
 of Taygeta, celebrated by the poet : — 
 
 . . . et virginibus bacchata Lacoenis 
 Taygeta. . . . 
 
 The joy of the artist as he shows these studies is pleasing to 
 witness. His eye warms, delighting itself again in that light, 
 his mind goes back to that primitive life with the delight of 
 second youth and of initiation. He raises the stole of the 
 Buddhist priest, which veils an unfinished picture, and with 
 the action reveals a figure painted in wax, with colors so 
 blended as to be almost indistinguishable. A woman is 
 seated, her feet crossed, her arms folded, her eyelids lowered, 
 clothed in material of a marvellous tissue, so diaphanous that 
 it seems about to melt away in the light of an aureole which 
 she herself seems to project. A cascade falls at the side of 
 this enigmatic form, the water flowing endlessly, symbol of 
 time that passes in eternal flight. 
 
 The young goddess, nevertheless, remains motionless in 
 her youth, whose serenity seems to have been attained 
 through storms. She is the Goddess of Meditation, "the 
 being who sees sounds," as the artist tells me. Silent, dead 
 to life, absorbed in her dream, she spreads peacefulness 
 around her. The grand lesson of the nullity of human 
 activity comes from the farthest East to this country of in- 
 tense effort. The fever of culture, with which these men are 
 V possessed, makes them capable of understanding through 
 innumerable experiences, and of translating into palpable 
 form, the poetry of meditative passiveness, so contrary to 
 their race. As after reading certain novels by Henry James, 
 so, too, on leaving John La Farge's studio, I have the im- 
 pression, nay, rather the evidence, that the American soul, 
 when once it sees the beauty of being delicate, reaches acute 
 
 BB 
 
370 
 
 OUTRE-MER 
 
 shades of analysis and unequalled visions. But the painter, 
 like the writer of romance, is solitary. Neither forms a 
 part of a school or even of a group. Personality, the un- 
 changeable individuality of their culture, is still a feature of 
 this country, and one which does not admit of the predic- 
 tion that there will ever be any American art. Nevertheless, 
 there are, at the present day, very great and admirable Ameri- 
 can artists, and that is enough, after all, for the glory of a 
 people. 
 
IX 
 DOWN SOUTH 
 
 I. In Georgia 
 
 The author begs the reader to look upon this narrative as a "short 
 story," all the facts in which are true, but in which the author, for personal 
 reasons, has been obliged to make several alterations. — P. B. 
 
 The misfortune of a somewhat prolonged journey in the 
 United States is that you begin to recognize at each fresh 
 halting-place that the country is really too vast, too complex; 
 that after having amassed mountains of notes, there are still 
 mountains to amass; that after having lived in this or that 
 town a month, it would be necessary to live there a year; that 
 after having studied this or that class of people, thousands of 
 other classes remain yet to be studied. 
 
 I especially felt this immensity, this complexity, during 
 the course of an excursion through the South, of which I 
 retain memories that I shall not attempt to connect with the 
 preceding notes. This is perhaps the best way of making 
 this travelling journal conform to reality. For, indeed, 
 Charleston passed, a fresh country begins. The flora changes 
 as well as the sky, the fauna as well as the people. The real 
 reasons which precipitated these two worlds at each other's 
 throats, using slavery as a pretext, appear to you as clear as 
 do those which caused the war of 1870, when you cross the 
 Rhine. But the wounds of our ancient Europe, like those in 
 a poisoned body that has lost the power of creating fresh cuti- 
 cle, have not closed; while, in the American nation, they 
 
 371 
 
372 OUTRE-MER 
 
 have not only healed, but have been forgotten. The difficult 
 task has been entered upon of finally mixing, blending, and 
 amalgamating these two portions of a vast empire, this North 
 and this South, so naturally, so radically antithetic. 
 
 You open a chance newspaper, in the train that carries you 
 toward Charleston, and you see that the present Speaker of 
 Congress, corresponding to our President of the Chamber of 
 Deputies, was formerly an officer in the Confederate army. 
 Prisoner of war for a year, he began the study of law immedi- 
 ately peace was concluded. He has had a career as a lawyer, 
 and is now one of the important leaders of the Democratic 
 party. Mr. Wilson is another illustration of the same state 
 of affairs, — the Mr. Wilson who is so popular, the applauded 
 author of a celebrated bill, the man whom I saw the other 
 day in Congress carried in triumph upon the shoulders of his 
 admirers, after a speech, with a basket of roses in his arms. 
 
 The flow of life has resumed its course in this powerful 
 organism ; and of a terrible war, lasting several years, — a war 
 of races, a war of climates, a war of principles, a war of inter- 
 ests, a war of pride, — there remains no other trace than that 
 contained in the list of pens-ions inscribed on the budget. 
 This list, a fact almost incomprehensible to one not initiated 
 in the hidden workings of American politics, increases in 
 amount as the war period is left behind. 
 
 The soldiers of the North and the soldiers Of the South 
 meet and fraternize, just as though the slaughters of Chancel- 
 lorsville and Gettysburg had never taken place. No, I am 
 mistaken. The heroic struggle has left more noble traces 
 than a shameful abuse of war pensions. It has left the mem- 
 ory of a common bravery, a proof that American industrialism 
 has not diminished the energy of the race. It has left the 
 legend of Lincoln, of one of those men who, simply by the 
 propagation of their example, mould in their image the con- 
 science of an entire country. This personage, so American by 
 
 1 
 
DOWN SOUTH 373 
 
 the composite character of his being, humorous and pathetic 
 at one and the same time; this politician, acquainted with all 
 artifices and trickeries, and yet so capable of idealism and 
 mysticism; this half-educated man, with his magnificent sim- 
 plicities of eloquence; this former woodman, his face embit- 
 tered with disappointment and luminous with hope, enfeebled 
 by trial and yet so strong; this statesman, close to the people, 
 and yet gifted with such amplitude of vision, — is the most 
 modern of heroes, one whom the United States may safely 
 compare with Napoleon, with Cavour, with Bismarck. To-day 
 the South recognizes his grandeur, as well as the North. He 
 had the good fortune to be just the workman that was neces- 
 sary for the task he undertook, and to die immediately his task 
 was accomplished. Great destinies are made up of such timely 
 hazards. 
 
 In selecting as the first stopping-place in my Southern travels 
 a little town in Georgia, I was trying to realize a desire to 
 meet an old ofificer of the Northern army, a particular friend 
 of the great President. His name I must also keep secret. I 
 will simply call him Colonel Scott, a disguise that will not 
 hide him from his acquaintances. A mutual friend, who had 
 given me a letter for him in Washington, described him to 
 me. "Prepare," he said, "to meet one of the most compli- 
 cated of men, a many-sided man, as we say. You will see 
 for yourself. He comes originally from Massachusetts and 
 there is the Puritan in him yet. He has been through the war, 
 and he is still a soldier. He has studied medicine, and he 
 is something of a scientist. Then he went into business and 
 directed a large company manufacturing uniform and livery 
 buttons, so that he is somewhat of a tradesman. Besides this 
 there is in him a little of the landed proprietor, of the gen- 
 tleman farmer, ever since he purchased a large plantation in 
 the South on account of his daughter's health. And he is, 
 above all, a charming personality, charitable and honest, full 
 
374 OUTRE-MER 
 
 of curious memories of Lincoln, Grant, Hooker, Sherman. 
 Certainly you must have a chat with him." 
 
 I arrived, then, at Philippeville — that is the pseudonym I 
 shall ask the reader to accept for this little city in Georgia — 
 toward the middle of the month of March. My first step was 
 to ask the address of Mr. Scott. I was told that he lived only 
 about two miles from the town, but that I ought to write to 
 him in order that I might not make the journey uselessly. 
 
 "He is passionately fond of hunting," added Mr. Williams, 
 the hotel proprietor, who gave me these details. "He some- 
 times remains out three or four days without returning to 
 the house. You know, sir, that we have the best hunting 
 in America here; deer, duck, wild turkey, partridge, quail, 
 and not a single wild animal, not a bear, not a puma. Ah, 
 Philippeville beats every town in the South." 
 
 "Not a wild animal?" said I. "And the alligators and the 
 rattlesnakes? " 
 
 "Oh, they're all down there in Florida," he replied. 
 "Why, my dear sir, I've been here for twenty years during 
 the winter and spring, and I've never seen a bigger snake 
 than an adder." 
 
 The worthy Mr. Williams neglected to add that, during 
 these twenty years of residence, he had not quitted his hotel 
 a hundred times, a hotel which, by the way, realized an 
 ideal of comfort for travellers. He treated all travellers 
 like friends, as careful of their well-being and recreation as 
 though he had really been the host of some country-seat where 
 was gathered a group of invited guests. I do not think you 
 will meet anywhere in the world, save in America, this type 
 of hotel proprietor, a man perfectly well-mannered, a man 
 who dines in evening dress every day in the common dining- 
 hall, opposite his wife, who is also in evening toilette, and who 
 then passes the evening in the drawing-room, chatting and 
 listening to an orchestra engaged for the season. I engaged a 
 
DOWN SOUTH 375 
 
 small light carriage on the morrow of my arrival in Philippe- 
 ville; and passing down the long route, bordered by wooden 
 cabins and populated by negroes, went with my black coach- 
 man through a great forest of pitch pines, strewn with honey- 
 suckles in full bloom and as high as ourselves, and finally 
 arrived at a large open turnstile upon which were written the 
 simple words : " Scott's Place." 
 
 I can see myself again, as though in a dream, alighting from 
 the little carriage and walking up a winding path, bordered 
 by trees of odorous fragrance, and I again see, at the end of 
 the path, the large, low house which was evidently that of the 
 master. It was built of wood, like those of the negroes of 
 Philippeville, but of varnished wood, lacquered yellow, with 
 the roof painted a sombre red, and surrounded with a wooden 
 veranda painted a bluish white. 
 
 I had not to take the trouble of ringing and asking for the 
 master of this Southern country-seat, so peaceful and so coquet- 
 tish, with its one story, and with its garment of clambering 
 roses. A troop of fifteen or twenty negroes, men, women, and 
 children, clustered before the staircase, ranged in a circle round 
 a man of about sixty years of age, very tall, very red, but still 
 robust and slender, in a huntsman's costume, with high leather 
 gaiters and a striped velvet jacket. The Colonel, for it was he, 
 did not perceive my approach any more than did the negroes 
 who surrounded him, regarding him with breathless attention, 
 so absorbed were they all in some strange task. Colonel Scott 
 was bending over a rather large wooden box of open lattice- 
 work, that appeared to contain some singular animal in a state 
 of extreme irritation, to judge from the sounds that issued 
 from it — sounds that resembled a file rubbed furiously on 
 some extremely hard substance. He held in his right hand a 
 stick, at the end of which he had fixed an enormous wad of 
 cotton, and he worked this stick about through the interstices 
 of the box, while he poured in it with his right hand the con- 
 
376 OUTRE-MER 
 
 tents of a large bottle full of a water-colored liquid. I recog- 
 nized almost immediately the sickly-sweet odor of chloro- 
 form. What was the animal the Colonel was trying to stupefy 
 in this way? The filing sound became more and more feeble. 
 You could hear it dying away like the moaning of an invalid 
 succumbing under the influence of some powerful ansesthetic. 
 
 A negro said, "He's asleep now." The Colonel emptied 
 the remainder of the bottle into the box, stirring around, 
 meanwhile, the baton — I suppose to make all sure. Then, 
 taking up a pair of pincers, he tore off one of the planks at the 
 top and turned the box upside down. Out of it, I first saw 
 issue the monstrous head of a serpent — a head as big as my 
 hand, triangular and flat, with swollen glands hanging limply 
 from the end of a long neck, of which I could see the throb- 
 bing throat, with its white, soft skin. The long body un- 
 coiled and rolled out to the length of about eight feet, thicker 
 than my arm, and terminated by a little tail composed of a 
 dozen rings, looking as though cut out of gray horn. The 
 sight of this rattlesnake was so hideous, so worthy of the sur- 
 name, atrox, given by the naturalist to this variety, — Crotalus 
 atrox, — that there was among the negroes a hurried attempt to 
 retreat from the animal, which was, nevertheless, so defence- 
 less at this moment. 
 
