CHAPTER I

I HAVE always liked Americans, and had, I think, a larger acquaintance among them than is usual in the case of an Englishman of private station who has never crossed the Atlantic. That acquaintance became much enlarged, by correspondence, from the time that my novels became known in America. Americans appear to have, strongly developed, that kindly impulse which causes a reader who has found pleasure in a written work to regard the author of that pleasure as a friend, and tell him so. At all events, from the time my book arrived in America I have been constantly receiving such letters of kindly thanks and generous appreciation from an ever increasing number of American readers, and in very many of those letters earnest hopes were expressed of my visiting the United States. To make such a visit had always been my desire, but for over thirty years I was a chaplain in the Army, and that, and home duties, prevented my realization of the wish; until, my retirement from the Army, on February 11th, 1919, left me free to go where I chose for as long as I chose.

Among my other friends by correspondence none had been more. cordial than the Very Rev. II 0012 12 John Cavanaugh, C.S.C., President of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana; and, as soon as he was aware that I should soon be free to visit his country, he wrote the most hearty letter of invitation, begging me to come at once to Notre Dame, and to regard it as my headquarters while I should be in America. On finding that I should be accompanied by my ward and cousin, Mr. Frank Bickerstaffe-Drew, the President, with equal cordiality and insistence, extended the invitation to include him also. Since 1917 I had been an Honorary Doctor of Laws of the University of Notre Dame, and President Cavanaugh bade me regard the University as my American home, as in fact I found it, and shall ever regard it.

Not long after receiving this most warm and hospitable invitation, another reached me, from the Rev. Thomas Schwertner, D.D., of New York, begging that whether we stayed in that city a week, a month, or a year, it should be as his guests, in the Dominican house of which he was a friar. Perhaps nothing could illustrate better than these two invitations that wonderful hospitality which is a dominant note of American character.

On the 31st of March, we left our Wiltshire home for London, where passports had to be viséd at the American Embassy, and on the 3rd of April proceeded to Liverpool, for embarkation in S.S. Lapland , of the White Star Line (formerly Red Star). Our travelling companions in the train were a Mr. and Mrs. Whiggam, a charming American couple returning to their own country after many years' residence 0013 13 in ours: they were as hospitable as their countrymen and countrywomen at home, and made us share their luncheon. Strange to say, it was raining when we reached Liverpool, and it was pleasant enough to get on board the comfortable ship, which sailed at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Our voyage was prosperous, the weather perfectly calm, and several of our shipmates contributing much to its enjoyment. Beside the Whiggams there was, in especial, a young American couple, a doctor and his wife, from Grand Rapids, in the State of Michigan: Captain Ferris Smith had been doing very important war work in England, in our Royal Army Medical Corps, as a specialist in face-building , a branch of his profession that has made wonderful advance since the War created such sad need of it. It was with real regret that we parted from the Whiggams and the Ferris Smiths at New York, and it would always be a pleasure to meet them again.

We did not, however, proceed direct to New York, having to land a couple of thousand Canadian troops and army nurses at Halifax on our way. The coasts of Nova Scotia were therefore the first of the New World we were to see, and, as it turned out, They were, nearly nine months later, to be the last

For an hour or two before getting in to Halifax, we were skirting those shores, low and rocky, with plenty timber, apparently of no great size; but the harbour of Halifax is really beautiful, of great size, and, surrounded by a coast-line beautifully 0014 14 broken: with innumerable little bays and headlands, islands and peninsulas. The sunny sky and sea, the rocky shores, and abundant woodland, gave a delightful variety of colour.

We were alongside the wharf soon after four o'clock, and, before six, had disembarked the troops, radiant at getting home (though many indeed might have three thousand miles of railway-travel to complete their journey), and by six we were moving again.

It was early on Saturday, the 12th of April, that we entered New York Harbour, in bright weather, and soon afterwards were able to compare the famous statue of Liberty with our previous ideas of it.

At my side was standing an American gentleman who, like scores of millions of his compatriots, abhorred “Prohibition.”

“Poor woman!” he bade me note, “she is looking pretty wistfully at Europe. I guess she'd find herself more at home over there, though we talk more about her here. People talk more about what they want than what they've got.”

Though we were abreast of the wharves before noon, we were unable to land till after six o'clock in the evening, owing to a strike among the wharf hands. In the Custom House we had little trouble, though a longer delay than is usual on arrival at a British port; while waiting by my baggage, I was borne down upon by an Interviewer, representing a great New York daily paper, anxious to learn my views on Prohibition, President Wilson and the 0015 15 League of Nations; on my explaining that I had come to America to visit my friends and give lectures on literary subjects, that I was sublimely ignorant of politics, and regarded politics as a noisome subject, on which I was resolved to keep my mouth shut, he appeared pained, and gradually melted away in a trickle of further questions, to which he seemed to be composing appropriate answers as he went.

On the whole I may say here that I escaped the omnipresent interviewer pretty successfully during our long stay in America. When escape was impossible, I had nearly always occasion to regret it: for what I did say was never put down, and what was put down I had never said and would never say. On several occasions opinions directly opposite to those I had confessed were not only ascribed to me, but put as verbatim into my mouth, in long screeds of inverted commas.

A foreigner driving up from the Albert Dock does not gather a beautiful first impression of London, nor is the drive ‘up-town’ from the New York docks calculated to give strangers a first impression of the splendour and beauty of that city. But if he catches sight of the inscription ‘Tonsorial Parlor’ over a barber's shop he will feel sure he has arrived safely in America. ‘Parlor’ is a favourite description of certain places of business; ‘ShoeShine Parlor’ and ‘Soft-Drink Parlor’ are the commonest. I never saw ‘Wrecking Parlor,’ though ‘Wrecking Establishment’ or ‘Wrecking Undertaken’ is frequent all over the Union: after all, 0016 16 it does not sound more cynically violent than if our practicians of the same calling were to proclaim themselves ‘House-breakers’ over their shops, as they call themselves in the trade, or announce themselves ready to ‘Undertake House-breaking at the shortest notice.’

In most cities of the Union you shall see this notice, ‘Waists Reduced’ or ‘Immense Reduction in Ladies' Waists,’ not over the doors of surgeons or quack doctors, but in the windows of costumiers.

CHAPTER II

OUR New York host had written on note-paper bearing an address in Lexington Avenue, and to Lexington Avenue we drove. A lay-brother came to the door, and begged us to wait while he fetched the Prior. We had but a minute or two to wait, and that interval was passed in literally terrified expressions of dread that all American houses might prove as hot as this one. It was a heavy, close evening at best, but the heat in that hall was truly portentous: and we were fresh from England, where coals were so costly and so rare that fires were reduced to the lowest possible amount. The Prior welcomed us kindly to New York, but explained that Dr. Schwertner no longer lived there, at St. Vincent's, but at St. Catherine's in East 62nd Street. Thither accordingly we drove on, and were cordially received by Prior Smith, who promptly set us down to supper in the Refectory. His welcome was as warm as his house, and human language can no farther go: we remained his guests for a month, and his last word was the expression of a hope that we would return and continue to use his house for as long, and whenever, it might suit us.

We had hardly returned to my room after supper, to deal with the huge mail awaiting me, when a telegram arrived from Boston, stating that a lecture B 0018 18 had been announced for the following afternoon at three o'clock, to be delivered by me to the alumnæ of Notre Dame College, and requesting me to set off that very day, at midnight, for Boston, where the train would arrive at 5 o'clock in the morning. This I felt unable to do, but telegraphed that I would leave New York next morning and arrive soon after three in the afternoon, and would proceed immediately from the railway station to the Lecture Room. Before this telegram was despatched we were called to the parlour to hear the lamentations of the President of the New York Converts' League and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Pullman West, who had organized a lecture to be given by me to the League, at the Plaza Hotel, on the previous Thursday. They had been sending impassioned cablegrams, and wireless messages, to our home, to the houses of friends of ours in England, and to White Star liners, though unluckily not to the ship in which we were crossing. A very large and important audience had assembled to hear the lecture, but no lecturer had appeared: like David Copperfield's sister Betsy, he was ‘not forthcoming.’ This was a rather inauspicious beginning of a Lecture-tour: however, a fresh date was fixed, and the lecture was duly given a fortnight later.

The first impression of our next day's journey was that of the magnificent size and artistic beauty of the Grand Central Station in New York. In London, or indeed in England, we have nothing like it: nor have I seen any railway terminus in Europe at all worthy of comparison with it. I had 0019 19 indeed indelible recollections of the beauty of the Bombay terminus of the line to Poona, seen over thirty years before, but the Bombay station is not to be compared for size with the Grand Central of New York.

America, as a Republic, cannot tolerate the division of railway passengers into first, second and third class; there is one class for everybody; and of the democratic institution of Pullman tickets we were, on this our first journey in the United States, oblivious: so we took ordinary tickets, and travelled less comfortably than we might have done. On cross-country journeys we had afterwards occasion to travel again by ordinary car more than once. The ordinary car is not, as a rule, so good as our third-class: that at least is my experience. And I prefer our first-class to the American Pullman, though many travellers, English as well as American, would disagree with me. Our first-class compartment on main lines contains seats for five or six passengers: the American Pullman seats nearly sixty. Those seats are arm-chairs, revolving on a pivot, so that the occupant can face in any direction he chooses. Once, he has ‘taken his reservation,’ which he may do as long beforehand as he wishes, he is sure of his place: a certain chair is booked to him, and no one can take it but himself: nor, if he leaves it empty to lunch or dine, can he find it filled up on his return, however many passengers may have got in at stations where a stop has meanwhile been made. On the other hand, if ‘reservations’ have not been taken, as someone called upon 0020 20 to make a sudden journey can hardly have taken them, he is likely, even booking at a terminus, and arriving half an hour before the departure of the train, to be unable to obtain a place in a Pullman; and if joining the train at a junction, or indeed any station other than the terminus, he is very unlikely to obtain one.

Personally I prefer the comparative privacy of our English railway-carriages: and if there should be a screaming baby, or a noisy child, I think it better that only five or six passengers should (like Henry VIII by the wailings of Catherine Parr, according to Lingard) be ‘incommoded by the noise’ than that three-score should so suffer.

All over the United States the Pullman-car attendants are gentlemen of colour, who are always scrupulously clean, and usually civil and obliging: they talk excellent English; indeed, one of them told me he had perceived me to be British by my ‘dialect.’ Another, even more flattering though less correct, after brushing my hat, handed it to me with a low bow and the following assurance, “Not a speck of dust on it now, Cardinal.”

As I was, while in eastern America, being perpetually informed, of my strong likeness to the late Archbishop of New York, he may have taken me for Cardinal Farley.

Not one railway station, in America, out of a thousand, condescends to the monarchical weakness of a platform, as their own Mr. Owen Wister points out in his Pentecost of Calamity : in most, even of the terminal stations, the trains pull up 0021 21 and passengers have to descend on the lines, often far outside the shelters; and in wet weather this is not very agreeable.

We reached Boston soon after three o'clock and were met at the Back Bay station by a family known to us then already by correspondence, and now among our most valued friends. Mr. Reggio, his son William, and his daughter Erdna, drove us direct to the large and beautiful Convent of Notre Dame, on the Fenway, where we found an audience of about six hundred assembled. There my first lecture in America was delivered, and its reception was an earnest of the cordial and only too indulgent welcome accorded to me wherever I spoke in the United States. Afterwards, in another room, a sort of reception was held, Miss Logan, President of the alumnæe , introducing a large proportion of the audience to the lecturer, many demanding autographs, most expressing kindly appreciation of his lecture and of his works, so that a considerable time was thus employed.

Afterwards we went home with our hosts, and were introduced to Mr. Reggio's other son, Nicholas, and the wives of both his sons, and also to his adorable grandchildren. I have found all American children delightful little creatures, and I protest against the libel of their being spoiled, but the Reggio babies are the most irresistible I have met anywhere.

After dinner we had a delightful evening of music, and talk. The Reggio house is charming, and full of beautiful things: but above all it has the air of a home , where affection, goodness, and cleverness 0022 22 make the atmosphere. It was the first private house we had entered in America, and we were lucky indeed in our first. Before we parted for the night, our host and his daughter Erdna had made us feel that a journey of over three thousand miles had only brought us to another home: that we were come among real friends whom we could never afford to lose.

In the forenoon of the morrow we were received by Cardinal O'Connell, who is the first Prince of the Church the Puritan Boston has had for its Archbishop. Boston, however, is the Puritan capital no longer, seventy-five per cent. of its population, as we were told, being Catholics. It could not have for its first Cardinal a stronger or more forceful personality. Cardinal O'Connell is one of the great figures of America, powerful in mind and will, and, we were told, irresistibly witty and entertaining when he unbends in familiar intercourse.

As we arrived on a busy morning, his reception day, we did not venture to trespass on His Eminence's time, and dismissed ourselves in a few minutes.

None of the portraits I had seen of Cardinal O'Connell did him justice, especially as regards the intelligent strength of his countenance.

From Archbishop's House we drove along the historic Beacon Street (profanely nicknamed ‘High Brow Row’) to call upon the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly , to whom we had an introduction from, the Abbé Ernest Dimnet, whom I had known in Paris. The Abbé is well-known in the United States and much admired there, both personally and for his 0023 23 writings and lectures. At the end of our stay in America we met him in New York, and thoroughly enjoyed his piquant and amusing talk, which is specially enlivened by very brief, graphic, and effective vignettes of character. He had come to America to deliver the Lowell Lectures at the University of Harvard, and other lectures at various places on behalf of French works of Reconstruction.

We had the good fortune to find Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly , at home, and received a most hearty welcome from him. He reproached us for not being his guests, and hoped we would be so on another and longer visit to Boston.

We lunched at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Perkins, among the foremost citizens of Boston, at Brookline, an attractive suburb of the city. Mrs. Perkins is a leading Catholic of the place, clever, agreeable, and highly gifted with the social tact such a position must demand in such a place as Boston. Her husband made us just as welcome as herself; he is, I understood, a Quaker, but seemed quite at home in his very Catholic entourage, and was singularly cordial and kind to ourselves. He and his wife are bookish people of artistic tastes, and books and pictures fill their charming home. The situation of the house, on a wooded steep, by the side of a beautiful lake, is most pleasing.

From it we drove to Wellesley Hills, some miles further from Boston, by a pretty road along which are strewn the attractive homes of wealthy Bostonians; our destination was the college or Academy of the Sisters of Charity, where I gave my 0024 24 second lecture. These are not precisely the Sisters of Charity so well known in England and France by their huge white cornettes , but an American variant of the Order, founded by Mother Seton in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Instead of the white, bird-like cornette, they wear a head-dress, different but equally distinctive, of very thin, glazed, silk gauze, black and somewhat helmet-shaped. It was, I understood, the bonnet of a widow as worn at Baltimore in 1809 when Mother Seton founded there her Daughters of Charity.

Later on we were the guests of many houses of this Order, of the same or different congregations, and found the nuns, everywhere, most delightful people, carrying on most efficiently the work of higher education among girls, or administering and serving hospitals of the most improved type with boundless devotion and charity.

From Wellesley Hills we drove back to Boston, passing on our way the magnificent new buildings of the Jesuit University at University Heights, Chestnut Hill, a really splendid pile of grey stone in Perpendicular Gothic. Unfortunately we could only drive by it, without a visit, as we had not more than time enough to reach the railway station on our return to New York. At the station we bade farewell with sincere regret to our kind friends the Reweighs.

CHAPTER III

ON the following morning, Tuesday, 15th of April, we were just starting to fulfil another lecture engagement when we received a visit from Mr. Shane Leslie, whom we had not yet met, though his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill's charming sister, Lady Leslie, was already known to us, as was his own very entertaining book, “The End of a Chapter.” The son of an Irish father and an American mother, he is married to an American wife, and seems at present to be fixed in New York. He was cordial and iriteresting, but we had to hurry off to Manhattanville, to my lecture at the Sacred Heart Convent, where, in a vast building, in a fine situation, there is an excellent Academy. This was the first of seventeen houses of this Order, in the United States and Canada, where, we were warmly welcomed, and where I gave lectures. The Convent stands on the bend of a hill, the midst of: spacious grounds, and was, when built, eight miles out of New York; the city now stretches out many miles beyond it. We had not long reached home when a motor-car arrived to take us to Mount St. Vincent on Hudson for another lecture. It is about twenty miles from the heart of New York, though technically, I believe, in the city. The Convent is an immense building, in beautiful grounds, and gloriously situated high above 0026 26 the Hudson. The river is here, and for many, many miles up, of wonderful beauty, broad and noble, on one side coasting precipitous heights, on the other flowing at the foot of green and wooded hills dotted with innumerable fine houses and lovely gardens.

