L. P. Gratacap

“ The leader stepped forward, waved his baton and the solemn strains of America—the transplanted hymn of England—rose plaintively, like a prayer; to Leacraft it sounded like encouragement, like sympathy. Someone began to sing—hats came off, the guests rose, and the multitude sang. If the Star Spangled Banner had been exultant and triumphant, thronged with the memories of achievement and victory—America throbbed with supplication, and underneath the supplication, the fervor of allegiance, sacrifice and love. The peculiar awkwardness of an unusual, an unique predicament, was removed. ”

“ At such a crisis can it be possible for men and women, calling themselves English, in whom the memory of English fame and English glory, is still a present pride, can it be possible that at this moment they still consort for amusement, for display, for the fugitive follies of mutual admiration? This aristocracy is the head and forefront of the nation, and it should now be bowed in penitence, in supplication, in the agony of self inquiry, and it stupifies me to find them gay, when the heart of England is breaking with grief. ”

“ It grew with a certain flaming ardor of noble hopes and resolves. It grew also with an agony of doubt. The whole implication of the idea was grievously wounding to pride, and it strained at the very heart-string of the English nature. To go away from England was to become un-Englished, to lose the rich heritage of pastoral beauty, the treasured wealth of historic associations, the spot and home of literary triumphs, the soil, the air, which by some impalpable union of efficacies made the English blood and temperament, and which could not be taken away to make the same fine product elsewhere. ”

“ Leacraft wheeled round as if on a pivot, and even in the pale light the Thomsens could see that his face flushed, and the stern decision of his voice betrayed the fires of resentment. “Who is it that these precious pretenders of Europe look to when they have famine and disaster; who has taught the lessons of sympathy, of open-hearted helpfulness, and unswerving generosity, or made them recognize in their own natures the almost exterminated seeds of kindness? ”

“ The matter had now suddenly loomed up into a frightful reality, and the devastating storms sweeping out of the black heart of the north, had brought Scotland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland into a common fate of extinction. The sheltering power of the Gulf Stream was removed from Great Britain, and the frost of the Arctic world, so long repulsed, but now no longer compressed within the Arctic circle, expanded with instantaneous certainty, spreading the shroud of its killing cold over the same latitudes in Europe that for ages had slept beneath its spell in America. ”

“ There was an instant’s silence, and then the stranger spoke, still holding Leacraft’s hand, and retaining his undeviating inspection of Leacraft’s face, as if he would force upon himself the recognition of a friend.
“These are just words, sir,” he began: “but how much you misunderstand what is going on here. This apparent revelry is an effort to keep from swooning: it is the forced continuance of a life familiar to us, when that life is to be crushed into nothingness; it is the defiance of habit, the revolt against extinction, the mortal protest against the infamous tyranny of circumstances. ”

“ There was bitterness in this, and yet to Leacraft with his undissembling and emancipated mind it was understood. It meant chance to these people—this removal; and to most of them chance never came, never could come as they were. And then to linger, was starvation, loneliness, disuse, death. The business of the country had enormously shrunken, its productive power had been halved, commerce was drifting in stronger and steadier currents elsewhere, and no where so strongly as to Germany, while the over mastering pre-eminence of America loomed up in proportions that paralysed conjecture. ”

“ The King was to leave England in June, 1910, and when he left with sumptuous and melancholy observance, with splendor of color and depth and power of music, with uniform and ritual, with prayer and chorus and prophecy, with august and intolerable grandeur, with the art of tradition and the ornaments of invention, he was to pass down to Tilbury and sail away beyond Gravesend to the new realm of his possession on the shores of Australia. ”

“ The social power, the redemptive agencies, the final product of his thought, aspirations, skill, will be incorporated in this City of Man for men—the City of the Future—and it will be ours—all ours—London rediviva, London redux, London sempieterna, et ne plus ultra. A greater England shall be gathered within its walls. It will hold our sanctified patriotism, our emancipated reason, our ennobled, disciplined applied science, the embodyment of our imagination, and to its doors the world will gather, too, in fealty, in trust, in homage. ”

“ Leacraft fixed his eyes upon the President, and he was near enough to him to note his expression. President Roosevelt sat squarely facing the people—now crushing in with an irresistible impulse from the distributed masses before him. He seemed serious, at moments almost solemnly so, at others he turned to his companions with alacrity, and his face even smiled at some allusion or whispered comment. Again his eyes wandered dreamily—Leacraft thought sadly—to his notes, and then he moved restlessly and leaned forward, and even half rose, eagerly scanning the expectant faces. ”

“ Ned Garrett was a typical American of the best breed, and with the most unmistakable marks of that American suavity, sweetness and splendid confidence, not a whit tainted with assumption or vanity, which makes the American man the best type of man the world over. He, too, was tall and fair, with fascinating aplomb, and a frank surrender to the claim of friendship, without a too credulous endorsement of all social paper not readily negotiable. As he saw Leacraft he ran to him with a glad welcome of surprise and pleasure. ”

“ Never on earth was there such a picture of dejected grandeur, as this emptied metropolis of the world presented; never before had a great city become its own tomb, through the flight of its inhabitants; never in any record of disaster, whether by earthquake, pestilence, flood or vulcanism, was there such obliteration as followed the withdrawal of the citizens of London from their own capital. ”