224 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



ground has been more precious. They have had none 

 to waste, and have made the most of every inch of it. 

 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 so 

 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 cosy, mellowing atmosphere that per- 

 vades 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 travellers miss in our land- 

 scape ; and only where homes are built with fondness 

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

 and domestic instincts, will they hold the charm and 

 radiate and be warm with the feeling I have described. 



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

 European cities differ from ours in this same particular. 

 They have a homelier character — more the air of 



