CORRESPONDENCE.
AMERICA AND ENGLAND.
A ronnioN land which does not require from us the know- ledge, perhaps hardly learnt, and the use, probably uncertain, of a foreign tongue must be rich in differences to make us feel its foreignness at all. America did not at first provide differences sufficient in quantity and quality to make us feel that we were in a new country, and not in some part of the old one which we had not yet seen. How mortifying to travel so• far and yet feel so much at home ! We at once began to look for differences. They were soon found when we had to take a journey; nay, perhaps even in extricating ourselves and our luggage from the Cunard wharf on arrival, we thought the American policeman a trifle less considerate and helpful than a British one would have been ; but that is a small matter. Mr. Besant has well said, that if you will travel in America, it is, before all things, necessary that you should master the mysteries of the "check " system,—a system which certainly saves a good deal of trouble when you have learnt it.. We do not know, for we quote from hearsay, whether he went on to say that in the next place there is the " Express ". system to be studied ; and after that, the laws and customs of " tips ; " and last, but not least, there is the longing which arises for even the old and much-despised four-wheeler to be stilled, before we can travel with any comfort. Unless we are rich, alas American cabs are not for us; but there are- wheeled conveyances of many kinds flashing about up in the air above, and down below, on every side, and it behoves us to keep out of the way of all of these,—for they will not keep• out of ours. There is a certain discomfort, too, in the know- ledge that the owners of these vehicles will suffer less if they kill us outright, than if we escape with the loss of a leg or an arm. Compensation to the value of $5,000 is given in case of• death ; but when a man is incapacitated from pursuing his busi- ness, he may receive many times that sum if he can prove that he made it before his accident, and can now make it no more.
In America, however, it is no easy matter to keep your- self alive, for those who have your safety in their keeping when you travel are much more reckless and indifferent to human life than the corresponding class at borne ; and then every one is in such a hurry ! The streets were always crowded, with tense-looking, eager, worn men who never seemed able to walk quickly enough. Americans are accused of being always in pursuit of the "almighty dollar ;"—all these men, whom we saw were surely in pursuit of something. A story was going in London some little time ago of an Englishman• who, having married a rich American wife, did not show any- inclination to work as she thought a man should ;—in fact, as there was no need for it, he was not disposed to work at all.. Being remonstrated with, he said : "My dear, I am en- deavouring to create a leisure class in this country." We never appreciated this story until we had crossed the Atlantic, and then we felt that he had been doing his best to supply a great want. Not only is every man in a hurry, but everything we see is in a hurry, too. All goes, as the old Pasha in "Eidthen " said, "Whizz, whizz ! all by steam ; whirl, whirl all by machinery ; " but nothing goes silently, unless it be the ferry-boats across the river. There is more shrieking of engines, jangling of bells, and noise of all kinds, than we ever heard in our lives before.
The quietness of the small towns in the neighbourhood of New York is as marked as the unquietness of New York itself. They are more like gigantic villages than towns. Every morning sees them emptied of nearly all their male• folk, who fly to the capital to gallop their daily stage of duty. The country town of which we saw most was a place with a good deal of character. The houses were pretty and comfort- able, but, small as the difference might appear at first sight, very unlike English houses. An Englishman's house is his castle, and his garden his walled-in fastness. In these houses, and in all that we saw, the sitting-rooms opened into each other, and the only division between them and between the. entrance-hall was a curtain which seemed to be never drawn, or a sliding-door which was never used. This seems to deprive one of all sense of seclusion. Most American gardens, too, are laid out on somewhat of the same principle. They have no fences of any kind except at the back. The grass-plot of one house is insensibly merged in the grass-plot of the next, and every householder has, so far as sight is concerned, the benefit of his neighbour's lawn and flower-beds. The effect is very pretty from the houses ; and it is prettier still to walk down a long street bordered on each side by unfenced-in gardens filled with gay eannas and geraniums and large shade-giving trees.
