Jonathan and His Continent Part 29

I know Americans of both s.e.xes who, rather than lead an idle life, have taken to the stage. These actors and actresses belong to good society, which admires them in public and welcomes them in private. Such things do honour to the national spirit, and raise the dramatic profession in the eyes of the public. Why should not all actresses be as respected and respectable as singers or pianists?

Not only is work respectable in America, but in certain States it is compulsory. In the State of Missouri, for instance, any idle improvident fellow who neglects his family or, through shiftless habits, is likely to become a burden to the State, may be sold at auction to the highest bidder for a term of six months. This is a law pa.s.sed twenty years ago.

It provides also, that after the vagrant has worked out the purchase-money, any other sum earned by him, at a fair compensation, is to be applied by his purchaser to the payment of his debts, or the maintenance of his family. If, when he is free again, he returns to his bad habits, his fellow-townsmen take the law into their own hands. They escort him to some public place and flog him; and if that does not cure him, his wife runs the risk of seeing him one fine day hanging from some neighbouring tree. The people will tell you, as the most simple thing in the world, that by acting thus they economise the cost of a police force. Rather primitive this reason, it must be admitted; but in new societies, idleness is a crime, and the bees ought to have a right to drive the drones out of the hive.

Jonathan is but John Bull expanded--John Bull with plenty of elbow-room, and nothing astonishes him, nothing stops him.

Distances, he takes no account of: for him they do not exist. At the annual dinner of the Clover Club, at Philadelphia, seated opposite me was the editor of one of the large Chicago newspapers. He had come from Chicago to Philadelphia to be present at the banquet. After all, it is but a twenty-four hours' journey. That's all. I could not help making a remark on the subject to my neighbour at table.

"There's nothing at all astonishing about it," said he. "You see that bald gentleman with a long white beard over there? Well, he has come from San Francisco."

A piece of canvas-back duck, at that moment in my throat, nearly choked me.

"Excuse me," I said to my neighbour, "I have only been in America three months.... I shall get used to it--I shall get used to it."

And, indeed, it was very necessary to get used to it.

I was looking one day at the list of engagements which my manager had just sent me for the following week. To my stupefaction I read:

"Monday, New York.

"Tuesday, Youngstown (Ohio).

"Wednesday, Indianapolis."

I ran to the office of this imperturbable Yankee, and asked him:

"Is it possible that I can reach these towns, so far apart, in time to give my lectures?"

"Nothing easier," he replied, seizing the railway guide. "Your New York lecture comes off at three in the afternoon. At five, you have a train which gets to Youngstown by noon next day. There you lecture at eight.

Pay your bill and send your luggage to the station before going to the Academy of Music, where you have to speak. As soon as your lecture is over, jump into a cab, and you will catch the ten o'clock train, which will set you down at Indianapolis in time for your next day's engagement."

"What! go to the train in evening dress?" I exclaimed.

"And why not? You undress in the sleeping-car, I suppose?"

"What a life!" thought I. "These Yankees beat everything."

Oh, that map of the United States! If you would have any idea of a good lecturing tour in America, just imagine yourself appearing in public one day in London, the next in Paris, the day after in Berlin, then in Vienna, St. Petersburgh, and Constantinople to finish up the week. Then take Teheran, and the chief cities in Asia, and you have a fair idea of the journeys.

Here is a little scene of American life. It was told me, not only without boast, but as the most natural thing in the world, by Mr. L. S.

Metcalf, the editor of the _Forum_, one of the most important Reviews of New York.

Mr. Metcalf wished to have an article on the subject of the Mormons for his Review: not one of those papers written by a man who had pa.s.sed through Utah, but a serious study. For several weeks he had been in correspondence with one of the elders of the Mormon Church.

"All this letter-writing does not advance matters much," thought Mr.

Metcalf to himself one day; "one or two hours' conversation would settle the thing."

Two hours later he was in the train for Salt Lake City. He probably reckoned this way: "It is only five days' journey in the cars, and what is that when one sets against it a good talk in the interest of the Review?"

Mr. Metcalf set out, arrived, saw, had his chat, took the cars again, and came home.

"But," I timidly advanced, "what became of the Review during all this time?"

"Oh, it suffered nothing from my absence," said its editor; "I installed myself at the table in the library-car, where I was able to carry on my work at my ease. When we stopped at the stations, I posted my letters, and sent and received telegrams with as little difficulty as in New York."

"But could you really work easily in the train?"

"Better, much better, than at my own desk, my dear sir; there was no one to come and disturb me."

I was one day relating this conversation to an American journalist.

"You are simply wonderful, you Americans," I said to him; "you would go to the Sandwich Islands to fetch news of the king at Honolulu."

"Just so," he replied--"I have done it."

This "I have done it" was the finishing touch.

A New Yorker sets out for San Francisco, as Parisians set out for Versailles or Chartres. He takes the Liverpool steamer, just as we take the little boat for Auteuil, without any more fuss, without any more preparation. Do not ask him whether he will return by the same line.

Perhaps he will take it into his head to come home by China and Australia. His own country is larger than Europe itself; and France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, even Russia,--all these names sound to his ear no more than Ohio, Pennsylvania, or any other American State.

One of my fellow-pa.s.sengers, on my homeward trip in the _Germanic_, was a New Yorker, who, on the morning of the day the boat was to sail, left home without the least intention of crossing the Atlantic. Having made up his mind at noon, he telegraphed to his wife, "Don't wait dinner, am off to Europe," bought a bag and a few necessaries for the voyage, and calmly embarked at 3.30 for Europe.

American wives are used to this sort of telegrams, and think nothing of it.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

_The "XIXth Century Club."--Intellectual Activity.--Literary Evenings.--Light Everywhere._

To show the point to which intellectual activity goes in America, I cannot do better than speak of the "XIXth Century Club."

Two or three years ago, Mr. Courtlandt Palmer,[14] one of the princ.i.p.al inhabitants of New York--a gentleman as rich in intellectual attainments as in dollars--conceived the happy idea of inviting his friends to meet twice a month in his drawing-room, for the purpose of discussing the important questions of the day. His invitation was accepted with alacrity; and thus the club, which consists of lady members as well as gentlemen, was formed.

[14] It is with deep sorrow that I learn, while writing these lines, of the death of Mr. Courtlandt Palmer, to whom I owe many charming hours spent in New York.

Nothing is more interesting than these meetings; nothing, at all events, left a deeper or more pleasurable impression upon me than these intellectual treats. Papers upon some question--political, scientific, literary, or artistic--are read, and followed by debates.

The reunions were so much enjoyed that the number of the members soon increased rapidly, and it became necessary to hire a public room for their accommodation. So great is the present popularity of the club, and so great the demand for admission to membership, that every few months a larger room is needed to hold all these people eager to enlighten themselves on the questions of the day which interest the thinking world.