231

THROUGH FRENCH OPTICS

A Critical View of the American People by Paul Bourget.

The Analytical Race Specialist Tells What He Thinks of Us After Twenty Days' Inspection.

Some Criticisms of His View by Mrs. Feathe -- We are Children, but We Are Glad of it.

We have been viewed and reviewed -- we Americans, by any number of foreign visitors. Some of them have been foolish, shallow and provincial, some have been honest, earnest, and even profound. A great many have babbled nothings and bored us to the verge of extinction. Some of them have been simply stupid, and have taken the bad manners of foreign immigrants, finding hospital in this country, as the standard of American manners.

But the other day a great observer of men came among us, and viewed us as he had viewed many another people, from the point of view of Race. Since "Cosmopolis" was written, Paul Bourget has stood identified with the question of Race -- the great modern aclineator and discriminator of it -- the man who reads humans as the Egyptologist reads hieroglyphs. His facile and scholarly genius has become identified with this questions, and it is, therefore, with profound interest that one reads what he has to say about the American race, that new, yet very individual thing, which yesterday was not, and which today embodies so large a part of the best energy and pride in the world.

For it is a fact that while other nations grown languid, sated and overcultivated, so that patriotism has degenerated in them into a vanity or disappeared altogether into a vague cosmopolism, that in America the sentiment strengthens and grows, bracing itself as foes to its principles appear, growing defiant as philosophers threaten its overthrow, and asserting itself passionately with the vehemence of youth and of faith.

All this is a part of the involuntary and spontaneous effort of the American race to create, formulate and cement itself. Indeed, we have cast the mold, and given it free, strong lines. It is hardening now. And by and by we will take it out of the mold. It will be finished. Time will behold it, and will begin its work upon it. It will mellow it, beautify it, and, presently begin to weaken it. The ravages will become apparent. And the disintegration will come -- how many centuries from now?

But never mind.

That is altogether another, a different story.

M. Bourget's first impressions of America, on leaving the steamer, appear to have been that we are rather terrible. He certainly considers us astonishing We gave his nerves a tingle -- even a shock. And it must be admitted that we are horribly noisy and brutal in our business life. To be sure, he enjoyed the harbor, it would be hard to forgive anyone who did not enjoy the harbor of New York.

"On the morning of the seventh day we come in sight of New York -- summer's morning, burning and veiled. We were not able to enter yesterday, and I am glad of it, before the inconceivable picture of this arrival. The steamer is mounting the mouth of the Hudson, which forms the harbor for the great town, with a movement as gentle as it had been rapid twenty-four hours ago. This sensation would be worth the voyage alone, so unexpected and profound is it. The enormous estuary shivers and ripples, stirred by the last throbbings of the Atlantic, and, on these two banks, as far as the eye can reach, on the right where New York spreads itself out, on the left where Jersey City swarms, indefinitely, interminably, it is a series of short wooden jetties, brand and covered in. Names are written on them, here that of a railroad company, there of a shipping company, then of another railroad company and of another shipping company, and continuously also from each of these jetties a ferryboat starts out or arrives in, carrying away or emitting passengers by the hundreds, dozens of carriages with horses harnessed to them, entire trains full of goods I count five or six of those ferry-boats, then fifteen, then twenty. Enormous, overhanging the green water with their two decks painted in white and brown, they go beating the heavy waters with their iron wheels, and at their summit a gigantic swing beam regulates their uniform movement, they go, encountering one another, pushing up against each other, without doing any harm, so steady is their speed, with their appearance of colossal, laborious animals, each performing its task with a conscientious safety."

As for the city itself, he paid that the tribute of being very much surprised at it.

The two towns, on the right and on the left, continue to extend themselves beyond what you could dream of Leaning out on the New York side, I can distinguish some very small houses, an ocean of low constructions whence emerge, like islands with abrupt cliffs, buildings of brick so boldly colossal that even from here their height is crashing to the eye I count the stories above the line of roofs. One of them has ten, another twelve. Another is unfinished A hollow framework of iron is outline against the sky, a project of six such stories atop of eight others already built.