No house on the Hudson has a finer situation than Mount Saint Vincent: it is the Mother-house and Novitiate of the Sisters of Charity, the community numbering some fifteen hundred sisters, and about a hundred novices: without counting the College, where the work of the higher education of girls is excellently carried on. We were most heartily welcomed by the Mother Superior, and the chaplain, Rev. John McNamee, who has been in charge for many years, and shown the house, which contains many fine and interesting portraits and paintings. The audience at my lecture was large and very appreciative. In England we had been warned that, though Americans are much fonder of lectures than ourselves, American audiences are somewhat cold, and not at all given to signs of approval: I may say here that I found the contrary the case everywhere: my audiences were not only attentive and patient, but most kindly encouraging, always alive to ‘points,’ interested, and only too generous in applause. I mention this once for all, to avoid tediously repeating, on each occasion of mentioning a lecture, that its reception was much above its deserts. I think American audiences prefer homely, simple talks, spoken and without notes, to more ambitious lectures, written, and read from a manuscript. As my own lectures were always on literary 0027 27 subjects, they would certainly have been better if written.

On the following day, Wednesday, April 16th, our only event was a luncheon with Mr. Arthur Kenedy, the senior partner of a firm of publishers, who are the American publishers of my cousin's book, and of most of my own. He is still a young man, of kind and charming manners, a first-rate specimen of the best sort of American businessman, overshadowed, alas, by an incalculable calamity in the loss of his young wife, leaving him the desolate father of a group of orphaned children. Nothing could be finer than the touching simplicity and directness of his way of speaking of his great loss, of his eldest little daughter's comfort to him under it, her baby wisdom and goodness, and of his ideal married life.

He and his brother have built up the firm into a great publishing house, and will raise its status higher and higher. At twenty-one he was made manager by his father, and from that day his life has been devoted to making it a really great business. To deal with, he is an ideal publisher, having as clear an eye for the author as for himself, and regarding books from the book-lover's point of view, and not merely with the peculiar interest a butcher may be supposed to feel in edible animals.

Our luncheon was at the Savarin Café, ‘downtown,’ and the scene was typical of a New York midday. The guests at the innumerable tables seemed to be habitués , businessmen, mostly well-known to each other and to the waiters; lively, keen, 0028 28 alert and cheerful, not after all too much hustled to enjoy an excellent meal and plenty of talk over it. At Savarin's the cuisine is first-rate, and I should imagine that its frequenters must be affluent.

Close to it is Trinity Church, looking down Wall Street, though hardly now looking down upon it. Sir Charles Lyell wrote of it in 1845, “The top of the steeple is 289 feet from the ground and the Episcopalians may now boast that, of all the ecclesiastical edifices of this continent, they have erected the most beautiful.” If the Episcopalians made that boast today they would certainly not be thinking of Trinity Church, in New York! “It is,” says Sir Charles, “seen from great distances.” Alas, it cannot now be seen from the next street. In spite, however, of many lines of fervent admiration of this ‘Cathedral,’ Sir Charles has his misgivings. “When,” he says, “the forty-five windows of painted glass are finished, and the white-robed choristers are singing and the noble organ peals forth its swelling notes to the arched roof, the whole service will remind us of the days of Romanism.” He says that in the New York diocese Puseyism has gone greater lengths than in any part of England, and instances the awful case of a bishop “who has had to order the revolving reading-desk of a clergyman to be nailed to the wall to prevent his turning with it to the altar,” but the offender resigned, and, if you please, was given 6,000 dollars by sympathetic parishioners.

Savarin's is also near the Woolworth Building, the highest in the world, and, what is more to the 0029 29 point, very beautiful. The height I think is nearly Seven hundred seven hundred feet, and the view, from the gallery near the top, of New York, Brooklyn, Long Island, etc., is wonderful. While on the subject of tall buildings, I may say that the skyscrapers of New York are not only one of its characteristics, but also one of its beauties: they are often architecturally pure and pleasing, and their massive simplicity is really imposing. It is also satisfactory to note, as one does note everywhere in New York, that its street-architecture is constantly improving; the newest buildings are the best; and, if one compares a building of forty or fifty years ago with its just-finished neighbours, the comparison is sure to be favourable to the latter. The older houses and institutions are mostly of an ugly and rather sombre red colour, while the new ones are of a beautiful white stone (often marble), or of various very pleasingly coloured bricks, grey, drab, cream, or Wedgwood-buff, with ornaments or facings of harmonious tints in terra-cotta, stone, or marble. The bricks themselves are small and beautiful, exquisitely ‘potted.’ The houses on that part of Fifth Avenue facing Central Park are often palatial, generally fine, and, in many cases, really beautiful. The buildings most successful architecturally have an obviously French inspiration.

Central Park itself, like all the city parks of America, is beautiful. In laying out these places the Americans have a faultless judgment and most happy inspiration; where the site can be chosen, they choose the best for the purpose, and where 0030 30 Nature has clone done anything they never sacrifice or spoil it but are wonderfully capable in making their own additions seem the spontaneous growth of Nature and time.

CHAPTER IV

THE next day, being Maundy Thursday, we visited several churches, notably the new St. Vincent Ferrer's, Dominican Church in Lexington Avenue. This building is very fine, both exteriorly, and, perhaps specially, interiorly. I suppose it would be called Perpendicular; but America has its own Gothic, and does not very slavishly adhere to European canons of style and period. Whether St. Vincent's be finer within or without, it is certain that the exterior of St. Patrick's Cathedral is finer than the interior. It is a splendid fane occupying a very important site, on Fifth Avenue, which must itself have been enormously costly. The immense cost of the whole was, we were told, very largely contributed by poor Catholics, whose offerings were their wages. The interior, fine as it is, is to my taste too broad in proportion to its length, though this vast breadth enables all the members of the largest congregation assembled in it to see the whole of any function taking place: and the architect of a city church cannot design his ground-plan to satisfy his own ideas of proportion, but must often sacrifice them to the site on which he has to work. The architect of St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York, could not have made it longer in the space between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, nor narrower without sacrificing accommodation 0032 32 necessary for a huge congregation. As it is, St. Patrick's stands a noble monument of the devotion and generosity of the Catholic people of New York.

Nearly opposite its façade is St. Thomas's Episcopal Church, one of the most satisfactory Gothic buildings we saw in America. The Episcopal Church in the United States answers to the Church of England in the latter country: but, as there is also a Methodist Episcopal Church, one often hears the oddly pleonastic title of ‘Episcopal Bishop’ to specify a prelate of the American Episcopal Church.

After luncheon on this day we received a visit from Dr. Foakes Jackson, formerly one of the dons of Jesus College, Cambridge, and now a professor at the Union Theological College in New York. After visiting that fine College with him he took us to see Columbia University, and gave us tea in the University Professors' Club, from whose windows we saw our first game of Base Ball.

We parted from him near Ulysses Grant's tomb, which afterwards we entered. The mausoleum stands splendidly, high above the majestic Hudson, and the building is worthy of its site, and of the great soldier whose relics it enshrines. But perhaps the actual sarcophagus with its emplacement suggests too sincere a flattery of the tomb at the Invalides. General Grant's mausoleum adorns Riverside Drive, a quite glorious promenade extending for miles along, though far above, the Hudson River, with the ‘Palisades,’ the precipitous ramparts of New Jersey, 0033 33 opposite. The Palisades are columnar precipices of basaltic rock, several hundred feet high, rising almost from the river's edge, and running along it for miles at an almost uniform height, like a Cyclopean wall. At the top lies a level, charmingly wooded, country, strewn with ‘residential suburbs,’ among which is Englewood, where Dr. Foakes Jackson invited us, before we left him, to lunch at his home. This we did a few days later, receiving as kindly a welcome from his hospitable wife, also English, as from himself. Englewood is a pretty village (if there be any villages in the United States), consisting of pleasant ‘frame’ houses dotted among agreeable woods, not too dense for cheerfulness. On that occasion our most agreeable host gave me his ‘Social Life in England: 1750-1850,’ being his Lowell Lectures for 1916, which I read forthwith with genuine pleasure and enjoyment. They are shrewd, witty, and acute essays; the first, sixth and seventh, ‘Life in the Eighteenth Century illustrated by the Career of John Wesley,’ ‘Social Abuses as exposed by Charles Dickens,’ and ‘Mid-Victorianism and W. M. Thackeray’ being particularly interesting. We very much regretted not meeting Dr. Foakes Jackson again, but, on our return to New York, before sailing for home, he was, we heard, in England.

It is time I mentioned Dr. Schwertner, our host in New York. On our arrival, when received by Prior Smith, we were told he was absent, preaching a Mission at Philadelphia. He had now returned, and his visits to our rooms gave us abundant entertainment. 0034 34 He is young, vehemently energetic, and extremely amusing: the most rapid talker I ever met, his conversation poured over us like an avalanche, and we could only listen and laugh. We found him, besides, unfeignedly kind-hearted, the most generous of hosts, and determined to secure the success of my lecture-tour with the most complete disregard of his own trouble. His brother Dominicans were all most friendly and hospitable, but it was he who had invited us to make their house our home, and the idea was his. Unfortunately we saw less of him than might have been the case; from early morning till late in the evening, often late at night, we were absent, for many lecture-engagements, during our stay in New York, were at considerable distances, and he himself was very busy, and had gone away to preach other Missions and Retreats before we left. By him, however, and his secretary, the programme of my lecture-tour, during its earlier period, was arranged and thought out.

Dr. Smith, the Prior, was also called away before our departure to deliver a course of sermons in California, but his mantle of hospitality was not packed in his ‘grip’, but, handed to Fathers McNicholas and O'Connor, and indeed to all the kind friars. It would be very ungrateful to omit the names of Brother Dominic and Brother Raymond who took unwearied care of us.

CHAPTER V

THE following day was a quiet one; on the next we had plenty to do, and found it all very pleasant. At 10.30 a motorcar called to carry us to Tarry Town, about two and twenty miles from New York, a most beautiful drive along the Hudson, and passing through the town of Yonkers. At Tarry Town we were entertained with delightful hospitality by the Mesdames of the Sacred Heart, a Community with several English members, whose beautiful house of Marymount, in large, finely timbered grounds, has a perfectly exquisite situation and entrancing views over the Hudson. As usual we went over the Convent and its Academy (where I was engaged to lecture) and the adjoining Noviciate also.

All these buildings are first-rate, and the girls who are being educated by the excellent Sisters, as in every such Institution visited by us, are most obviously thoroughly pleased with their beautiful home and their motherly, affectionate teachers. On every side the windows of Marymount command lovely views: at the back the land falls steeply to a winding lake, lying between hanging woods on one side, and sunny, undulating meadows on the other.

Our fellow-guest at luncheon was Lieutenant Marcel Jousse, a good-looking, clever young French 0036 36 officer, and instructor of artillery, and also a Jesuit priest! He was admirably smart and soigné, in his pale-blue uniform. He proved also to be an interesting and amusing talker.

Hard by the village of Tarry Town, Major John André was arrested, tried by the Colonial forces for espionage , Washington declaring that according to the law of nations he deserved death, found guilty, and hanged on 2nd October, 1780. Though buried where he suffered, George III caused a monument to him to be erected in West-minster Abbey, and thither in 1821 his bones were removed. He was twenty-nine years old at the time of his death, and a distinguished young officer, being Adjutant General to the British forces commanded by Sir Henry Clinton. Of the evidence which secured his condemnation there is no doubt: the papers he carried proved the object of his journey—to arrange with General Benedict Arnold, of the Colonial Army, in command at West Point, for its betrayal to the British: but it is a pity the real traitor Arnold was not hanged instead: he however escaped and died obscurely in England twenty-one years later.

At Tarry Town Washington Irving spent his last years, died, and was buried. He had bought and remodelled an old Dutch house, which he christened Sunnyside, near his own ‘Sleepy Hollow’ and there he was visited by his friend and sincere admirer Charles Dickens.

From Tarry Town we returned to New York to the Buckingham Hotel, where we had tea with 0037 37 Miss Manly, of Baltimore, a well-known figure for many years in Baltimore society, and a beloved friend of its greatest figure, Cardinal Gibbons; from whom, alas, we heard on visiting him seven months later, that she lay at death's door.

It was a lively and pleasant party, among our fellow-guests being a sister of Mr. Marion Crawford, and many other clever and interesting people.

Our first dinner-party in America took place that evening, at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Schuyler Warren—another excellent first impression: host and hostess cordial and kind, and the talk always clever and entertaining.

The next day was devoted to an attempt to tackle an enormous accumulation of correspondence, except for an afternoon party at Mrs. Pullman West's in Fifth Avenue.

On the following morning we paid our Easter visit of congratulation to the Archbishop of New York, Monsignor Hayes, who had only lately succeeded Cardinal Farley. While waiting in his reception rooms (an absolute bower of beautiful flowers, Easter offerings from some of his innumerable admirers) we inspected the very interesting series of portraits of his predecessors in the See of New York. We had not to wait long, and the Archbishop welcomed us with a most charming geniality and kindness: he introduced us to Father Duffy, just returned from Europe, one of the most distinguished of American Army Chaplains during the War, admired and venerated by Americans of all denominations. On the following morning we 0038 38 were again received by Archbishop Hayes, with equal friendliness. Presently we.received from his Grace an invitation to witness his enthronement, as Archbishop, in his Cathedral, and the ceremony of his reception of the Pallium from the hands of the Papal Delegate to the United States, Monsignor Bonzano: a wonderful sight, the body of the huge church crowded by the Archbishop's delighted people, the aisles thronged with clergy, and the Sanctuary, immense as it is, hardly sufficient to accommodate the throng of Archbishops, Bishops, and Prelates. The Papal Delegate, himself, on the throne to the left of the sanctuary, tall, slight, youthful-looking, and handsome, made a fine and dignified figure.

CHAPTER VI

ON the next day, Tuesday, 22nd April, we again had tea with Miss Manly, and the night following dined at Pelham Manor, near New York, with a most agreeable family called Blaine Walker: the daughter, a pretty and charming girl of nineteen, had just become a barrister.

On Friday, the 25th, we left New York, temporarily, for Philadelphia, where we arrived about one o'clock, but found that Chestnut Hill, whither we were bound, though in the city, was twelve miles from the terminus. However, we reached it in half an hour, and found it a most attractive spot. At Mount St. Joseph's, where I was to lecture, we were welcomed by the Superior General and the Superior of the College, and immediately after luncheon taken to the enormous entrance hall of the College where the pupils were assembled, by one of whom a really beautiful address was delivered, after which a Cantique of welcome was sung by them all. After the lecture, at about five o'clock, there was a “supper” attended by a number of clergy, one of whom, Very Rev. J. Kirlin, * insisted on carrying us both home for the night to his house in Philadelphia. This was the beginning of a strong and, I hope, lasting friendship.

* Now monsignnor Kirlin.

The drive into the city proved to be a beautiful one, especially where it led through the glen of the 0040 40 Wissahicken River: it instantly reminded us of Scotland, which our host commended as correct, in spite of our confession of never having visited that country. The Wissahicken makes the glory of Fairmount Park, itself the pride, very justly, of Philadelphia. The park is, more conventionally, adorned with some fine statues, the best by St. Gaudens: that which attracted us the most was the figure of an Indian Warrior, splendid full of life, strength, character and vigour.

No doubt, the glory of this park would be William Penn's house if he had ever lived there: but he lived in the city; and, where it stands now, his house was not built till nearly two centuries after his death. Penn's statue crowns the tower of the City Hall, but of its excellence it is hard to judge, as it stands 537 feet above the level of the street. If any statue were to be there placed, it should obviously be his: but should any portrait-statue be placed at so immense a height?

The City Hall is an enormous building, and cost twenty million dollars to erect: it is of white marble, and must be one of the finest municipal buildings in the United States.

The old State House dates from 1735, and it was there that the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, and there that the famous Liberty Bell hangs, on which, I suppose, the knell of monarchy was rung.

Philadelphia preserves still (unremoved to Fairmount Park) the Carpenters' Hall, where the first Congress met, 4th September, 1770. It was at 0041 41 Philadelphia that the Federal Constitution was drawn up, in 1787, and this city was the Federal Capital of the United States from 1790 to 1806, during which period the first mint was established here. The Protestant Episcopal Church of North America was organized here in 1786; but Philadelphia has always been the Mecca of American Quakerism; and its greatest glory has been its steady and generous spirit of toleration. With so charming a host it was inevitable that our visit to Philadelphia should be entirely agreeable: we left him, with sincere regret, on our return to New York on the next day, Saturday, 26th April.

On the morrow we lunched at Englewood with Dr. and Mrs. Foakes Jackson, and in the evening dined at the Metropolitan Club, with Mr. and Mrs. Bourke Cockran, meeting a party of interesting and most pleasant friends of his, including Mr. and Mrs. Chandler, the latter a half-sister of Mr. Marion Crawford. Mr. Bourke Cockran, famous for his oratory, was presently to introduce me to my audience at the Plaza Hotel: his beautiful and interesting wife, whose sister is Mrs. Shane Leslie, was a daughter of Mr. Henry C. Ide, of Vermont, during whose official life at Samoa Robert L. Stevenson was the beloved friend of the family. Mrs. Bourke Cockran told me the following charming and most characteristic anecdote of the friend of her childhood. Finding the little girl, one day, evidently troubled in mind, he asked with affectionate solicitude what was the matter. What she had to complain of was, it transpired, her birthday: being 0042 42 born on Christmas Day she found her birthday “shoved (so to speak) aside.” Why couldn't she have been born on a common day, when people would attend to it? “I don't want my birthday,” he declared, with profound sympathy, and appreciation of her grievance, “I never use it. You shall have it. I will make it over to you.” And, with much legal ceremony, he drew up the Deed of Renunciation and Transfer, whereby he made over to her the 13th November as her birthday in perpetuity!