 The Colonel, with the rapidity of a workman who knows 
 that every instant is precious, forced a stick into the mouth 
 of this formidable monster. The raised jaw revealed the 
 inside of the mouth, a horrible red of living flesh, with the 
 thin, bifurcated tongue looking as though glued to the palate. 
 I saw him with his free hand take up some metal instrument 
 — one of those forceps that dentists use. He grasped, with 
 the pincer, one of the fangs in the jaw, which was beginning 
 to bleed. A little effort, and he dropped upon the ground one 
 of the teeth of the monster, then a second, then a third, then 
 a fourth — four long, curved, hollow needles, horrible and 
 
DOWN SOUTH 377 
 
 delicate biting instruments, which at that very instant con- 
 tained enough venom to cause death, even with a scratch. 
 The animal, nevertheless, continued to sleep with a bloody 
 foam upon the borders of its closed jaw. The Colonel 
 seized it by the middle of its body, with his hairy hand, 
 and threw the inert mass into the box, renailed the cover 
 with three strokes of his hammer, picked up, one by one, 
 the dangerous defences, and placed them carefully on the 
 wooden block of the steps devoted to the use of the horse- 
 men, and called a negro. 
 
 "This big fellow will be a little astonished when he wakes. 
 Take him away and don't get into the habit of bringing me 
 a new one every morning." 
 
 As he pronounced these words, his eyes met mine. They 
 were gray eyes that glistened in the ruddy face with a singu- 
 lar brilliancy of youth. He did not hesitate about my 
 identity any more than I had hesitated about his. The letter 
 of introduction that I had sent him in the morning, announc- 
 ing my visit in the afternoon, left him no room for doubt. 
 He saluted me by name while shaking my hand, and said, in 
 French, without any further preamble, with the immediate 
 familiarity of the American : — 
 
 "That's the sixth that I've operated upon in two years, and 
 the third this year. That's why I spoke to them as you heard 
 me. Jim Kennedy is the proprietor of a collection of mon- 
 sters that he is taming, I don't know how. He is going to 
 show them from town to town, from village to village, and to 
 earn, in a few weeks, sufificient to enable him to live for months 
 without working. That's the character of all these blacks," 
 he continued, shrugging his shoulders; "as soon as they have 
 enough to eat, they won't move their little finger." 
 
 "But suppose that they're happy thus, Colonel? " I replied. 
 
 "Happy?" he repeated abruptly. "Happy! They're only 
 too happy, but it's a brute's happiness, and it degrades them 
 
378 OUTRE-MER 
 
 more than slavery. Yes, sir," he continued, with an insistence 
 in which I found the Puritan that I have spoken about. 
 "They were worth more when they were slaves, you may 
 believe me. I was one of those who served under Lincoln 
 with the utmost enthusiasm, and I don't dispute the truth of 
 the principles we fought for. No, I do not dispute it. He 
 is not a man who admits that there can exist a single slave in 
 the world eighteen hundred years after Christ. Unfortunately, 
 we imagined that we had finished when we had freed them. 
 But that was too simple. Our troubles only began then. 
 We didn't realize that a being of an inferior race, like the 
 negro, could not pass at once to a superior condition without 
 danger. You will see some sad things in the South, sir, if you 
 travel. 
 
 " But here I am, keeping you out in this afternoon sun, which 
 is nothing to me and which is suffocating to you. Come into 
 the house, and be presented to Miss Scott. It's only a modest 
 little house, but it will give you, for all that, an idea of what 
 the house of a slave proprietor in Georgia was forty years ago. 
 All around it, you see, were the negro cabins. I have left 
 three or four of them standing. The cooTcing was done in that 
 little building out there. Here were the stables. I have only 
 repaired those which the Chastins left. That's a French name, 
 isn't it? It's the name of the family that lived here. The last 
 member of it has been dead about nine years. They came 
 from New Orleans. Would you believe that after the war, 
 ruined by the emancipation of their slaves and having nothing 
 to live upon except this land, they remained here for several 
 years almost without leaving it, without cultivating it, killing a 
 pig now and then, hunting a little, eating tomatoes that were 
 grown for them by a poor negro who would not leave them ? 
 They were good people and kind masters, and yet that had not 
 prevented them from selling one after another the seven children 
 of that very negro. He opened the gate for you, did he not? " 
 
DOWN SOUTH 379 
 
 " What ! that Httle comic personage, with hair and beard like 
 gray moss, like Hchen, with a parchment face ? " 
 
 " That very man," said the Colonel. " Now, just see what 
 slavery makes of a man. He has never hated his master for 
 those sales. He found, and he still finds, it quite natural that 
 they should sell his sons, just as they would sell calves or suck- 
 ing pigs. He loved his masters, and his masters loved him ! 
 Such inhumanity is inconceivable. But be seated. I will go 
 for my daughter." 
 
 An oil painting, about one-fifth life size, somewhat clumsily 
 but sincerely painted, showed Mr. Scott at twenty years of age, 
 wearing his cloak of cavalryman in the Northern army. He 
 was recognizable, even after half a century, with his rude figure 
 of improvised officer, just the parallel, in his indomitable 
 energy, of the generals of our first revolution. I had not time 
 to make a more minute examination of this salon, nor to read 
 the titles of the books arranged in the low bookcase ; for the 
 sliding door opened and I saw the Colonel enter, pushing 
 before him, with all the delicacy of a sick-nurse, a wheel-chair 
 on which was seated a young woman of about thirty years of 
 age. 
 
 The sight of an irremediable infirmity, particularly when 
 this infirmity is allied to youth, stirs some profound chord in 
 the soul. When youth, thus attacked in its very flower, is found 
 embodied in a perfectly beautiful and perfectly good creat- 
 ure, this pity becomes still more poignant. Miss Ruth Scott, 
 if you considered nothing but her face, had those large, deH- 
 cate features which resist the action of years. Her color had 
 all the brilliancy given by magnificent blood ; she had a finely 
 curved mouth, in which a smile disclosed very large and very 
 white teeth — like those of her father. Her eyes were clear 
 blue, a little lighter than the Colonel's, telling of a very loving 
 woman's heart, proud and delicate. Above her noble forehead 
 grew the most opulent hair in locks of a tawny gold, thick and 
 
380 OUTRE-MER 
 
 luxuriant — hair with which one might weave a glorious shim- 
 mering mantle for the shoulders of a goddess. 
 
 Alas ! the most humble and the most implacable of maladies, 
 — almost too ridiculous to name for a girl of this age and of 
 this splendor, — rheumatism, had deformed and knotted the 
 feet, which one could not see under the shawls, in such a way 
 as to render futile even an attempt at walking. Without any 
 emotion she showed her hands swollen at the joints — poor, 
 infirm hands which could neither guide a pen nor hold a 
 needle. And, yet, a smiling resignation — nay, more than 
 that, a serious, serene joy could be read upon this face, which 
 one would think ought to have expressed all the melancholy 
 of one destined to martyrdom. It was not long before I 
 understood whence came this serenity of mind under so great 
 and so incurable a misfortune. Miss Ruth had not spoken ten 
 phrases before she had revealed to me the secret of her inner 
 strength. Like her father, she was possessed by the idea of 
 the responsibility of the people of her race toward the negroes. 
 And I recognized in her at once that fervor of proselytism 
 which is so difficult for a Latin to consider without some little 
 suspicion. 
 
 The history of the Anglo-Saxon race would, however, be 
 inexplicable without this hereditary instinct of the missionary. 
 Miss Scott was only an example of this instinct, a more touch- 
 ing example than many others on account of her infirmity. I 
 can still hear her slightly hard voice in which trembled the 
 reproaches of a conscience always striving toward apostleship. 
 And I can hear her say to me, speaking about those poor 
 negroes whose happy heedlessness I had just been prais- 
 ing : — 
 
 " They are not always so. There are racial tragedies even 
 to-day that you would never suspect. About ten years ago I 
 was studying in Boston. One day a colored girl presented her- 
 self at our college. The president had strong ideas about jus- 
 
DOWN SOUTH 381 
 
 tice. She assembled us all and asked us to promise that we 
 would treat the newcomer as though she were one of ourselves. 
 Otherwise she would not receive her. She gave us an hour in 
 which to make our decision as to whether we would give her 
 this promise or not. We deliberated together. As opinion 
 was divided on the question, we decided to vote and to submit 
 the matter to the decision of the ballot. The result was favor- 
 able to the stranger. 
 
 " Would it not have been cruel, I ask you, to deprive her of 
 a little culture on account of her blood, particularly as her 
 father was a very distinguished doctor? She remained among 
 us for four years. She was intelligent, as the negroes very often 
 are, and scrupulously honest, which they are not always. We 
 liked her very much, and even those who did not vote in her 
 favor kept their promise and never let her feel that they con- 
 sidered her other than as white. I suppose she was happy. 
 Her father, however, died and left her without fortune. She 
 had to return to Savannah to the family of her grandfather. 
 There this girl, accustomed to live in the best society in the 
 North, could not find a single respectable person who would 
 receive her, who would even recognize her. She was com- 
 pelled to mix solely with the people of her race, inferior, 
 brutal, coarse, knowing themselves to be such, beings without 
 instruction and without education. She suffered so much that 
 she finished by a crime. She committed suicide — threw her- 
 self into the water. Isn't that a tragedy, as I told you ? Is 
 it not frightful?" 
 
 " But why did she not remain in the North ? " I asked. 
 "Would she not have been able to marry there?" 
 
 " Ah, no," said the Colonel in turn, " and I understand the 
 reason. Marriages between negroes and whites are not per- 
 mitted in the United States, and that is right. God has not 
 willed that these races should mix. The proof of this is that 
 mulattoes have almost always an evil nature. No, it will not do 
 
382 OUTRE-MER 
 
 to corrupt the white race by the mixture of the black. One 
 must make of the negro, so long debased, a race of men who 
 will be men, of citizens who will be citizens, something other 
 than children or animals." 
 
 " But are they not already Christians ? " I interrupted. 
 
 "And good Christians," repUed Miss Ruth. "You should 
 hear them sing their hymns in which they speak of Paul and 
 Moses as of people whom they had once known. Sometimes 
 these hymns are most exquisite poetry. Do you remember, 
 father, that about the bones, with the air that so well fitted the 
 beautiful words ? Suppose you sing it for Mr. ." 
 
 " I will try," said the Colonel. He seated himself at the 
 piano quite simply. When had he found leisure to learn music 
 enough to play and sing so pleasantly? He began with a little 
 prelude, seeking the notes with the supple fingers that had 
 held the officer's sword, the doctor's lancet, the administrator's 
 pen, and that I had seen only half an hour before plunging a 
 pair of forceps into the mouth of a rattlesnake. He played a 
 soft and gentle air, one of those subdued melodies that suggest 
 the echo of a monotonous measure beaten upon a stretched 
 skin during the warm nights, and the words were something 
 like this : " I know that these bones are mine, that they are 
 mine, and that they will be raised again upon that morning." 
 
 What a touching phrase and how singularly significant, when 
 one considers that it was invented and sung by slaves, by poor 
 slaves, who, as a matter of fact, owned only the skeleton, which 
 it was impossible to tear from their body to sell ! What 
 wretchedness and what hope ! 
 
 " They used to crack their heels and their knees together in 
 the evenings when they sang those words around our house," 
 went on Miss Scott. " If you like the songs, we will find you 
 some more of them." 
 
 " There is one song that I have never heard," I replied, 
 " and that I am sure you know, Colonel ; one which, I am sure, 
 
DOWN SOUTH 383 
 
 the negroes must have sung, since it was the hymn of their 
 deliverance — I mean John Brown's march." 
 
 It was not unintentionally that I asked my host, seeing that 
 he was so complaisant, to sing this admirable war song, which 
 has always appeared to me to be so impressive in its vigorous 
 simplicity : — 
 
 John Brown's body lies mouldering in the tomb, 
 But his soul is marching on ! 
 
 Glory, glory, hallelujah ! 
 
