E. A. SILSBEE'S REMARKS. 15 



the French do taste. The ornament is taken for the 

 temple. Very was the temple, no ornament, its living 

 walls. 



The trouble with us as a people is that, like a novice 

 trying his hand at an art, we think too much of the accom- 

 plishment. We strain after effect. The English have 

 got beyond this, come through, and are fairly lodged in 

 maturity. Good breeding has got into literature ; orna- 

 ment, emphasis is bad form. Repose is cultivated with 

 knowledge and strength. Science has disciplined the 

 world to the fact, and literature has had to drop some of 

 its airs and vail some of its graces. We want reality 

 having had enough of show. 



Picturesqueness vanished with gothic and the middle 

 age, but it remained for us to build a New York and Phil- 

 adelphia, and call streets 74th St. and 600th St. "We 

 shall soon be called 7,000 ourselves and 9906 or a 

 1,000,007th. At last the American people will live in 

 one hotel stretched from Boston to San Francisco with a 

 bar room underneath. They will be born without legs 

 and move in horse cars. 



Coining home one hears buzzed in one's ears forever 

 the rich man of the neighborhood. Once it was Girard 

 and Astor, now Vanderbilt and Stewart. In Germany it 

 was Goethe and Schiller when you went in and when you 

 came out, now Bismark or Moltke. In England, Glad- 

 stone, Dizzy, the Queen. In France some distinguished 

 man, statesman or literary. The Englishman lives to be 

 somebody socially, the German to know, the American to 

 get, the Frenchman to enjoy. Nothing will ever correct 

 this rude addiction for a hundred years or more till the 

 continent fills in, settles down. The time will come when 

 it will be a vulgar thing to be rich. It is now, and 

 America is vulgar at this hour in consequence, and mate- 



