A Little Journey in the World

be together, and who had fallen into an uncompelled habit of happening to be together. There might have been a club for the study of the Want of Diversity in American L

alue of congregate effort. It seems to superficial observers that all Americans are born busy. It is not so. They are born with a fear of not being busy; and if they are intelligent and in circumstances of leisure, they have such a sense of their responsibility that they hasten to allot all their time into portions, and leave no hour unprovided for. This is conscientiousness in women, and not restlessness. There is a day for music, a day for painting, a day for the display of tea-gowns, a da

usion of half-digested information does not raise the general level of intelligence, which can only be raised to any purpose by thorough self-culture, by assimilation, digestion, meditation. The busy bee is a favorite simile with us, and we are apt to ov

at democracy levels, and that the anxious pursuit of a common object, money, tends to uniformity, and that facility of communication spreads all over the land the same fashion in dress; and repeats everywhere the same style of house, and that the public schools give all the children in the United States the same superficial smartness. And there is a more serious no

ience operates so variously on moral problems in one community and another. It is as impossible for one section to impose upon another its rules of taste and propriety in conduct--and taste is often as strong to determine conduct as principle--as it is to make its literature acceptable to the other. If in the land of the su

tartling. We cannot flatter ourselves, therefore, that under equal laws and opportunities we have rubbed out the saliencies of human nature. At a distance the mass of the Russian people seem as monotonous as their steppes and their commune villages, but the Russian novelists find characters in t

n the one hand, and on the other of a broken country of clustering trees and cottages, rising towards a range of hills which showed purple and warm against the pale straw-color of the winter sunsets. The charm of the situation was that the house was one of many comfortable dwellings, each is

is thoughts are exposed to the air, and it is the bright fallacies and impulsive, rash ventures in conversation that are often most fruitful to talker and listeners. The talk is always tame if no one dares anything. I have seen the most promising paradox come to grief by a simple "Do you think so?" Nobody, I sometimes think, should be held accountable for anything said in private conversation, the vivacity of which is in a tentative play about the subject. And this is a sufficient reason why one should repudiate any private conversation reported in the newspapers. It is bad enough to be held fast forever to what one writes and prints, but to shackle a man with all his flashi

e was too much diversity. "Almost every church has

xpected to obtain a note on the character of Dissenters. "I thought a

re is a real-estate extension, a necessary part of the pl

on a totally erroneous notion. Of course there must be a

ounds, but perhaps by purely worldly motives, the elements that meet in the church are apt to be

to it worshipers who would naturally come together, but the chur

"that churches grow up like scho

want that creates them. If it's the same that builds a music hall,

ch ought to be formed only of people sociall

em is that it is the most difficult thing in the world to reconcile re

who carried along her traditional religious ob

r of a cotton-spinner, and he had enough to do in attending meetings of directors and looking out for his investments to keep him from the operation of the State law regarding vagrants, and give greater social weight to his opinions than if he had been compe

onal attitude of wanting to know, "that you Americans are disturb

Lyon. What we liked in him, I think, was his simple acceptance of a position that required neither explanation nor apology--a social condition that banished a sense of his own personality, and left him perfectly free to be absolutely truthful. Though an eldest son and next in succession to an earldom, he was still young. Fresh from Oxford and South Africa and Australia a

e early Christians in their assemblies all knew each other, having met elsewhere in social intercourse, or, if they were not

joined the talk, in which she had been a most animated and stimulat

good deal of confusion. The meeting-house, you remember, had a committee for seating people according to their quality. They were very shrewd, but it had not occurred

r, "they got all sorts of people

l sorts; but in those, days they were

at in this country you have churches for

ording to the means of each sort, and the rich are always glad to have the poor come, and i

the whole thing. I don't believe there is elsewhere in the world s

in the church associations. I'm not sure but we shall have to go back to the old idea of considering the ch

United States is now the most promising field for t

cher asked, with a smil

the most democratic religion, having this one notion that all men, high or low, are equally sinners and equally in need of one thing on

make this world any better, but only to

kingdom-of-heaven idea on earth, the better off

. We've got into such a sophisticated state that it seem

u take care of the present, the future will

cumulation and compensation--take care of the pennies and the pou

Margaret, to give the coup de grace, for it is evident by Mr. Morgan's referenc

ile the company rose to greet her, with a half-hesitating, half-inqu