ices of an irresponsible childhood. In the
primitive history of the land her ancestors took no part. They did not
play with flint-knives and set up dolmens where New York now stands.
They did not adorn themselves with woad and feathers. The Prince Albert
coat (or its equivalent) was always more appropriate to their ambition.
In vain you will search the United States for the signs of youth.
Wherever you cast your eye you will find the signal proofs of an eager,
grasping age. Youth loiters and is glad, listening to the songs of
birds, wondering at the flowers which carpet the meadow, and recking not
of the morrow. America is grave and in a hurry. She is not content to
fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden age. The one hope
of her citizens is to get to Wall Street as quickly as possible, that
they may add to their already useless hoard of dollars. For this purpose
they have perfected all those material appliances which increase the
rapidity and ease of life. They would save their labour as strenuously
as they would add to their fortunes. A telephone at every bed-head
has made the toil of letter-writing superfluous. A thousand ingenious
methods of "transportation" have taken away the necessity of walking.
There is no reason why in the years to come hand and foot should
not both be atrophied. But there is nothing young in this sedulous
suppression of toil. Youth is prodigal of time and of itself. Youth
boasts of strength and prowess to do great deeds, not of skill to pile
millions upon millions, a Pelion upon an Ossa of wealth. Nor in the vain
luxury of New York can we detect anything save the signs of age. It is
only in modern America that the mad extravagance of Nero's Rome may
be matched. There the banquet of Trimalchio might be presented without
surprise and without reproach. It differs from what are known as "freak
dinners" only in the superiority of its invention and in the perfection
of its table-talk.

In brief, the fantastic ambition of a "cottage" at Newport, as of
Trimalchio's villa in Southern Italy, is the ambition, not of primitive,
reckless, pleasure-loving youth, but of an old age, sated and curious,
which hurries to decay.

Again, it is not a young people which cries aloud "too old at forty!" In
the childhood of the world, the voice of age is the voice of wisdom.
It is for Nestor that Homer claims the profoundest respect, and to-day
America is teaching us, who are only too willing to learn th