genius he worshipped. The carpets were old and worn and faded. He wished
them to be so, as a perpetual protest against the world's sham. It did
not appeal to me as a place of inspiration for a writer.

I returned to America impressed with the over-crowding of the British
Isles, and the unsettled regions of our own country.

"Tell the United States we want to send her five million population this
year, and five million population next year," said a prominent
Englishman to me. I urged a mutual arrangement between the two
governments, to people the West with these populations. Great Britain
was the workshop of the world; we needed workers. The trouble in the
United States at this time was that when there was one garment needed
there were three people anxious to manufacture it, and five people
anxious to sell it. We needed to evoke more harvests and fruits to feed
the populations of the world, and more flax and wool for the clothing.
The cities in England are so close together that there is a cloud from
smokestacks the length and width of the island. The Canon of York
Minster showed me how the stone of that great cathedral was crumbling
under the chemical corrosion of the atmosphere, wafted from neighbouring
factories.

America was not yet discovered then. Those who had gone West twenty
years back, in 1859, were, in 1879, the leading men of Chicago, and
Omaha, and Denver, and Minneapolis, and Dubuque. When I left, England
was still suffering from the effects of the long-continued panic in
America.

Brooklyn had improved; still, we were threatened with a tremendous
influx of people. The new bridge at Fulton Ferry across the East River