Jonathan and His Continent Part 3

"There is a woman who is not afraid of tripping and losing her diamonds," said I to myself; "but perhaps she got them the same way that she might have lost them. Certainly she cannot be a lady." However, it appears she was, and a well-known figure in New York Society. So I was told by the manager of the establishment, who was at the time showing me over his magnificent rooms.

If good style consists in not doing what the vulgar do, good style in America ought to consist for one thing in not wearing diamonds--unless democracy should demand this sign of equality.

Diamonds are worn by the woman of fashion, the tradesman's wife, shop-girls, work-girls, and servants; and if you see a shabbily-dressed woman who has not a pair in her ears, you may take it for granted that she has put them in p.a.w.n.

Naturally, in America, as elsewhere, all that sparkles is not diamond.

When you see diamonds in the ears of shop-girls and factory-girls, they are sham gems bought with well-earned money, or real ones bought with badly-earned money.

I have seen pretty women completely disfigure themselves by hanging enormous diamonds in their ears. These ear-drops had a very high commercial value; but artistic value, none. There is a defect, which seems to exist everywhere in America--a disposition to imagine that the value of things is in proportion to their size.

Love of woman, innate in the American, is not enough in itself to explain the luxury that man lavishes on her in the United States.

America is not the only country where man is devoted to woman and ready to satisfy all her caprices. The Frenchman is as keenly alive to her influences as the American, if not more.

The luxury of the American woman must be explained in another way.

Money is easily earned in the United States, and is freely spent.

Business savours more of gambling than of commerce in the proper sense of the word.

Jonathan, then, is in a position much like that of a man whom I saw give a hundred franc note to a beggar one day in the streets of Monte Carlo.

"If I win at _trente et quarante_," said he to some one who asked him how he could do such a foolish thing, "what are a hundred francs to me?

I can afford to be generous to a poor fellow-creature out of it; if I lose, it is so much that the _croupier_ will not get." When Jonathan covers his wife with diamonds, he says to himself: "If I win, I can indulge my wife without inconveniencing myself; if I lose, it is so much saved from the fray."

This is not all.

If the American thirsts after money, it is not for the love of money as a rule, but for the love of that which money can buy. In other words, avarice is a vice almost unknown in America. Jonathan does not ama.s.s gold for the pleasure of adding pile to pile and counting it. He pursues wealth to improve his position in life and to surround those dependent upon him with advantages and luxuries. He spends his money as gaily as he pockets it, especially when it is a question of gratifying his wife or daughters, who are the objects of his most a.s.siduous attention. He is the first to admit that their love for diamonds is as absurd as it is costly, but he is good-humoured and says, "Since they like them, why should they not have them?"

In Europe, there is a false notion that Jonathan thinks only of money, that he pa.s.ses his life in the worship of the almighty dollar. It is an error. I believe that at heart he cares but little for money. If a millionaire inspires respect, it is as much for the activity and talent he has displayed in the winning of his fortune as for the dollars themselves. An American, who had nothing but his dollars to boast of, might easily see all English doors open to him, but his millions alone would not give him the _entree_ into the best society of Boston and New York. There he would be requested to produce some other recommendation.

An American girl who was rich, but plain and stupid, would always find some English duke, French marquis, or Italian count, ready to marry her, but she would have great difficulty in finding an American gentleman who would look upon her fortune or her _dot_ as a sufficient indemnity.

At a public dinner, the millionaire does not find a place of honour reserved for him, as he would in England. The seats of honour are reserved for men of talent. Even in politics, money does not lead to honours.

No, the Americans do not worship the Golden Calf, as Europeans are often pleased to imagine.

As to the ladies, that is different--but we shall speak of them in another chapter.

CHAPTER VII.

_Notes on the great American Cities.--New York.--Boston.--A Visit to Oliver Wendell Holmes.--Washington.--Mount Vernon.--Philadelphia.--Chicago.--Rivalry between these Cities.--Jokes they indulge in at each other's Expense._

The large cities do not const.i.tute the real America. To gain a correct idea of the country, one must go and see those hundreds, nay thousands, of flourishing little towns which spring up day by day on that immense continent.

I went to America too late, and left it too early, to be able to enjoy and admire its natural beauties. The trees were shorn of their magnificent foliage, the Indian summer was just over, and forest and prairie were alike bare and brown. No matter: I dread descriptions of scenery, and I could not have done justice to the subject. Men interest me more than rivers, rocks, and trees. I cannot describe Nature, and it is human nature that attracts me most.

Great cities surely have their interest, especially those of the United States, which, with the exception of New York, have each their own particular characteristics.

The city of New York is built upon an island about nine miles long, half a mile broad at the south, and about two and a half broad at the north.

This island has the form of a tongue.

The city looks like a slice of honeycomb on the map: twelve great arteries run from north to south, crossed at right angles by over a hundred streets forming an immense number of "blocks," as they are called.

