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 New 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 



