occasionally a dead cat or dog, hideously bladder-like, its four paws
stiff and indignant towards heaven.

This analysis of fairyland turned me towards the statue of Liberty,
already passed and growing distant. It is one of those things you have
long wanted to see and haven't expected to admire, which, seen, give you
a double thrill, that they're at last _there_, and that they're
better than your hopes. For Liberty stands nobly. Americans, always shy
about their country, have learnt from the ridicule which Europeans, on
mixed aesthetic and moral grounds, pour on this statue, to dismiss it
with an apologetic laugh. Yet it is fine--until you get near enough to
see its clumsiness. I admired the great gesture of it. A hand fell on my
shoulder, and a voice said, "Look hard at that, young man! That's the
first time you've seen Liberty--and it will be the last till you turn
your back on this country again." It was an American fellow-passenger,
one of the tall, thin type of American, with pale blue eyes of an
idealistic, disappointed expression, and an Indian profile. The other
half of America, personated by a small, bumptious, eager, brown-faced
man, with a cigar raking at an irritating angle from the corner of his
mouth, joined in with, "Wal! I should smile, I guess this is the Land
of Freedom, anyway." The tall man swung round: "Freedom! do you call it
a free land, where--" He gave instances of the power of the dollar. The
other man kept up the argument by spitting and by asseveration. As the
busy little tugs, with rugs on their noses, butted the great liner into
her narrow dock, the pessimist launched his last shafts. The short man
denied nothing. He drew the cigar from his lips, shot it back with a
popping noise into the round hole cigars had worn at the corner of his
mouth, and said, "Anyway, it's some country." I was introduced to
America.