e
that it might not be well to cultivate a new sense of social duty in
this matter. Is it Utopian to suggest a policy of "America for the
Americans"--some effectual restriction of immigration before it is too
late, so as to leave room for the natural increase of the American
people? This is an "expansion," a "taking up of the white man's burden,"
which would command my warmest sympathy. It is to the interest of the
whole world that the America of the future should be peopled by "white
men" in every sense of the word.

New England, however, cannot be utterly depopulated of its old stocks,
for at every turn you come up against those good old Puritan names which
bespeak a longer ancestry than many an English peer can claim. I find
among the signatures to a petition against the reinstatement of an
elevated railroad in Boston, such names as Adams, Morse, Lowell,
Emerson, Bowditch, Lothrop, Storey, Dabney, Whipple, Ticknor, and Hale.
Of the fifty signatures, only three (or, at the outside five, if we
include two doubtful cases) are of other than English origin. In
contrast to this I may mention another list of names which came under my
notice at the same time--a list of the purchasers at a sale by auction
of seats for a New York first-night. Here twenty-six names out of forty
are obviously of non-English origin, while several of the remaining
fourteen have a distinctly Hebraic ring.

Though very much smaller than New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia,
Boston is essentially a great city, with a very animated street life,
and nothing in the least provincial about it. But it is not in these
great capitals, not even in this marvellous Chicago where I am now
writing, that one most clearly realises the bewildering potentialities
of the United States. It is precisely in the minor, the provincial
cities, which to us in Europe are no more than names--perhaps not so
much. For instance, what does the average Englishman know of Detroit?[H]

What State is it in? Is it in the North or the South, the East or the
West? For my part I knew in a general way, having been there before,
that Detroit was situated somewhere between Chicago and Niagara Falls,
but until a few days ago I should have been puzzled to describe its
situation more precisely. Well, I arrive in this obscure, insignificant
place, and find it a city of considerably more than a quarter of a
million inhabitants, beautifully laid out, magnificently paved and
lighted, its broad an