think that they have been to the
United States, when as a matter of fact they have only been to New York,
it may be as well to explain why New York City is the least typically
American of all parts of the country. There are some who go back as far
as Revolutionary days for the explanation, and point out that even then
New York was more loyalist than patriot; one might go even farther back
and show that New York always had a conspicuously large non-Anglo-Saxon
element. But there is no need to go back even to the Revolution. In the
century that has passed since then, the essential characteristics of the
American character have been the products of the work which the people
had to do in the subduing of the wilderness and of the isolation of the
country--of its segregation from contact with the outside world. New
York has been the one point in America farthest removed from the
wilderness and most in touch with Europe, and it has been there that the
chief forces which have moulded the American character have been least
operative. The things in a New Yorker which are most characteristic of
his New-Yorkship are least characteristically American, and among these
is a much greater friendliness towards Great Britain than is to be found
elsewhere except in one or two towns of specialised traits. This is not
in any way to depreciate the position of New York as the greatest and
most influential city in the United States, as well as (whatever may
have been the relative standing of it and Boston up to twenty years ago)
the literary and artistic centre of the country; and I do not know that
any city of the world has a sight more impressive in its way than
upper-middle New York--that is to say, than Fifth Avenue from Madison
Square to the Park. But the English visitor who acquires his ideas of
American sentiments from what he hears in New York dining-rooms or in
Wall Street offices, is likely to go far astray. There is an
instructive, if hackneyed, story of the little girl whose father boasted
that she had travelled all over the United States. "Dear me!" said the
recipient of the information, "she has travelled a great deal for one of
her age!" "Yes, sir! all over the United States--all, except east of
Chicago."

* * * * *

In the course of a long term of residence in the United States, this
adaptability, this readiness to turn to whatever seems at the time to
offer the best "opening" (which is so conspi