From the Metropolitan Club we drove to the Plaza, where we found an audience of eight hundred assembled, and Mr. and Mrs. Pullman West (President and Presidentess of New York Converts' League) on thorns lest their lecturer should again fail them. This was the only occasion on which he suffered from almost unconquerable nervousness throughout the lecture-tour. His audience was, however, unboundedly appreciative and cordial: his introducer, in an excellent speech, having certainly done all that was possible, and something more than strict verity authorized, to secure for the lecturer the interest and goodwill of his hearers. Nearly all of them were afterwards introduced, and, as each had to be thanked for kind expressions, the process was not brief. It was particularly good-natured of an audience that had been once disappointed to be so indulgent to a speaker who had, on the former occasion of their gathering to hear him, played them false.

CHAPTER VII

ON the morrow we travelled, by a pretty line, to Convent Station, New Jersey, for a lecture at St. Elizabeth's Academy and College. The place and the people proved alike delightful. There are several distinct buildings, each very large, and of excellent appearance, grouped at a little distance from each other, in a beautiful undulating park, which forms part of a considerable estate. The views from the higher points are wide and beautiful; and the interior of each building is arranged and fitted for its purpose with an excellence that could not be surpassed. That the students, whether ‘Collegians’ or ‘Academicians,’ should be happy and contented in such a home of kindness and comfort is natural, but that happiness, that evident sense of being at home, was the most striking feature whether at St. Elizabeth's or at similar seats of higher education for girls, conducted by nuns, which we visited in America.

After luncheon came my lecture, then we went over all the buildings, and spent the rest of the afternoon making friends with many of the Sisters, and being introduced by Sister Mary Vincent to many of the students, and to the Chaplain, whom we visited in his spacious, most comfortable quarters. Sister Mary Vincent is, I think, ‘Dean of Studies,’ 0044 44 or Head Mistress, of the Schools: which are, of course, quite distinct from the Convent proper, the quarters of the Community of Nuns and their Novices. We should be sorry to be forgotten by her, and are in no danger of forgetting her. It is one of the privileges of Catholics to know such people, and one which I am for ever wishing my non-Catholic friends could share with us. To very many it would, I feel sure, be a revelation. The non-Catholic, to whom Houses of Religion are a terra incognita , is apt to think of Nuns as harmless, useless, narrow, probably ignorant and bigoted, prisoners; leading an unnatural life, which must bore them; without human ties or interests; dull, starched, disinherited heiresses of life; who must certainly find death a signal of relief and release from the intolerable tedium of cloistered existence.

Of course, there are many degrees of such misapprehension, ranging from that of good-natured, condescending, and quite tolerant, compassion for a set of worthy, but deluded, creatures who imagine the ‘only way to please God is to make ourselves uncomfortable,’ to that of imagining nuns as life's failures, the ugly, the deformed, or disfigured, victims of disease, or victims of a disappointment in love, who have fled to the cloister to hide their sorrow or chagrin from the world. To this meaner, more sordid fashion, of misapprehension some of our older novelists have contributed: gorgeously ignorant of the Catholic Church, but, like the great Sir Walter himself, particularly 0045 45 alive to the picturesqueness of her ‘properties,’ they have found a perverse convenience in relegating a jilted, or superannuated heroine, or a disgraced sub-heroine, to the cloister: the ugly sister, whom no one will marry, becomes a nun.

How unlike is the reality! I have found nuns the widest-minded of good women: keenly alive to the occupations and interests of those whose vocation is the ordinary life of the world: most tolerant of imperfection and fault in others: charitable beyond measure; much less disposed than good folks outside to accuse of worldliness those whose natural bent is not ecclesiastical: singularly practical and capable in affairs; excellent organizers: far better educated proportionally than lay women, and with a frank esteem for education and letters. A widow does sometimes become a nun, but instances are not common: an elderly unmarried woman very rarely becomes one: those who enter religious communities are almost always youthful, and it is very often indeed the liveliest and most attractive daughter of the family who chooses this high vocation, or rather believes herself called to it. Of all classes of women I have known, nuns are the most cheerful. In some countries they are apt to be seriously overworked, their numbers being, however large, inadequate to the works of use and benevolence demanding their toil: the teaching of schools, parish and primary as well as those for higher education, the nursing and conduct of hospitals, as well as nursing at home in the families of the poor and of the rich; the conduct 0046 46 of orphanages, of homes for the aged and destitute poor, as well as of homes for the homeless of higher rank; the charge of penitentiaries, and of reclamation-homes for unfortunates-I say that in many countries there are not nuns enough for the work they have to do, so that they are heavily overtasked: but they neither complain nor allow themselves to seem overburdened, to be peevish or impatient. The sweetness of temper of these wonderful women is to me a perpetual marvel. I doubt much if any women ‘outside’ are so happy, or have a healthier enjoyment of life, however steadfastly their desires are fixed on a greater life to come, their unwavering, assured hope of which is an unclouded light upon their path here.

In the later afternoon, and again after supper, we were the guests of the ‘Academicians’ and ‘Collegians,’ in each of whose houses there is a large and pleasant recreation-room, furnished in the best style, where they entertained us with a charming geniality.

When we left Convent Station it was with a very willing promise to return, which we did not forget on our return to New York at the end of the year.

CHAPTER VIII

ON the next day, Tuesday the 29th April, we motored to Tarry Town, and I lectured at Marymount: and afterwards we were due, at four o'clock, at Mrs. Schuyler Warren's, to meet about a hundred New Yorkers of light and leading: but a disaster befell us-the motor-car that should have brought us back from Marymount never arrived, and it was not till long after four that a Mr. and Mrs. Degnan, who happened to come out to Marymount to visit their daughter there, kindly undertook to carry us back to New York: even then our misfortunes were not ended, for on the way we had a break-down, which caused a further delay of half an hour; and it was six o'clock before we reached Mrs. Schuyler Warren's. Only four or five out of her hundred guests remained, the rest having gone away anathematising us as faithless creatures, though the misfortune was ours, and the fault no one's but the chauffeur's. Mr. and Mrs. Degnan who had brought us from Tarry Town were kind and interesting people: Mr. Degnan a contractor, whose big work at that time was the bringing of a new water-supply to New York, from (I think) a distance of ninety miles.

On the 30th we went to Jersey City, a great but not lovely city, where I lectured in a very large hall belonging to the Dominican Sisters, 0048 48 who afterwards entertained some of the local clergy and ourselves at supper (at five o'clock) and then sent us on to Caldwell, where I was to lecture in another house of Dominican nuns. The road passes by the Hackensack and Passaic rivers, through Newark, another busy city of New Jersey, with some wide streets planted with lime trees, and a few ‘Old Colonial’ buildings, an immense number of churches, and a still larger number of factories and other industrial buildings.

Caldwell itself is quite in the country, the Convent well placed in a very elevated situation: but it was almost night when we reached it, and nearly nine o'clock before the lecture could begin. I do not know at what hour in the early morning we should have got home had we been obliged to make the journey by train; but the nuns most kindly sent us the whole distance to our own door in New York by motor.

At 10 o'clock next morning we left New York for Torresdale, in Pennsylvania, changing at Trenton in New Jersey, and arriving at Torresdale a few minutes before twelve. It is a very pretty place, lying along the high banks of the Delaware River (still very broad though over a hundred miles here from its mouth), and consisting chiefly of good houses, standing each apart in its own plot of ground and well shaded by beautiful trees. Away from the river, beyond the houses and their gardens, lies a pretty rural country, with plenty of timber. Our destination was Eden Hall, where I was to lecture, after luncheon, to the pupils of 0049 49 the Ladies of the Sacred Heart. We received a very kind welcome from the Reverend Mother, Madame Dikovitch, and also from the Mother Provincial of this order in the United States and Canada, Madame Moran.

Eden Hall is a fine house, very prettily situated, in old, well-timbered grounds, which we hardly saw to advantage as it rained heavily all the time. As it is an American superstition that England is the only home of rain, we always had a grim satisfaction in these Nemesis-days of incessant downpour!

After the lecture, Rev. Mother Moran was good enough to express a hope that I would be able to lecture at many of the Convents under her enormous jurisdiction-and I did, as it turned out, lecture at seventeen of them, receiving at each the same warm and appreciative welcome.

On May 2nd, the next day, we went a three hours' journey, to Suffern, in the State of New York, but across the Hudson River from New York City. The railway journey was pretty, but Suffern itself is much prettier, nestled between woody hills; and the Convent where I lectured has a lovely situation, high above the little town, with entrancing views, especially a long, flanking view of the whole range of the Ramona Mountains, foot-hills of the Catskills. This Academy is under the charge of the Sisters of the Holy Child, very old friends of mine in England, at whose Mother-house I gave one of the first of my lectures: that house is at Mayfield, in Sussex, an old palace of the Archbishops of Canterbury, from the time of St. Dunstan to that of Cardinal D 0050 50 Pole, Cranmer being the first Primate who never had a home there. At Suffern I counted on a cordial welcome, and was not disappointed: on this occasion, as was often to happen during the rest of our tour, my cousin sang before and after the lecture. He has a rarely beautiful voice, and an excellent knowledge of production, with a wonderful taste and expression. Here, as afterwards, he was warmly appreciated, and no doubt his share in the afternoon's occupation added very much indeed to our hearers' impression of enjoyment. On this occasion also we were, by the kindness of the nuns, sent all the way back to New York by motor.

On the next day but one, the 4th of May, I lectured at the Academy of the Blessed Sacrament, in West 79th Street, New York, to an even specially appreciative audience, only in part made up of the pupils and Community, the bulk of it, perhaps, consisting of their relations and friends. Here I had the pleasure of meeting the young widow of a young American poet, Joyce Kilmer, killed in the War. His death, as we observed on countless subsequent occasions, is felt, all over America, almost as a personal loss, by innumerable readers to whom personally he was unknown: and there can be no doubt that it cut short a literary career of immense promise. Many months after this his mother, whom I did not know, wrote to me, and thus began a very interesting correspondence. She was kind enough to send me, with some volumes of her son's poetry, which I already knew, a book of his essays that were new to me: though in bulk inconsiderable, 0051 51 they are of such excellence as to suffice of themselves to prove the writer a born man of letters; to a brilliant literary method they add a singular whimsical charm of wit and fancy, a freshness of outlook on common, even hackneyed, things, and a subtle appeal to the affections of the readers, that constitute altogether an irresistible charm, and fill the reader with sorrow that that first instalment of excellence should be the last. It is easy from them to understand how lovable, and how much loved, Joyce Kilmer was. His widow was also his fellow-poet, and her poems are upon the same high level with his.

On the following day, May 5th, I had two lectures, one in New York, at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, 533 Madison Avenue, and one in the afternoon at St. Mary's College, Plainfield, in New Jersey, at a considerable distance from New York. The former was a house of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, where I have learned to be sure of a kindly reception, but on this occasion the kindness was specially undeserved, for, through a confusion of dates, they had been deprived of a lecture I should have already given them. Nothing could have surpassed the cheerful good-nature with which the Rev. Mother made light of the mishap and the inconvenience it must have caused.

Plainfield is a beautiful spot, and St. Mary's College stands finely in a lovely situation, on the side of a high wooded hill, with a splendid stretch of country, somewhat level, but rich and timbered like a vast park, in front and to either side. The 0052 52 views in all three directions are glorious: and the building is immense, and architecturally very fine. It is the Mother-house of the Sisters of Mercy, and the Sisters have in charge a College, an Academy, and a preparatory school for little boys. Before my lecture I was taken, by Sister Mary John, over the whole of the great house, and could not sufficiently admire its beauty, and the excellence of every arrangement. Here, as in many similar institutions we visited, provision is made not merely for the usual branches of a first-rate education, but for the efficient teaching of “Domestic Science.” There is a fine suite of rooms for the accommodation of the diocesan, the Bishop of Trenton, and while I rested a little in these the Mother Superior cordially invited me to come and stay there, for some weeks, when the summer heats should have made a retreat from New York to the country desirable. I mention this as one among innumerable instances of the boundless American hospitality. To spend a few weeks in that lovely and restful spot, with hostesses so kind, and with so pleasant a companion as their Chaplain, was a temptation indeed: but our Westward route was already fixed, and soon we were to be steadily moving towards the Pacific.

The weather, until about five o'clock, had been lovely all day: but, just as we were about to leave St. Mary's College, it became nearly dark, and a furious storm of lightning, thunder and rain accompanied us to the railway station.

CHAPTER IX

ON Wednesday, the 7th May, we left New York, at 10 a.m., on our third short visit to Philadelphia, where I lectured at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, 1819 Arch Street, of which the Superior is a most witty and delightful person, Madame Gerardin, of the Dames du Sacré Cœur, an American in spite of her French name. Thence we were driven to Sharon Hill, in the outskirts of Philadelphia, for another lecture at the Academy of the Holy Child, conducted by Sisters of the same Order as the Academy at Suffern. Our drive was particularly pleasant, for it was made in most amusing and agreeable company. At the conclusion of the Arch Street lecture, we had been introduced to a Mr. and Mrs. Meneeley and to the sister of the latter, who kindly proposed conveying us in their motor to Sharon Hill. I thought this offer singularly intrepid, as it involved hearing a second lecture in about half an hour. Thus began another lasting and valued friendship. Mrs. Meneeley's sister showed her intrepidity, of another kind, by seizing the earliest opportunity of informing the author of her extreme dislike of his novel “Jacqueline”: but such frankness, from so charming a critic, was much more agreeable than the eulogy of another reader who vehemently praised, as incomparably John Ayscough's best work, a novel— 0054 54 by another writer! After the second lecture, Mr. and Mrs. Meneeley drove us into Philadelphia, and gave as an excellent dinner at the Manufacturers' Club; then took us to the station and only left us when the train was moving.

On the following afternoon I lectured, and my cousin sang, to a very large audience in a hall belonging to St. Vincent's Hospital in 11th Street, New York. The audience, however, did not consist of patients or convalescents of the hospital, but of a society of ladies and their guests, and was invited, I believe, by Mrs. De Lancy Kane and Comtesse de Laugier Villars.

Next day after breakfast we travelled to New Haven, in the State of Connecticut, where we were to lunch with Mrs. Hoppin, one of the daughters of the celebrated American author, ‘Ike Marvel,’ Donald C. Mitchell, whose works have held the American reading public for seventy years: the most famous is Reveries of a Bachelor , but I find a more subtle charm in My Farm at Edgewood.

Mrs. Hoppin met us at the station and in five minutes we were old friends. She drove us through the city, which has more of the Old Colonial character than any we had yet seen, to the famous University of Yale, where we were most kindly received by the President, who showed us an interesting portrait of the founder. Another professor took us over the University, which covers nine acres of ground in the heart of the city. As the University has flourished for nearly two hundred and twenty years, the buildings are of various dates, and varying degrees of 0055 55 architectural merit, but certainly the most peculiar were the mysterious-looking quarters of some of the students' secret clubs, where no one but the members has right of entry.

The President of Yale was our fellow-guest at luncheon at Mrs. Hoppin's home, a fascinating house built by her father, and the original of Edgewood Farm. Another guest, staying in the house, was Mrs. Clifford Winslow, an artist of distinction, who, like our hostess, has become one of our intimate friends. It was a most agreeable party, the talk lively and clever.

After luncheon we walked up the hill to the family house, where Mr. Mitchell's unmarried daughters still live, a few hundred yards from their widowed sister. It stands high above the plain, and has a beautiful view over New Haven to the sea: and the grounds, all arranged by ‘Ike Marvel,’ and planted by him with rare trees, are delightful, melting naturally into the woodlands that clothe the hill behind. Inside, the house has many attractions, extensive library, old family pictures, and old furniture: with a traditional, aristocratic atmosphere well suited to its inmates.

On returning to Mrs. Hoppin's, she divulged that a number of her New Haven friends were presently arriving to hear ‘John Ayscough.’ As New Haven is supposed to be a stronghold of Old England Puritanism I wondered at her courage.

“Won't they be frightened at such close contact with a Prelate of the Papal Court?” She laughed, but seemed to think it possible. (Neither she, her 0056 56 sisters, nor Mrs. Winslow are Catholics, but, I think quite inured to them.)

I decided, under the circumstances, not to lecture, but to read certain chapters from French Windows , with a few introductory and explanatory remarks. The result was most satisfactory: I never had a better or more flatteringly appreciative audience: and during the reception that followed we were overwhelmed with kindness. Our only regret was being able, on so short a visit, to see so little of these clever and interesting people. This was in fact one of the most delightful days we spent in America. Its end was as agreeable as its beginning; for, reaching Boston late at night, we were welcomed at the station by the Reggios, in force, and driven to our ‘first American home’ in their house.

Next morning I lectured at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, in Commonwealth Avenue, to the Community only: and, in the afternoon, spoke again at a public hall, on behalf of the Devastated Churches of France, the lecture being organised by Miss Reggio, Mrs. James Dwight, and a committee of ladies.

