II. THE CURE FOR AMERICANITIS.


Prince Wolkonsky, during a visit to this country, declared that
"Business is the alpha and omega of American life. There is no pleasure,
no joy, no satisfaction. There is no standard except that of profit.
There is no other country where they speak of a man as worth so many
dollars. In other countries they live to enjoy life; here they exist for
business." A Boston merchant corroborated this statement by saying he
was anxious all day about making money, and worried all night for fear
he should lose what he had made.

"In the United States," a distinguished traveler once said, "there is
everywhere comfort, but no joy. The ambition of getting more and
fretting over what is lost absorb life."

"Every man we meet looks as if he'd gone out to borrow trouble, with
plenty of it on hand," said a French lady, upon arriving in New York.

"The Americans are the best-fed, the best-clad, and the best-housed
people in the world," says another witness, "but they are the most
anxious; they hug possible calamity to their breasts."

"I question if care and doubt ever wrote their names so legibly on the
faces of any other population," says Emerson; "old age begins in the
nursery."

How quickly we Americans exhaust life! With what panting haste we pursue
everything! Every man you meet seems to be late for an appointment.
Hurry is stamped in the wrinkles of the national face. We are men of