Except in the city proper, where they have particular names, the streets are all numbered: 1st Street, 2nd Street, 125th Street, and so on. The great arteries take the name of Avenues, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, up to 11th, besides Broadway which crosses the city diagonally.

It will readily be seen that nothing is easier than to find a house situated in such and such a street, at such and such a number. So many streets, so many blocks, and you are at your destination without trouble. The thing which puzzled my wits was to remember the addresses of my acquaintances: No. 103, East 15th Street; 144, West 26th Street; 134, West 33rd Street; 177, East 48th Street; 154, West 72nd Street; 400, Fifth Avenue. You can readily imagine the perplexity of the unfortunate foreigner who finds himself, at the end of a few days, confronted with this difficulty and with a score of calls to pay.

As I looked at the New Yorkers walking along the streets with that preoccupied look of theirs, I said to myself: "Those good people must be trying to keep their address in mind, and are repeating it over to themselves all the time."

It is of no use looking in New York for monuments in the sense which we attach to the word in Europe. There are ma.s.sive buildings, and a few handsome churches, but nothing which arrests your gaze. The houses in the best parts of the town are built of brown stone, in the English style. In the populous quarters many are of red brick, with green shutters on the outside.

The streets are horribly ill paved. From my windows, which looked on Madison Square, the carriages appeared to rise and fall as if on a troubled sea. Drunkards have had to drop their habits: they could not reach home from the beer saloons.

Three fine squares alone break the monotony of all these parallelograms of streets: Washington Square, Union Square, and Madison Square.

On the north, Central Park, with its fine avenues, its hillocks, its valleys, its lakes, and its magnificent terrace over the Hudson, is a very lovely pleasure ground. It is the only place where one can see trees, turf, and flowers. New York does not possess a single garden, public or private, if one excepts the three squares I named just now.

That which strikes the visitor to New York is not the city itself, but the feverish activity that reigns there.

Overhead is a network of telegraph and telephone wires; on the ground a network of rails. It is estimated that there are more than 12,000 miles of telegraph wires suspended over the heads of the pa.s.sers by: about enough to go half round the world.

The whistles of the boats that ply between New York and Brooklyn on the East River, and between New York and Jersey City on the Hudson, keep up, day and night until one in the morning, a noise which is like the roar of wild beasts. It is the cry of Matter under the yoke of Man. It is like living in a menagerie.

In almost every street tramcars pa.s.s every few minutes. It is an incessant procession. In Broadway alone there are more than three hundred. The cars, as they are always called in America, are magical, like everything American. Built to carry twenty-four persons inside (there are no seats on the top), they are made to hold sixty and more.

In fact, no matter how full they are, there is always room for one more.

The conductor never refuses to let you get on board. You hang on to the rail beside the driver or conductor, if it is not possible to squeeze yourself inside and hold on to the leather straps provided for the purpose; you gasp for breath, it is all you can do to get at your pocket to extract the five cents which you owe the car company; but the conductor cries in his imperturbable nasal drawl: "Move forward, make room." If you do not like it, you have the alternative of walking. These cars are drawn by two horses. At night, when the theatres are emptying and the loads are heaviest, is just the time when the stoppages are most frequent--someone gets on or alights at every block; the strain on the horses must be tremendous.

Cabs are few. This is not wonderful, seeing that the lowest fare is a dollar or a dollar and half.

In Third Avenue and Sixth Avenue, you find the overhead railway called "the Elevated." It is supported on iron pillars, and the trains run along on a level with the upper windows of the houses. This company carries every day the fabulous number of 500,000 pa.s.sengers.

All the existing means of transit are acknowledged to be insufficient, and an underground railway is talked of. There will soon be travellers under ground, on the ground, and in the air. Poor Hercules, where are you with your _ne plus ultra_? You had reckoned without your Yankee.

The streets, ill-paved and dirty, are dangerous in winter. Coachmen do not check their horses for the foot pa.s.sengers, but neither do they try to run over them. They strike the middle course between the London coachman, who avoids them, and the Parisian one, who aims at them.

At the corner of each block there is a letter-box. If you have any newspapers or extra large letters to post, you lay them on the box and trust to the honesty of the pa.s.sers-by. If rain comes on, so much the worse. If you want stamps, you go to the chemist and buy a lotion or potion, taking occasion at the same time to buy your stamps.

Post-offices are few and far between.

The populous quarters, such as the Chinese quarter, the Italian quarter, the Jewish quarter, with their tenement-houses--those barracks of the poor, which I visited one day in company with a sanitary engineer--remind one of Dante's descriptions: it is a descent, or rather an ascent, into h.e.l.l. I spare the reader the impressions which that day left upon me. Horrible! A populace composed of the offscourings of all nations--the dirtiest, roughest, one can imagine.

Hard by this frightful squalor, Fifth Avenue, with its palaces full of the riches of the earth. It is the eternal history of large cities.