On the following day I travelled to Providence, the capital of the State of Rhode Island, a finely situated city, with a particularly beautiful State Capitol. There, at Elmhurst, I lectured at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, particularly enjoying a long and interesting talk with Madame de Roquefeuil, the Superior. After the lecture I was driven round the city, and shown its beauties, by some of the local clergy, who then saw me off at the station. 0057 57 Rather late at night I reached New York, not sorry to get to bed. At half-past ten next morning I lectured at Manhattanville to the pupils of the Academy of the Sacred Heart, making the third lecture in three days at houses of this order. The Superior at this Convent, Madame Burnett, is a Bostonian, a convert, I believe, and remarkably clever and interesting.

We lunched on this day with Mr. and Mrs. T. Hughes Kelly, whom on previous occasions we had had the pleasure of meeting at the houses of friends. Our talk was chiefly of books, and Mr. Kelly commended to our reading the novels of Mr. Booth Tarkington, which I did not then know. The one he gave me, The Magnificent Ambersons , I think cleverer than the more popular Seventeen. The former commemorates a sort of American rising town, and a sort of its citizens, which, we were told, no longer exists. At all events the portraiture is crisp and vivid.

This was our last day in New York, and the rest of it was occupied in farewell visits and packing. After having been for a month the guest of the Dominicans of East 68th Street, it was with grateful regret that we realised it was our last night under their hospitable roof.

CHAPTER X

AT one o'clock on the 13th of May we left New York for Albany. The journey is along the Hudson River and singularly beautiful, perhaps nowhere lovelier than at West Point. Albany, itself on the Hudson, 142 miles from New York City, is the oldest chartered city in the United States, its charter dating from 1686, twenty-two years after the cession of the Dutch Colony, then Fort Orange, to England. Charles II made a grant of it to his brother James, Duke of Albany (and York) from whom it received its present name. Though the State Capital, it is a big place, with about two hundred thousand inhabitants. It is also a place of much beauty, in an excellent position, and adorned with really splendid public buildings most advantageously placed. The streets are mostly very broad, and particularly cheerful, and the surrounding country as beautiful as any in eastern America. It has a very large and flourishing trade, one branch of which, in ales and beers, Prohibition has destroyed, and become a wistful memory, though we understood that specimen bottles are still preserved in family museums. In the old colonial days Fort Orange was the chief emporium of the Dutch trade with the Indians, on which account it was a better friend of the terrible Iroquois than it should 0059 59 have been; and Dutch Fort Orange was not always the best of neighbours to British New England. In the year of its cession to England the Dutch were, for nine years, driven out of New Amsterdam at the Hudson's mouth: after eleven years, in 1674, New Amsterdam was ceded permanently to England, and took its new name from the other title of the King's brother, James, Duke of York, and Albany.

At Albany we were met by Mr. Kearney, and Father Charles by whom we were driven to Kenwood, a Convent of the Sacred Heart where we were to stay, some miles out of the city, by the route we followed, chosen for its beauty. Kenwood is a very large group of buildings, crowning a hill from which there are lovely views over the Hudson and the Hudson valley, here very wide. As I shall later on have to speak of a second and longer visit to this charming place and its kind inmates, it need only be said here that after supper I lectured to the pupils of the Academy.

Next morning at 10 o'clock Mrs. Kearney, the wife of the gentleman who had met us on our arrival, arrived in her car to take us to the station and show us some of the lions on our way.

First we drove to the house of Governor Glyn, late Governor of the State of New York, where we were joined by Mrs Glyn: and with her went to the State Capitol which claims (with justice so far as our experience goes) to be the finest building of the kind in the whole Republic. It is more individual in design than the other State Capitols we saw, and stands magnificently. The interior 0060 60 is specially fine, the Legislative Chambers very imposing, and the ‘Stairway’ magnificent and beautiful. The room in which we waited till the present Governor of the State of New York, Governor Smith, could come to us, was huge, of fine proportions splendidly fitted and adorned, and hung with many excellent portraits of historic interest. The Governor was, of course, very busy and we did not detain him long, but he was cordial and friendly, and gave the impression of a strong man, intelligent and capable, alert and shrewd, straightforward and direct. I suppose that of all the State Governors the Governor of the State of New York is the most important, and his work the most arduous.

After viewing, much too hurriedly, the interior of the Capitol, our two ladies (one of whom had threatened terrible things if we did not properly admire it: having apparently but little confidence in the admiring capacities of Englishmen) drove us to the station, where we left them with great regret. Even if four people, who never met before, do talk incessantly and all at once, for an hour and a half, they can hardly arrive at more than a truncated friendship, unless they meet again to pick up their arguments where they dropt them. And this was not to be our good luck with Mrs. Glyn and Mrs. Kearney, for when we had, on our second visit to Albany, the very great pleasure of meeting Governor Glyn, these two ladies were engaged abroad in works of public utility. So that it can never now be known who got the best of our arguments, or, for certain, what they were all about.

0061 61

The earlier part of the journey from Albany to Buffalo, which was our destination, is beautiful: it traverses the Mohawk valley, famous now for its loveliness, once for the evil prowess of its inhabitants, the most formidable, perhaps, of all the Five Nations of the terrible Iroquois. The railway runs close to the river, and at the foot of a long wooded wall of hill. Nothing could be more smilingly peaceful than the scene is now, but that valley has witnessed ghastly things. Parkman is the archhistorian of the Iroquois in their relations with the French Colonists of Canada and the British of New England, and a shudder runs through all the pages stained with their bloody name.

After Utica the scenery is flat and no longer beautiful. At Rochester the train passes through, not over, the streets of the city: at half-past five we reached Buffalo, and were driven at once to Canisius College, where we were to be for five days the guests of the Jesuit Fathers. The next morning was spent in visiting parts of the city, and after luncheon the President of Canisius College took us to see the Bishop, the Right Rev. Dr. Turner, and his Cathedral, a sumptuous, white marble building, erected in Gothic style (by an Italian architect, we understood) not long ago, at enormous cost, on an attractive site. Also we visited the house where President McKinley died, on the 14th September, 1901, of the wounds inflicted upon him by an anarchist assassin on September 6th. His death made Theodore Roosevelt, who was Vice-President, President of the United States.

0062 62

Buffalo, though 423 miles from New York City by rail, and 295 as the crow flies, is in the State of New York, at the head of Niagara River, on Lake Erie. Its principal commercial streets are wide and busy, many of the streets are lined with trees, and the residential quarter is adorned with fine mansions standing in park-like avenues. Delaware Avenue is three miles long, and has a double row of beautiful trees on each side. There are several public monuments, and the City Hall is an imposing building of Maine granite. The electricity of the city, whether for lighting, street-railways, or factories, is generated by the Niagara Falls. Between 1880 and 1900 the population of Buflalo more than doubled, rising from 155,137 to 352,387: the latter figure has now been left far behind.

In the evening I lectured at D'Youville Academy, conducted by the Grey Nuns, a fine house in a beautiful part of the city, with a fine auditorium, or theatre, for concerts, lectures, etc.

On the following morning, accompanied by the President of Canisius College, we went to Niagara and spent the day there.

Niagara Falls are twenty-six miles from Buffalo, the road, and the lands on either side of it, almost a dead level, and without feature or beauty. The city of Niagara Falls contains many factories, and a population, I should guess, of some forty thousand-souls. The land immediately adjoining the Falls on either side is a State reservation: on the American side, the New York State Park (115 acres), on the Canadian, the Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park, 154 acres.

0063 63

As everyone knows, the Niagara River flows out of Lake Erie and down to Lake Ontario, falling 326 feet in its course of 36 miles. The two lakes and the river joining them form, in this part of the continent, the boundary between Canada and the United States. The fall nearest to the former, or ‘Canadian Fall,’ has a drop of 158 feet, and is 2,640 feet in its bow: the American Fall has a drop of 169 feet, and a bow of 1,000 feet. Fifteen million cubic feet of water dash over the falls every minute, of which nearly nine-tenths are said to rush over the Canadian falls; the depth of water at the crest is mostly about 4 feet, though at the apex of the Horseshoe Fall it is 20 feet.

So much for statistics, of which no one can think till he has been looking for a long time at the most famous falls in the world. Our first view was from near the American end of the bridge connecting the United States and Canada. From that point even the nearest end of the American Fall is at some distance, and the whole mass of falls curves away till, where it joins the Canadian shore, it must be a mile away. We then went to a projecting bracket of rock immediately above the first of the American falls, whence the enormous mass of water hurls itself down into the caldron, a hundred and fifty feet below, from a point close to the spectator's feet. The noise of its thunder is stupendous, and the mist of spray rises high above the river in a chill cloud.

Turning westward, and following the park towards the rapids above the falls, one comes upon a succession of quite lovely points of view: above the falls 0064 64 the Niagara River is very wide, and all a wild hubbub of broken water, falling many feet to the mile, and boiling over hidden rocks and boulders. Goat Island divides the American and Canadian falls, and thence innumerable magnificently beautiful views, up river and down, come upon one at every step. Niagara City is, plainly, hideous: but it is much screened by the trees of the park, and to get out of sight of it altogether is not difficult.

Before luncheon we got as far as the beginning, from the American point of approach, of the Canadian falls. After luncheon we went under that one of the American Falls which screens the only natural opening behind the falling sheet of water, called the Cave of the Winds. All one's own clothing has to be removed, and replaced by shirt and trousers of thick flannel, over which is worn an arctic-looking costume of oilskin. By a wooden enclosed stairway one then descends the face of the rock to a point by Luna Island, with the Bridal Veil fall thundering down and drenching with water and spray the medley of broken and fallen crags and boulders below, of which the largest is called the Rock of Ages. By a succession of very narrow wooden bridges from rock to rock one then passes in front of, and then back behind, the Bridal Veil Fall. It might perhaps be better said that one passes through it: for it is really through the backward fringe of the fall that the bridge leads: it is water, not spray, that smashes down upon the visitor: water bitterly cold that chills one in an instant, renders it impossible to keep the lips open, and impossible to breathe. Still 0065 65 it would be a pity to miss this, unless delicacy of heart render the shock and chill too dangerous.

Soon after this we crossed to the Canadian side, where it seemed both strange and homely to see the British flag, and the Royal arms, everywhere. It was my first experience of re-entering the British Empire, by crossing a bridge, five minutes after leaving another country. An electric railway was presently about to convey passengers down the Niagara Gorge, and bring them back by the American side: this trip we made, and it should on no account be omitted. The line keeps close to the brink of the precipice, and the views everywhere are truly magnificent. The walls of rock fall sheer to the rapids a hundred and seventy to two hundred feet beneath: on both sides of the river there is abundant timber and undergrowth, and the precipice is not a monotonous line, but has many curves and projecting headlands. During the seven miles of rapids here the river falls 110 feet, it boils over and around innumerable boulders and rocks, and has great whirlpools, and some still, black pools that have, somehow, a deadlier look than the wild rush of white waters that seem dashing every way. Having heard so much of Niagara all my life, I confess I had been prepared for disappointment: but the grandeur of the scenes proved equal to every description, and the beauty of them far beyond what I had been told.

On the day but one following we returned for a second visit to Niagara, leaving Buffalo earlier: and on that occasion devoted all our time to the E 0066 66 ‘Canadian Falls,’ which are, no doubt, even more impressive than the American. We could not stay so late, as we had to leave Buffalo for Detroit at six in the evening.

It was, indeed, with regret that we left Canisius College and the Jesuit Fathers who had treated us with unbounded kindness and hospitality. The President, Very Rev. Michael Ahern, entirely spoiled us: of all the kind people we met in America, he was one of the most kind. Like many Jesuits, a first-rate man of science, travelled, learned and cultured, no one could be more modest, no one's conversation could be more interesting and delightful.

He went with us down to the harbour and stayed there till the boat was moving.

CHAPTER XI

LAKE ERIE, which we were now to cross to Detroit, has an area of 9,960 square miles, large enough to take in all Wales, with Wiltshire to fill up the balance, over. It is 573 feet above the level of the Atlantic, 326 above Lake Ontario, into which its waters are carried by Niagara River. Of all the five great lakes it is the shallowest, having an average depth of only 70 feet, and nowhere a depth of more than 216 feet—the greatest depth of the comparatively little Lake of Geneva is 1,622. Its navigation is dangerous and difficult, and bad storms are frequent. From December to March it is frozen, and navigation ceases. It is about 240 miles long, and Buffalo and Detroit are at its extreme points, east and west.

It has a wonderful fleet of passenger boats, and our own, the Detroit III, was a splendid vessel, of immense size, and with all the accommodation of a first-rate hotel. The dining-saloon is equal in size and appointment to that of a great ocean-liner, and the corridors, lounges, and reading-saloons are finer than many liners can show. The sleeping cabins are large, light and airy, each with its own separate dressing-room and lavatory with hot and cold water laid on.

Leaving Buffalo at six o'clock on Sunday evening, the 19th of May, we found ourselves next 0068 68 morning coasting the Canadian shore, low but pretty, and, about seven o'clock, reached Detroit, the chief city (and naturally not the capital) of the State of Michigan. Here a New Yorker would consider we were ‘in the West:’ and Michigan itself pleads the soft impeachment of ‘Middle West.’ We arrived, before our hostesses were up, at 384 Jefferson Avenue East, a street about ten miles long. where we were to be the guests of two ladies who had long been friends by correspondence, Mrs. O'Brien and Miss Anne Flattery. They soon appeared and made us immediately at home: but very soon after breakfast we had to leave again, for the present, to go, by the Pére Marquette railway to Toledo, in the State of Ohio, where I was to lecture that evening. At the station we were met by the President of St. John's University and Mr. Theodore McManus, who drove us to the Bishop's House where we were to stay. The Bishop, Monsignor Schrembs, had unfortunately to be away on official visitation, but he wrote most cordially commending us to the care of his Chancellor, Monsignor Schwertner, brother of our New York host, of the Dominican Fathers. Monsignor Schwertner proved a charming host and made our stay at Bishop's House most agreeable. Monsignor Schrembs we afterwards heard spoken of, all over America, as one of the foremost of the American bishops.

After luncheon Mr. McManus called for us and took us in his car over the city, and then far out into the country to his estate there, where he has built a picturesque sort of bungalow country-house, 0069 69 for use until a larger one close beside shall have been built.

We returned to the Bishop's House for supper after which I lectured at the Ursuline College to a large audience, and then went to Mr. McManus's house in the city, where we had the pleasure of meeting his wife, like her husband, an ardent book-lover. He is, we learned afterwards, himself a writer of repute, but of this he breathed no word. From his talk about books and writers he should, one would say, be a thoughtful and capable essayist. On the following morning he drove us to Detroit, about sixty miles: the country mostly very level, and without much feature.

After luncheon, our hosts of 384 Jefferson Avenue drove us to the Academy of the Sacred Heart, in Lawrence Avenue, where I lectured, and we received a kind welcome from Madame Power, the Superior. Thence we had to go by train to Monroe, at no great distance from Toledo, whence we had come in the morning, but in the State of Michigan. There I was to lecture again, in the evening, at St. Mary's Academy, which is attached to the Mother-house of the Sister-Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary; it is a very large and fine group of buildings, the Convent, Academy and College, and Orphanage, each separate. The Superior of the Academy, Mother Domitilla, showed me over the place while my cousin went through his songs with his accompanist.

There is here an immense auditorium and it was well filled. On our arrival in the hall we 0070 70 found the big stage occupied by a large orchestra of the pupils, and an equally large choir of theirs occupied the front of the hall in plano : near, but beneath, the stage were two raised seats (terribly like thrones) on which we were to sit: an excellent address was read by a senior student, and their orchestra and choir gave a really fine concert, after which came the lecture, followed by a further selection of music and my cousin's songs. Mother Domitilla had not dropped a word of this ceremonial prepared to do us honour, and, like Dr. Johnson on a certain occasion ‘I had nothing ready’ by way of adequate reply.

Unfortunately, and without warning, I had a sufficiently alarming fainting fit just as I was going to bed. Our quarters were in the extremely comfortable house of the Chaplain, an agreeable Belgian priest whose name, I am sorry to say, I have forgotten.

Returning next morning to Detroit we were met at the station by Miss Flattery, picked up Mrs. O'Brien at their house, and drove out to Grosse Point, a lovely suburb of Detroit, whose beautiful houses lie along the shores of Lake St. Clair (26 miles long, 25 wide) that empties its waters, through the Detroit river, into Lake Erie. Very soon after passing Henry Ford's motor factories the whole of the road out from Detroit is lined with extremely fine houses, not only large, but often of considerable architectural excellence. To English eyes they seem, sometimes, too fine for the extent of ground on which each stands: but this is not due to any defect of 0071 71 taste, but simply to the prosaic fact of the enormous taxes levied on land on which houses stand. One feels that each of these great houses should have a park about it instead of standing a few yards from its neighbours to right and left.

At Grosse Point itself the ‘homes’ are specially attractive, and their situation on the lake-shore is ideally lovely.

We lunched at one of the most beautiful of these houses, Marcour, the home of two sisters, Mrs. Francis Dwyer and Mrs. Rucker, friends of our hostesses. The rooms of this house are delightful, and full of beautiful objects. The ladies are, I think, French Canadian by descent, as are a large proportion of the upper classes of Detroit, which was founded from Canada, and was originally a Canadian fort and outpost, and a Mission of the Canadian Jesuits. At four o'clock we drove on, to the Academy of the Sacred Heart, for another lecture, returning to Detroit just in time for dinner.

