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Your United States - Impressions of a first visit by Arnold Bennett
page 136 of 155 (87%)
after street, and street after street, and saw so many of them just
alike, and saw so many similar faces mysteriously peering in the same
posture between the same curtains through the same windows of the same
great houses; and saw canaries in cages, and enfeebled plants in pots,
and bows of ribbon, and glints of picture-frames; and saw crowd after
dense crowd fighting down on the cobbled roads for the fearful privilege
of entering a surface-car--I had, or seemed to have, a composite vision
of the general life of the city.

And what sharpened and stimulated the vision more than anything else was
the innumerable flashing glimpses of immense torn clouds of clean linen,
or linen almost clean, fluttering and shaking in withdrawn courtyards
between rows and rows of humanized windows. This domestic detail,
repugnant possibly to some, was particularly impressive to me; it was
the visible index of what life really is on a costly rock ruled in all
material essentials by trusts, corporations, and the grand principle of
tipping.

I would have liked to live this life, for a space, in any one of half a
million restricted flats, with not quite enough space, not quite enough
air, not quite enough dollars, and a vast deal too much continual strain
on the nerves. I would have liked to come to close quarters with it, and
get its subtle and sinister toxin incurably into my system. Could I have
done so, could I have participated in the least of the uncountable daily
dramas of which the externals are exposed to the gaze of any starer in
an Elevated, I should have known what New York truly meant to
New-Yorkers, and what was the real immediate effect of average education
reacting on average character in average circumstances; and the
knowledge would have been precious and exciting beyond all knowledge of
the staggering "wonders" of the capital. But, of course, I could not
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