People of Destiny: Americans as I saw them at Home and Abroad

of criticism, and search round for things that seem to them obje

hem, with arrogance in their eyes, and talk, as an English officer, not of that type, expressed it to me, "as though they had bad smells at the end of their noses." I am bound to say that during my visit to the United States I found much more to admire than to criticize, and perhaps because I was on the lookout for things to like rather than to dislike I had one of the best times of my life-in some ways the very best-and came

the style of their houses, those neat buildings of wood with overlapping shingles, and wide porches and verandas where people may sit out on summer days, with shelter from the sun; and I liked especially the old Colonial type of house, as I think it is called, with a tall white pillar on each side of its portico, and well-proportioned windows, so that the rooms have plenty of light, and as much air as the central-heating system permits-and that is not much. To English eyes accustomed to dingy brick houses in the suburbs of big cities, to the dreary squalor of some new little town which straggles around a filthy railway station, with refuse-heaps in undeveloped fields, and a half-finished "High Street," where a sweetstuff-shop, a stationer, and an estate agent establish themselves in the gloomy hope of business, these American villages look wonderfully clean, bright, and pleasant! I noticed that in each one of them there were five institutions in which the spirit of the community was revealed-the bank, the post-office, the school, the church, and the picture-palace. The bank is generally the handsomest building in the place, with a definite attempt to give it some dignity of architecture and richness of decoration. Insi

PHERE OF AN AMER

dences at the counters. I liked the social atmosphere of an American post-office. I seemed to see a visible friendliness here between the state and the people. Then there is the school, and I must say that I was overwhelmed with admiration for the American system of education and for the buildings in which it is given. England lags a long way behind here, with its old-fashioned hotch-potch of elementary schools, church schools, "academies for young gentlemen"-the breeding-grounds of snobs-grammar-schools, and privat

words of praise, built in what we call the Tudor style, in red brick, ivy covered, with long oriel windows, so that it lifts up the tone of the whole town because of its dignity and beauty. Here, too, was a fine lecture-hall, easily convertible into a theater, with suitable scenery for any school play. It was a committee of boys who organized the lectures, and one of them acted as my guide over the school-building and showed me, among other educational arrangements, a charming little flat, or apartment-house, completely furnished in every detail in bedroom, sitting-room, and kitchen, for the training of girls in domestic service, cookery, and the decoration of the home. Here, as in many other things, the American mind had reached out to an ideal and linked it up

e meaning of marvelous melodrama, wonder why lovers do such strange things in their adventures on the way to marriage; and they watch with curiosity and surprise the ghastly grimaces of "close-up" heroines in contortions of amorous despair, and the heaving breasts, the rolling eyes, and the sickly smiles of padded heroes, who are suffering, temporarily, from thwarted affection. The history of the world is ransacked for thrilling dramas, and an American audience watches all the riotous splendor and licentiousness of Babylon or ancient Rome, while Theda Bara, the Movie Queen, writhes in amorous ecstasy, or poisons innumerable lovers, or stings herself to death with serpents. Royalists and Roundheads, Pilgrim Fathers and New England witches, the French Revolution and the American Civil War, are phases of history which provide endless pictures of "soul-stirring interest"; but more popular are domestic dramas of modern life, in which the luxury of our present civilization, as it is imagined and exaggerated by the movie managers, reveal to simple folk the wickedness of wealthy villains, the dangers of innocent girlhood, and the appalling adventures of psychology into which human nature is led when "love" takes possession of the heart. It is impossible to say what effect all that has upon the mentality of America. The

s and Albert. The girl had put her dust-cloak over the back of her chair, but still wore a veil tied round her hat and under her chin-a little pointed chin dug firmly into her palm, and modeled with the same delicacy of line as the lips about which a little smile wavered, and as the nose which kept its distance, with perfect discretion, from that of the young man opposite, so that the waiter might have slipped a menu-card between them. She had a string of pearls round her neck which would certainly have been the first prize of any highwayman holding up her great-grandmamma's coach, and judging from other little signs of luxury as it is revealed in Fifth Avenue, I felt certain that the young lady did not live far from the heart of New York and had command of its treasure-houses.... Two other groups in the room, sitting at separate tables, belonged obviously to one party. They were young people, for the most part, with one elderly lady whose white hair and shrewd, smiling eyes made all things right with youthful adventure, and with one old fogy, bland of countenance and expansive in the waistcoat line, who seemed to regard it as a privilege to pay for the large appetites of the younger company. Anyhow he paid for at least eight portions of chicken okra, followed by eight plates of roast turkey and baked potatoes, and, not counting sundries, nine serves of deep-dish pie. The ninth, unequal, share went, in spite of warnings, protests, and ridicule from free-spoken companions, to a plump girl with a pigtail, obviously home from college for a spell, who said: "I guess I sha'n't die from overeating, though it's the way I'd choose if I had to quit. An appetite is like love. Its dangers are exaggerated, and seldom fatal." This speech, delivered in all solemnity, aroused a tumult of mirth from several young women of grown-up appearance-at least they had advanced beyond the pigtail stage-and under cover of this one of them deliberately "made up" her face till it bloomed like a rose in June. In another corner of the Pickwick Inn sat a lonely man whose appearance interested me a good deal. He was a man of middle age, with black hair turning white, and very dark, melancholy eyes in a pale, ascetic face. I have seen his type many times in the Café de l'Odéon on the "Latin" side of Paris, and I was surprised to find it in a roadside inn of the United States. A friend of mine, watching the direction of my gaze, said, "Yes, that is a remarkable man-one of the best-known architects in America, and, among other thing