On the morrow Mrs. O'Brien and Miss Flattery drove us to see Belle Isle, the beauty spot of the environs of Detroit: a long narrow island, like a floating wood, in the Detroit River, with Canada on one side and Michigan on the other. Thence we drove out to Grosse Point to tea with some other friends of our hostesses, Mrs. Lothrop and her sister, the Duchessa del Monte: there were quite a number of agreeable people to meet us, not many of whom seemed to do much with their tea when they got it: Americans have not yet, as a rule, learned really to like tea in the afternoon, though they make it the 0072 72 pretext for asking their friends to come to see them. They have remarkably good teas, and perhaps, if they did full justice to them, would spoil their dinners, for they usually dine earlier than we do.

The house of the Duchessa del Monte and Mrs. Lothrop was most attractive and had just been moved as it stood from another site, owing to a division of family property. Later on, in California, we watched a house in process of removal, but that was a mere bungalow, a frame-house of no size, whereas this, at Grosse Point, was a large house, with charming interior decorations, floors, ceilings, wall-hangings and chimney-pieces, etc.

One of the guests, Mrs. Sheldon, took us after tea to see her own house, also at Grosse Point, thoroughly worth a visit, for the singular beauty of the house itself, its large grounds, and the art treasures it contained.

CHAPTER XII

FOR our last evening in Detroit our hostesses arranged a reception of their friends in our honour: about a hundred of them attended, and it was a thoroughly agreeable party. Many of the guests were of old French Canadian families, and some were of old French Louisianian families: it was my first meeting with any of the latter, and they proved interesting and charming people, with a cachet of their own. George Cable's tales of the old South are among the most fascinating of American works, and these Louisianians reminded one of his people.

Many of our American friends expressed regrets that, ours being a Lecture Tour, we had so little leisure for seeing as much as they would have wished of American society: but I can only say that what we did see left an excellent impression, and added very much to the pleasure of our visit. In their unremitting efforts to increase our enjoyment, Mrs. O'Brien and Miss Flattery were much aided by the kindness of their cousin, Mr. Frederick Flattery, who took endless trouble to carry out their plans on our behalf. These three friends were not only unweariedly kind, but excellent company, full of good stories, and always cheery and amusing.

On the following morning, May the 23rd, they ‘carried us’ on our way to the station, to pay our 0074 74 respects to the newly appointed Bishop of Detroit, whom we were lucky enough to find at home.

After a railway journey of about seven hours we reached South Bend, in Indiana, at quarter to seven in the evening, where we were met by Very Rev. J. Cavanaugh, C.S.C., President of the University of Notre Dame, whose happy guests we were to be for nearly three weeks. It was largely owing to the President's invitation that we went to America at all, and indirectly to him that the success of the lecture-tour was owing: for he interested in us his friend, Mr. Earl Dickens, who, from the date of our arrival at Notre Dame, took upon himself the organization of all the rest of the tour, extending to over seven months, in the United States and Canada. This involved an infinity of labour, an enormous mass of correspondence, the obtaining and arrangement of lecture-engagements, drawing up of routes and time-tables, and the obtaining of a vast mass of essential information concerning hotels, steamships, etc. I can never help feeling somewhat ashamed of the intolerable labour all this threw upon Mr. Dickens, by whom it was undertaken and carried out as a work of simple friendship: had he been a business agent I should have owed him a heavy debt of gratitude, but, though the business he did for me was arduous and very long-continued, it was no business matter at all, but an exercise of most energetic friendship.

The University of Notre Dame is, I imagine, one of the oldest, if not quite the oldest, of the universities of America, apart from those of the quite 0075 75 eastern States. It was founded over sixty years ago in the pioneer days of the Middle West. It does not yield in charm to any even of the most famous universities of New England and the East. It has a great number of very attractive buildings, grouped about a lovely Campus, which forms part of an estate of several thousands of acres, and much of this land is of great beauty, all of it unspoiled. Though this part of Indiana is somewhat flat, it is by no means a dead level, but has plenty of undulations, of rich agricultural land, wide pastures, and delightful copse. The St. Joseph River winds between wooded slopes and bluffs, a broad, deep stream undisfigured, and of a peculiar sylvan charm. Nowhere, in our drives over the university lands, did we see their smiling glades and meadows outraged by abominable hoardings with screaming advertisements of boneless fish, hotels with ‘running water’ in every room, or tobacco best to smoke and best to chew. I wonder if these advertisers would care to know that there really are travellers who would rather sleep under a haystack or a railway-arch than at an hotel that is so shamelessly willing to turn beautiful America hideous, and to go without cigarettes rather than smoke those thrust into notice by fifty yards of hideous painted hoarding, so planted as to spoil the beauty of lovely woods bordering lovely meadows. For my part I should joyfully become the humblest member of a League to bind its associates from trading with any firm that advertised with this selfish and abominable disregard of its country's charm. England suffers from such 0076 76 gentry, but not to a hundredth part of what America suffers. Nine out of ten railway-journeys in the eastern United States are made hideous, that might be most beautiful, by the outrages of these wood and field advertisers. The further one travels West the less is American landscape thus profaned.

The beauty of the University demesne is much increased by its lakes, one of which is surrounded by woods, the other by softly undulating meadow-lands studded with trees. There are many buildings, grouped about the campus, or a little removed from it: the central building, with its golden dome, the large church, the presbytery, which is the residence of the Provincial of the Society of the Holy Cross, half a dozen Halls, the Theatre, the Law School, the Chemistry School, the Gymnasium, the Infirmary, the Kitchens, the Museum and Art Galleries, a Restaurant building, where students who choose to do so can board à la carte , instead of paying for their board to the University by the term: and besides these, at a little distance from the University group of buildings, the Novitiate, the General House' of the C.S.C., the Dujarie Institute for Lay Brothers, the Mission House, the Seminary, etc. The multiplicity of buildings all belonging to the same institute gives much more the impression of a University , as distinct from a College, than is the case where all is contained in one pile of buildings, however large. And this effect is strengthened by the sense of growth illustrated by the various ages of the different buildings: one can understand a college completed in one plan, and at one time, but hardly a university. 0077 77 The number of undergraduates is about seventeen hundred, the number of professors, clerical and lay, about forty.

We remained long enough to appreciate the excellent spirit of the place, natural in a university old enough to have a tradition. Notre Dame ranks high not only as a seat of learning, but for sports, and its moral is first-rate.

CHAPTER XIII

OUR quarters were in the Central or Administrative building, and were most comfortable: we had, besides our bedrooms, a large sitting-room, where we had the pleasure of receiving frequent visits from the President and his professors, and from some of the students, too. The look-out over smooth lawns to the chapel and other buildings was very academic and serenely restful. At the base of this Central Building are the enormous dining-halls, decorated by mural paintings of illustrious cities of the world. The first floor is crossed by very wide corridors meeting under the dome, and also adorned by mural paintings, giving the history of Columbus. Our own rooms opened on to these corridors, and also the Reception Rooms, large and dignified, finely and suitably furnished, and hung with interesting portraits and paintings. The height and width of these corridors, their intersection at the great central space crowned by the dome, and their traversing the whole floor, secures refreshing coolness in the heats of summer, which were now beginning. To this floor the steps of the main entrance lead up, and the view thence across the Campus, to the avenue along which is the road to the town of South Bend, is most attractive. The beauty of the Campus is largely due to the care and zeal of one of the Lay Brothers, whose memories 0079 79 go back to the early days of Notre Dame, a skilled landscape gardener, an enthusiast in botany, flori-culture, and arboriculture. With him I had some interesting talks, and would have liked to have more.

Our days at Notre Dame were very pleasantly spent: after Mass and breakfast, a much accumulated correspondence had to be dealt with: then perhaps a lecture had to be given: and I was much relieved to find how kind a welcome the undergraduates gave me. This was my first experience of lecturing before the members of a University, and I had been nervous enough, dreading lest such an audience might be more critical than indulgent. Perhaps the President hypnotised them into approval. After dinner, there might come a little rest and reading, then a drive with the President to some place of interest or beauty in the neighbourhood: then supper, and very often another drive.

Sometimes we dined with the Provincial at the Provincial House, and that we enjoyed very much. He was always as kindly and hospitable as he was amusing—with a pawky wit, and a lively force of repartee, particularly alert when an opening for the chaffing of Englishmen occurred. In this he was ably supported by two of his ‘Councillors,’ Rev. A. B. O'Neill and Rev. Charles O'Donnell: the latter a poet of distinction. * Another of his Councillors, long known to me by correspondence, was the Rev. Daniel Hudson, for many years past the Editor of the “Ave Maria.” This magazine, published at Notre Dame, is known all over the

* And now himself Provincial of the Society of the Holy Cross.

0080 80 Catholic world, and to its introduction of my works to American readers I owe a very large proportion of my ‘public’ in the United States and Canada. It was a great pleasure to meet personally one whose letters had made me regard him, for years, as a friend. At the Provincial's table we met also, on different occasions, two bishops; Monsignor Alerding, the bishop of the diocese (Fort Wayne), a gentle, kindly man, much respected and loved: and Monsignor Tacconi, who has been for many years bishop of Ho-Nan in China. We were much impressed by this missionary prelate, finding him simpatico, clever and acute, and wholly absorbed in his distant, lonely work. To my cousin he was specially attracted and cordially invited him to visit him in China.

One afternoon we were present at an Oratorical Contest in the theatre of Washington Hall: the prize was won by a youth named Joseph Tierney, and no doubt he was the best of the speakers: but all the speeches struck us as being extremely good.

Another afternoon we devoted to watching a Base Ball match between the University of Notre Dame and the University of Purden, Notre Dame scoring thirteen, and Purden one. I enjoyed it so well that it was a matter of regret I had so few opportunities of witnessing Base Ball matches during our time in America.

Another afternoon we spent in the University Museum: the building, recently completed, is very fine: and it has a large library containing many 0081 81 rare and valuable works, especially a wonderful Dante collection, also a series of picture galleries enriched by many examples of the work of famous masters; but its gallery of original portraits appealed to myself as much as anything it contained; and I was also specially interested in a collection of antique, and often historical, ecclesiastical vestments and ornaments.

CHAPTER XIV

ALTOGETHER I lectured or spoke about seventeen times during our stay at Notre Dame, but not always at the University: once being at South Bend, once at Chicago, and twice at St. Mary's College, an institution in charge of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, about a mile and a half from the University. Its surroundings are beautiful, and the College and Convent buildings are charmingly grouped in lovely grounds, and fine in themselves. On the second occasion of my speaking it was not a lecture I delivered at St. Mary's but what is called the Baccalaureate Address, on the occasion of their ‘Commencement.’ This name sounds peculiar to English ears: for ‘Commencement’ means the end of the Academic year, when degrees, diplomas or prizes are conferred: and the college, school, or university breaks up for the long vacation. But I understand that the same term is in use, in the same sense, at Trinity College, Dublin.

On the Sunday evening after our arrival at Notre Dame I had to speak at a banquet of the Knights of Columbus, given at Oliver's Hotel in South Bend, being one among many speakers, of whom the best was the President of Notre Dame, who is indeed an orator of long and widely established fame. Unlike many orators he is unfailingly amusing.

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South Bend is a pretty city, lying along the banks of the St. Joseph River, with a large manufactory of motor-cars&mdash the Stuydebaker; and a large Polish, in addition to its native American, population. It has excellent shops, cafés and hotels, of which latter the Oliver is the principal. I can think of no English town of the size and importance of South Bend with so good an hotel.

I confess to disliking banquets, and the thought of having to speak at the end of one makes it much worse. We attended three at South Bend, the one I found most agreeable being in honour of the President of Notre Dame, at which I had no speech to make. After fifteen years of Presidentship Dr. Cavanaugh was about to retire, and this was a public farewell to him from his neighbours. Like some marriages, the company was mixtæ religionis: for the President's admirers are by no means confined to those of his own Church. Excellent speeches were delivered by the‘Episcopal Bishop,’ the Presbyterian Minister, and the leading Jew of South Bend, each of whom spoke with genuine affection and respect of their guest of the evening. Indeed there was no mistaking the really affectionate feeling towards him of all the company.

One of our drives, and a specially beautiful one, during our stay at Notre Dame, was to a place called Fort St. Joseph, near the little city of Niles. The site of the fort is marked by a boulder and platform, raised on a low ridge above the green water-meadows through which the St. Joseph river 0084 84 flows between thickly wooded banks. A very peaceful spot now, it was once an outpost, exposed to fierce and frequent attack by the Indians. Hard by lies buried one of the French missionary fathers who travelled all through their hostile region alone and on foot.

The concluding days of our stay at Notre Dame gave us the opportunity of seeing a University ‘Commencement.’ By the night of Friday, June 6th, alumni and their friends began to arrive: many from very distant parts of the Union, such as Texas: many had, in fact, very recently arrived from Europe, where they had been fighting in the Great War. On Saturday night there was held a ‘Camp Fire,’ i.e., an informal meeting at which speeches were made and songs sung, by alumni and professors who had fought, or acted as Chaplains, at the front.

On Sunday morning there was a High Mass, and the large church, crowded to its utmost capacity, made a fine and moving sight. The University church at Notre Dame is not, like many college chapels, a simple oblong chamber of moderate size, divided into chapel and ante-chapel: but a capacious cruciform church, with nave, aisles, transept, choir and retro-choir, Lady Chapel, and side chapels. Its interior decoration is rich and picturesque, and it makes an ideal setting for a function.

At this Mass is preached the ‘Baccalaureate Sermon’: on this occasion it was by no means an Academic discourse, or learned, but a very simple talk from myself to the young men whose University days were now ended.

0085 85

At the end of Mass an enormous ‘Star-spangled Banner’ was laid on the floor of the sanctuary before the high altar and then blest: then the whole congregation, the clergy in their vestments, and the laity with them, went in procession to the flag-staff in the Campus, where the flag was hoisted and ‘broken.’

In the afternoon new Law Schools were dedicated and opened—with many brilliant speeches, chiefly delivered by eminent jurists, alumni of the University; in these orations not only the glory of Law was celebrated, but its chief professor at the University during many years, Colonel Hoynes, a distinguished veteran of the war of North and South. Naturally there was later on a banquet, and a copious dessert of speeches, of a high level of merit.

On the following day there was the Base Ball match: my attention to which was rather disturbed by a visit from the President, as it was beginning. At the Conferring of Degrees in the evening the Baccalaureate Address was to be delivered by Senator Walsh, a United States Senator renowned for his oratory. He telegraphed that he could not get away; would I oblige the President by taking his place? To oblige the President I would have stood for Congress myself: so all the afternoon I had the agreeable consciousness of an unprepared speech to deliver, instead of listening myself to an expected oration from a famous speaker, whom all were eager to hear.

The Conferring of Degrees was an interesting ceremony; and gave me the occasion of returning thanks for my own Honorary Degree of Doctor of 0086 86 Laws, conferred at the commencement of 1917. I may repeat here that I am proud of being a member of the University of Notre Dame, and shall always think with filial and loving affection of this American Alma Mater of mine, and of its boundless hospitality.

CHAPTER XV

ON the morning of June 10th, after delivering the Baccalaureate Address at St. Mary's College, and lunching there, we left Notre Dame for Milwaukee, where we arrived at quarter-past eight that night. Among those who saw us off at the station was the President's young secretary and namesake, John Cavanaugh, who had throughout our visit devoted himself to us, and done all he could to make our stay pleasant. From South Bend to Chicago is about 100 miles, from Chicago to Milwaukee 85. For the last three weeks the weather had been fine, but rather hot: at Milwaukee we found it much cooler, which we supposed to be due to its position on Lake Michigan. At Milwaukee we were the guests of another University, of which also I have the honour to be an Honorary Doctor of Laws: and we were met at the station by Rev. Albert Riester, the Father Minister, answering to the Bursar of some of our colleges in England, the President being absent for a few hours in Chicago.

The University of Marquette is in charge of the Jesuits, and has over three thousand members: its standard of studies is very high, and it occupies a high position academically among the universities of America, its Faculty of Medicine especially enjoying a wide repute. It stands on Grand Avenue, 0088 88 in one of the best situations in the city. The avenues of Milwaukee are famous, and Grand Avenue, broad and lined with noble elms, has the greatest name. We drove at once to Marquette, and soon after supper were not sorry to get to bed, as early on the morrow we had to go, for the day, to Madison.

Milwaukee is much the largest city of the State of Wisconsin, but Madison is the capital. The journey of eighty-two miles is really beautiful; in fact Wisconsin struck us as the most beautiful of the States so far seen by us. It gives the impression of one vast park; indeed, the timber area is over 40 per cent. of the whole State: the trees are very lovely, and it is incomparably green.