 I meant this Marseillaise of the Northern army to serve 
 simply as pretext for the telling of battle stories, such as old 
 heroes love to recite. I had mistaken the amazing simplicity 
 of this hero. He appeared a little surprised at my request, 
 but turning again to the piano he sang the Warrior's Hymn. 
 It is a clear-cut, bright, almost gay melody, expressing superb, 
 almost jovial self-confidence and the courage that comes from 
 serving a just cause. I gazed at the singer while he uttered the'^ 
 words associated for him with many a bloody memory. But 
 he sang the air just as it was written, with a countenance which 
 showed that he liked to sing it. My mind was, neverthe- 
 less, somewhat confused at his offer immediately afterward to 
 sing the Southern march, " Dixie." A genuine dance air is 
 this one, bright, agile, and frivolous. The Colonel evidently 
 took great pleasure in recalling both marches, so much was the 
 civil war a thing of another age to him ; one might say merely a 
 picturesque memory of the past. 
 
 Leaving the piano and swinging his great form in a rocking- 
 chair, he said : — 
 
 "You ought to have heard those two songs sung by thou- 
 sands of soldiers on march ! They were brave men, on both 
 sides, and perfect soldiers at the end. I saw the armies made, 
 built up, day by day, hour by hour, like a new town. I re- 
 member, toward the end, that a French officer who had wit- 
 
384 OUTRE-MER 
 
 nessed one of our parades, asked : ' Now that you have this 
 fine army, where are you going to begin? In Canada, or in 
 Mexico ? ' " 
 
 " ' We shall begin by sending them all back to their work,' I 
 replied to him ; and that was the truth. At the end of the 
 war we had twelve hundred thousand men ; six months after- 
 ward, only fifty thousand," and he laughed aloud in the strength 
 of his national pride. He was prouder of this disbanding than 
 of twenty victories. 
 
 " But," he said seriously, returning to his old point of view 
 like a true American, " all the same, we have not done enough 
 for the negroes. We ought not to have given them what we 
 have given them, nor yet, on the other hand, have left them to 
 themselves so completely." 
 
 " Do you think that one can improve a race?" I broke in. 
 " While I was in Canada, of which you were just speaking, near 
 Montreal, I visited a village of converted Iroquois. Their 
 priest assured me that it was impossible to instruct them beyond 
 a certain point. There is, as it were, a hmit of culture pre- 
 scribed in advance in the blood of all of us." 
 
 " Well, one can attain that limit at least," said Miss Ruth, 
 quickly. "You may change your idea perhaps, when you have 
 seen the school that we have founded at PhiHppeville. I will 
 show it to you one of these afternoons if you remain here a few 
 days." 
 
 When I left the Colonel we had made an appointment for 
 this very visit. I was to take lunch with him, and we were to 
 go to the school in company with his daughter, an ingenious 
 invention perfected by him permitting her to be removed from 
 her couch to a carriage. He told me his plans for the after- 
 noon, as he conducted me, through his park, toward my car- 
 riage. We took a different road from that by which I had 
 arrived, and, as we passed before a little enclosure full of trees 
 and surrounded by low walls, he said : — 
 
DOWN SOUTH 385 
 
 "That is the cemetery where all the Chastins have been buried 
 for one hundred and fifty years. Would you like to see their 
 tombs ? Places like these are the remains of that old America 
 which travellers forget so often in their studies of the new." 
 
 We entered the cemetery. The luxuriant Southern vegeta- 
 tion transformed these thirty square yards into a great mass 
 of flowers. Wild jasmine, hawthorn, honeysuckle, narcissus, 
 grew there in glorious confusion. Glycins climbed up the 
 trees, and yellow roses, those miniature roses that are called 
 bankshires, grew in large tufts among the dark cypresses. The 
 gravestones were worn away by time in this garden of youth, of 
 springtime, and of perfume. 
 
 I parted the fresh branches and sweet flowers to decipher 
 some of the epitaphs. The latest of the stones, put there no 
 doubt by the care of Mr. Scott, was decorated with a carved 
 sabre. I read the inscription on it, and saw that it was the 
 tomb of the last of the Chastins, and that this last heir of the 
 name was also a colonel, but in the Confederate army. Near 
 by, upon another tomb, nearly hidden by vegetation, I could 
 distinguish the date 1738, and the words "New Orleans." I at 
 once understood that the successor of the former owners had 
 had the pious idea of placing in their last repose, side by side, 
 the founder of the demesne and his descendant. 
 
 It was a pathetic thought what humanity lay in this enclosure. 
 The race which here slept in its entirety had once been all 
 powerful, and no one now remained to pay it homage except 
 the generous enemy who had come into its inheritance, and 
 the changing seasons that showered their splendors on the sad 
 resting-place with that calm indifference of nature so hateful 
 to us when we are young, and that we love when age begins 
 to creep on. The consciousness of our littleness enables us to 
 meet the inevitable defeat with a tranquil soul. Although as 
 an active man, and one who has been through the war, the 
 Colonel, perhaps, did not feel the same sort of emotion as I 
 cc 
 
386 OUTRE-MER 
 
 myself, this little mortuary oasis, which the murmur of bees 
 filled with music on that sunny day, did not leave him indifferent. 
 He became as silent as myself, and it was only when we had 
 left the place that he recovered his spirit, and said : — 
 
 "You noticed that the cemetery is still cared for? One of 
 their old slaves has undertaken the duty. They call her Aunt 
 Sarah. You will see her at our school. She looks after the 
 children. Her fidelity is a tribute to the Chastins, and it 
 makes the place dearer to me. Naturally there is some pleas- 
 ure in the thought that one occupies a house in which have 
 lived none but noble people for four or five generations. It 
 makes one feel as though there were no unfortunates around. 
 As a matter of fact, there are none. When you have been to 
 the school, you shall visit a few of the cabins. You will see 
 the happy faces of these people. A little salt pork and some 
 fruit, and they are as comfortable as though they had all the 
 millions of all the cottagers of Newport. However, here is 
 your carriage." 
 
 My little carriage, in fact, awaited me almost at the door 
 of the cemetery. I recognized in this delicate, hospitable 
 attention the graceful foresight of the invalid. The Colonel 
 gave a few instructions to the coachman, and said to me. 
 "On Tuesday, at one o'clock," as he shook my hand. I had 
 to repress the temptation to reply to him, "Tuesday? What 
 a long time ! " so great was my desire to see him soon again. 
 The originality of his character,' the nobility of his daughter's 
 face, the picturesque aspect of 'their residence, had inspired 
 in me one of those sudden interests that professional novel- 
 ists are probably the only ones to feel. The imagination is 
 as if entranced with a passionate desire to know all about 
 some one, to breathe the same air, to live the same life, to 
 think the same thoughts. While I was travelling along the 
 sandy roads toward Philippeville I hardly noticed the beauty 
 of the scenery, so absorbed was I by my reflections upon these 
 
DOWN SOUTH 387 
 
 two persons, who were unknown to me a few hours before. I 
 admired the puritanical ardor which had distinguished their 
 ancestors, and which still burned in them like an inextin- 
 guishable flame. I found in their fervor of proselytism the 
 influence of the pilgrims of the Mayflojver. 
 
 I was surprised at the race prejudices which, notwithstand- 
 ing this missionary zeal, made them regard as pollution the 
 marriage of one of their race with the best of their black pro- 
 tegees. I thought of the wealth of this man's nature, a nature 
 which five or six trades, and sixty years of work, had not 
 exhausted; of the sadness of his daughter's life; of the pecul- 
 iarities of this country, even; of the astonishing apparition, 
 for example, of Mr. Scott busily engaged in wrenching out 
 the fangs of a chloroformed serpent. In fact, fifty motives 
 made me desirous of seeing again as soon as possible the man 
 whom I had met to-day. I little thought under what different 
 circumstances I should see him on Tuesday, very far from 
 the family lunch presided over by Miss Ruth, nor that I 
 should take part in his company in a stranger battue than even 
 a rattlesnake hunt would have been for a Parisian writer. 
 
 It was on a Friday that I paid my visit to the Colonel. Dur- 
 ing the following three days, there fell in Philippeville one of 
 those rains which in hot countries seem to fill the atmosphere 
 with muggy vapors, rather than to refresh it. Imprisoned in 
 the hotel, I had no other distraction than to watch the water 
 falling in inexhaustible cataracts and to talk with the hotel- 
 keeper. I had been mischievous enough to tell him of my 
 visit to the Colonel and of my encounter with one of those 
 formidable reptiles of which, I believe, he would have obsti- 
 nately denied the existence, even if he had seen one lift its 
 head in the middle of his tennis court. 
 
 "Oh, those niggers must have gone into Florida for it," 
 replied Mr. Williams, without hesitation. "They have a per- 
 fect mania for catching them alive, in order to sell them to 
 
388 OUTRE-MER 
 
 some zoological garden. " He said a " zoo, " by way of abbrevi- 
 ation. " Mr. Scott, who is a fine fellow, ought not to render 
 them such services. He only encourages them, without taking 
 into account that the serpents might awake during the opera- 
 tion. But the Colonel has always been too good to the col- 
 ored people. He has been ill requited several times for his 
 kindness. Did he tell you that at this moment a certain 
 Henry Seymour, one of his old servants, whom he had dis- 
 missed for robbery, is in Philippeville prison, after having 
 ravaged the entire country? He took refuge in the woods, 
 after a murder, and stayed there with his Winchester. 
 
 " He was such a good shot that he terrified all the other 
 negroes, and the cowards furnished him with food, brandy, 
 and cartridges. Finally he was taken. A "false friend mixed 
 some opium in his whiskey and delivered him up. He was 
 tried and condemned to death. Would you believe it, Mr. 
 Scott was indignant at the idea that the man had been cap- 
 tured by such means, and managed to obtain a postponement 
 of the execution. He even went to Atlanta to obtain a re- 
 prieve. He was not successful, and on Thursday this rascal 
 will be hanged." 
 
 " But the Colonel must have had other reasons, apart from 
 this treachery? " 
 
 "Oh, of course; he insisted that Seymour had been put on 
 the chain gang while too young. - You have seen those men, 
 in white and brown suits, who work on our roads, with chains 
 at their feet. Those are our convicts. And this youth has 
 gone through that experience. 'I remember him well. It is 
 true he was only seventeen yeats of age, but he had already 
 committed two robberies, witltout counting that for which 
 Mr. Scott discharged him, although he would not have him 
 arrested." ^ 
 
 "Only seventeen years!" I replied. "It's very young, all 
 the same. At that age one is very impressionable, and such 
 
DOWN SOUTH 389 
 
 company is not calculated to improve a character that has 
 gone wrong." 
 
 "Well," answered Mr. Williams, "there are many who 
 remain in the chain gang for a year, or two years, and even 
 then begin their life afresh. When a man has paid his debt, 
 we Americans regard it as really paid. This Seymour could 
 have paid his in work. If he preferred to carry on in a way 
 that he would have to pay for by hanging, why, all right! 
 By the way, would it not interest you to be present at the 
 execution? In Georgia we have not adopted electricity. We 
 just stick to hanging. You can compare it with France; for 
 there you have the guillotine, have you not? " 
 
 "I have never seen it work," I replied, "and I doubt 
 whether I have sufficient moral courage to stand by and see a 
 man hanged." 
 
 "In any case, I will get you a ticket from the sheriff," said 
 the hotel-keeper, "and you can use it or not, just as you 
 choose." 
 
 He kept his word, and two days later — that is, on Monday 
 — he announced to me that I should have the ticket. But on 
 the evening of the same day he approached me again, in the 
 hall of the hotel, wearing the anxious countenance of a good 
 citizen who has learned bad news, and of a hotel-keeper who 
 foresees some unpleasant occurrences for his guests, and said : 
 
 "What do you think? Have you heard the news? The 
 ticket that the sheriff has given us is no good. That damned 
 rascal, Seymour, is not going to be executed." 
 
 "Has Mr. Scott obtained his reprieve? " I asked. 
 
 "No; the man has escaped. They gave him too much 
 freedom in his cell. He received too many visits. Some one 
 passed him a knife, and this afternoon, when the jailer took 
 him his food, he took advantage of the moment when the man 
 stooped to put the tray on the floor and planted the knife 
 right between his shoulders. The jailer fell dead at once. 
 