"gigantic, colossal, immoderate, unbridled, words fail to equal that apparition, that landscape in which the enormous mouth of the river acts as frame to a development of human energy greater than itself. Having reached this intensity of collective efforts that energy becomes an element of nature History adds to that impression, in order to redouble it, the indisputable bluntness of figures. IN 1624 not much more than 250 years ago, the Indians sold to a Westphalian the point of this island of Manhattan. He founded the town, which is there now. The poetry of democracy, and there is really one, lies in those rushes of popular vitality wherein the individual disappears, where the separate effort is but as a note of nothing in an immense concert. It is certainly not the Parthenon, that little temple on a little hill where the Greeks have fixed their ideal; only so much material as was indispensable and spiritual essence sufficient to animate the whole, even to the smallest atom, with measure and harmony, but it is the dark and violent poetry of the modern world which gives you a tragic shiver, so much voluntary and furious humanity holds in a horizon like that of this morning and it is the same every day!"

Bourget's first mingling with the Americans at Castle Garden undeniably gave him a shock But it seems that his friends had led him to expect as much Indeed, he tells of one young Frenchman who came here armed with letters of introduction, and all that would have made his visit entertaining. Yet, five days after landing, he took a steamer for home.

"I was not able to stand the blow," was the only reply he made to his astonished parents.

Bourget says. "That blew in landing is certainly a severe one to a Frenchman accustomed to that administrative order, the slowness of which one abuses so much when obliged to submit to it, but which we regret when we find ourselves in an Anglo-Saxon crowd, where the struggle for life has already its humble and pain symbol in the struggle for the baggage as soon as the boat arrives at the quay.

"An immense shed, crowded with people going and coming, shoving and knocking up against one, gigantic policemen, with huge stomachs protruding from under their belts, who hold themselves in that crowd as columns against which it shall break, custom house officers in unbottoned uniforms, for it is warm whose cheeks are swollen out with a quid, and who expectorate long jets of brown saliva over the floor where the boxes are to be placed; those boxes just arrived and thrown over with a jerk amid the expressmen who offer their checks carpenters with chisels and hammers to undo and nail up the cases, the arms of employes in the open cases turning and turning over the linen and dresses with the roughness of people in a hurry; then those trunks no sooner closed and 'checked' than they are seized by porters and hurled down at the risk of being broken along a sloping plank into the lower floor. A strong smell of human sweat permeates everything. There you have the entrance into the big American city. It has as brutal and as rapid as a boxing feint"

Of course Bourget permits himself to be entertained with all the paraphernalia of our civilization He is almost irritated at the national genius for ingenuity, and considers the endless contrivances for the saving of time and energy as childish He can, however, and does, understand a bath tub with hot and cold water, and looks upon that as a more reasonable refinement. He is distressed, also, as might have been expected, about our apparent lack of time.

"At what o'clock does one love?" he cries "At what o'clock does one die? At what o'clock does one think? At what o'clock, in short, is one a man -- and not a work machine in motion?"

He is exercised for fear we will never ever find time to grow roses He thinks people look too self-centered. He complains because they appear to be engaged with inward thought, instead of being interested and amused by their neighbors. But in all this he finds, as well he may, a nervous and triumphant energy which belongs and only could belong to a race which is young and strong and independent.

So, to pass over all these observations of tricks of living and his comments upon the splendor of the surroundings of the rich, and the prodigality of all, and the rush, assertion, love of display, and candor, let us get at what he seems to consider the salient point.

He is writing of the set at Newport, our "coterie of millionaires," and says:

"As the wealthy classes in America have no kind of influence over the elections, the ambitious politician has nothing to do in society There is no institut here to give the vogue of a wordly coterie which can lead a writer or an artist. Neither is there a center whence literary reputations radiate and which is condensed in a few salons. The girls only exceptionally receive marriage portions, so that the fortune hunters chiefly consist in strangers ruined and with titles, who generally disappear after a season They feel too soon that old Europe is still the surest ground for that kind of speculation, as on the other hand the morals of the country seem good in the main and that an acknowledged 'lisson' is here a phenomenon, this social life cannot either serve as a screen to the complications of passional life. Reduced in that way to its proper basis it develops itself more and more exaggeratedly toward gorgeousness and public entertainments, and as everywhere some real food and a positive occupation are necessary to such vigorous activities, this society life ends here at least by turning entirely toward sport. So again, what logically should be a fault becomes a principle of health, so true is it that among the strong races everything develops into force, even frivelity and vanity, while among the people who are getting old even culture and delicacy only end in sickness and corruption.

"How do they amuse themselves?

