turned their faces towards the older land. Gradually it was discovered
that it was the simplest affair in the world to drive down to the
wharves and take a steamer which landed one, after a more or less
interesting voyage, in Liverpool, or at some other convenient port.
From there one went to London, or Paris, or Rome; in fact, whithersoever
one's fancy guided, but first or last it always led the traveller to
the treading of green, velvet English turf. And once standing on
such velvet, both men and women, looking about them, felt, despite
themselves, the strange old thrill which some of them half resented and
some warmly loved.

In the course of twelve years, a length of time which will transform a
little girl wearing a short frock into a young woman wearing a long one,
the pace of life and the ordering of society may become so altered as
to appear amazing when one finds time to reflect on the subject. But one
does not often find time. Changes occur so gradually that one scarcely
observes them, or so swiftly that they take the form of a kind of amazed
shock which one gets over as quickly as one experiences it and realises
that its cause is already a fixed fact.

In the United States of America, which have not yet acquired the serene
sense of conservative self-satisfaction and repose which centuries of
age may bestow, the spirit of life itself is the aspiration for change.
Ambition itself only means the insistence on change. Each day is to be
better than yesterday fuller of plans, of briskness, of initiative. Each
to-day demands of to-morrow new men, new minds, new work. A to-day which
has not launched new ships, explored new countries, constructed new
buildings, added stories to old ones, may consider itself a failure,
unworthy even of being consigned to the limbo of respectable yesterdays.
Such a country lives by leaps and bounds, and the ten years which