390 OUTRE-MER 
 
 Seymour took his revolver and his keys, freed seven negroes 
 or mulattoes, prisoners like himself, but for slight offences, 
 and the eight scoundrels escaped by the back door of the 
 prison, which faces the country. They had the good luck to 
 get away without being seen, so that their flight was only 
 known two hours later. By this time they are in the woods, 
 and there can be no traces of them on the roads after the heavy 
 rains. Heaven knows when they Avill be retaken ! Now was 
 I not right in saying that the Colonel is too easy with those 
 people? If he had not demanded a postponement, Seymour 
 would have been hanged last week, the jailer would still be 
 living, and I should not be afraid of losing my guests. A 
 family is to come next week, but if they read in the papers 
 about this adventure, they will be afraid and go to St. Augus- 
 tine. They will get the idea that it is not safe in Georgia," 
 
 I was sufficiently accustomed to the newspapers so dreaded 
 by Mr. Williams, and to their extraordinary accounts of daily 
 happenings, to feel some astonishment at the change of plans 
 of which he spoke. Apart from the larger cities, America 
 still continues to be a country of daring exploits, executed 
 with an audacity that recoils before no danger. On the other 
 hand, I had not expected to find myself, I, a peaceable Gallo- 
 Roman literary man, taking part in such a tragic history as 
 this of the jail-breaking bandit. I passed the evening follow- 
 ing Mr, Williams's revelations in wondering how I could bring 
 the Colonel to speak to me of his old servant during our lunch- 
 eon, on the following day. I had divined from a few words 
 the hotel-keeper had let drop, that the philanthropic owner of 
 Scott's place was very sensitive on this particular point. As 
 things turned out, the Colonel spared me the trouble; for on 
 the Tuesday morning, about nine o'clock, his card was brought 
 up, with the message that he was downstairs and wished to 
 speak to me. I found him wearing his hunting-costume, as 
 on the first occasion that I had seen him, his legs thrust into 
 
DOWN SOUTH 391 
 
 stout leather gaiters, and with enormously thick-soled shoes. 
 He carried a rifle in his hand. 
 
 " I came to beg you to excuse me," he said, without any 
 preamble, " and to ask you to put off our luncheon to another 
 day. I daresay you are aware that several prisoners have 
 escaped from jail, and among them one who was condemned 
 to death — in fact, a man who was formerly one of my 
 servants." 
 
 "I have heard of it," I replied, "and also that you had for- 
 merly been very good to the wretched creature." 
 
 "'That is not true," he responded ; " but in any case it is of 
 no account. The important thing just at present is to re- 
 capture them, in order that they may not terrorize the country. 
 Immediately on their escape, we telegraphed to Atlanta for 
 bloodhounds, dogs specially trained for man hunting. I have 
 collected about ten of the citizens for the work, and I have 
 brought you a horse, so that if you choose to come with us — " 
 
 "Why not?" I replied, after a few minutes' hesitation. "At 
 least, so long as there is no — " 
 
 "You are afraid of some lynching scene?" interrupted the 
 Colonel, who had read the fear in my eyes. " Make yourself 
 easy on that point, for while I am present they would not dare. 
 Have you your gun? " and, upon receiving a negative response, 
 he added : " However, you will not need it. You don't 
 belong to the country, and you will naturally only be with 
 us as a spectator. Besides, only one of them is armed, this 
 very Seymour, and he has only a No. 48 Colt. If he had his 
 Winchester, I shouldn't take you along ; for he would never 
 allow himself to be taken without bringing down five or six 
 of us." 
 
 Twenty minutes later, and without any further preparation, 
 I was following the Colonel along one of the roads which 
 traverse the immense forests of pitch-pines planted around 
 Philippeville. My horse, a Kentucky animal, was trained to 
 
392 OUTRE-MER 
 
 go at that gallop the Americans call " single foot," a kind of 
 swift trot that covers the ground very rapidly, and which I have 
 never met anywhere else. As I learned afterward, our little 
 party was composed of simple shopkeepers. Except for their 
 gaiters, they were dressed just as though at their counters, but 
 they all wore a singularly energetic expression, and displayed a 
 not less singular skill in managing their steeds. 
 
 It was very evident that they had all at some time been 
 occupied in some business which had not been without its cares 
 and worries, before establishing themselves in this remote corner 
 of Georgia, as grocer or as saddler, as dealer in ready-made 
 clothing or as undertaker. With the exception of the Colonel 
 and myself, the whole caravan was chewing tobacco. I could 
 see the regular motion of the jaws, and the barrels of the rifles 
 — each of them carried one — gleaming close to the faces, 
 stirred with this automatic movement. Eight dogs, rather 
 small in height, and undistinguishable to a novice from the 
 ordinary hunting dog, went on ahead of us, around us, to right, 
 to left, sniffing the air, hesitating, running, taking up the scent, 
 and losing it again. 
 
 The storm had ceased on the preceding evening, and the 
 morning, after many days of torrent-like rain, was made lovely 
 by a moist, bright radiance. Although the forest roads passed 
 through a sandy country which had already swallowed up almost 
 all the rain, so much had fallen that the low-lying portions were 
 still full. The tiniest of the watercourses which descended 
 toward the neighboring river had overflowed, and we had almost 
 constantly to clear some brook transformed into a pond, in 
 which our horses waded up to the chest. 
 
 Almost continually, also, we had to leap over trunks which 
 strewed the road. In the great forests of Georgia and Florida, 
 the negroes are accustomed to draw the resin from the pitch- 
 pines by notching them. The notch they cut is so deep that 
 a wind storm of very slight force is quite sufficient to break 
 
DOWN SOUTH 393 
 
 the tree, and a veritable tempest had been raging all through 
 the region during the last two days. 
 
 ''The negroes call these fallen trees 'hurricanes,' " said the 
 Colonel, in explanation of this newly felled mass, an explana- 
 tion which, however, did not account for the old trunks, the 
 innumerable rotting stumps, between which grew a rich, thick 
 vegetation of tiny palms, showing themselves bravely or lying 
 crushed to the earth. Out of this carpet of large flat leaves 
 sprang great honeysuckles and flowers such as I had admired 
 the other afternoon, a luxuriant mixture of pink and white, 
 freshest pink and most delicate white. Colossal yellow jessa- 
 mines were interlaced in the trees. Violets as large as pansies 
 peeped out among the grass. The barking of the dogs, who 
 were now following the trail, began to fill the spring landscape 
 with a clamor that seemed to me exceedingly fantastic. 
 
 Not being charged with the civic duties whose trace I could 
 see printed upon the faces of the horsemen, who were now 
 walking their steeds, their bridles twisted round their wrists, 
 their eyes wide open, and their rifles in their hands, I had 
 time to dream, and I was oppressed with the thought that the 
 vehement bark of those ferocious animals was being heard 
 with terror by seven or eight unfortunates crouched motion- 
 less in the woods, or, perhaps, crushing, in their furious course, 
 flowers similar to those which surrounded me; casting the 
 branches to one side with frenzied arms; breathless with fear 
 and panting with fatigue. At this moment the pack, which 
 had again been at fault, took off along a cross road with such 
 fury that they were soon lost to our view. The Colonel halted 
 us. He listened for a few moments with the close attention 
 of an old warrior accustomed to interpret distant sounds. 
 "The dogs have stopped," he said at last. "They have got 
 one of them. We had better spread ourselves out fan-like in 
 order to surround them and the man." 
 
 Acting upon his instructions, the little troop disappeared in 
 
394 OUTRE-MER 
 
 a few seconds among the trees. I saw the horsemen, one after 
 another, dive deeper into the gloom, the bridles hanging free 
 now, and the rifles ready for use. The shrewd, intelligent 
 horses appeared to go in the right direction by sheer instinct. 
 The horsemen had merely to press with one of the large, 
 wooden stirrups, decorated with leather, in which the foot was 
 fixed in the Mexican manner, and the knowing animal turned, 
 passing with sure and firm tread, through the pools of water and 
 crossing the obstacles formed by large, fallen trees, which lay 
 on every hand, without even brushing them with the hoof. The 
 Colonel and I remained alone. We began to advance in the 
 direction whence came the barking, but we had not ridden 
 in this way more than two hundred yards before we had to 
 slacken our pace. The river, one of these little watercourses, 
 almost without name, of which hundreds flow in that region, 
 and which are about as large as the Adige or the Po, had over- 
 flowed its banks. Its muddy waters flooded the portion of the 
 forest where we were now marching. The Colonel went on in 
 front of me. " I know the route a little," he said, " and there's 
 less chance that my horse will break its leg in some hole." 
 
 I could see him about a neck in advance of me, his body 
 so supple, notwithstanding his age, upon his stout steed. Now 
 and again he would turn and stoop as though to gather up 
 into one ear the full significance of the disturbance coming 
 from the place toward which we were riding. I could see his 
 profile at such times, a resolute, serious profile, but wearing 
 an expression of sadness that I was beginning to read both by 
 the light of the hotel-keeper's indiscretions, and by that given 
 me by his own character. At that very moment, engaged in 
 doing his duty as a good citizen in hunting down a brigand, 
 he could see again, without doubt, that same brigand just as 
 he was when in his service, a mere boy, almost a child. The 
 contrast was too great between the day that he had discharged 
 Seymour from his house, after a first escapade, and the pres- 
 
DOWN SOUTH 395 
 
 ent time, when he was conducting a troop charged with the 
 duty of tracking his old servant, now an outrageous malefactor, 
 through these inundated woods. With the idea of responsi- 
 bility proper to the old Puritan, it was impossible that the 
 Colonel should not contrast these two episodes, impossible 
 that he should not say to himself, " I might, perhaps, have 
 averted this destiny if I had been less severe." 
 
 I could read the cares of a troubled conscience upon that 
 strong countenance, side by side with the natural tension of 
 the soldier lying in ambush. All at once the complex expres- 
 sion of the martial visage became more intense. The Colonel 
 again stopped his horse, his hands again gripped his rifle, 
 which he brought to his shoulder with terrible deliberation. 
 I stooped almost to the neck of my animal, and through the 
 foliage of the pitch-pines I could see the shore of the river, 
 recognizable in this enormous flood only by the abrupt cessa- 
 tion of vegetation. I could see the dogs swimming upon the 
 sheet of reddish water. I could see their three wide-open 
 jaws collected threateningly round the head of a man. With 
 one arm the unfortunate creature was swimming, with the 
 other he held a pistol out of the water. Slowly, almost im- 
 perceptibly, he advanced, fighting against the current and 
 trying to reach a submerged bridge, of which the iron cable 
 was still visible five or six yards away. It was the only chance 
 that he had of crossing that terrible river. You could measure 
 the force of its current by three logs that went drifting by. 
 It was a miracle that the swimmer had not been struck by one 
 of them; a miracle that he had gained even that little dis- 
 tance. He must have been fighting in this way a long time, 
 and yet he did not lose courage ! When the pack surrounded 
 him too closely, terribly united and howling, but without 
 biting him, he v,rould strike at the muzzles of the dogs with 
 the butt end of his revolver. The furious blow would drive 
 back the living barrier of implacable jaws and would thus 
 
396 OUTRE-MER 
 
 leave him sufificient room to enable him to make a little more 
 headway. It was easy to see that he was keeping his weapon 
 intact for a more important occasion, if he was compelled to 
 abandon his one hope of safety. 
 
 There was in this desperate combat against such opposing 
 forces, against the elements, against animals, against men, 
 something so courageous and so hopeless that it oppressed the 
 heart. We were so close to the man that I could see with 
 extreme clearness the expression of his face. It was a mu- 
 latto's face, rather yellow than brown, a nearer neighbor of 
 white blood than the negro's. His hair was not kinky, it 
 was even hardly curly. The nose, instead of being flat, was 
 aquiline. What family had bequeathed this aristocratic face 
 to this robber, this murderer? From whom had this Henry 
 Seymour descended ? For it was Seymour. If any doubt had 
 remained in my mind after the description the hotel-keeper 
 had given me, the Colonel's agitation would have dissipated 
 it. His rifle continued to remain at his shoulder, but his 
 finger did not press the trigger. Even had it touched it, it is 
 not probable that the ball would have struck the mark, so great 
 was the trembling of the old man's arm, now that he was aim- 
 ing at his old servant. Finally the rifle barrel was raised 
 without having been fired, and I heard Mr. Scott say aloud, 
 as if he had been alone : — 
 
 *' No, I cannot shoot him so ! " 
 
 He spurred his horse. The water was so deep now that 
 the Colonel was in it to above the knee. He could go no 
 further without swimming, but he was upon the edge of the 
 forest and there were no trees before him. He cried out, and 
 the swimmer turned. I saw the revolver that the fugitive con- 
 tinued to hold out of the water aimed at the Colonel, and then 
 begin to rise just as. the Colonel's rifle had done. Seymour 
 had recognized Mr. Scott, and he did not fire. This hesitation 
 to commit murder was so completely unexpected in a profes- 
 
DOWN SOUTH 397 
 
 sional murderer, and under such circumstances, that even at 
 that moment and in the fever caused by such an adventure I 
 could not help feeling astonishment. The man must have felt 
 for his master a very strange sentiment of veneration to refuse 
 to fire, he a man who had already spilled so much blood. Or 
 could it be that he had seen the Colonel's gesture of a few 
 minutes ago, and, being certain that he would not fire, 
 thought it was useless to waste one of his five shots? Or, 
 again, could it be that this excellent marksman recognized 
 the impossibility of aiming accurately while swimming as he 
 was? I shall never know the secret motive that prompted 
 this scene, which passed with such tragic rapidity. 
 