"I have amused myself in order to answer that question with a certain amount of precision by following almost hour by hour for several days the use which some of those women make of the time who are called here 'leaders of society' I transcribe one of the sketches thus obtained, taking it among twenty others. They are almost all similar by the physiological strength which the display, the taste for out of door life and for exercise, and this way of amusing themselves explains why the ladies of society, instead of being debilitated and having faded complexions and that 'old glove' look, as a cruel humorist put it, like their sisters in all the large cities of Europe, retain on the contrary the freshness of their skins, that suppleness of movement and their vital force. They are aware of it and they are proud of it.

"'What pleases me,' said one of them, 'In considering that I am an American is to know that I belong to a fine and healthy race.' * * *

"They do not modify their criticism as regards the Parisiennes. I hear one deploring the change of one of her fellow countrywomen who has married a Frenchman: 'She was so robust with such a good complexion, and now she has become thin and worn, quite sallow,' and they laugh in saying such things, with their happy laughter, in which there is what we can so difficultly understand, honest animism, with their teeth cleaned so that they are like precious things, and when the dentist has worked there he has put in gold, which shines with such new brilliancy that it no longer has the appearance of an infirmity!"

THROUGH FRENCH OPTICS

A Critical View of the American People by Paul Bourget.

The Analytical Race Specialist Tells What He Thinks of Us After Twenty Days' Inspection.

Some Criticisms of His View by Mrs. Feathe -- We are Children, but We Are Glad of it.

We have been viewed and reviewed -- we Americans, by any number of foreign visitors. Some of them have been foolish, shallow and provincial, some have been honest, earnest, and even profound. A great many have babbled nothings and bored us to the verge of extinction. Some of them have been simply stupid, and have taken the bad manners of foreign immigrants, finding hospital in this country, as the standard of American manners.

But the other day a great observer of men came among us, and viewed us as he had viewed many another people, from the point of view of Race. Since "Cosmopolis" was written, Paul Bourget has stood identified with the question of Race -- the great modern aclineator and discriminator of it -- the man who reads humans as the Egyptologist reads hieroglyphs. His facile and scholarly genius has become identified with this questions, and it is, therefore, with profound interest that one reads what he has to say about the American race, that new, yet very individual thing, which yesterday was not, and which today embodies so large a part of the best energy and pride in the world.

For it is a fact that while other nations grown languid, sated and overcultivated, so that patriotism has degenerated in them into a vanity or disappeared altogether into a vague cosmopolism, that in America the sentiment strengthens and grows, bracing itself as foes to its principles appear, growing defiant as philosophers threaten its overthrow, and asserting itself passionately with the vehemence of youth and of faith.

All this is a part of the involuntary and spontaneous effort of the American race to create, formulate and cement itself. Indeed, we have cast the mold, and given it free, strong lines. It is hardening now. And by and by we will take it out of the mold. It will be finished. Time will behold it, and will begin its work upon it. It will mellow it, beautify it, and, presently begin to weaken it. The ravages will become apparent. And the disintegration will come -- how many centuries from now?

But never mind.

That is altogether another, a different story.

M. Bourget's first impressions of America, on leaving the steamer, appear to have been that we are rather terrible. He certainly considers us astonishing We gave his nerves a tingle -- even a shock. And it must be admitted that we are horribly noisy and brutal in our business life. To be sure, he enjoyed the harbor, it would be hard to forgive anyone who did not enjoy the harbor of New York.

"On the morning of the seventh day we come in sight of New York -- summer's morning, burning and veiled. We were not able to enter yesterday, and I am glad of it, before the inconceivable picture of this arrival. The steamer is mounting the mouth of the Hudson, which forms the harbor for the great town, with a movement as gentle as it had been rapid twenty-four hours ago. This sensation would be worth the voyage alone, so unexpected and profound is it. The enormous estuary shivers and ripples, stirred by the last throbbings of the Atlantic, and, on these two banks, as far as the eye can reach, on the right where New York spreads itself out, on the left where Jersey City swarms, indefinitely, interminably, it is a series of short wooden jetties, brand and covered in. Names are written on them, here that of a railroad company, there of a shipping company, then of another railroad company and of another shipping company, and continuously also from each of these jetties a ferryboat starts out or arrives in, carrying away or emitting passengers by the hundreds, dozens of carriages with horses harnessed to them, entire trains full of goods I count five or six of those ferry-boats, then fifteen, then twenty. Enormous, overhanging the green water with their two decks painted in white and brown, they go beating the heavy waters with their iron wheels, and at their summit a gigantic swing beam regulates their uniform movement, they go, encountering one another, pushing up against each other, without doing any harm, so steady is their speed, with their appearance of colossal, laborious animals, each performing its task with a conscientious safety."