Madison is a charming city, beautifully laid out on a delightful site, covering an eminence between two lovely lakes, Mendota and Monona. The streets are handsome and full of fine trees; and the State University makes a dignified and most attractive centre. Its buildings are well disposed, and handsome in themselves, gaining immensely from their position and the trees and gardens about them. At the station we were met by the Chaplain of the Dominican Convent, Father Hengell, with whom we lunched: enjoying extremely his friendly and pleasant talk. His house immediately adjoins the Convent and both are situated on the summit of a high wooded hill with beautiful views over Lake Mendota. Soon after luncheon, the sky, that had been exquisitely blue, became suddenly black, and there was a furious storm of thunder, lightning and torrential rain, which however passed almost 0089 89 as suddenly as it had come on, and, by the time we had to set out for the Catholic Women's Club, where I had to lecture, it was fine again. Considering what the weather had been when those attending the lecture had to set out, the audience was good, and it was particularly appreciative. Afterwards the President of the Club, Mrs. Halligan, and her husband, took Father Hengell and ourselves to dinner at the Madison Club, charmingly placed on a bluff overlooking Lake Monona. They then drove us to the station, whence we returned to Milwaukee by another line, to enable us to see a string of lakes—Oconomowoc, Okautchee, Lagawicka and Pewaubee, all really lovely.

It was late when we got back to Marquette, but our host was waiting up for us, and came to have a chat. The President of Marquette is a young-looking man whose face would make a fine study for a portrait of one of the first companions of St. Ignatius: intellect, will-power, and serene strength, all subdued to one purpose of Service, make a countenance of singular supernatural force. He looks born to be President of a University, and one does not need to be told (as we were told) that he has done wonders for Marquette. President Noonan had to tell us of a plan he had made for our next day's pleasure, which was duly carried out.

At 10 o'clock next morning we, accompanied by Father Riester and Father Devlin, were driven by Mr. Val Zimmerman to Lake Beulah, a lovely drive of thirty-five miles, through pastoral country, all dairy-farms of rich, undulating meadow-land; 0090 90 we passed through Waukesha, a good-sized town, and Mukwonago, as pretty a village as any we saw in the United States.

Lake Beulah has so many windings as to look from some points like a wide river flowing, between banks of low hills, covered with woodland, and broken by stretches of smiling meadow sloping gently down to the water's edge. Here the University of Marquette has a property, wlth With a large villa, rather like some Alpine hotels, whither the Community goes for Retreats, and for a villeggiatura during the summer heats. It stands, surrounded by trees, on a bluff above the lake, and has delightful views.

The drive homeward in the evening light was even prettier than it had been in the morning.

On the next day we called upon the Archbishop of Milwaukee, Monsignor Messmer, who returned our visit in the course of an hour, and was most cordial and friendly. After luncheon we were taken for a pretty drive along the lake-front, where there are many fine residences and beautiful views.

On Saturday morning, June 14th, we visited the Sanatorium of the Sacred Heart, a very large and fine institution in charge of the School Sisters of St. Francis: it is a Water-Cure institution according to the system of the famous priest, Dr. Kneipp. Its glory, architecturally, is the magnificent chapel, as large as some Cathedrals, and splendidly beautiful. So short a visit as ours scarcely did it justice, but we were wanted in the auditorium, where an 0091 91 orchestra of nuns gave us a concert of instrumental music, very finely rendered. Each of these nuns has been specially trained to become the teacher of music in one of the colleges or academies of the Order.

At half-past two I lectured in one of the halls of the University, seizing the opportunity to express my gratitude for the honour it had done me, two years before, in conferring upon me its Doctorate of Laws. At five o'clock we left Milwaukee for Chicago.

CHAPTER XVI

WE reached Chicago after another pleasant journey through the lovely rural scenery of Wisconsin, and were driven to the charming house of Mr. Edward Hines, who was to be our host, at Evanston.

This was not, however, our first visit to Chicago, as we had been thither during our stay at Notre Dame.

On that occasion we had been met at the station by Mr. and Mrs. Bremner, Very Rev. E. J. Fox, and Fathers McCarthy and Geoghegan, who drove us to Mr. Bremner's house for luncheon, and thence to Lake Forest, where I had to lecture.

One frequently hears Chicago spoken of slightingly: but it is in fact a city of surprising beauty. The part called “The Loop,” i.e., the core of the business centre, is neither uglier nor more beautiful than is usually the case with crowded hearts of big mercantile cities: but even here there are fine streets and fine buildings. The Loop, however, covers but a small part of the enormous area of Chicago, which extends to several hundred square miles. It has a frontage to Lake Michigan of thirty miles, and an enormous ‘Park system,’ and all this region of lake-shore and park is really beautiful: and, that region apart, there is an immense area covered with most attractive avenues. In many of these 0093 93 the residences are fine and architecturally satisfactory: along Lake Shore, which is the ‘millionaire quarter,’ the buildings are among the best to be seen in America. Lake Forest is not technically in Chicago, but from the centre of the city till Lake Forest is reached there is a continuous succession of private houses, clubs, and institutions, well designed, well built, and well placed. It is a drive of some thirty miles, with an unending series of beautiful peeps of the lake, through lovely trees, or open glades of the woods, in clearings of which the houses have been set. At some points the road is carried by bridges over charming little wooded valleys, or gorges, running down to the shore of the lake.

The Academy of the Sacred Heart is in one of the most beautiful parts of Lake Forest: and the large building, itself very picturesque, stands finely, with lovely views of woodland and lake. Madame Fox, the Superior, is a singularly charming, as well as clever and capable, lady, with whom I enjoyed an interesting talk that I only regretted could not be longer.

On our way back to Chicago we stopped at Evanston, where the famous tenor, John McCormack, was to sing: Mr. Bremner having with singular kindness arranged to drop us at Patten Hall, where the concert was to take place, and come out for us again from the city when it should be over. The hall is immense, and we were told that it seated on this occasion an audience of eleven thousand. Father Fox and ourselves were fortunate, late comers as we were, in getting good places behind the stage, 0094 94 where we heard the great singer excellently. Chicago is said to be the most musical city in America, and has the honour of being the first to appreciate Gallicurci: certainly its reception of John McCormack was splendid.

After the concert Mr. Bremner drove us to his own house, and finally to that of Father Fox, where we stayed the night. This most agreeable first impression of Chicago was now to be confirmed by a charming week there.

Throughout our stay we were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Hines, in their sumptuous home at Evanston, and were most efficiently entertained by their young son and daughter. They themselves had been called away to Yale, almost on the day of our arrival, where they were to receive the diplomas of their eldest son, who had gone from his University to fight in France, and been one of the last victims of the war. Later on we were fortunate enough to meet Mrs. Hines, and thank her in person for her abundant hospitality.

On the night of our arrival, late as it was, the Pastor, Very Rev. H. P. Smyth, very kindly came round to arrange for my Masses at his church, a few hundred yards away. On the morrow we lunched at the South Shore Club, an enormous and beautiful building on the edge of the lake; it was the most beautiful club building I had ever seen, nor do I believe any city can show a finer. Its rooms are vast halls, hung with most interesting portraits and pictures, and furnished and decorated in perfect taste. Later in the afternoon I had a very 0095 95 long-standing lecture engagement to fulfil at Power's Theatre, one of the leading and longest-established theatres of Chicago. On our way into the city we passed through the Campus of the University, whose very fine buildings are ranged along it. The lecture I was to deliver was for the benefit of the ‘Big Sisters,’ an interesting and most useful society of Chicago ladies, whose purpose is explained by the name of their organization. Each lady-member endeavours to act as a ‘big sister’ to girls less fortunately placed than herself, helping them in just the same ways as an elder sister would.

My correspondent concerning this lecture had been Miss Anna Ward, one of the Big Sisters, who had represented Mrs. Edward Hines, as hostess, at our luncheon-party at the South Shore Club.

I imagined it would please her and her fellow-members if I spoke of the work of the Big Sisters, with an outsider's appreciation. But I had not reckoned with the American fondness for the ‘personal note’; and she was troubled beyond measure by my giving what might seem like an advertisement of her Society, and came to me to beg I would add a supplementary lecturette unconnected with the Big Sisters. This she was able to do while my cousin was singing. His reception, from a specially musical audience, was particularly cordial and flattering.

As the afternoon was very warm, and the theatre filled with fluttering fans, it seemed to me inhuman to inflict a further talk, but my duty was obedience, and I did as I was asked.

0096 96

On the next afternoon, after lunching with Miss Anna Ward, and her friend, Mrs. McIntyre, at the Women's Athletic Club, we went with Father Fox to visit the famous Stock Yards. I confess that nothing would induce me to repeat the visit: nor do I intend to describe it, though the description would bear little resemblance to the ghastly series of pictures in “The Jungle.”

On the morrow, June 17th, Miss Anna Ward helped us in the rather lengthy ceremonial of obtaining tickets for our impending journey to Denver, Grand Canyon, California (via the New Mexico desert) Portland (Oregon), British Columbia, the Canadian Rockies, etc. These tickets, when issued, proved to be six feet long, but, considering the enormous distance covered, very reasonable in price.

After lunching with Miss Ward again, at the Women's Athletic Club, we drove out to Longwood, where I lectured at the Academy of Our Lady, in charge of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, on the occasion of their ‘Commencement.’ The Archbishop of Chicago presided, gave the diplomas and prizes, and introduced me in a graceful and particularly kind speech. Monsignor Mundelein is one of the greatest figures of the American Catholic world; a marvellous administrator, very essential in the ruler of one of the most enormous dioceses of the whole Church, and everywhere spoken of as the ‘next American Cardinal.’ Immensely tall, with a fine and graceful figure, a handsome powerful face, genial manner, and an excellent speaker, 0097 97 he thoroughly looks his part. After this lecture we were driven far out into the country to Elmhurst, where, at his delightful country house of Cool-na-Creeva, we were to be the guests for the night of Mr. Murphy, and his daughters and their aunt. We had not yet met any of them, but their friend Mr. Scannell O'Neill, who had long been one of the greatest of my American friends, had told them to be our friends also. Indeed we found them very ill-pleased that our visit could only extend to twenty-four hours: and, long before the first of those hours had passed, we were ourselves heartily sorry our stay had to be so short, The three girls, Miss Veronica, Miss Ursula, and Miss Mollie, proved very good company, with enough character between them for another three: and, with their father and their aunt, made up a singularly interesting and pleasant family group. At Cool-na-Creeva, as in many other houses which opened wide their doors to us, we found the absurdity of the common idea that there is no family life in America, that Americans are too hurried for homelife, and can never be happy under their own roofs. But our glimpses of American home-life had to be provokingly brief, as we were always ‘for the road,’ and always keeping up to an itinerary that carried us many thousands of miles, and at every halt was marked by lecture-engagements fixed for a certain day and hour.

CHAPTER XVII

ELMHURST , on the fringe of which, with views over the pretty open country, Mr. Murphy's house of Cool-na-Creeva is situated, belongs to a type of American place which has no exact counterpart in England, or perhaps in Europe. It is neither city nor town, nor is it like what we understand by a village. Our villages consist chiefly of cottages, with a farm-house or two, and perhaps a manor house, a parsonage, and possibly one or two largish houses, the doctor's, and maybe the neat home of some widowed or spinster lady: and often enough our villages contain cottages only.

Elmhurst, and its congeners in America, is a thoroughly country place, and has no suburban smack. But the houses are mostly those of wealthy owners, there are very few cottages, and there is no air of rusticity.

After twenty-four most pleasant hours at Cool-na-Creeva we quitted it, with great regret and a willing promise to return in the autumn, to go back to Chicago where I lectured at St. Francis Xavier's Academy, which adjoins the Mother-house of the Sisters of Mercy. After this we dined with Miss Anna Ward and her mother at the Edgewater Hotel, a huge and very attractive building on the shore of the lake. Lake Michigan, though, 0099 99 like the other great lakes of North America, of fresh water, is really an inland sea, of three times the area of Wales, with a slight tide; and it is the only one of the great lakes lying wholly within the territory of the United States.

That Chicago lies along the shore makes the greatest charm of the city, and the lake breezes do much to temper its summer heats.

After a most agreeable evening we returned to our charming boy and girl host and hostess, in the very sumptuous motor-car placed by them at our disposal throughout our visit.

On the following day we lunched at Glenview, a most fascinating Country Club: my cousin and the juniors riding out there, while I was driven thither by Mrs Bersback, a young niece of Mr. and Mrs. Hines, with another guest of theirs, Miss Bannon, an extremely entertaining Southern lady. In the evening we were the guests of a society called The Mediævalists at a banquet given in our honour at the University Club, a large and very fine Gothic building in the city, one side of which is on the famous Michigan Avenue. The Mediævalists are not exactly middle-aged, nor, in mufti, do they suggest the Middle Ages, though they have a ‘habit,’ with which on this occasion they dispensed for the sake of coolness. We found them excellent hosts, and they proved most encouraging and appreciative listeners.

It is part of their ritual to ‘heckle’ the speakers of the evening, but this ‘habit’ (more alarming than their cowls) they also laid aside out of kindly 0100 100 deference to the proverbial timidity of an Englishman abroad: though they indulged it freely in regard of the other speakers of their own society. One of the most prominent of these was Monsignor Kelly, President of the Catholic Extension Society, who had lately returned from a visit to the battle-fields of France and Flanders, and gave a most interesting description of them.

The next day, Friday, June the 20th, was the last of our stay: after some good-bye visits, notably to Miss Anna Ward, by whose kindness and care the pleasure of our visit to Chicago had been assured, we dined for the last time with our young hosts at Evanston, bade them farewell, and drove into the city, where I was again to lecture at St. Xavier's Academy. Thence we went to the station, and boarded our train, which set out, on its long journey to Denver, at twenty minutes after eleven.

We were not due to arrive at Denver till the day but one following.

CHAPTER XVIII

DURING Saturday, 21st June, we were passing through the States of Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. Of the former on this occasion, it being night, we saw nothing. By daylight we were in Iowa.

Though the frontier lines of all the younger States of the Union are ruler-drawn, north and south, east and west, it would be a great mistake to imagine that each state is in appearance a replica of its neighbor. The contrary is the case: one has not long entered a state before perceiving it to have a different face from the one last left behind.

Iowa, for instance, is not at all like Illinois. It is almost exactly the same size, having an area equal to that of England and Wales, and like Illinois is a Prairie State: but it strikes one as greener, and its large areas of ‘corn,’ i.e., of maize, give it a less European aspect to the English eye. It is nearly as level as Illinois, having no mountains or what we should call hills: and no bluffs, except along the river-courses, and many of the smaller rivers are without them. The wheatfields of Illinois look flatter, and Iowa has more woodland. The maize-fields, in June, were vividly green, and, one would say, ‘maize-brakes’ would be a better name for them: often they seemed moist and oozy. The whole state is a very gently tilted, table-land, 0102 102 900 feet above the sea. The soil, one of the richest in the world, and the state as a whole agricultural, in spite of 20,000 square miles of rich coal-field. In Iowa one feels one is really ‘West,’ which I never succeeded in feeling in Illinois.

Nebraska is larger than Iowa by about 20,000 square miles. It is also a prairie state, but it has an upland air not realized in Iowa: the westward tilt upwards is now much steeper, the eastern region being twelve hundred feet above the sea, the western six thousand. In appearance, at all events, it is drier than Iowa, and warmer: and the rainfall in the latter is in fact greater (33 inches compared with 21), and the mean temperature of Nebraska about four degrees higher. Nebraska has many high sandhills covered with scrub bush. It also grows much maize, as well as tobacco and sugarbeet: but it rears as well great numbers of horses, cattle, sheep and hogs, and one here begins to see the great, unenclosed ranches of stock-raisers, the genuine prairie of romance.

To me there is an immense and singular attraction in these wide, free spaces, empty and lonely, but not melancholy: smiling, clear and clean; out of man's eye, out of sight of everything except God and the sun. I cannot find this vastness monotonous, nor think it dull. They who call it ugly must, I think, have ugly eyes: they who call it dull must think there are no events but of man's making, and have no conception of Nature's.

The nearer one mounts towards the ‘Divide,’ beyond which the slope is downward to the Pacific, 0103 103 the emptier grows the land: cities cease, and towns are fewer and smaller; lonelier and lonelier become the rare and widely separated homesteads. Here and there are oddly lovely river-reaches: twists of sandy bank, low but steep, with patches of dark green scrub nestled under them, then levels of sand, through which the narrow ribbon of the summer stream curves.

Early on Sunday morning we were in the State of Colorado and entering the confines of old Spanish America: and our road steadily, though very gradually, inclining upwards. This State takes name from its great river, Colorado, the ‘red-stained’ river. It is much larger than the British Isles, and is a high dry table-land, gabled by its vast mountain-range. Mounting towards the Rockies from the east, we crossed an immense tilted plain, broken by few and small trees, a measureless range for cattle and sheep. But the plain ends in the Rockies and their foothills, and in the Rockies of this state there are more than a hundred mountains exceeding thirteen thousand feet in height. The highest summit is fourteen thousand four hundred and sixty-four feet above the sea. Denver, which we reached between seven and eight on Sunday morning, lies in a plain five thousand one hundred and ninety-six feet above sea-level, and is called the Mile High City. It stands on the South Platte River, in view of the Rocky Mountains. Founded in 1868 as a mining camp, it is the State capital, and is now a large and beautiful city with wide streets, in many cases shaded by trees, more than sixty churches, a Catholic and an 0104 104 ‘Episcopal’ Cathedral, a Mint, and a fine Capitol, admirably placed among avenues and parks on very high ground. Denver has also a University and many public schools, excellent hotels, and a very beautiful park. It has a splendid climate, dry and invigorating, with a mean temperature of 48°, and annual rainfall of only seventeen inches. Its position as the centre of a mining industry raised it from a camp to the metropolis of an enormous State: and, above all, the neighborhood of the fabulously rich Leadville Hills. More recently it has achieved a new importance as a health resort, and as a summer station for wealthy visitors from the south-eastern States flying from the heats of their own summer.