 Standing up in his stirrups, thus making a still more promi- 
 nent target of his huge frame, the Colonel cried, with a voice 
 that dominated the furious barkings of the dogs, the tumult of 
 the water, and the rustling of the forest: — 
 
 "Come, Henry, my boy, you see it's no use! You'll have 
 to give up. There are seven other rifles after you, and they'll 
 be here in five minutes." 
 
 The man shook his head without replying. Then, as though 
 the presence of his enemies had given him new strength, he 
 fired at one of the dogs with the muzzle close to the animal. 
 It howled with pain, and the other dogs hung back. Then, 
 judging that his weapon could not serve him any longer, he 
 dropped it into the water in order to dive and swim with both 
 arms. 
 
 " He's going to escape," said the Colonel, whose clear eyes 
 became fixed. 
 
 He again shouldered his rifle, and I felt that this time he 
 would not hesitate. This heroic effort of citizenship was, how- 
 ever, spared him. When Seymour's head came up in the river, 
 he was quite close to the bridge, sufficiently close, in fact, to 
 seize the cable. In another moment we saw him dive and 
 reappear on the other side of it. Perhaps if he had once got 
 
398 OUTRE-MER 
 
 upon the bridge and had gone on diving while walking, he 
 might have escaped. But the instinct to stretch his limbs 
 after such an effort made him stand erect the instant he felt 
 his feet posed upon the planks. His chest appeared above the 
 water, and that very moment two shots went off at our right, 
 fired by two of the hunters. One of the balls struck the 
 mulatto in the shoulder, and we saw his arm drop limp and 
 inert. The other crashed against the iron cord of the cable, 
 glanced off, and struck the fugitive in the head. He raised his 
 unwounded hand to his forehead and then reeled. The few 
 movements that he made to grasp anew the iron cable were 
 a mere convulsive, instinctive effort. He felt himself fainting, 
 and disappeared under the water. But the Colonel had already 
 forced his horse into the stream and had begun swimming. 
 He gained the side of the wounded man, whom he raised with 
 his powerful arm and brought to shore. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later the entire troop, attracted by the 
 shots, had assembled with us around the still fainting man. 
 The dogs slipped between the legs of the horses, trying to smell 
 and lick the bloody cloths with which Mr. Scott was wiping the 
 two wounds, which were but slight, received by the unfortunate 
 wretch. We learned later that, in the hope of putting ofT his 
 execution, he had pretended to be ill, and had refused to eat for 
 several days. That was the real cause of his defeat. Had he 
 been more robust, he would not have been so much retarded. 
 He would have crossed the bridge, as his comrades had done, 
 two hours before our arrival, and once in the other part of the 
 forest he would have found, as they did, a line of railroad, and 
 like them, without doubt, would have clambered on to a train in 
 motion, like professional tramps. 
 
 Before long Henry Seymour began to recover his senses. At 
 the first effort he made to rise, one of the men drew his revolver, 
 while two others seized the wounded man by the legs and tied 
 them firmly. He, however, did not make any fresh attempt 
 
DOWN SOUTH 399 
 
 at useless resistance. The ball which had glanced off the cable 
 had struck him in the arch of the eyebrow, and had cruelly 
 wounded all the left side of the forehead and the eyelid so that 
 only the right eye was capable of being opened. But the furious 
 glance he gave with this single eye was so ferocious as his gaze 
 wandered around our circle that one of the huntsmen replied to 
 his silent defiance by a word involuntarily spoken aloud : — 
 
 " It's too late, man," he said simply. 
 
 Seymour did not appear to have heard him. It was the 
 Colonel he was looking at now, with quite another expression. 
 The brown eyes had taken on again their look of soft, humid 
 sweetness. I expected, from the nature of his look, to hear some 
 strangely touching expression, but I had misread the animal sim- 
 plicity of such a nature. All that the wounded man felt in the 
 way of sentiment for Mr. Scott resulted solely in this demand, 
 which he addressed to him directly, as though he would not 
 deign to speak to any one else : — 
 
 " Give me something to drink. Colonel ; I am so thirsty. 
 Won't you give me something to drink? " 
 
 There was something so coaxing, so almost infantine in the 
 voice with which he spoke to his old master, that it recalled 
 the petting of which he had once been the object. Mr. Scott 
 drew a flask from his pocket, uncorked it, and put the mouth 
 to the lips of the prisoner, holding up his head as he did so. 
 Seymour swallowed several mouthfuls greedily. His eye began 
 to glisten more caressingly, and, with that versatility of feeling 
 which equals in those singular beings their suppleness of move- 
 ment, he smiled with pleasure as if he had quite forgotten his 
 rage of only a few minutes ago, his crime of the preceding 
 evening, his wild flight of this morning, his wounds and the 
 certainty of his dark future. 
 
 " Ah ! It's the same whiskey that we used to drink when 
 hunting together," he said, smacking his lips. " He beats 
 everybody, does my Colonel." 
 
400 OUTRE-MER 
 
 "And now," responded the latter, " you're going to be quiet 
 and let me dress your wounds." 
 
 "Will you give me some more whiskey afterward? " asked 
 Seymour. 
 
 " Yes, you shall have some." 
 
 " And one of your cigars, Colonel?" 
 
 " And one of my cigars." 
 
 " All right," said the mulatto, holding out, without any resist- 
 ance, first his head and then his arm. Mr. Scott had brought 
 with him a complete little field case of surgeon's instruments. 
 He displayed all the skill of an old surgeon in cleansing and 
 binding up the two wounds, while the soldier in him was dis- 
 played in a desire to clear up a certain point that had remained 
 obscure to him, a desire that made him ask : — 
 
 " How is it that you did not cross the river yester- 
 day?" 
 
 " Because we went to the Georgetown bridge, Colonel," 
 replied the other, "and the waters had carried it away. There 
 was only one of two things to be done — either to go down 
 the river to the Berkeley Farms bridge, twenty miles lower 
 down, or to come up to this one. As we knew the roads 
 better, we chose this route, but we were wrong. How is it, 
 though. Colonel, that you thought we should come in this 
 direction?" 
 
 " I knew the Georgetown bridge had been carried away," said 
 Mr. Scott, " and I calculated that you would reason exactly as 
 you have done. You said to yourself, ' They don't believe that 
 we would be audacious enough to come so close to the town.' 
 But it's not daring you're short of, Henry, or courage. Now 
 that the dressing is finished, is there anything more I can do 
 for you?" 
 
 " Send me a bottle of your whiskey to the prison," replied 
 Seymour. " And get permission from the sheriff for me to 
 finish it before I have to swing." 
 
DOWN SOUTH 401 
 
 Events such as those I had just witnessed are not very ex- 
 traordinary in PhiHppeville, in a city where they do not recol- 
 lect having passed a year without one or two lynchings. 
 Ordinary life, therefore, resumed its course at once, and on 
 the very evening of that dramatic day, when I went to buy 
 some Richmond tobacco, I recognized in the grocer who sold 
 it to me one of the horsemen with whom I had scoured the 
 forest in search of Henry Seymour. He was chewing his quid 
 with the usual impassible phlegmatic air, and we made no 
 more allusion to our adventure than two Parisians meeting 
 again at their club in the afternoon would speak of the bows 
 they had exchanged at the Bois in the morning. 
 
 In fact, the incident appeared to have made a profound 
 impression only upon Mr. Williams ; for he did not hesitate 
 to display a pleasure that appeared to me almost indecent, 
 although he justified it by a quaint, business-like admission. 
 
 " Those people from New York, of whom I spoke to you, 
 will be here the day after to-morrow. I telegraphed to them 
 the moment Seymour was recaptured. They must have re- 
 ceived the news of his arrest as soon as they heard of his 
 flight, and they replied to me in this telegram, announcing 
 their arrival. Ah, I was rather afraid. By the way, it appears 
 that Seymour is not wounded so badly as to prevent his execu- 
 tion to-morrow (Thursday), as it was previously decided." 
 
X 
 
 DOWN SOUTH 
 
 II. /// Florida 
 
 Between Jacksonville and Lake Worth, along that low penin- 
 sula — often lower than the sea itself — with all the lagoons, 
 lakes, and rivers lying between us and the Everglades, and 
 further away the Antilles, I saw landscapes filled with an almost 
 tropical vegetation of a never-to-be-forgotten luxuriance. An 
 entire civiHzation is delineated in this country, whose first pos- 
 sessors, the Seminole Indians, had not been conquered half a 
 century ago. The massacre of Dr. Henry Perrine on one of 
 the islands or keys — those breakwaters of the peninsula — 
 occurred on August 7, 1840, and the first traveller, a New 
 Yorker, who explored the Okeechobee, one of the great lakes 
 of the interior, reached there in 1880. Even now an expedi- 
 tion off the railway lines which lead to Tampa, on the Gulf of 
 Mexico, and to Palm Beach, on the Atlantic coast, would entail 
 immense difficulties. This does not prevent a large number of 
 young North Americans, fond of hunting, yachting, fishing, and, 
 above all, of free life, from visiting each spring and winter these 
 almost inaccessible parts of the peninsula with the floral name. 
 The reader who may wish to follow the tourist's diary in which 
 I here transcribe the various trips, will find in it the description 
 of a perfectly easy and modest excursion. Had I possessed the 
 talent to evoke in these pages the horizons on which I feasted 
 my eyes during the three weeks of spring which I passed in 
 this astonishing country, I should have given the impression 
 
 402 
 
DOWN SOUTH 403 
 
 which I still retain of that Eastern America — ihe impression 
 of a mosaic, of a sudden change from the land of the factory 
 and of industry to the most untouched and the most virginal 
 realm of nature ! What must that Western shore be, that 
 Southern California which stretches from San Francisco to Los 
 Angeles and further south ? And how am I to console myself 
 for not having had, in these ten months of travel, the time to go 
 there ? The Americans are indeed right when thay talk of the 
 large scale upon which their country is established. It is but 
 too large ! 
 
 Jacksonville, Easter Day, 1894. 
 
 A town of quite small houses, with dusty streets, and all 
 along their wooden sidewalks trees of magic and exuberant 
 verdure, a lavish leafage which the dust has been unable to 
 sully. Persian lilacs, like those whose perfume I breathed in 
 the East, stand in the very street, gigantic, in full bloom, and 
 perfuming the heated air ; then there are overladen orange 
 trees, Japanese medlars, also yellow with fruit, bananas, palm 
 trees, all of which foreshadow a different world from that of 
 Georgia. A subtle aroma seems to pass through the sun which 
 shines in the intensely blue sky, like that which overhung the 
 Dead Sea last year, when, on leaving the grim convent of Mar 
 Saba, I perceived that still water and the soft line of the moun- 
 tains of Moab. But history and legend were mingled yonder 
 with the feeling of nature. Here it is nature alone with which 
 I come in contact, nature with its murderous fauna, its violent 
 flora, its atmospheric phenomena, rather its cataclysms, charm 
 and danger, at once perceptible in the very air one breathes, in 
 every small detail which we meet at the corner of the street, in 
 the sudden alternations of temperature, in fact, in the entire 
 life of this small town, so peaceful on this Easter morning. 
 
