of the intelligence and the soul of the new generation? The generosity,
I may fairly say the joy, of his contribution to the general perfect way
makes a monument of his high rest there at the heart of all that was
once noblest in history.

HENRY JAMES




I

ARRIVAL


However sedulously he may have avoided a preparatory reading of those
'impressions' of America which our hurried and observant Great
continually record for the instruction of both nations, the pilgrim who
is crossing the Atlantic for the first time cannot approach Sandy Hook
Bar with so completely blank a mind as he would wish. So, at least, I
found. It is not so much that the recent American invasion of London
music-halls has bitten into one's brain a very definite taste of a
jerking, vital, _bizarre_ 'rag-time' civilisation. But the various
and vivid comments of friends to whom the news of a traveller's
departure is broken excite and predispose the imagination. That so many
people who have been there should have such different and decided
opinions about it! It must be at least remarkable. I felt the thrill of
an explorer before I started. "A country without conversation," said a
philosopher. "The big land has a big heart," wrote a kindly scholar;
and, by the same post, from another critic, "that land of crushing