At the station we were met by Mr. Gallagher, our host, who drove us first to the Cathedral, hence after my Mass he took us home to breakfast. A lawyer by profession, he had lately acquired a predominating interest in the Shirley Hotel, and was living there with his wife and little girl. It is a fine building in the best position, and in every way luxurious. Here during our two days in Denver we were Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher's guests.

After luncheon, on this day of our arrival, they drove us to Loretto Heights, twelve miles out in the county, with grand views of the city, and of the Rocky Mountains. The Academy of Loretto Heights stands on a bold ridge of hill, the ground falling away from it in steps to the plain, beyond which lies the vast crescent of the Rockies. It is a huge house, over which we were taken by one 0105 105 of the nuns, a convert from Judaism and a most interesting person.

Here I lectured, and then we had to return to the city for a banquet given by the Knights of Columbus at the Brown Palace Hotel—very large and fine, though in a less attractive situation than the Shirley. After the banquet there were many speeches besides my own. The other people's I enjoyed, but personally I dislike speaking at banquets, never feeling so much at ease as when speaking from a platform raised above my audience.

CHAPTER XIX

THE following day, Monday, 23rd June, was one we specially enjoyed. It was a holiday, with no lectures, and on it we first entered the charmed region of the Rockies.

Soon after breakfast, Mr. Cochrane, a friend of our host and hostess, called for us in his motor, and drove Mrs. Gallagher, her daughter Marjory, and ourselves, out to the mountains. For twenty-five or thirty miles our road was across the plain, which is, however, by no means a dead level. Then, rather abruptly, the mountains begin: and the road is a series of zigzags, rising very rapidly. This road was only completed recently, so that we were lucky in being enabled to get high and deep into the mountains in the short time we could spare. To see what we saw, in part of a day, would, on foot, be a question of days: for behind each hill is another, higher than itself.

It is impossible to give in words any idea of the beauty and magnificence of this scenery. Its variety is also marvelous: every twist of the terraced road presents a new view: and as one rises higher and higher each new view is grander than the last. At first there is always on one side the enormous panorama of the plains with their mountain rampart, but this view itself changes much, as one mounts higher above it. Then the road passes behind the 0107 107 first outpost wall of hill, and it is all mountain, gorge, and mountain. Some of these gorges are very wild, rugged, precipitous, rocky and trackless, steep bare funnels of red: others green and cool; the road often passes through shady belts of wood: then runs along a bare shelf of the mountain-side. Yet between that mountain and the next there may be stretches of upland pasture, tenderly green. Ever so high up one may cross, for a mile or more, islands of parky meadow-land, sheltered by woodbelts and spinneys, and then, turning a corner, find oneself on a brackety jut of rock a couple of thousand feet above a savage gorge that runs up another three or four thousand feet, without tree or herbage.

On this occasion we had two objectives: Lookout Mountain, and Mount Genesee, from each of which there were magnificent distant as well as near views. The latter, Mount Genesee, with a few acres of rather level summit, is a peculiarly attractive point. Numbers of large butterflies, rare and lovely, were enjoying the summer sun and air: there seemed to lie around it an empty circuit, free of very near mountains, then a wide and deep chasm, beyond which stands a wall of huge mountains: behind which are innumerable high peaks, Pike's Peak, eighty miles away, rising to fourteen thousand one hundred feet, Mount Evans, etc.

In a few days, from the summit of Pike's Peak itself, we were to be looking back towards Mount Genesee.

In the evening Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher took us for a very different, but beautiful, drive round the 0108 108 great park adjoining Denver. On the following day, after luncheon, we parted with great regret from our kind hosts and left Denver for Colorado Springs.

This was a short but beautiful journey through lovely upland country, the road trending always uphill till Palmer Lake is reached, 7,247 feet above sea-level: after which there is a gradual descent of about a thousand feet to Colorado Springs. Throughout these highland regions of the far west the air has a splendid clearness and purity, and has an effect of cheerfulness and vitality. The road from Denver to Colorado Springs is not a straight line drawn across prairie, but curves along the river-sides and lake-sides, with ridges of wooded hill not far off, and sometimes near oddly architectural-looking, detached islets of steep, rocky hill, abruptly rising above the grassy upland.

At Colorado Springs we were to be the guests of the Sisters of Charity (Mother Seton's) and at the station their Chaplain, Father Riordan, met us and drove us to Glockner Sanatorium, of which, and its adjoining hospital, these nuns are in charge. Their house is on the outskirts of the town, in a marvelously lovely situation, facing Pike's Peak, the base of which is only a few miles away.

Sister Mary, who was then only Acting Superior, met us with a hundred regrets for the absence of Sister Rose Alexius, the actual Superior, who was. attending a great Conference of Nuns at Chicago: later on we met Sister Rose, and she became, and will always be, one of our greatest friends: but 0109 109 her lieutenant (shortly her successor), Sister Mary, was from the first moment so kind to us, so unwearied in devising schemes for our comfort and enjoyment, that we could not imagine any hostess surpassing her, Indeed these two friends are never to be forgotten: two more perfect women we could never meet. All nuns take three vows, of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience, but I think Mother Seton's daughters must have added a fourth—of Friendship.

Glockner is a wonderful institution, and it has been brought to its present pitch of excellence by Sister Rose, during fifteen years of loving rule. Colorado Springs has a wide and ever growing reputation as a health-station, and especially for diseases of the chest; and the house of these Sisters of Charity provides a perfect home for patients of all denominations—indeed there are more non-Catholics in it than Catholics.

On the day after our arrival we were driven to Cheyenne Cation Cañon, an exquisitely lovely gorge on the outer fringe of the Rockies; the whole way to it is indescribably beautiful, the road winding along by a river, overhung by trees, with great sentinel rocks standing up into the valley at every bend of its course. These rocks are, indeed, mountains in height, though often so slight of bulk, in proportion to their height, as they tower upwards, as to seem Titanic spires. Owing to the depth of the valley and its lovely trees, the effects of light and shade and of colour add immeasurably to its beauty. At its end, where the mountains to right and left close in, there are seven high and beautiful waterfalls.

0110 110

From Cheyenne Cañon we drove to Williams Cañon, beyond the little alpine town of Manitou, a very lively little resort, with a holiday air, consisting of chalets, big hotels and “pensions,” and shops crammed with tourist-objects. It is a pretty place immediately under the mountains, and the road from it to Williams Cañon is lovelier still, following the course of a rapid mountain stream.

At Williams Cañon, or Canyon, itself, the road becomes more remarkable—a sort of cutting, extremely tortuous, between innumerable weirdly shaped and high rocks, of a hot red colour, contrasting startlingly with the sheer blue of the sky. The odd form of the rocks, bristling up out of the narrow and twisted valley, makes it unlike any other cañon we saw in America. It has few or no trees.

Remarkable in itself, it is more remarkable for its great cave, discovered not many years ago by some boys at their play, and now called the Cave of the Winds. It would take a geologist to describe it intelligently. I can only say that it consists of more than one cave, on different floors, connected with each other by natural corridors, inclined planes, and stairways; many of these opening into smaller caverns, the larger being lofty and of considerable size. All are hung with stalactites, with stalagmites rising in many instances from the floor to meet them. In some instances stalactite and stalagmite have actually met and formed a column, in others they are on the point of meeting, with only a few inches, or a single inch or less, separating the downward spiret from the upward. 0111 111 If broken off and polished by a lapidary, the points of these stalactites and stalagmites make a beautiful semi-transparent stone, somewhat resembling alabaster, or “Mexican” onyx. Of course it has long been forbidden to break them off. In some places the incrustation of the walls looks like soft whitish moss, though in reality so very hard that only a blow from a hammer would break off a fragment.

One tiny opening in a corridor is called “The Bridal Chamber” because a couple chose to be married there not long ago. I do not understand they were celebrated for anything else.

CHAPTER XX

ON the following day, June 26th, we made a fairly early start for Pike's Peak; Sister Mary and my cousin were anxious I should let one of the doctors examine me before deciding to go, as many persons, especially those who are no longer young, suffer so much from the altitude as to make it dangerous for them to attempt this expedition. But as I was quite sure I should go, and did not want to first trouble a doctor and then perhaps disobey him, I would not be examined. All the effect of the altitude I noticed was a certain “buzziness” in the ears, and that sudden rapid movement, especially in climbing stairs or slopes, was not advisable.

Our trip, however, was to be entirely by motorcar, a new road having been made to the summit of the mountain, 14,109 feet above the sea-level, about 8,000 above the level of Colorado Springs.

This is the highest motor-road in the world, and it must be one of the most lovely. The views at every turn are of supreme beauty, and of infinite variety. The road is finely engineered and built, though at certain corners a nervous traveller might think a wall a desirable addition; for these corners are too abrupt for a long car like ours to take them in one curve, but backing is necessary, and the backing brings the car so near the edge that one does 0113 113 wonder what would happen if some of the loose pile of stones were to rattle away. It is also rather a suspense when a long string of motor-cars coming down the mountain meets one going up, and has to squeeze past.

I think it was here that we first saw the weird results of former forest-fires, afterwards to be a very familiar sight in California, Oregon and Washington. Sometimes a mere patch, often many acres, of wood-land has been burnt, and the charred trunks of tall trees stand up, black and weird pillars, from ground whence all the undergrowth has been destroyed, and lies bare and slaggy, or patched with fresh herbage.

The views out across the plains (themselves highland table-lands) are of enormous extent, and singularly beautiful; the wealth of colour—purples, reds, rose-tints, and vehement blues—under the vast turquoise of the sky, being marvellous. Then the nearer, alpine, scenery grows with every few hundred feet of ascent, more entrancing. Finally, at the summit, is attained the view of the whole massif of the Rockies of Colorado, which is hundreds of miles in breadth. As for its length, it stretches, far beyond sight, for thousands of miles northward to Canada. The top of Pike's Peak is not in fact a peak, but a saddle, and was free from snow when we saw it, though lower down we had passed through some deepish drifts, and some fairly extensive snow-fields. The latitude of Pike's Peak is about that of Naples, and I suppose the altitude of perpetual snow is considerably lower than it is in Switzerland, where much lower summits are never snow-free. H

0114 114

Near the summit of Pike's Peak we saw some musk-rats, but not many; they are numerous enough but apparently cautious and shy. We saw, lower down the mountain, as we had seen also at Mount Genesee, the quaint and fascinating little chipmunk, not at all shy, but very much alert. In the prairie-lands round Colorado Springs we saw thousands of the queer little marmots called prairie dogs.

Our driver was not anxious to let us stay long on the summit, as he himself “felt the altitude,” and had seen many persons faint there, and remain an alarmingly long time without consciousness.

On the way down, at a mountain chalet, we found an excellent luncheon, advertised as a ‘chicken dinner.’ Chicken and beefsteak are the meats of America; mutton uncommon, veal rare, and joints of beef not seen once for a hundred occasions on which beefsteak is offered. It is hard to persuade an American that the English do not live entirely on beefsteak; and I do not think anyone believed me when I said that in America I ate more beefsteak than I had eaten in all my life before.

On each of our days at Colorado Springs we were driven to beautiful places, the most notable being the singular region called the Garden of the Gods.

It should be explained that at this particular point of the Rockies they have no real foot-hills, but the great mass of mountains rises up, an abrupt wall, from the table-land on which it stands. Nevertheless the table-land is itself ridged with long terraces of slight elevation, and to these the old Spanish adventurers and colonists have left the name 0115 115 mesa , which means ‘table.’ Between Manitou and that part of Colorado. Springs which till recently was called Colorado City—and was once the State capital—there is more than one mesa, more or less parallel with each other. In the dip between two of these lies the Garden of the Gods. It is not flat, but roughly accidenté: and from its uneven surface rise many detached rocks of varied shape, often brightly red, though sometimes nearly white, and often like rough, thick spires. They rise in some instances to a height of three hundred feet. The effect of their strong colour-contrasts, under so brilliant a sky, of their weird shapes, and of the wild desolate emplacement, is fiercely picturesque. Not far from Colorado Springs a sort of smaller garden of the gods has been enclosed, planted with trees that have flourished admirably, and interspersed with charming shrubberies and flower-gardens, by the Palmer family, who have a large house in its midst, called Glen Eyrie. In the pioneer days of this part of Colorado— English pioneer days, not Spanish—the Palmers were very prominent people, and I believe they are still large property-owners hereabouts.

To the Garden of the Gods we drove several times, once in the late evening: but its appearance is more striking under the sharp lights of midday, or morning, than when its vivid contrasts of colour are toned down by twilight. Another pretty drive is across a few miles of cultivated prairie to Austin Bluffs, a tangle of small hills and dells, partly covered by low scrub and trees, whence there are wonderful 0116 116 views across prairie and mesa to the great mountains. On two evenings of our stay at Glockner I lectured, and my cousin sang, to such of the inmates as cared to attend, and some of the ladies and gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Every evening he sang in the beautiful chapel, during Benediction.

Sister Rose Alexius returned from Chicago before our visit ended, and we had the opportunity to begin that friendship with her which was developed later in the year at Cincinnati.

On Tuesday, July 1st, we left her hospitable roof, with most sincere regrets at parting from Sister Mary and herself, and many others of these wonderful nuns. Their chaplain, Father Riordan, had been unwearyingly kind and cordial to us also.

CHAPTER XXI

WE left Colorado Springs about five on Tuesday evening, and on Thursday morning at 8.40 reached Grand Cañon. This journey of about forty hours was extremely interesting: the country through which it carried us different from any we had yet seen. After leaving Colorado Springs the line runs almost due south, continuing this course for three hundred miles till Las Vegas is reached, almost midway east and west, across New Mexico, but in the north of that State. During the whole of that three hundred miles the line lies at the foot of the Sierra Blanca, a vast mountain wall, forming indeed the main axis of the Rocky Mountains in this region. Trinidad is the last town of the State of Colorado, and about twenty miles beyond it the line passes between the Sierra and the group of mountains called Spanish Peaks, between thirteen and fourteen thousand feet in height. The general height of the Sierra Blanca is about twelve thousand feet.

At Las Vegas the line, still skirting high mountains, turns west by south, towards Albuquerque, after which its general trend is directly west. These mountains are the Las Vegas, Santa F6, and Taos ranges, all of great height, and still making up the main block of the Rockies. To give a general idea of the route here, one would say it passes, much 0118 118 above the level of the roots of the mountains, along a cornice, through long and wide valleys, not much twisted; these valleys are not arid-looking, but often plentifully wooded, and forests run up the mountains themselves to a great elevation, often covering their ridges as well, giving them a shaggy, fringed outline. Sometimes the line skirts, and occasionally it crosses, fine rivers of much beauty.

After Albuquerque, however, the character of the country changes: for the line makes across the Desert of New Mexico, the same Desert becoming more and more marked after the state of Arizona is entered. It must be remembered that whether the road skirts high mountains, or crosses the Desert, it is always upon plateaux high above sea-level. The Desert is not at all reminiscent of that of northern Africa. It is not of sand, but of a soil which would, if irrigated, be very fertile: though often level for vast tracts, hills, or even high mountains, are seldom out of sight, and often not distant. And from the level surfaces rise not infrequently isolated clumps of rock of weird form. Indian villages and hamlets are frequent, and give a special character. Here was an ancient semi-civilisation, and here, to some extent, it still lingers half-heartedly. Though all this is a region of precious metals and precious, or semi-precious, stones, the present Indians are simply husbandmen. Their hamlets are groups of the abodes of tillers of the soil. Personally I doubt if they were ever miners: we know how bitterly the Spanish pioneers were constantly disappointed in their hungry expectations of finding 0119 119 Indian villages (or ‘cities’ as they liked to think them) where gold, silver, and gems were common. In few of the pueblos did they find any of these precious goods. There are still towns of the Moquis Indians, where all evidences of civilisation point to a tradition of agriculture: there are found traces of ancient irrigation, by canals and aqueducts—no mines. In the Salt River Valley alone there are 150 miles of main canal, without counting the lateral ducts leading from these. I am convinced these Indians were concerned how to make food grow out of the and desert, not with the precious but useless minerals that might lie hidden beneath it.

The desert region, if not treeless, is very sparsely varied by anything higher than shrubs, even shrub growth being scarce enough. It has however, some plants and even trees found nowhere else in the United States. Among the shrubs the commonest is the creosote bush, four or five feet high, with shiny leaves, yellow blossoms, and white, fluffed seed-balls.

