第21章

What do we care for the mutual impressions of potentates who amuse themselves with sitting on people? Those things are their own affair, and they ought to be shut up in a dark room to have it out together.Once one feels, over here, that the great questions of the future are social questions, that a mighty tide is sweeping the world to democracy, and that this country is the biggest stage on which the drama can be enacted, the fashionable European topics seem petty and parochial.They talk about things that we have settled ages ago, and the solemnity with which they propound to you their little domestic embarrassments makes a heavy draft on one's good nature.In England they were talking about the Hares and Rabbits Bill, about the extension of the County Franchise, about the Dissenters' Burials, about the Deceased Wife's Sister, about the abolition of the House of Lords, about heaven knows what ridiculous little measure for the propping-up of their ridiculous little country.And they call US provincial! It is hard to sit and look respectable while people discuss the utility of the House of Lords, and the beauty of a State Church, and it's only in a dowdy musty civilisation that you'll find them doing such things.The lightness and clearness of the social air, that's the great relief in these parts.The gentility of bishops, the propriety of parsons, even the impressiveness of a restored cathedral, give less of a charm to life than that.I used to be furious with the bishops and parsons, with the humbuggery of the whole affair, which every one was conscious of, but which people agreed not to expose, because they would be compromised all round.The convenience of life over here, the quick and simple arrangements, the absence of the spirit of routine, are a blessed change from the stupid stiffness with which I struggled for two long years.There were people with swords and cockades, who used to order me about; for the simplest operation of life I had to kootoo to some bloated official.When it was a question of my doing a little differently from others, the bloated official gasped as if I had given him a blow on the stomach; he needed to take a week to think of it.On the other hand, it's impossible to take an American by surprise; he is ashamed to confess that he has not the wit to do a thing that another man has had the wit to think of.Besides being as good as his neighbour, he must therefore be as clever--which is an affliction only to people who are afraid he may be cleverer.If this general efficiency and spontaneity of the people--the union of the sense of freedom with the love of knowledge--isn't the very essence of a high civilisation, I don't know what a high civilisation is.I felt this greater ease on my first railroad journey--felt the blessing of sitting in a train where I could move about, where I could stretch my legs, and come and go, where I had a seat and a window to myself, where there were chairs, and tables, and food, and drink.The villainous little boxes on the European trains, in which you are stuck down in a corner, with doubled-up knees, opposite to a row of people--often most offensive types, who stare at you for ten hours on end--these were part of my two years'

ordeal.The large free way of doing things here is everywhere a pleasure.In London, at my hotel, they used to come to me on Saturday to make me order my Sunday's dinner, and when I asked for a sheet of paper, they put it into the bill.The meagreness, the stinginess, the perpetual expectation of a sixpence, used to exasperate me.Of course, I saw a great many people who were pleasant; but as I am writing to you, and not to one of them, I may say that they were dreadfully apt to be dull.The imagination among the people I see here is more flexible; and then they have the advantage of a larger horizon.It's not bounded on the north by the British aristocracy, and on the south by the scrutin de liste.(Imix up the countries a little, but they are not worth the keeping apart.) The absence of little conventional measurements, of little cut-and-dried judgments, is an immense refreshment.We are more analytic, more discriminating, more familiar with realities.As for manners, there are bad manners everywhere, but an aristocracy is bad manners organised.(I don't mean that they may not be polite among themselves, but they are rude to every one else.) The sight of all these growing millions simply minding their business, is impressive to me,--more so than all the gilt buttons and padded chests of the Old World; and there is a certain powerful type of "practical"American (you'll find him chiefly in the West) who doesn't brag as Ido (I'm not practical), but who quietly feels that he has the Future in his vitals--a type that strikes me more than any I met in your favourite countries.Of course you'll come back to the cathedrals and Titians, but there's a thought that helps one to do without them--the thought that though there's an immense deal of plainness, there's little misery, little squalor, little degradation.There is no regular wife-beating class, and there are none of the stultified peasants of whom it takes so many to make a European noble.The people here are more conscious of things; they invent, they act, they answer for themselves; they are not (I speak of social matters)tied up by authority and precedent.We shall have all the Titians by and by, and we shall move over a few cathedrals.You had better stay here if you want to have the best.Of course, I am a roaring Yankee; but you'll call me that if I say the least, so I may as well take my ease, and say the most.Washington's a most entertaining place; and here at least, at the seat of government, one isn't overgoverned.In fact, there's no government at all to speak of; it seems too good to be true.The first day I was here I went to the Capitol, and it took me ever so long to figure to myself that I had as good a right there as any one else--that the whole magnificent pile (it IS magnificent, by the way) was in fact my own.In Europe one doesn't rise to such conceptions, and my spirit had been broken in Europe.The doors were gaping wide--I walked all about; there were no door-keepers, no officers, nor flunkeys--not even a policeman to be seen.It seemed strange not to see a uniform, if only as a patch of colour.But this isn't government by livery.

The absence of these things is odd at first; you seem to miss something, to fancy the machine has stopped.It hasn't, though; it only works without fire and smoke.At the end of three days this simple negative impression--the fact is, that there are no soldiers nor spies, nothing but plain black coats--begins to affect the imagination, becomes vivid, majestic, symbolic.It ends by being more impressive than the biggest review I saw in Germany.Of course, I'm a roaring Yankee; but one has to take a big brush to copy a big model.The future is here, of course; but it isn't only that--the present is here as well.You will complain that I don't give you any personal news; but I am more modest for myself than for my country.I spent a month in New York, and while I was there Isaw a good deal of a rather interesting girl who came over with me in the steamer, and whom for a day or two I thought I should like to marry.But I shouldn't.She has been spoiled by Europe!