sky-scrapers, clear of the roofs, are still lit on the sunward side with
a mellow glow, curiously serene. To the man in the mirk of the street,
they seem to exude this light from the great spaces of brick. At this
time the cars, always polyglot, are filled with shop-hands and workers,
and no English at all is heard. One is surrounded with Yiddish, Italian,
and Greek, broken by Polish, or Russian, or German. Some American
anthropologists claim that the children of these immigrants show marked
changes, in the shape of skull and face, towards the American type. It
may be so. But the people who surround one are mostly European-born.
They represent very completely that H.C.F. of Continental appearance
which is labelled in the English mind 'looking like a foreigner'; being
short, swarthy, gesticulatory, full of clatter, indeterminately alien.
Only in their dress and gait have they--or at least the men among them--
become at all American.

The American by race walks better than we; more freely, with a taking
swing, and almost with grace. How much of this is due to living in a
democracy, and how much to wearing no braces, it is very difficult to
determine. But certainly it is the land of belts, and therefore of more
loosely moving bodies. This, and the padded shoulders of the coats, and
the loosely-cut trousers, make a figure more presentable, at a distance,
than most urban civilisations turn out. Also, Americans take their coats
off, which is sensible; and they can do it the more beautifully because
they are belted, and not braced. They take their coats off anywhere and
any-when, and somehow it strikes the visitor as the most symbolic thing
about them. They have not yet thought of discarding collars; but they
are unashamedly shirt-sleeved. Any sculptor, seeking to figure this
Republic in stone, must carve, in future, a young man in shirt-sleeves,
open-faced, pleasant, and rather vulgar, straw hat on the back of his
head, his trousers full and sloppy, his coat over his arm. The motto