 Negroes and still more negroes. It seems as if the town 
 belong to them entirely, so densely do they throng on the side- 
 
404 OUTRE-MER 
 
 walks, the men in Prince Albert coats, with flowers in their 
 buttonholes and wearing trousers of light shades, the women 
 clothed in outrageously bright-colored dresses, among which 
 those of apple green, poppy red, and light pink predominate. 
 Their bodices are cut in " Figaro " fashion, their hats are 
 decorated with ribbons and enormous flowers, and their hair is 
 plaited in plaits which are very thin and very tight, the object 
 being to diminish or destroy the natural crinkling. They smile, 
 showing their white teeth between their thick lips. The white 
 teeth of the men are displayed in a similar smile, and they all 
 salute and approach one another with that ceremonious famil- 
 iarity, that sort of natural affectation which is peculiar to this 
 strange race. A group dressed in white pass along an avenue. 
 They are converts who have just been baptized in the river ! 
 All these people are glad that they are alive on this warm April 
 Sunday. I follow some, who press forward toward a crowded 
 church, and through a door I see the usual mixture of conflict- 
 ing colors in the dresses of the women as they listen to the 
 sermon of a famous preacher. The voice of the black clergy- 
 man, standing at the end on a platform, comes to me over this 
 multicolored sea. He is in a fever of excitement, his eyes 
 showing their whites and rolling convulsively. He has just 
 depicted hell with the eloquence of an untaught visionary, and 
 now he is announcing salvation and offering Christ as a quack 
 offers a remedy: "Do you take Christ?" The costumes, 
 the religion, the smiles, the attention, suggest to me by strong 
 contrast what these people were in their savage state, and I 
 am impressed with the singular game of fate, the amazing irony 
 of events which makes us all workers together for results that 
 we never purposed. In contrast with this American town, filled 
 with those happy negroes, those "ladies" and those "gentle- 
 men " of color, as the whites call them with polite irony, who 
 benefit by the railroads built by the whites, by the tramways 
 invented by those whites, by the telephone organized by those 
 
DOWN SOUTH 405 
 
 whites, and by the justice and the laws elaborated by those 
 whites, a vision rises up before me of far-away torrid Africa, 
 fifty or a hundred years back, with its leaf-huts under a burn- 
 ing sun, its kings practising human sacrifice, its bestial, idola- 
 trous, and perilous existence. Then comes the negro dealer, 
 and the next step is taken in the transportation of the grand- 
 fathers and the ancestors of these folk in the hold of a ship ! 
 Those ebony wood dealers have proved to be the benefactors 
 of the families whose founders they thus transported to this 
 Southern country before the war ruined their traffic. They 
 thought they were making slaves, and they were making citi- 
 zens of free America. P'rom time to time history shows such 
 double-faced ironies, as though to prove to us that we are 
 puppets in the hands of an invisible Author, who constructs the 
 tragedy of the universe according to His own ideas. Our good 
 intentions end in miserable results, just as was the case with 
 those worthies of 1789, who believed that they were decreeing 
 fraternity, but who were really preparing the " Terror." 
 
 St, Augustine, March 30. 
 
 The hotel life of America does not resemble any other. 
 You should go to St. Augustine if you would understand to 
 what extent these hard workers enjoy it, how much they ex- 
 pect of it, and how much it meets their innermost personal 
 characteristics. At this moment, although the end of the win- 
 ter season is at hand, the traveller can scarcely find room in 
 these palace-like buildings, one of which resembles the Alcazar, 
 another the Alhambra, a third the Escurial, a fourth a vast 
 house of the colonial period. And all is on a scale of extrav- 
 agant luxury which all the travellers visibly enjoy. Unlike cas- 
 ual visitors in the large hotel of a European watering-place, 
 these people feel as much at ease in these sumptuous halls, in 
 these magnificent palaces, amid these plushes and these paint- 
 
406 OUTRE-MER 
 
 Ings as they would at home — even more than at their own 
 homes. Many come from new towns in the centre and on the 
 border of the West. Their fortunes, recent as those towns, 
 have roused in them a desire for luxury and comfort which this 
 hotel satisfies grossly but easily. The grossness they do not 
 feel, and they delight in the ease. You should see them dur- 
 ing the day, rocking themselves on their chairs to the sound of 
 the orchestra, which, from one to three o'clock and from eight 
 to ten, makes the vast building vibrate. After dinner a ball is 
 organized, and they all dance. 
 
 You see men of seventy taking their places in the quadrille, 
 a grandmother polkaing beside her granddaughter, and young 
 people waltzing with the incomparable lightness of the young 
 people over here. The movement of these dances, the rapid 
 rhythm of the steps, which are really danced and not walked, 
 betray a physical ardor, an ardor for pleasure equal to the ardor 
 for work. All these people are in full dress ; young men are 
 introduced to young ladies by other youths ; laughing groups 
 gather everywhere — on the stairs, on the terraces — there is 
 in the air a good fellowship that would make you believe that 
 these people have known each other for years were it not for 
 the introductions continually taking place around you. The 
 "very glad to meet you" of these travellers, who cordially 
 shake hands, though this morning they did not know one 
 another, gives you the impression of a railway station, at which 
 the tourists of an entire train have been suddenly introduced 
 with no distinction of persons. 
 
 RocKLEDGE, April 2. 
 
 Almost immediately below St. Augustine the landscape 
 changes. The palmetto, which crept along the ground as 
 undergrowth, becomes higher. It first reaches the height of a 
 child, then of a man, then twice that of a man. Its colonnades 
 close up. Strange trees appear, the trunks of which spring 
 
DOWTSr SOUTH 407 
 
 from huge bulbs like that of a gigantic orchid. The orange 
 groves multiply, becoming vaster and broader, and the burning 
 atmosphere reveals the near approach of the tropics. But 
 American energy does not seem to be affected by the chmate. 
 This South has nothing of the South in it, except its vegetation 
 and its light. The stern, energetic race is just as intent as ever 
 on the great struggle. Cars loaded with fruits follow one 
 another on the railroad, as numerous as were the cars filled 
 with meat in the neighborhood of Chicago. Here, however, 
 they are ventilated, while the others were frozen. One sees 
 the plains brought under cultivation and covered with oranges, 
 not indigenous to the country. Not much more than twenty 
 years ago the people bethought themselves of planting them on 
 this soil, and already the orange trade of Florida threatens that 
 of Spain and Sicily. As in the West, small towns spring up 
 beside the railway, and land speculation extends all along the 
 line. I am told that at Lake Worth, where I shall be the day 
 after to-morrow, one of the magnates of this company suddenly 
 built in the wilderness a hotel which is a palace, and then 
 extended the line to reach his hotel, and that a winter resort is 
 in course of growth out there as by enchantment. Here again 
 you find that infatuation for Europe, which in this people 
 always mingles with the intense originality of their spirit of 
 enterprise. The idea of giving to their country a Riviera 
 haunts these great Florida speculators, and they have suc- 
 ceeded, but without being able to give their coast that dainty 
 flower of cosmopohtan worldliness, that which forms the charm 
 of our Provence, nor the beauty of the environs of Genoa, that 
 home of the finest museums and churches of divine Italy. But 
 if Florida has not the elegance of Cannes, nor the fetes of Nice, 
 nor the enchantment of art, what landscapes, what nature she 
 has ! 
 
 I walked this evening on the edge of the Indian River, 
 which I shall descend to-morrow. It is a long lagoon, six 
 
408 OUTRE-MER 
 
 miles broad in certain places and fifty feet at others. A slip of 
 land, stretching out indefinitely, separates it from the ocean, 
 and it thus extends along the entire peninsula, lapping the quiet 
 beaches of the winter resorts, such as the one at which I have 
 stopped to-day. It was five o'clock. The sun was sinking in 
 the west, enveloping the luxuriant vegetation in a sort of quiv- 
 ering luminous dust. 
 
 I was following between the palms the path which leads 
 along the shore. Those beautiful trees were growing up on all 
 sides, not in clumps as in the oases of the East, but like a forest, 
 the gigantic trunks ending in large full green sprays, which the 
 wind moved with a metallic murmur. Between those im- 
 mense trunks, which looked as though padded with a woven 
 bark, immense plants of a scent unknown to me rose out of 
 thickets covered with full-blown flowers, red and bluish, — flow- 
 ers twice as large as a lily, that looked as if made of cloth or of 
 silk velvet. Green oaks were mingled with those flowers, in- 
 terspersed with palms smothered in a network of pale green 
 creepers. At times, at some spot during the walk, a vista 
 would suddenly open up and reveal an orange grove, with the 
 golden fruit shining amid the lustrous leaves. The water of 
 the lagoon quivered under the movement of the tide which 
 through a neighboring gully made itself felt even here. It 
 rippled against the shore amid those standing trees and against 
 the fallen trunks, with a rhythmical monotony in which was 
 a palpitation like the breathing of the ocean, out of sight 
 behind yonder protecting shp of land. 
 
 They call it " Fairyland," a term calling up old recollections 
 of the lands of fogs — of Ireland, of Scotland — whence have 
 come so many of the colonists estabhshed here. Light yawls 
 glided about on the surface of the lagoon, broad of hull and 
 high of sail ; they were full of wind now — a warm wind, a 
 languid and ardent breath. All along the road was a suc- 
 cession of cottages, their covered verandas all facing the forest. 
 
DOWN SOUTH 409 
 
 Here a sick woman was swinging in a hammock. There a 
 youth with a faded complexion was reading and dreaming. 
 It was a scene of nature where one could die gently, not caring 
 to fight any more, longing to be absorbed, rocked, put to sleep. 
 Thinking of the sharp winter of Boston and New York, with 
 its snow and sleighs, I felt how large this land is, how it touches 
 at both extremes of climate. Realizing the vastness of this 
 continent, I asked myself again if, the conquest once estabhshed, 
 — it is so recent, — the American will allow himself to be im- 
 pressed with this diversity of climate, and if he will create for 
 himself a gentler civilization in these States, one more analogous 
 to this light and beauty. And, as though in ironical reply, I 
 perceived at a turn in the road a drawing-room car going at 
 full speed among the trees, and on the trunk of a palm tree, 
 lighted up by the rays of the setting sun, I saw a board upon 
 which I read that a certain mineral spring is the " Czar of Table 
 
 Waters ! " 
 
 On the Indian River, April 3. 
 
 I resume this diary on a boat of singular form which is 
 descending toward the military post of Jupiter, whence the 
 railroad takes me to Lake Worth. The lower part is a sort 
 of raft, manned by a unique crew composed entirely of blacks. 
 Piles start out of it, supporting a kind of deck, and above that 
 is a bridge. In the space between the deck and the bridge 
 there is a large dining-room. Small cabins open out from it 
 on both sides. The wheel, which slowly propels this construc- 
 tion, is behind, made both for these waters, which are deep, 
 and for others where the flat bottom of the raft rubs constantly 
 against the sandy bottom. I shall without doubt be one of the 
 last to descend the lagoon in this fashion ; for the railroad will 
 soon be opened between Titusville and Jupiter, so that we 
 shall be able to go from New York to Lake Worth without 
 changing cars. The captain, an American of the Southern 
 States, who has much Spanish and French blood, with the 
 
410 OUTRE-MER 
 
 clever little face of an inhabitant of Tarbes or of Pau, and with 
 inexpressibly aristocratic, yet simple, manners, shows me the 
 rails on the banks, and says to me : " Whenever you see a 
 railroad sleeper, you see the tomb of a steamboat man." The 
 railroad will go quicker. The traveller will avoid a long day 
 of eight to ten hours on the turns of the river. But the railroad 
 will never give him the same knowledge of the river. 
 
