W. Y. Morgan

“ The sailing of an ocean steamer is always a scene of delightful confusion and excitement. Thousands of people throng the pier and the ship, saying goodbyes to the hundreds who are about to leave. The journey across the ocean, though no longer a matter of danger or hardship, is yet enough of an event to start the emotions and make the emoters forget everything but the watery way and the long absence.
The crowd is anxious, expectant, sad, and unrestrained. Men who rarely show personal feeling look with glistening eyes on the friends to be left behind. ”

“ This beautiful England with its castles and palaces and picture galleries and great history is far behind every other nation in its treatment of the workingman, and consequently England is now sitting on a keg of dynamite which is likely to explode. Once get it out of the heads of the English workmen that they have to submit to these things and these wages because their fathers did, and that it is a great blessing to have a king and lords, and the English working-men will raise Hades with the present political and social conditions in merry England. ”

“ The Scots were fierce fighters, and in the days when war meant conquest and conquest meant pillage the Scots were unexcelled in all lines. Now that the world is putting up a different standard for success we find the Scotchmen adapting themselves to modern ideas; and in science, invention, law and commerce they can show down with any lot of people twice their size on earth. They are proud of their country, and can recite its legends and its poems of Burns even if they are so poor that they don’t have a square meal a day. ”

“ Far away in the distance is Windsor Castle, the favorite royal dwelling-place, the Thames like a silver streak dotted with boats and wooded islands, quaint towns with old churches, and winding roads white with the macadam of chalky stone, occasional tram-ways, busses with the passengers on top, gardens and orchards, little strips of pasture with sheep and cows, fences of hedges and ivy-covered walls,—all of these things are a panorama which make the breath come fast, the heart beat more rapidly. ”

“ The most entertaining feature of the Amsterdam landscape that I have seen is a Dutch lady in a hobble skirt. The fashion is here all right, and it would make an American hobble appear tame and common. In the first place, the Dutch lady is not of the proper architecture, and in the second place, she still wears a lot more underskirts, or whatever they are, than are considered necessary in Paris or Hutchinson. But she does not expand the hobble. The shopping street of Amsterdam is filled with fashionably dressed Dutch ladies who look like tops, and who are worth coming a long ways to see. ”

“ Not only tulips but crocuses, hyacinths, lilies, anemones, etc., are raised for the market,—cut flowers to the cities, bulbs to all parts of the world. Just now the gardens are filled with phlox, dahlias, larkspurs, nasturtiums,—by the acre. The flowers are about the same as at home. Out of this thin, scraggly, sandy soil the gardeners of North Holland are taking money for flowers and bulbs faster than miners in gold-fields. With flowers and cheeses these Dutch catch about all kinds of people. ”

“ He was still loyal to Holland, but he would not trade his new home with its opportunities for all the comforts of canals and clean streets. “You see,” he said, “in Holland every man has to take off his hat to those above him—and there are always those above him.” Of course we have classes, in a way, in our country, but a man never has to take off his hat or pay homage to another man, and the real American, home-grown or imported, can’t get that feeling of equality out of his system. ”

“ The sidewalks are occupied by cafés, miles of them it seems to me, and for the price of a drink, from one cent up, and in substance from coffee down, a Frenchman can occupy a comfortable seat and observe the wonders of art and glimpses of nature which pass by. An American can do the same, only a real American can never put in a whole evening consuming one small cup of coffee or whatever other beverage he can call for in the French language. ”

“ That is the great beauty of being an American in London, for all of the history and literature that have centered here is ours as well as our English cousins’.
The hansom cab and the old omnibus are disappearing before the taxi and the motor-bus. It is a shame, but the world will move on. Every Englishman or traveler remembers the London cab, with its two wheels and hood-shaped carriage, and the driver up behind. There are still a few, but the taxis are faster, and the London cab horse will soon be freed. ”

“ Thousands of English and American Puritans come to Paris every year, but the Frenchman who travels for pleasure is unknown. Why is it? I give it up, unless we have some French tastes along with our English standards.
The French people are the most temperate, most economical and most saving of any of the peoples of Europe—or America. With all their fun they love money, and never for [132] get the necessity of having some in their old age. Get off the Parisian boulevards, which are spoiled by visitors, and you see the French, pure and simple, though not so very pure and not at all simple. ”

“ Soon after we left Dublin we came upon linen factories and distilleries and Presbyterian churches, people too busy to jolly a stranger, and cannily seeking the surest way to a sixpence. In the South of Ireland no one is too busy to talk with the stranger and to tell him all the legendary lore of the country, while in the North one shrinks from stopping the busy worker, even to ask him which way is straight up. ”

“ But when months of travel have exhausted the appetite for sights, and the occurrence of the strange no longer starts a thrill, the thoughts of the traveler far exceed the speed of the ship and the fastest boat that crosses the Atlantic is too slow. This is the only excuse I can find for the Cameronia, which sailed four days later than scheduled, and has developed no traits which will be affectionately remembered by the present passengers. ”

“ The roads are good and white, the fields just now are green, the sky is a blue like the sky in Italy and Kansas. The little towns with their white-washed houses and red-tiled roofs cluster every mile or so along the river, and the view from the mountains or from the river is one that makes the tickle come around the heart. ”

“ There is only one small newspaper in this city of 60,000 inhabitants, but I suppose everybody hears the news at the market. It is better than a show, or an art gallery, or a cathedral, to see the dickering, hear the talk and watch the people. ”

