174 WINTER SUNSHINE 



in a luggage van than be jerked and jolted to de 

 struction in the velvet and veneering of our palace 

 cars. Upholster the road first, and let us ride on 

 bare boards until a cushion can be afforded; not 

 till after the bridges are of granite and iron, and 

 the rails of steel, do we want this more than aristo 

 cratic splendor and luxury of palace and drawing- 

 room cars. To me there is no more marked sign of 

 the essential vulgarity of the national manners than 

 these princely cars and beggarly, clap-trap roads. 

 It is like a man wearing a ruffled and jeweled shirt- 

 front, but too poor to afford a shirt itself. 



I have said the English are a sweet and mellow 

 people. There is, indeed, a charm about these an 

 cestral races that goes to the heart. And herein 

 was one of the profoundest surprises of my visit, 

 namely, that, in coming from the Xew World to the 

 Old, from a people the most recently out of the 

 woods of any, to one of the ripest and venerablest 

 of the European nationalities, I should find a race 

 more simple, youthful, and less sophisticated than 

 the one I had left behind me. Yet this was my 

 impression. We have lost immensely in some 

 things, and what we have gained is not yet so obvi 

 ous or so definable. We have lost in reverence, in 

 homeliness, in heart and conscience, in virtue, 

 using the word in its proper sense. To some, the 

 difference which I note may appear a difference in 

 favor of the greater 'cuteness, wideawakeness, and 

 enterprise of the American, but is simply a differ 

 ence expressive of our greater forwardness. We are 



