LITMIR.BIZ

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9.

      On returning here, I found a most curious letter awaiting me. I must tell you that in Boston, last Monday, I made the following remarks in my lecture:

      “The American is, I believe, on the road to the possession of all that can contribute to the well-being and success of a nation, but he seems to me to have missed the path that leads to real happiness. To live in a whirl is not to live well. The little French shopkeeper who locks his shop-door from half-past one, so as not to be disturbed while he is having his dinner with his wife and family, has come nearer to solving the great problem of life, ‘How to be happy,’ than the American who sticks on his door: ‘Gone to dinner, shall be back in five minutes.’ You eat too fast, and I understand why your antidyspeptic pill-makers cover your walls, your forests even, with their advertisements.”

      And I named the firm of pill-makers.

      The letter is from them. They offer me $1000 if I will repeat the phrase at every lecture I give during my tour in the United States.

      You may imagine if I will be careful to abstain in the future.

…

      I lectured to-night before the members of the Thursday Club – a small, but very select audience, gathered in the drawing-room of one of the members. The lecture was followed by a conversazione. A very pleasant evening.

      I left the house at half-past eleven. The night was beautiful. I walked to the hotel, along Fifth Avenue to Madison Square, and along Broadway to Union Square.

      What a contrast to the great thoroughfares of London! Thousands of people here returning from the theaters and enjoying their walks, instead of being obliged to rush into vehicles to escape the sights presented at night by the West End streets of London. Here you can walk at night with your wife and daughter, without the least fear of their coming into contact with flaunting vice.

…

      Excuse a reflection on a subject of a very domestic character. My clothes have come from the laundress with the bill.

      Now let me give you a sound piece of advice.

      When you go to America, bring with you a dozen shirts. No more. When these are soiled, buy a new dozen, and so on. You will thus get a supply of linen for many years to come, and save your washing bills in America, where the price of a shirt is much the same as the cost of washing it.

… January 10.

      I was glad to see Bill Nye again. He turned up at the Everett House this morning. I like to gaze at his clean-shaven face, that is seldom broken by a smile, and to hear his long, melancholy drawl. His lank form, and his polished dome of thought, as he delights in calling his joke box, help to make him so droll on the platform. When his audience begins to scream with laughter, he stops, looks at them in astonishment; the corners of his mouth drop and an expression of sadness comes over his face. The effect is irresistible. They shriek for mercy. But they don’t get it. He is accompanied by his own manager, who starts with him for the north to-night. This manager has no sinecure. I don’t think Bill Nye has ever been found in a depot ready to catch a train. So the manager takes him to the station, puts him in the right car, gets him out of his sleeping berth, takes him to the hotel, sees that he is behind the platform a few minutes before the time announced for the beginning of the lecture, and generally looks after his comfort. Bill is due in Ohio to-morrow night, and leaves New York to-night by the Grand Central Depot.

      “Are you sure it’s by the Grand Central?” he said to me.

      “Why, of course, corner of Forty-second Street, a five or ten minutes’ ride from here.”

      You should have seen the expression on his face, as he drawled away:

      “How – shall – I – get – there, I – wonder?”

…

      This afternoon I paid a most interesting visit to several girls’ schools. The pupils were ordered by the head-mistress, in each case, to gather in the large room. There they arrived, two by two, to the sound of a march played on the piano by one of the under-mistresses. When they had all reached their respective places, two chords were struck on the instrument, and they all sat down with the precision of the best drilled Prussian regiment. Then some sang, others recited little poems, or epigrams – mostly at the expense of men. When, two years ago, I visited the Normal School for girls in the company of the President of the Education Board and Colonel Elliott F. Shepard, it was the anniversary of George Eliot’s birth. The pupils, one by one, recited a few quotations from her works, choosing all she had written against man.

      When the singing and the recitations were over, the mistress requested me to address a few words to the young ladies. An American is used from infancy to deliver a speech on the least provocation. I am not. However, I managed to congratulate these young American girls on their charming appearance, and to thank them for the pleasure they had afforded me. Then two chords were struck on the piano and all stood up; two more chords, and all marched off in double file to the sound of another march. Not a smile, not a giggle. All these young girls, from sixteen to twenty, looked at me with modesty, but complete self-assurance, certainly with far more assurance than I dared look at them.

      Then the mistress asked me to go to the gymnasium. There the girls arrived and, as solemnly as before, went through all kinds of muscular exercises. They are never allowed to sit down in the class rooms more than two hours at a time. They have to go down to the gymnasium every two hours.

      I was perfectly amazed to see such discipline. These young girls are the true daughters of a great Republic: self-possessed, self-confident, dignified, respectful, law-abiding.

      I also visited the junior departments of those schools. In one of them, eight hundred little girls from five to ten years of age were gathered together, and, as in the other departments, sang and recited to me. These young children are taught by the girls of the Normal School, under the supervision of mistresses. Here teaching is learned by teaching. A good method. Doctors are not allowed to practice before they have attended patients in hospitals. Why should people be allowed to teach before they have attended schools as apprentice teachers?

      I had to give a speech to these dear little ones. I wish I had been able to give them a kiss instead.

      In my little speech I had occasion to remark that I had arrived in America only a week before. After I left, it appears that a little girl, aged about six, went to her mistress and said to her:

      “He’s only been here a week! And how beautifully he speaks English already!”

…

      I have been “put up” at the Players’ Club by Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, and dined with him there to-night.

      This club is the snuggest house I know in New York. Only a few months old, it possesses treasures such as few clubs a hundred years old possess. It was a present from Mr. Edwin Booth, the greatest actor America has produced. He bought the house in Twentieth Street, facing Gramercy Park, furnished it handsomely and with the greatest taste, and filled it with all the artistic treasures that he has collected during his life: portraits of celebrated actors, most valuable old engravings, photographs with the originals’ autographs, china, curios of all sorts, stage properties, such as the sword used by Macready in Macbeth, and hundreds of such beautiful and interesting souvenirs. On the second floor is the library, mostly composed of works connected with the drama.

      This club is a perfect gem.

      When in New York, Mr. Booth occupies a suite of rooms on the second floor, which he has reserved for himself; but he has handed over the property to the trustees of the club, who, after his death, will become the sole proprietors of the house and of all its priceless contents. It was a princely gift, worthy of the prince of actors. The members are all connected with literature, art, and the drama, and number about one hundred.

      CHAPTER VIII

The Flourishing of Coats-of-Arms in America – Reflections Thereon – Forefathers Made to Order – The Phonograph at Home – The Wealth of New York – Departure for Buffalo New York, January 11.

      There are in America, as in many other countries of the world, people who have coats-of-arms,

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