 First of all, immediately after embarking at Fort Pierce, 
 there is a broad expanse of water shut in on the left by the 
 narrow, wooded strip of land which separates it from the sea. 
 Scarcely a trace of cultivation is to be seen either to the left 
 or to the right, where the mainland stretches out, but in most 
 places is that luxuriant vegetation which has increased con- 
 tinually ever since we left Rockledge. The closer the banks, 
 the more we perceive the inextricable matting of the branches. 
 There is a certain tree, the trunk of which serves as a crown 
 to roots exposed above the water, which are twisted like an 
 enormous knot of serpents. One might say that they were the 
 motionless feelers of a monstrous animal, the body of which 
 would be formed by the trunk of the tree, which was pumping 
 the water greedily, insatiably, by its fifty parched mouths. 
 Beside it are palms, nearly all burned and reddened. Grasses 
 and briers interlace and form colossal thickets twice the height 
 of a man, where one would imagine the most formidable 
 beasts must lie in wait. At the place where the river becomes 
 narrow, the great voice of the ocean is heard. All at once 
 it appears above the line of trees, immense and blue, a sap- 
 phire blue, a lapis blue, with a trace on that intense azure of a 
 large almost purple vein, so violet is it. It is the Gulf 
 Stream, that mysterious flow of hot water through the cold 
 depths of the Atlantic. Enormous waves break in crests of 
 white foam upon the beach, all of which we see from the 
 bridge of the boat, so thin and low is the preserving slip of 
 land at this point. It is broken, and a gully appears, through 
 
DOWN SOUTH 411 
 
 which the high waves hurl themselves, stopped at once by an 
 island of yellow sand, upon which there are thousands of sea- 
 gulls and pelicans. The noise of the wheel of our approach- 
 ing boat frightens them away. A whirlwind of scattered wings 
 whitens the sky, \/here the black spots made by the long- 
 legged waders disappear less quickly. I hear the prolonged 
 cry of the seagulls, like that of a sick child, a wail so human 
 that it is painful. 
 
 Lake Worth, April 4. 
 
 I arrived at Lake Worth yesterday evening after nightfall. 
 Here, again, is one of those impressions of contrast, such as 
 America alone can give — a corner of the world. A corner of 
 a peninsula very far from towns large or small, without vil- 
 lages, without cultivation even, the whole extent a dangerous 
 and inaccessible solitude, until, all at once, through the whim 
 of a railroad owner, a hotel is built which is a palace. I see 
 the one, of which much had been said, filling a break on the 
 horizon with its enormous and luminous mass; beyond it a 
 large sheet of water, wherein trembles the reflection of a sky 
 brilliant with stars. The train has stopped at the edge of 
 Lake Worth, this vast salt pond which bathes Palm Beach yon- 
 der, the beach of palms where that fantastic hotel is situated. 
 A pleasure boat, a trim steamer, furnished with extraordinary 
 caprice, comes to meet us, and, after some manoeuvring, exe- 
 cuted somewhat at random on this dark water, to avoid here 
 a sand bank, there the piles of a future jetty, we see the 
 palace, as luxurious as though it stood in New York on the 
 sidewalks of Fifth Avenue, with its colonnaded entrance, 
 lighted by electricity and perforated with elevators. Its hall 
 is filled with men and women in ball dresses, who are dancing 
 wildly, and who show complexions burnt by the torrid sun of 
 the day, by the long hours spent on the sandy beach, and the 
 baths in that surf, which is so close by and which the Gulf 
 
412 OUTRE-MER 
 
 Stream warms like the Mediterranean in summer. From 
 time to time a couple of dancers come upon the terrace to 
 breathe in the soft, tropical night, and lazily they suck oranges, 
 which everywhere fill large baskets, perfuming the atmosphere 
 with a sweet aroma, while the breeze coming from over the 
 gardens wafts on to the terrace and into the hall the odors of 
 countless flowers. 
 
 What a country to be happy in, after the manner of a plant 
 that grows in the sun, unmindful and without desire to be 
 elsewhere ! In opening my window in the morning, I see, 
 between the lake and the house, a forest of cocoanut trees. 
 The fruit appears in the middle of the leaves, hung in bunches, 
 and each is as large as a child's head. In going toward the 
 ocean just now, I inhaled the perfume of a rose-laurel wood, 
 which a tramway, drawn by a single horse, crosses for a mile. 
 The carriage in passing brushes the beautiful trees with their 
 flesh-colored flowers, and, as the people have not even trimmed 
 the branches, we tear and destroy living flowers. But this 
 vegetation is so rank that the damage will be repaired to- 
 morrow. A warm odor and a sense of growth which inebri- 
 ates, exhales from these trees and from these grasses, from 
 these fields of pineapples, and forests of cocoanut trees. 
 Nature is at one and the same time too violent and too soft. 
 The sea at the end of this alley of rose-laurels is too blue. It 
 is no longer the wild ocean, it is the Mediterranean, the vo- 
 luptuous, the feminine — . But no. We look closer, and the 
 colossal swelling of the waves shows that it is the great and 
 powerful Atlantic. Over that azure there passes again the 
 great dark artery of the Gulf Stream, and we notice gigantic 
 forms of fishes as they sport in the blue and violet tints of the 
 billows. They are sharks. Their presence does not prevent 
 the young Americans from bathing on that free beach. I hear 
 one say to another who hesitates, "Go, and run your risk." 
 
 That saying contains an entire philosophy. 
 
DOWN SOUTH 413 
 
 April 7. 
 
 I am going to leave to-morrow, at sunrise, this adorable 
 oasis of gardens thrown in between this lagoon and the Atlan- 
 tic, being bound for New York; thence, by one of the "ocean 
 greyhounds " I shall go to Liverpool and then to France. 
 
XI 
 
 HOMEWARD 
 
 At Sea, Aboard the , April, 1894. 
 
 Another fifteen days in New York to classify my notes, to 
 verify some of them, to rei^isit places which I had visited 
 before, to speak with people whom I had already known, — 
 in short, to bid an adieu, not without regret, to this land, 
 which is really so captivating, since one breathes here at every 
 moment the breath of liberty, — all this has been done, and 
 here I am once more on the Atlantic, on board an English 
 steamer this time, and one which is quicker than the steamer 
 in which I "crossed the pond" — as the Yankees familiarly 
 say — last August. We left New York on Saturday morning; 
 to-day is Wednesday, and to-morrow, Thursday, we shall be 
 at Queenstown, in Ireland, and the day after to-morrow, Fri- 
 day, in Liverpool. When the Anglo-Saxons take upon them- 
 selves to vie with one another, their keenness of competition 
 knows no impossibilities. The other boat was 11,500 tons 
 register; this one registers 13,000 tons. The engines of the 
 other were of 20,000 horse power; the engines of this one 
 have a horse power of 30,000. The former was 580 feet long, 
 this one is 620 feet. 
 
 And just as, on the other, we were practically on Ameri- 
 can soil, so, on this, we are already in England. I recognize 
 it by twenty small signs; by the politeness and the exactness 
 of the attendants; by the somewhat heavy and dark look of 
 the drawing-rooms, which have no resplendent gorgeousness of 
 plush and nickel; by the economy of the table, not weighted 
 
 414 
 
HOMEWARD 415 
 
 with the innumerable dishes of American prodigality. But 
 when we are returning from so long a journey, we no longer 
 have the heart to take pleasure in observations of this descrip- 
 tion. The harvest of strange sensations is reaped. What 
 germs this journey to America may have sown in me; what 
 profound modifications contact with that civilization, so full 
 of life and so different from ours, may have made in my 
 thoughts, 1 know not. In turning over this diary, I find that, 
 above all things, I was going to seek in the United States 
 light as to the future, foreshadowed by those three great and 
 inevitable powers which are transforming the Old World, 
 namely, Democracy, Science, and the Race question. I have, 
 in fact, seen at work an immense democracy, which has caused 
 a scientific spirit to penetrate, in the form of industry, into the 
 smallest detail of life, and, in the form of education, into the 
 soul of its soul. I have seen living, side by side, blacks and 
 whites, Germans and Irish, Chinamen and Scandinavians, 
 Italians and Anglo-Saxons. What hypotheses has that sight 
 induced me to form, by analogy, as to the morrow of our own 
 civilization? 
 
 By analogy? But can any analogy be established? Has 
 what we understand among us by democracy anything in com- 
 mon with the form of civilization which the Americans have 
 established in their vast Republic? Yes, if we merely busy 
 ourselves with that vague programme which Lincoln — and 
 Napoleon, also, by the way — formulated in these terms : 
 " For the people and by the people." No, if, on the one side, 
 we look at the general spirit of the country, and, on the 
 other, at the customs which that spirit is working out in 
 France, that country among the great States of Europe which 
 believes itself to be the most advanced on the path of reform, 
 we shall find that the word "democracy " signifies that all the 
 powers of the State are delegated to the representatives of 
 the people, that is to say, to the majority. And, however 
 
416 OUTRE-MER 
 
 oppressive, however unjust, may be the measures taken by 
 those representatives, the moment that they meet the desire 
 of the greater number, we consider them not only legal, but 
 democratic. Thus conceived, democracy consists in the 
 constant sacrifice of the individual to the community. 
 
 But it is precisely in the contrary sense that American 
 democracy works. It is toward the more intense, the more 
 complete development of the individual that it has striven 
 until now, to the diminution, to the suppression, if it were 
 possible, of the influence of the State. On arriving at New 
 York, what strikes the stranger? The individual energy, the 
 spirit of enterprise, manifested everywhere, and visibly with- 
 out control. If he begins, as I did, the study of the country 
 from the top, from that part of society which entertains and 
 amuses itself, what characteristic strikes him first? It is the 
 application of the same energy to social elegancies, the result 
 of which gives the European visitor that continuous feeling of 
 "too much," of abuse, of exaggeration. It is, again, the 
 energy and the robust development of the individual which 
 form the characteristic of the American woman and the young 
 girl. It is also by energy and individuality that the man of 
 business is distinguished in this country, and the feebler 
 individualities of his employees, in their struggle against him, 
 have no other resource than to associate themselves for the 
 purpose; or, in other words, they can do nothing but defend 
 themselves, without asking anything of the State. 
 
 It is again by energy and individuality that the people of 
 the rough and savage West maintain themselves. The energy 
 of individuality and the spirit of enterprise are taught in the 
 schools of the most refined part of the country, — in other 
 words, in New England, — and these schools, moreover, are 
 all founded by individual generosity or municipal generosity, 
 which comes to the same thing. This feature is so essential 
 that it is found again in the pleasures of the Americans, all of 
 
HOMEWARD 417 
 
 which are in harmony with purposed and personal action, and 
 it is so profound that it resists the weakening influence of 
 climate. Constantly, in the South, you meet with a living 
 testimony of that Northern activity, and you find that it is 
 invincible even near the tropics. Such, at least, is the resum^ 
 of the brief inquiry which I made in my too short journey 
 through that immense Republic. Conceived and practised in 
 that way, democracy results, not as with us in a perpetual 
 levelling, but, on the contrary, in bringing about astonishing 
 inequalities between individuals, who forcibly devour one 
 another. The vital law of competition is at work there, as in 
 nature, to such a point that, at times, this democracy gives 
 the impression of an aristocracy, — I had almost said a feudal- 
 ism. The president of a great railroad, the proprietor of a 
 great newspaper, the master of a great factory at New York, 
 at Chicago, at St. Paul, has more real power than a prince. 
 Only, he is a prince who has made himself, and a similar 
 conquest is within the reach of all, provided they have the 
 strength. Equal social possibility, — such is the democratic 
 formula in America. Equal social reality, — such is the 
 formula in Europe, and particularly in France, since the 
 Revolution of 1789. I know nothing so contradictory. 
 
 There is a second difference which does not permit of an 
 analogy between the democratic ideal United States and ours. 
 The United States, even after allowing for the sociahstic demon- 
 strations of German immigrants, appears to the traveller to be 
 the least revolutionary of countries ; the one where constitu- 
 tional problems are the most definitely and stringently regu- 
 lated. It is a conservative democracy — that is to say, exactly 
 the contrary of ours. This is because the country has instinc- 
 tively put into practice the maxim which dominates the lives of 
 nations, as it dominates those of individuals. Things maintain 
 themselves by the same conditions which brought them into 
 existence. In giving full play to his individual energy, the 
 
 EE 
 
418 OUTRE-MER 
 
 American has conformed to the law of his origin. Who made 
 this country what it is? Exiles, rebels, adventurers. They 
 came to this new land to recreate for themselves an existence 
 of adventure, of daring, and of feats of will. A social compact, 
 fixed enough to prevent those wills being turned into tools of 
 disorder, broad and flexible enough to mutilate nothing of 
 them — there, in an abstract form, is the programme which the 
 doctors of social science would have given to this country, and 
 which it has by instinct realized. They did not reach democ- 
 racy through reasoning ; they found themselves established 
 under that system. Thence results that sort of ease in liberty 
 which is one of the striking features of America, and that 
 absence of defensive laws. 
 
