Ch. 7: America's Defenceless Coasts

JUST suppose that America were twenty days distant from England.
Then a man could study its customs with undivided soul; but being
so very near next door, he goes about the land with one eye on
the smoke of the flesh-pots of the old country across the seas,
while with the other he squints biliously and prejudicially at
the alien.

I can lay my hand upon my sacred heart and affirm that up to
to-day I have never taken three consecutive trips by rail without
being delayed by an accident. That it was an accident to another
train makes no difference. My own turn may come next.

A few miles from peaceful, pleasure-loving Lakewood they had
managed to upset an express goods train to the detriment of the
flimsy permanent way; and thus the train which should have left
at three departed at seven in the evening. I was not angry. I
was scarcely even interested. When an American train starts on
time I begin to anticipate disaster--a visitation for such good
luck, you understand.

Buffalo is a large village of a quarter of a million inhabitants,
situated on the seashore, which is falsely called Lake Erie. It
is a peaceful place, and more like an English county town than
most of its friends.

Once clear of the main business streets, you launch upon miles
and miles of asphalted roads running between cottages and
cut-stone residences of those who have money and peace. All the
Eastern cities own this fringe of elegance, but except in Chicago
nowhere is the fringe deeper or more heavily widened than in
Buffalo.

The American will go to a bad place because he cannot speak
English, and is proud of it; but he knows how to make a home for
himself and his mate, knows how to keep the grass green in front
of his veranda, and how to fullest use the mechanism of life--hot
water, gas, good bell-ropes, telephones, etc. His shops sell him
delightful household fitments at very moderate rates, and he is
encompassed with all manner of labor-saving appliances. This
does not prevent his wife and his daughter working themselves to
death over household drudgery; but the intention is good.

When you have seen the outside of a few hundred thousand of these
homes and the insides of a few score, you begin to understand why
the American (the respectable one) does not take a deep interest
in what they call "politics," and why he is so vaguely and
generally proud of the country that enables him to be so
comfortable. How can the owner of a dainty chalet, with
smoked-oak furniture, imitation Venetian tapestry curtains, hot
and cold water laid on, a bed of geraniums and hollyhocks, a baby
crawling down the veranda, and a self-acting twirly-whirly hose
gently hissing over the grass in the balmy