“ English manufactures and commerce have been built up because in England labor is intelligent, high-class, and cheap. I can have a tailor-made suit of clothes for twelve dollars in London. That’s fine for me, but how is it for the tailor? And it doesn’t help the other English workingman, for he does not have the twelve. On the other hand, the ability of the American workman to buy has brought it to pass that he can get just as good a suit, better fitted and better looking, at a Hutchinson clothing store for twelve to fifteen dollars,—and he has the money and buys! ”

“ French national character. The French are not false, but they are fickle. They like a change, a novelty, an excitement. A revolution, or a new government, appeals to their sense of enjoyment just as does a new picture, a new hat, or a new coiffure. In spite of this trait they have done great things in all the great lines of advancement and progress. Theoretically they should be failures, but in fact they are successful. They consider Paris the greatest city of the world, and the way the people of other countries come here and add to the circulating medium seems to prove they are right. ”

“ To me the most attractive part of English life is that in the home. The Englishman gathers his family about him, pulls down the blinds, reads his newspaper and is in his castle, which no lord or duke can enter without his consent. ”

“ Over in the steerage hundreds of would-be Americans gaze eagerly at the land of hope and promise. Soon they will be welcomed by the Statue of Liberty which holds out the torch of citizenship to every alien with ten dollars in cash and a certificate of health. [237] The American flag appears on passing boats, and it is the most beautiful as it is the most meaning of all the ensigns of all the nations. A man with a German accent tells me how forty years ago, when a mere boy, he came from the fatherland to try his fortune in the New World. ”

“ The man looked up, and I could tell the passenger was nervously preparing to ask for important news, perhaps of the strike, or the English elections. He called, “Who’s ahead in the National League?”
No coast looks as beautiful as the shore of home. Even New Jersey looms magnificently at such a time. The passengers are all on deck except those who are hiding articles from the customs officer. The returning Americans are full of enthusiasm. They have seen enough of other lands to know that there is none to compare with the United States, none which comes nearer to giving a man a chance. ”

“ But at first one is overly conscious of the many eyes which are observing his walk and the many minds which are undoubtedly trying to guess just where and why and who. But this mirror custom does not bother the Dutch young folks, not much. It is also the custom for the young man and his sweetheart to parade along the street hand in hand, arm in arm, or catch-as-catch-can, if they want to,—and they want to a great deal. At first this looked like a rude demonstration of affection, but after you have observed it some, say for an hour or so, it doesn’t seem half bad,—if you were only Dutch. ”

“ Incidentally I want to report that the people of Europe are looking on President Taft as the great man of the age—I mean the great common people are. His successful advocacy of international arbitration is hailed as the coming of an era of peace. You don’t know what that means to Europe, where nearly every man has to give years of his life to army service, where heavy taxes for forts and ships bear down on the people, and where there is always a possibility of war with a neighboring nation, which would mean great loss of life. ”

“ The Dutch theory is to treat the natives kindly but make them work as the dogs do in Holland. And the Javanese or the Javans, or whatever you call them, are too busy to get dissatisfied and plan revolutions. This question of what to do with the white man’s burden is a hard one to settle offhand. The brown people do not understand the American motives, and the Americans are probably the most detested people in the Orient. And yet the Americans are the only conquering nation which does not regard colonies as personal property and which tries to elevate the citizenship it finds. ”

“ The transportation in the center of London is confined entirely to busses and cabs. There is too much traffic and the streets are too narrow for street railways. In the outer parts of the city a number of street cars, or “trams” as they are called, are operated. Every bus and every tram has seats on the roof, and they are the choice seats on the vehicle. From one of these top seats is the place to see London, and the traveler has the advantage of not only being able to note the sights on the pavement and the walks, but he can look in the second-story windows and see how people live. ”

“ The drink problem is the hardest to solve in Great Britain, England, Ireland and Scotland. It is worse than the wage problem or the land problem. In no other countries that I have visited are the evils of booze so plainly in evidence as in the British Isles. In Germany the sight of the family in the beer garden with their mugs of creamy liquid, their [204] good-nature and their temperance, does not make an unpleasant impression. In France and the southern countries, where wine is the common beverage, one does not worry about this custom. ”

“ Many of the buildings are very old, and a favorite style of architecture is to have the front project several feet forward over the street. The tops of opposite buildings often almost meet. I don’t see why they do not meet and come down kerwhack, but they don’t. Imagine these quaint streets with old Dutch houses, white and blue, with red tiled roofs, and green and yellow thrown in to give them color, with angles and dormers and curious corners, the tops projecting toward one another, and you can see how interesting a Dutch street can be if it tries, as it does in Dordrecht. ”

“ In fact, the women of The Netherland have rights which they are not even asking in the United States, and no one disputes their prerogative of hard work. There are no “Suffragettes” in Holland, but a woman can do nearly anything she wants to unless it is vote, which she apparently does not care for. There are many rich Hollanders; in fact, there are few that are poor. But they do not constitute a leisure class. The wealthy Dutch gent merely works the harder and the wealthy Dutch “vrouw” scrubs and manages the household or runs the store just as she did in the earlier years of struggle. ”

“ War was the name under which nations concealed their crimes of robbery, and the Highlanders of Scotland had war all the time; so they were officially justified. When you analyze their romantic history and the great deeds of their heroes you will always find that no matter how strict their character and honor among themselves, they never considered it anything but a praiseworthy action to kill and rob an Englishman. ”

“ Far be it from me to criticize the freaks of female fashion. I never know what they are until after they are past due. But if the Dutch [61] hobble ever reaches the American side of the Atlantic it will be time for the mere men to organize.
The greatest art gallery in Europe is here, The Rijks Museum. I went to see it—once. I do not get the proper thrills from seeing a thousand pictures in thirty minutes. They make me tired. But Rembrandt’s Night Watch, or nearly anything a good Dutch artist has painted, is a real pleasure. ”