ind pleasant among the children of America, of dropping a bob courtesy to any grown-up visitor. The children of America have the qualities of their nation, simplicity, common sense, and self-reliance. They are not so bashful as English boys and girls, and they are free from the little constraints of nursery etiquette which make so many English children afraid to open their mouths. They are also free entirely from that juvenile snobbishness which is still cultivated in English society, where boys and girls of well-to-do parents are taught to look down with contempt upon children of the poorer classes. I sat down at table many mornings with a small boy and girl who were representative, I have no doubt, of Young America in the making. The boy, Dick, had an insatiable curiosity about the way things work in the world, and about the make-up of the world itself. To satisfy that curiosity he searched the Children's Book of Knowledge, the encyclopedias in the library, and the brain of any likely person, such as the Irish chauffeur and gardener, for scraps of useful information. In games of "twenty questions," played across the luncheon-table, he chose mountains in Asia, or rivers in Africa, or parts of complicated engines, putting the company to shame by their ignorance of geography and mechanics. For sheer personal pleasure he worked out sums in arithmetic when he wakened early in the morning. His ambition is to be an engineer, and he is already designing monster airplanes, and electrical machines of fantastic purpose-like, I suppose, millions of other small boys in America. The girl, aged eight, seemed to me the miniature representative of all American girlhood, and for that reason is a source of apprehension to her mother, who has to camouflage her amusement at this mite's audacity, and looks forward with a thrill of anxiety and delight to the time when Joan will put her hair up and play hell with boys' hearts. Joan has big, wondering eyes, which she already uses for cajolery and blandishment. Joan has a sense of humor which is alarming in an elf of her size. Joan can tell the most almighty "whoppers," with an air of innocence which would deceive an angel. Joan has a passionate temper when thwarted of her will, a haughty arrogance of demeanor before which grown men quail, and a warm-hearted affection for people who please her which exacts forgiveness of all naughtiness. She dances for sheer joy of life, lives in imagination with fairies, screams with desire at the sight of glittering jewels and fine feathers, and weeps passionately at times because she is not old enough to go with her mother to dinner in New York. In another ten years, when she goes to college, there will be the deuce of a row in her rooms, and three years later New York will be invaded by a pair of hazel eyes which will complicate, still further, the adventure of life east and west of Fifth Avenue. Those two young people go forth to

nd panels, and the sinking of its brick floors, and the memories that are stored up in every crack and crevice of that homestead where simple folk wed and bred, worked and died, from one generation to another. The new owners are simple folk, too, though not of the peasant class, and with reverence and sound taste they decline to allow any architect to alter the old structure of the house, but keep it just as it stands. In their courtyard, on a Sunday afternoon, were several motor-cars, and in their parlor a party of friends from New York who had come out to this little old mill-house in the country, and expressed their ecstasy at its quaint simplicity. Some of them invited themselves

zation and stupidity-the people who overeat themselves, the children who are too richly fed by foolish mothers, business men whose nerves have broken down by worry and work for the sake of ambition, society women wrecked in the chase of pleasure, and little ones, rickety, blind, or diseased because of the sins of their parents. The little doctor does not deal in medicine and does not believe in it. He treats his patients according to his philosophy of natural science, by which he gives their human nature a chance of freeing itself from the poison that has tainted it and getting back to normal self-healing action. He has devised a machine for playing waves of electricity through his patients by means of which he breaks up the clogging tissue of death in their cell life and regenerates the health of the c

EETING OF THE

sembled in the morning at the local station to begin a new day's work or a new day's shopping in the big city at their journey's end. They had a keen and vital look, and nodded to one another in a neighborly way as they bought bulky papers from the bookstall and chewing-gum from the candy stall and had their shoes shined with one eye on the ticket office. I liked the greeting of the train conductor to all those people whose faces he knew as familiar friends, and to whom he passed the time o' day with a jesting word or two. I liked the social l