As for the city itself, he paid that the tribute of being very much surprised at it.

The two towns, on the right and on the left, continue to extend themselves beyond what you could dream of Leaning out on the New York side, I can distinguish some very small houses, an ocean of low constructions whence emerge, like islands with abrupt cliffs, buildings of brick so boldly colossal that even from here their height is crashing to the eye I count the stories above the line of roofs. One of them has ten, another twelve. Another is unfinished A hollow framework of iron is outline against the sky, a project of six such stories atop of eight others already built.

"gigantic, colossal, immoderate, unbridled, words fail to equal that apparition, that landscape in which the enormous mouth of the river acts as frame to a development of human energy greater than itself. Having reached this intensity of collective efforts that energy becomes an element of nature History adds to that impression, in order to redouble it, the indisputable bluntness of figures. IN 1624 not much more than 250 years ago, the Indians sold to a Westphalian the point of this island of Manhattan. He founded the town, which is there now. The poetry of democracy, and there is really one, lies in those rushes of popular vitality wherein the individual disappears, where the separate effort is but as a note of nothing in an immense concert. It is certainly not the Parthenon, that little temple on a little hill where the Greeks have fixed their ideal; only so much material as was indispensable and spiritual essence sufficient to animate the whole, even to the smallest atom, with measure and harmony, but it is the dark and violent poetry of the modern world which gives you a tragic shiver, so much voluntary and furious humanity holds in a horizon like that of this morning and it is the same every day!"

Bourget's first mingling with the Americans at Castle Garden undeniably gave him a shock But it seems that his friends had led him to expect as much Indeed, he tells of one young Frenchman who came here armed with letters of introduction, and all that would have made his visit entertaining. Yet, five days after landing, he took a steamer for home.

"I was not able to stand the blow," was the only reply he made to his astonished parents.

Bourget says. "That blew in landing is certainly a severe one to a Frenchman accustomed to that administrative order, the slowness of which one abuses so much when obliged to submit to it, but which we regret when we find ourselves in an Anglo-Saxon crowd, where the struggle for life has already its humble and pain symbol in the struggle for the baggage as soon as the boat arrives at the quay.

"An immense shed, crowded with people going and coming, shoving and knocking up against one, gigantic policemen, with huge stomachs protruding from under their belts, who hold themselves in that crowd as columns against which it shall break, custom house officers in unbottoned uniforms, for it is warm whose cheeks are swollen out with a quid, and who expectorate long jets of brown saliva over the floor where the boxes are to be placed; those boxes just arrived and thrown over with a jerk amid the expressmen who offer their checks carpenters with chisels and hammers to undo and nail up the cases, the arms of employes in the open cases turning and turning over the linen and dresses with the roughness of people in a hurry; then those trunks no sooner closed and 'checked' than they are seized by porters and hurled down at the risk of being broken along a sloping plank into the lower floor. A strong smell of human sweat permeates everything. There you have the entrance into the big American city. It has as brutal and as rapid as a boxing feint"

Of course Bourget permits himself to be entertained with all the paraphernalia of our civilization He is almost irritated at the national genius for ingenuity, and considers the endless contrivances for the saving of time and energy as childish He can, however, and does, understand a bath tub with hot and cold water, and looks upon that as a more reasonable refinement. He is distressed, also, as might have been expected, about our apparent lack of time.

"At what o'clock does one love?" he cries "At what o'clock does one die? At what o'clock does one think? At what o'clock, in short, is one a man -- and not a work machine in motion?"

He is exercised for fear we will never ever find time to grow roses He thinks people look too self-centered. He complains because they appear to be engaged with inward thought, instead of being interested and amused by their neighbors. But in all this he finds, as well he may, a nervous and triumphant energy which belongs and only could belong to a race which is young and strong and independent.

So, to pass over all these observations of tricks of living and his comments upon the splendor of the surroundings of the rich, and the prodigality of all, and the rush, assertion, love of display, and candor, let us get at what he seems to consider the salient point.

He is writing of the set at Newport, our "coterie of millionaires," and says: