rvalue many of the
advantages their ingenuity has won. It is admitted that they are
restless, and must always be seeking something that they have not at
home. But aside from their ability to be warm in any part of their own
country at any time of the year, where else can they travel three
thousand miles on a stretch in a well-heated--too much heated--car,
without change of car, without revision of tickets, without encountering
a customhouse, without the necessity of stepping outdoors either for food
or drink, for a library, for a bath--for any item, in short, that goes to
the comfort of a civilized being? And yet we are always prating of the
superior civilization of Europe. Nay, more, the traveler steps into a
car--which is as comfortable as a house--in Boston, and alights from it
only in the City of Mexico. In what other part of the world can that
achievement in comfort and convenience be approached?

But this is not all as to climate and comfort. We have climates of all
sorts within easy reach, and in quantity, both good and bad, enough to
export more in fact than we need of all sorts. If heat is all we want,
there are only three or four days between the zero of Maine and the 80
deg. of Florida. If New England is inhospitable and New York freezing, it
is only a matter of four days to the sun and the exhilarating air of New
Mexico and Arizona, and only five to the oranges and roses of that
semi-tropical kingdom by the sea, Southern California. And if this does
not content us, a day or two more lands us, without sea-sickness, in the
land of the Aztecs, where we can live in the temperate or the tropic
zone, eat strange fruits, and be reminded of Egypt and Spain and Italy,
and see all the colors that the ingenuity of man has been able to give
his skin. Fruits and flowers and sun in the winter-time, a climate to
lounge and be happy in--all this is within easy reach, with the minimum
of disturbance to our daily habits. We started out, when we turned our
backs on the Old World, with the declaration that all men are free, and
entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of an agreeable climate. We
have yet to learn, it seems, that we can indulge in that pursuit best on
our own continent. There is no winter climate elsewhere to compare with
that found in our extreme Southwest or in Mexico, and the sooner we put
this fact into poetry and literature, and begin to make a tradition of
it, the better will it be for our peace of mind a