s of this
book apply in very few cases to the whole extent of the United States.
I shall be quite contented if any one section of the country thinks
that I cannot mean _it_ in such-and-such an assertion, provided it
allows that the cap fits some other portion of the great community. As
a rule, however, it may be assumed that unqualified references to
American civilisation relate to it as crystallised in such older
communities as New York or Philadelphia, not to the fermenting process
of life-in-the-making on the frontier.

In the comparisons between Great Britain and the United States I have
tried to oppose only those classes which substantially correspond to
each other. Thus, in contrasting the Lowell manufacturer, the
Hampshire squire, the Virginian planter, and the Manchester man, it
must not be forgotten that the first and the last have many points of
difference from the second and third which are not due to their
geographical position. Many of the instances on which my remarks are
based may undoubtedly be called _extreme_; but even extreme cases are
suggestive, if not exactly typical. There is a breed of poultry in
Japan, in which, by careful cultivation, the tail-feathers of the cock
sometimes reach a length of ten or even fifteen feet. This is not
precisely typical of the gallinaceous species; but it is none the less
a phenomenon which might be mentioned in a comparison with the
apteryx.

Finally, I ought perhaps to say, with Mr. E.A. Freeman, that I
sometimes find it almost impossible to believe that the whole nation
can be so good as the people who have been so good to me.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I have some suspicion that this ought to be in quotation marks,
but cannot now trace the passage.

II

The Land of Contrasts

When I first thought of writing about the United States at all, I soon
came to the conclusion that no title could better than the above
express the general impression left on my mind by my experiences in
the Great Republic. It may well be that a long list of inconsistencies
might be made out for any country, just as for any individual; but so
far as my knowledge goes the United States stands out as preeminently
the "Land of Contrasts"--the land of stark, staring, and stimulating
inconsistency; at once the home of enlightenment and the happy hunting
ground of the charlatan and the quack; a land in which nothing happens
but the unexpected; the home of Hyperion, but no less the haunt of