We in England spend our time either indoors or out. The Americans have invented a middle state, which, so far as
climate permits, we should do well to copy. Nearly every house not in the heart of a town has its verandah, to which the family betakes itself. Rich people with large houses have several verandahs, and move from one to another when, as Sir Philip Sidney would have it, " the sun begins to get uneasy." In towns which are built as cities, where life is cheap and land dear, people sit on the steps of their houses,— that is, do so late in the evening. You may walk the whole length of certain long streets in Chicago, and be vaguely conscious the while that the inhabitants of almost every house you pass are occupying their own steep steps. Should you call at one of these houses, figures detach themselves from the stonework just as the gnomes unexpectedly rose up from the rocks when Jefferson was acting Rip Van Winkle. Some verandahs are very luxuriously furnished, others have only cane chairs and tables, and a hammock or so. This brings us to something which struck us as strange,—namely, the confidence with which, in country towns and in the suburbs of the large towns, portable property is left out all night. England has to chain her outside doormats to the steps, if she wishes to see them next day. America leaves one mat, unchained and unpadlocked, outside at the top of the steps, and another at the bottom ; and each is in its place in the morning,—and that though there is not the protection of garden-railings and gate. The furniture in the verandah stays there too, and so do all the gay china flower-pots into which the workaday flower-pot is thrust. What is stranger still, book-post parcels and collections of news- papers, with enough stamps on them to make them decidedly worthy of a thief's attention, are laid on the top of the .street letter-boxes, and lie there till the next collection. The slit in these boxes is too narrow to admit anything larger than a letter; but had it been found to be unsafe to leave larger packages outside, a more capacious box with a larger opening would long ago have been provided. Such honesty seems most marvellous! Carlyle, as is well known, liked a fresh " church- warden " every evening, and every night laid that which he had just been using on his door-step to be appropriated by some poorer and less exacting smoker than himself. Would that pipe have been left untouched in America P Are pipes, and door-mats, and chairs, and tables beneath the attention of the "ingenious crooks" and "green goods men" of America P Can even back-doors and front-doors stand open with im- punity P Is it that thieves are only tempted by a big haul acquired with difficulty and danger P "Hold-ups " were com- mon enough in Chicago. A "hold-up," being interpreted, is this. A man of the kind who has a watch and purse in his pockets, and perhaps a diamond-ring on his finger, leaves a friend's house about midnight. In a lonely part of his way, he meets a man who is carelessly strolling along with a cigar in his mouth, and both hands folded behind his back. Just as the two are passing each other, the second man suddenly applies a revolver to the ear of the first, and says, " Hold up your arms this moment, or I will shoot you dead ! " The revolver being where it is, the first man can do nothing but obey, and having obeyed, is powerless, for he knows that if he moves his arms, he will be shot. " Walk on !" says the man with the revolver, still caressing his victim's ear with it. "Turn down this street !" is the next order, for a by-street is at hand. There an accomplice is waiting who quickly appro- priates all valuables, and departs. Five minutes later, the victim is dismissed. One of the first things which we saw on our return to England was an urgent appeal to burglars to go and break a certain safe. In Chicago, in one of the Exhibition buildings, there is a safe which was supposed to be so secure and in such good keeping that a note for $1,000 was placed inside it in the sight of a crowd of people, and a similar request to skilful burglars was made. We are not quite sure that the authorities played fair. Was it altogether fair to issue this pressing invitation, and then arrest several gentle- men who accepted it, but were not allowed time to employ all the resources of their art P Their failure stimulated mightier minds; and on a certain evening appointed a number of con- federates ran by the building where the safe was, crying, -" Fire ! fire 1" A fire in the Fair's grounds always causes much excitement, and as the tumult became greater, even the guardians of the safe ran out to learn where the fire was. When they returned to their watching-post, the safe was open, and the money gone ! Messieurs lea Voleura were polite. In a .day or two, one of the Chicago papers contained a paragraph in which "the thieves " begged to express their gratitude to the gentlemen who had so kindly placed so large a sum o money at their disposal. Thieves might, perhaps, accept a courteously expressed invitation to the World's Fair; but they did not frequent it in the systematic way in which London thieves used to frequent our little " Great Exhibi- tions." Who has not laughed at one of our thieves who went as a Bishop P We have always felt that to do this was to impose a cruel strain on the " inferior clergy." What inferior clergyman would like to say much, even if he did find a Bishop's hand in his pocket, seeing that that hand might belong to the very man on whom his chance of preferment depended P We were in the Fair grounds at all hours of the day and early night for weeks, and never heard of any pocket-picking ; nor yet did we hear an angry word, much less an oath. Altogether, we saw so little that was evil, and so much that was good, that we began to wonder where all the wicked people, whose doings made our blood run cold in the daily papers, were to be found. These papers are a national calamity. With very few exceptions, they seem to serve up a, banquet of brutal horrors to readers who will enjoy to the full every turn of the screw of the rack on which the murderer places his victim, and every agony of parents who still love the children whose evil deeds are made all too public. To an enterprising editor in America, no home has any privacy, no feeling of the heart any sanctity. The sins and sufferings of one-half of the world are to furnish the delights of the other; and scarcely a horror can be named which escapes serving as an occasion for a jest. If a man has the misfortune to lose a leg in a terrible accident, the headline of the paragraph which announces this is, "His leg goes to Heaven before him." If a couple of lovers are killed by lightning, we read, " Lightning takes off two." A lynching is gracefully described as "a neck-tie party." Worse things might be quoted, but we refrain; and yet, though these papers live and prosper, the people we see are as tender and compassionate as the heart of man can desire. One and all they are kind, and helpful too, —unless they should happen to be railway and hotel servants, who show their contempt for you at every turn. Railway servants almost always decline to impart any information. If they do impart a little, it is inadequate ; and if you try to hear more, they turn on their heels with some expression of contempt. It is in their case not a question of " tips," for their " tips" come at the end of the journey,—it is simply contempt, and nothing more. You are always " low, white trash " in the Negro's estimation, but never so low as when he is the con- ductor of your train,—even "Mane sur blano " under those circumstances is " impitoyable." " Tips " are disagreeable things anywhere ; in America they are more than disagreeable. We give them at the end of our stay in an hotel. In America, the waiters force it on your notice that a " tip "—it need not be a large one—is expected at the end of every meal, and when they have got it do not always say "Thank you." Until you learn this you are deprived of all comfort. The next thing to learn is that if a servant makes a payment for you, you must say " Keep the change."
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