be surrounded by boasting and impatient vanity concerning
the achievements of the United States and the citizens thereof. I
literally never heard a word of national boasting, nor observed the
slightest impatience under criticism.... I say I had expected these
things. I would be more correct to say that I _should_ have expected
them if I had had a rumor--believing mind: which I have not.

But I really did expect to witness an overwhelming violence of traffic
and movement in lower Broadway and the renowned business streets in its
vicinity. And I really was disappointed by the ordinariness of the
scene, which could be well matched in half a dozen places in Europe, and
beaten in one or two. If but once I had been shoved into the gutter by a
heedless throng going furiously upon its financial ways, I should have
been content.... The legendary "American rush" is to me a fable. Whether
it ever existed I know not; but I certainly saw no trace of it, either
in New York or Chicago. I dare say I ought to have gone to Seattle for
it. My first sight of a stock-market roped off in the street was an
acute disillusionment. In agitation it could not have competed with a
sheep-market. In noise it was a muffled silence compared with the fine
racket that enlivens the air outside the Paris Bourse. I saw also an
ordinary day in the Stock Exchange. Faint excitations were afloat in
certain corners, but I honestly deemed the affair tame. A vast litter of
paper on the floor, a vast assemblage of hats pitched on the tops of
telephone-boxes--these phenomena do not amount to a hustle. Earnest
students of hustle should visit Paris or Milan. The fact probably is
that the perfecting of mechanical contrivances in the United States has
killed hustle as a diversion for the eyes and ears. The mechanical side
of the Exchange was wonderful and delightful.

The sky-scrapers that cluster about the lower end of Broadway--their
natural home--were as impressive as I could have desired, but not
architecturally. For they could only be felt, not seen. And even in
situations where the sky-scraper is properly visible, it is, as a rule,
to my mind, architecturally a failure. I regret for my own sake that I
could not be more sympathetic toward the existing sky-scraper as an
architectural entity, because I had assuredly no European prejudice
against the sky-scraper as such. The objection of most people to the
sky-scraper is merely that it is unusual--the instinctive obj