FROM LONDON TO NEW YORK. 245 



Wherever they have touched they have taken root 

 and throve as best they could. Then the American 

 is more cosmopolitan and less domestic. He is not 

 BO local in his feelings and attachments. He does 

 not bestow himself upon the earth or upon his home 

 as his ancestors did. He feathers his nest very little. 

 Why should he ? He may migrate to-morrow and 

 build another. He is like the passenger pigeon that 

 lays its eggs and rears its young upon a little platform 

 of bare twigs. Our poverty and nakedness is, in this 

 respect, I think, beyond dispute. There is nothing 

 nest-like about our homes, either in their interiors or 

 exteriors. Even wealth and taste and foreign aids 

 rarely attain that cozy, mellowing atmosphere that 

 pervades not only the lowly birthplaces but the halls 

 and manor-houses of older lands. And what do our 

 farms represent but so much real estate, so much 

 cash value ? 



Only where man loves the soil and nestles to it 

 closely and long, will it take on this beneficent and 

 human look which foreign travelers miss in our land- 

 scape ; and only where homes are built with fondness 

 ind emotion, and in obedience to the social, paternal, 

 Mid domestic instincts, will they hold the charm and 

 radiate and be warm with the feeling I have de- 

 scribed. 



And while I am upon the subject, I will add that 

 European cities differ from ours in this same particu- 

 f ar. Tney have a homelier character more the 

 lir of dwelling-places, the abodes of men drawn to- 



