power-houses? Do not these wonders
exist in all the cities of earth? They do, but not to quite the same
degree of wondrousness. Hat-shops, and fine hat-shops, exist in New
York, but not to quite the same degree of wondrousness as in Paris.
People sing in New York, but not with quite the same natural lyricism as
in Naples. The great civilizations all present the same features; but it
is just the differences in degree between the same feature in this
civilization and in that--it is just these differences which together
constitute and illustrate the idiosyncrasy of each. It seems to me that
the brains and the imagination of America shone superlatively in the
conception and ordering of its vast organizations of human beings, and
of machinery, and of the two combined. By them I was more profoundly
attracted, impressed, and inspired than by any other non-spiritual
phenomena whatever in the United States. For me they were the proudest
material achievements, and essentially the most poetical achievements,
of the United States. And that is why I am dwelling on them.

* * * * *

Further, there are business organizations in America of a species which
do not flourish at all in Europe. For example, the "mail-order house,"
whose secrets were very generously displayed to me in Chicago--a
peculiar establishment which sells merely everything (except
patent-medicines)--on condition that you order it by post. Go into that
house with money in your palm, and ask for a fan or a flail or a
fur-coat or a fountain-pen or a fiddle, and you will be requested to
return home and write a letter about the proposed purchase, and stamp
the letter and drop it into a mail-box, and then to wait till the
article arrives at your door. That house is one of the most spectacular
and pleasing proofs that the inhabitants of the United States are thinly
scattered over an enormous area, in tiny groups, often quite isolated
from stores. On the day of my visit sixty thousand letters had been
received, and every executable order contained in these was executed
before closing time, by the co-ordinated efforts of over four thousand
female employees and over three thousand males. The conception would
make Europe dizzy. Imagine a merchant in Moscow trying to inaugurate
such a scheme!

A little machine no bigger than a soup-plate will open hundreds of
envelops at once. They are all the same, those envelops; they have even
less individuali