 As a result of their origin, all the countries thus built up have 
 that same profound unity, and, as a consequence, the same 
 plasticity, whatever may be otherwise the nature of their gov- 
 ernment. Aristocratic England is a proof of this. It is a 
 lesson which we can take from the American democracy, but 
 to practise it, it would be necessary for us to work in a direc- 
 tion opposite to that in which the democratic party has been 
 working for a hundred years. We should have to seek what 
 remains of old France and attach ourselves again to it with 
 every fibre, and first of all we should have to restore the prov- 
 ince with its natural and hereditary unity, instead of the arti- 
 ficial and parcelled-out " department " ; municipal autonomy 
 instead of administrative centralization ; local and fecund univer- 
 sities instead of our official and dead university ; then we should 
 have to reconstitute the landed family by allowing complete lib- 
 erty in the disposal of property by will ; we should have to pro- 
 tect labor by the reconstitution of corporations ; we should have 
 to restore to the religious life its vigor and dignity by the sup- 
 pression of the budget of public worship and by giving religious 
 associations the right to own property freely ; in a word, on 
 this point, as on the other, the task before us would be the 
 
HOMEWARD 419 
 
 systematic undoing of the murderous work of the French Revo- 
 lution. This is the advice which, for the impartial observer, 
 stands out from all the remarks made upon the United States. 
 If their democracy is so vigorous and strong, it is because the 
 individual is free and powerful in a State which is reduced to 
 a minimum of action. If it unites all wills in an immense har- 
 mony, it is because it is truly national. Our own revolution 
 has so completely dried up the sources of French vitality, 
 because it has established a rtJgime in which the State centralizes 
 in itself all the vital forces of the country, and because it has 
 violently cut asunder all historical links between our past and 
 our present. This criticism is not new. The three most lucid 
 analysts of contemporary France, — Balzac, Le Play, and Taine, 
 — starting from very different premises, have nevertheless 
 arrived at the same conclusions. It is not without interest to 
 note that it is also the conclusion formed from a visit to the 
 country which is most often used as an illustration by the parti- 
 sans of that revolution. 
 
 Thus I have learned to translate in America the word " de- 
 mocracy " into realities quite contrary to those which it repre- 
 sents in Europe, and consequently to fear it less. For if 
 democracy is reconcilable with the most intense development 
 of individuality and personality, all the objections launched 
 against that form of civilization prove groundless at once. It 
 is for us to lead it in that direction by every means in our 
 power. I have learned there also to recognize the social bene- 
 factions of science. It is a common idea among us, and one 
 to which I have for my part adhered too often, that a principle 
 of nihilism is concealed within it, which renders it incompatible 
 with the higher needs of the heart of man. Even those who 
 do not go so far as to condemn it thus in the name of the 
 ideal, are inclined to believe that it is a bad educator of the 
 people. They consider that many of the moral maladies of 
 the present moment are caused by the intoxication which those 
 
420 OUTRE-MER 
 
 results, imperfectly understood, produce in ill-prepared brains. 
 The pages in which these objections have been formulated and 
 commented upon during the last twenty years, and in which 
 minds less competent than well intentioned have proclaimed 
 the bankruptcy of that science which has excited, for forty 
 years, such enthusiasm among its devotees, the Renans, the 
 Taines, the Flauberts, would, if collected into volumes, fill a 
 library. 
 
 The enthusiastic hope of these great literary men in the 
 future results of positive methods was not entirely justified. 
 For the reaction of to-day the justification is not greater. 
 A visit to the United States, where these methods have most 
 constantly and most powerfully penetrated into the pettiest 
 details of life, puts things back into their true place. We 
 recognize, first of all, how incorrect are the statements of our 
 moralists in regard to this general nihilism of science, since it 
 exists yonder side by side with the most fervent Christianity — 
 all New England is a proof of it — and neither does Christianity 
 stand in the way of scientific development, nor does that de- 
 velopment lessen the Christian faith. In an essay devoted to 
 a celebrated article of M. Taine on " The Church in France," 
 M. I'Abb^ de Broglie, one of the most enlightened apologists 
 of the time, very justly remarked that the word " science " long 
 signified with us two very distinct ideas, — on the one hand, a 
 group of positive notions acquired by experimental procedure ; 
 and on the other, the hypothesis of pure metaphysics con- 
 structed upon those notions. In truth, the group of positive 
 notions alone constitutes true science. The American mind, 
 with its distributive lucidity, appears to have seen this from 
 the beginning, since religious and scientific life have grown as 
 though in parallel lines without stumbling against one another. 
 Its schools and universities have thus shown, as an object lesson 
 might do, the exactness of the theory put forward by Herbert 
 Spencer at the opening of the First Principles in regard to the 
 
HOMEWARD 421 
 
 possible reconciliation between religion and science through 
 agnosticism. 
 
 The first having for its object the unknown, that is to say, by 
 definition, the domain of research which escapes the second, 
 all that is necessary in order that these two powers, equally 
 necessary to the human soul, should work side by side with- 
 out touching one another, is not to allow the two empires to 
 become intermingled. That agreement, which America has 
 succeeded in, we, in our turn, can and must succeed in, and it 
 is one of the duties to which her example invites the best of 
 us. This land of initiative also points out to us that this same 
 science, in spite of all the prejudices to which I made allusion 
 just now, is an excellent educator of the lower classes. But it 
 is on the condition that it shall be taken really as an educator 
 — that is to say, that it shall appeal to the will through the 
 intellect. The Americans have only obtained the vitality of 
 their industrial civiHzation by submitting to this rule. All 
 culture is duplicated in their schools with a corresponding 
 activity ; all knowledge tends to practice ; and the most sci- 
 entific of teachings, understood in this way, produced neither 
 degraded people nor rebels. 
 
 On one point, my visit to the United States has not modified 
 my ideas ; I mean in regard to the opinion which I have con- 
 ceived of the irreconcilable antagonism of races. I had left 
 behind me a Europe all rent asunder, even in time of peace, 
 by that antagonism. I have not found that the New World 
 has escaped it to any greater degree. When we strive to guess 
 the future of America, it is always, as with that of Europe, from 
 the side of this problem of races that we end by looking at it. 
 If one day a conflict between the West and the East should 
 break out, — and so many signs seem, at times, to point to it, — 
 the true principle will be there, in this influx of elements of the 
 Germanic and Scandinavian race, so abundant that the civiliza- 
 tion of An?lo-Saxon origin is no longer able to assimilate them. 
 
422 OUTRE-MER 
 
 This is, however, but a hypothesis, and the majority of Ameri- 
 cans refuse even to discuss it, so great is their confidence in 
 the method adopted by their Repubhc for the settlement of 
 these differences of race. 
 
 That method is very simple, and in conformity with the deep 
 respect of individuahsm upon which all their democracy is 
 founded. It consists in multiplying indefinitely the centres of 
 local activity, and consequently in continuously breaking up, 
 by means of localized action, the forces which, massed in 
 groups, would be too powerful. 
 
 It is to be remarked, in fact, that the grave troubles from 
 which America has suffered during these past years arise from 
 the very centralized associations which have been built up con- 
 trary to the tradition of individualism. True, Europe, bound 
 as she is by historic necessities, cannot borrow this method 
 and break the unity of the great countries of which she is 
 composed. There is to be found, however, in this example, 
 an indication of general policy. It is a return to the theory 
 of little independent States — replaced, alas! by that of 
 nationalities — which, systematically applied on the morrow 
 of the First Empire, assured us so many years of such fruitful 
 peace. The solution of the problem of races will be found in 
 a recast geography, which, without hindering hereditary ten- 
 dencies, parcels out the fields of activity. When the crisis 
 of acute militarism, which the most brutal and the most 
 clumsy of annexations forces upon us, is solved, either pacifi- 
 cally or otherwise, that theory will impose itself upon those 
 who will construct the new map of the Old World, and it will 
 be a first step toward the United States of Europe, which was 
 the dream of King Henry IV., and which remains the ideal 
 of true civilization, reconcilable with all forms of government 
 and all the interior traditions. 
 
 Twenty-four hours have passed since I lingered over the 
 details of some of the salutary teachings which the New World 
 
HOMEWARD 423 
 
 can give the Old. I have said enough, in the course of my 
 traveller's diary, of the defects which have shocked me in that 
 New World, of its incoherence and its haste, of the crudity of 
 the streets of its big towns, of the excesses of its fashionable\ 
 life, and its lack of equilibrium, measure, and taste; of the \ 
 too artificial tension of its culture, which gives to its women, \ 
 as to its flowers, the artificiality of hothouse plants; of that I 
 abuse of energy which results in a sort of ferocity in the / 
 competition between business men, and which reduces the 
 beaten — the lower classes — to a too cruel extremity of mis- 
 fortune; of the corruption of its police, its magistrates, and 
 its politicians, that indefinable something which excessive 
 consciousness mixes with education; and finally, of the ab- 
 sence of relaxation and abandonment in its pleasures. But 
 what then? All the defects of this society are summed up in 
 this, — that it has dispensed with time. The sudden trans- 
 planting of the most energetic and the most unfortunate chil- 
 dren of Europe to this new country has produced too rapid a 
 movement. But why rake up these defects afresh ? The more 
 I proceed, the more I understand the justice of the phrase of 
 Goethe, "When we do not speak of things with a partiality 
 full of love, what we say is not worth being repeated," and, 
 at the moment when I am setting my foot on European soil, 
 it is truly with an emotion of gratitude that I say adieu to 
 America — of gratitude, because I have received precious, in- 
 comparable teachings; of gratitude, because I feel that France 
 is loved there; of gratitude, finally, becaues it exists, and its 
 niere existence represents for the future of civilization an 
 immense possibility. 
 
 In this last night, and within a few hours of Liverpool, all 
 the ideas gathered in those long months of exile come back 
 and stir me again most deeply. Toward five o'clock, a soft, 
 vague V/ipor having risen, all the outlines of the coast began 
 to melt and sink away. I saw but the water, dead and green. 
 
424 OUTRE-MER 
 
 green with a greenness as of emerald and milk. A gentle 
 shivering ripple ran over the water as the steamer advanced. 
 Low in the sky was a large, broad band of mauve, and in that 
 mauve was the birth of a rainbow, the base formed on a point 
 of light cast — toward where? The sun, which was setting 
 yonder, threw its rays on the level of the water and struck 
 straight upon a light-ship painted red, which seemed aflame. 
 A sailing vessel was approaching, which took such dark — 
 nay, quite black — shades, that it seemed a mourning boat, 
 as it glided onward, with a motion tenderly and peacefully 
 funereal. It was a dream landscape, such as we meet in this 
 fairy-like climate, a landscape in which one might expect to 
 see the feet of the Saviour, of the celestial Friend, walking 
 toward us, toward the humble men whose hearts the beauty of 
 such evenings at once pierces and overwhelms, I turned to 
 the other side, and I saw the sun about to die. It was red, 
 like flowing blood, hemmed in with black — the black of night, 
 the night which pressed upon it, and engulfed without being 
 lightened by it. 
 
 A bar extended across it. Then it diminished until it ceased 
 to be, in that darkness of the sky in which there brooded over 
 a red-brown sea nothing but a purple point which flickered 
 out. Then there remained nothing but the clouds, just as we 
 imagine sometimes, in these days of threatening wars and revo- 
 lutions, that other clouds, those of a new barbarism, are about 
 to veil the little point of light which is civilization. And here 
 I began to consider over again, in thought, the course which 
 the steamer had just travelled across the ocean. I said to my- 
 self that back yonder, at this same hour, that sun was at the 
 summit of the sky, half way in its course, lighting the towns, 
 the country, an entire universe. The harbor of New York 
 appeared to me in its enormous activity, then the avenues and 
 the crowds of passers-by. I saw again in a flash Boston, Phila- 
 delphia, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Paul. Minneapolis, so many 
 
HOMEWARD 425 
 
 cities in which I scarcely stopped, yet in which I sojourned 
 long enough for their names to conjure up vivid pictures ; and 
 the consciousness that that other world exists beside ours, that 
 humanity has yonder so colossal a field of experiment in which 
 to continue its work, fills me with a sort of mysterious exalta- 
 tion, as though an act of faith in human will had declared itself 
 in me, almost in spite of myself, and I opened my heart quite 
 fully to this great breath of courage and hope that has come 
 to me from "outre-mer." 
 
 Wortoaotr ^rrsB : 
 
 J, S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
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