The desert-plants have two principal methods of retaining what moisture they can gather (1) either by storing it, as the cacti do, or (2) by having hard polished leaves which permit as little evaporation as possible. The weirdest and most characteristic of the desert-trees is the Suhuaro (pronounced ‘Soowarro’) a giant cactus growing as high as fifty feet. Its sturdy and lofty central column, with lateral columns, have the look of huge, weird candelabra. Next in order of importance comes the cactus-like Ocatilla, consisting 0120 120 of a bundle of long thorny whip-lashes, sometimes fifteen feet long, bunched together at the root, and often called the Devil's Coach-Whips. In the spring these long whips are covered with beautiful crimson flowers, but the spring was over when we crossed the desert. The desert has millions of prairie-dogs, some foxes, many jackals and coyotes, some chipmunks, and, in the near hills, mountainlions. It has the only poisonous lizard, the ‘Gila Monster’, fourteen to twenty inches long: salmon-pink with black spots, and hand-like claws. He is said to be sluggish in general but very agile when driven to attack, and, once he has bitten, to hang on like a bulldog. The poison gland is in the chin, and the act of biting forces out the venom into the saliva, which entering the wound dangerously affects it. The bite, however, is said not to cause death.

The further west one goes the more arid and empty the desert becomes. Indian pueblos are no longer, or very seldom, seen near the line: the vast expanse is more and more rarely broken by mesa , or rock islands, and every indication of water seems to disappear. It is said that year by year till very recent times this desert has exacted its toll of human life, for those endeavouring to cross it have found the water-holes on which they counted dried up, and their bones now whiten in the fierce sun.

But even in this area of the desert high hills were seldom altogether out of sight, though often very distant. So far as I could judge from so distant a view these hills no longer suggested volcanic 0121 121 origin. They appear to be prolonged ridges, of rather uniform elevation, without peaks.

Late on Wednesday afternoon we ran into a terrific thunder-storm. For some time we had seen ahead a wall of almost black cloud, reaching from the horizon to the zenith, and stabbed with lightning-flares, occasionally zigzagging obliquely, but more commonly like tall, perpendicular trunks ending at the base in root-like forks. As we entered the storm zone, it seemed as if the flaring sunlight were pursuing us into the blackness: the rain was coming down in sheets, and the hard, baked, surface of the desert splashed it up again in tall spirts: every furrow was a brimming water-course, and rivers filled what had been parched gullies a couple of hours before. The storm seemed to be moving swiftly eastward, and it did not take very long for us to traverse its zone. I believe that within a few days of such a storm the visited area becomes covered with tender green herbage and myriads of lovely flowers. Also I am bold enough to believe that some day American enterprise will reclaim millions of acres of this so-called desert, which is desert only so long as it is left without irrigation. Where so much rain falls much might be caught, stored, and distributed. Where the Indians of a stone-age civilization could do what they did: making with their hands water-channels sufficient to irrigate land which would feed a population of two or three hundred thousand: what might not the modern American do, with his vast capital, his engineering skill, and his defiant enterprise?

0122 122

Very early on the morning of Thursday, July 3rd, we left the main line at Williams, and struck north, directly at right angles with it, sixty miles, to Grand Cañon, the objective and terminus of a short branch line.

The road trends steadily upwards: and the character of the country has altogether changed before Grand Cañon station is reached. The latter portion of the way is lovely, passing through green shady glades: sometimes grassy, though more commonly with deep undergrowth of grey sagebrake. Where, as here, a flooring of sage-brush is contrasted with the greens of forest trees, it adds to the general beauty: though, where it is the only vegetation, its ashen tint, unrelieved for miles by any other, has a death-like monotony. What relationship the plant bears to our sage I cannot say: in colour and growth it closely resembles it, and in its habit of becoming shabbier as it grows bigger: its average height appears to be about three feet.

CHAPTER XXII

THE terminus of the railway at Grand Cañon represents no town or village, but an hotel with its dependent buildings. This is the El Tovar, an excellent establishment, with over a hundred bedrooms, first-rate food and attendance, and built in a style suitable to its situation. It is not a city palace dropped in the wilderness, but a large chalet. It stands on the very rim of the Cañon, and the views from its large dining-hall are of a unique beauty.

To describe the Grand Cañon is hopelessly impossible: nor will I try. But the best way to give an idea of it, to those who have none, is, I believe, this:—Imagine a chasm three hundred miles long, a mile deep, and varying from eight to thirteen or fourteen miles in breadth at its rims: conceive that into this chasm many hundreds of mountains have been dropped, rising to five thousand in height, and filling it with an unearthly chaos of most weirdly shaped; most variedly coloured, pavilion-like masses of rock, through which a red river (whose entire course has two thousand miles of length) runs: a river of no great breadth, say a hundred yards, in proportion to the huge prison along whose floor it runs, never throughout the three hundred miles of the stupendous gorge less than a mile beneath the plateau on either side.

Of course this conception, though it seems to 0124 124 me to be the only one that can create any idea of the reality, is not itself real. The wild, inhuman, chaos of mountains were not thrust down into the stupendous chasm, nor were they piled up in it by volcanic action: but the making of the chasm made them: once, incalculable ages since, the river ran across the plateau-surface, precisely as one sees a runlet of water flowing through a shallow crack in the parched surface of a clay field, bring down its walls, so was it here. But the river did not, like the runlet, dry up and cease its work. It flowed on, and incessantly brought down more wall, carrying away, down its gradient, all that was friable and soft from those walls. Heat and cold helped, and furious rains helped; all that could rot and fall fell: but the longer, in inculculable time, the process continued, and the river worked itself a lower course, the harder and less destructible was the material acted on. Wherever it was hardest it resisted longest. So that what was soft has gone, and the perdurable rock has remained, or been destroyed incomparably more slowly: where there was a core of rock of defiant hardness it still stands even in summits, though none of those summits rise to the height of the Cañon-rims Where they are highest they are like the peaks of tents. At the lowest they are immense bases, mountain bases now, though once these mountains were as much part of the solid plateau-mass as a statue was once an indistinguishable part of the marble block out of which the sculptor called it by removing all around—making or adding nothing.

0125 125

The Colorado River has not done all the work: it has had millions of journeymen assistants. For, as each mountain began to disengage itself, it added rills and streamlets of its own: as each became a mountain it added torrents: and the action of these was for ever busy separating it more distinctively from its neighbour embryo-mountain. In no case was there any escape for falling water except down into the Colorado drain.

In historic time, I imagine, frost has been a minor agent: low down in the Cañon there is no frost now. But in remoter ages it may have been immensely colder, and frost have helped the splitting of the harder rocks: but always its agency must have worked most vigorously nearest the summits of the slowly disengaging mountains, least vigorously nearest their bases, where the temperature would be higher, and the opposed material more obdurate.

I keep calling the terrible chaos of heights within the chasm ‘mountains’—and it is to be remembered that the highest mountains in England, Wales or Scotland are much lower than they.

In many reaches of the river its immediate perpendicular rock-walls (which are not the walls of the Cañon) rise to five thousand feet.

The grand result of all this action of river, sun, rain and frost, in measureless time, is unique on earth.

It is pre-eminently awful: the awe of it strikes more overpoweringly than the terrible beauty. It is a stupendous Inferno, of a beauty unparalleled 0126 126 elsewhere. But the sense of its beauty is incomparably less than the oppression of its wonder. It is an advertisement of ruthless force, operating in every second of perhaps millions of years. Nowhere else is the enormous sense of Age so crushingly realized. The strata it has taken thousands of ages to cut through and expose one by one, one has to realize it had taken previous æons of time to build up, before the earliest exposure began.

Most travellers in western America have seen pictures of certain points in the Grand Cañon: it must be borne in mind that the hugest of these can attempt but the view at that special point—and the Cañon is three hundred miles long. Some of these pictures are wonderful achievements: but the artist of the best would be the first to admit that as a presentation it is a failure: he attempts only an impression, local, without context, a colour-study, or a study in unique forms. No picture can ever present the Grand Cañon.

It is beyond possibility to form an exaggerated idea of the Grand Cañon: a wrong one may easily be formed, is sure to be formed from any attempt to visualize verbal description: but it will be inadequate, not exaggerated.

At one side of the garden of the El Tovar Hotel runs a low stone wall: beyond falls the precipice down into the Cañon. From a few yards away nothing of the Cañon can be seen: for nothing in it is as high as its lips: only the further lip, thirteen miles away, level with the spectator, can be seen; draw nearer by a few feet, and nothing of the Cañon 0127 127 is seen yet, but you realize, with a kind of horror, that, between the low wall and that further rim, there must lie an abyss, over a dozen miles in width Stand at the wall, and the terrific hidden thing claps your mind and daunts your spirit at one incurable stroke: its immense confusion, its turmoil of colour, turmoil inhumanly silent, its soundless battle of colour, and mad orgy of shape. No one who has read Dante can help instantly thinking of him. If he had stood here his Inferno would have been incalculably more august and great. Into this pit would he have hurled its stupendous action, and it would have gathered immeasurable force from the terrible congruity of emplacement. The beauty of the Grand Cañon is supremely pitiless, disdainful of mankind, and proud.

Such shapes are nowhere else, nor such colours. The shapes, in reality being at every moment in course of being altered and ground down in an inexorable mill, seem static and eternal. The colours change notably with every fraction of time. The Cañon reach is spread with tents: pavilions of shell-pink, salmon-pink, flesh-coloured; ocean-blue, forget-me-not blue, hyacinth, purple, lilac, lavender; nile-green, forest green, emerald; orange, primrose, saffron, lemon, sage, citron; scarlet, gold, azure. Each pavilion rises to a centre pole, with bulges of lower pole-heads thrusting up, then a sloping fall to where the tent-pegs hold its base: the base multilateral, or rounded, or quadrilateral: and each pavilion is a mountain, whose base stands on ledge or terrace high above the Cañon floor. The river 0128 128 is almost, perhaps hence quite, invisible; even that explanation of this mad exploit of Eternity kept out of mind.

Close underneath lies a little mat of green, a thousand feet sheer beneath: it is really a thicket of a mile's length.

The Cañon contains thousands of valleys, gorges, baby cañons: hundreds of them are even here in sight: steep, arid, sulking in shadow or flaunting in the sun's stare: all inhospitable, unfriendly.

After all I am not attempting to describe: for one thing noted, a hundred are left out: the air and light alone, the miraculously clear yet coloured atmosphere would demand pages of description, with their incomparable effects of colour and of nearness which never suggests neighbourhood, but rather fierce aloofness: the apparent complete absence of animal life in what is a vast prison of it: the virginity and loneliness of these depths and distances: their menace—the ever present pulse of a sense that the chasm holds a million dangers to him who would trespass in it.

All these things, and others innumerable, go to make up the netted effect of this amazing spectacle, which is a thousand spectacles yet a unit of experience.

If one looked once down from that wall and went away, the vision would last as long as life. But, of course, one does not go away. One must look from a hundred places, from points many miles away, and others near at hand, but immensely different—and all the same. We stayed for a few days: sometimes 0129 129 driving for many miles along the rim, stopping over and over again, lingering, but never able to look at anything, or think of anything, but the Grand Cañon. Sometimes driving, as if away from it, through Tusayan forest (as big, they say, as Wales), only to get back to it at Grand View. That name I hate: every view of the Cañon is belittled by calling it grand: but the place is glorious. Here one does not look across the Cañon, but along it, from a rock-bracket under a sort of promontory pushed out into, the chasm, and that at a corner, whence one can see northward along the river's course for many miles, many scores of miles no doubt, but it is not the river one sees, for, except here and there, that is mostly hidden in its deep channel, but the Cañon rims, and between them the great maze of mountains, coulisse and crag, and pinnacle, and dome, gulfs of shadow, promontories of bright light and colour, a whole tangle of colour: the very air seems of different colours as one looks along these huge distances. I

CHAPTER XXIII

THERE are still plenty of Indians in this region, Navajos, Hopis, Havasupais, and others. They have given trouble enough even in quite recent years. Many of the tribes are still Pagan, and perhaps most are, in will, hostile and implacable. In the garden of the El Tovar Hotel stands a big, tall house; a replica of a Hopi Indian house. In the original many families would have lived. This one is chiefly a show-house for Indian products, basket-work, pottery and rugs, especially. The basket-work is marvellously fine in workmanship; its colours, and those of the soft cotton rugs, alike perfect in delicacy and harmony. Rugs and baskets are alike costly. The pottery follows in design that discovered in long-buried and only recently excavated Indian towns and villages of the desert: but they say the antique ware had a finer glaze.

At the Hopi house we saw Indian dancing, performed by ‘braves’ in war-dress. It was weird enough, as was the appearance of the dancers, and still more the ‘music.’ I cannot say that the few Indians we saw hereabouts had any charm either of appearance or manner: they seemed surly and repellent. Unlike the terrible Iroquois of the North the Arizona Indians are of low nature; and in general their faces broad and flat—some of 0131 131 them a little Mongolian in type of feature. ‘Red’ Indian would not be a very suggestive name for them: there is nothing bricky in their complexion, which is apt to be of a swarthy pallor.

Don Garcia Lopes de Cardenas, sent with twelve cavaliers by the Captain-General Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, in 1540, was the first visitor from the Old World to see the Grand Cañon. Led by Hopi guides across the great plateau, they came suddenly upon it, and, after spending days in exploring the rim and endeavouring in vain to find a way down into the Cañon, they returned to report their discovery to Coronado, who presently marched his whole expedition off eastward to New Mexico. For thirty-six years no other white man saw it: then a Spanish priest came, and crossed the river at a point called from his achievement Vado de los Padres. A silence of two hundred and seventy-five years then settled down upon the Cañon. Finally, in 1869, a one-armed Civil War veteran, Major John Wesley Powell, with nine companions, began his attack of the Colorado and its Cañon: three lost their lives at the hands of the Indians: the rest got as far down as the mouth of the Rio Virgin. In 1871 Powell came back, getting as far down as the mouth of the Kanab.

R. B. Staunton, in 1890, made the voyage down the whole series of the Cañons of the Colorado to the Gulf of California.

At this moment only a few persons comparatively have made the descent of the Grand Cañon. Proportionately , few out of the enormous population of 0132 132 the United States have visited its rim: for, though it can be visited all the year round, the travelling American is apter to cross the Atlantic than his own continent for pleasure. Of course many thousands do visit it every year. For my part I confess that to see it alone I would gladly make a journey twice as long: in the Order of Nature, apart from history and art, it is the greatest thing there is to see in the world. It must always remain the supreme abiding impression of America and in an isolation of memory like its isolation in fact, for (thanks be to God who made it) it is wholly untouched, unslurred by man. Neither greedy utilitarianism nor ‘enterprise’ have violated it. Niagara has her thunderous tears to pour into the abyss over the outrages to her lips: but for all the harm done to the Grand Cañon the white man might never have seen it. The Yosemite valley is admirably beautiful, but it is nearly grown into the hugest tea-garden in the world: the Grand Cañon, aloof, awesome, half-sinister, has the glory of the intangible and the unparalleled. California, at large, is extravagantly lovely: but it reminds of other beauty: the Grand Cañon is madly original. The Rockies of the United States and of Canada are prodigally glorious: but one compares—all European Alps might be added to them without seeming to increase their extent: but one could not say there would be no addition to their beauty. One can never say of the Grand Cañon that it somewhat resembles any little Cañon on a larger scale.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE journey from Grand, Cañon to Los Angeles takes between eighteen and nineteen hours. Leaving the former at 9 o'clock at night the latter is reached on the following evening between five and six.

After the Colorado River is crossed, and the State of California entered, the country for a long way remains desert, arid and level: yellow waste and staring blue sky the only colours. After San Bernardino, almost suddenly, a wholly different area is entered, still flat on either hand, but covered with enormous vineyards and orange-orchards, and backed by green and blue mountains.

At Los Angeles we were met by one of the Secretaries of Monsignor Cantwell, the Bishop of Monterey and Los Angeles, and driven by him to the Bishop's residence, where we were soon joined by our host, who had been away at San Diego confirming. On the following day he was again leaving, to go into Retreat at Santa Barbara; in the meantime he hospitably entertained us at dinner, our fellow-guest being the Bishop of Helena, in Montana. During his own absence Bishop Cantwell most kindly charged Father Corr, one of his ‘Curia,’ with the business of showing us about the neighbourhood.

While we remained at Los Angeles our quarters were in the Alexandra Hotel, a large and fine 0134 134 house in a central part of the city, where we were very comfortable. We had now been three months in America, and as an illustration of American hospitality I may mention that not until we reached Grand Cañon, where the El Tovar hotel is the only house, had we ever had occasion to stay in an hotel. Till then we had always been the guest of monks, nuns, Jesuits, or of hospitable lay-folk.

Los Angeles, where we stayed nine days, is a very large city, with wonderfully beautiful suburbs, and, though not on the Pacific, is very near it. Unfortunately it is very hot in summer, and even a little heat saps all my energy. Our hotel too, excellent as it is, was noisy, owing to its situation in a very busy quarter where many tram-lines meet.

On the day after our arrival Father Corr, whom I mentioned above, called for us after luncheon and took us to the Pacific Ocean, which we first saw at Redondo; whence we drove, along the sea shore, to ‘Venice,’ a town of ‘roundabouts,’ shooting-galleries, switchback railways and so forth, a sort of chronic fair. ‘If you like that sort of thing, it is just what you would like. ’

We did not linger there many minutes but drove on to Santa Monica, a really charming place, with beautiful views of ocean and mountains. Here there is an abundance of large and lovely palm trees.

At Santa Monica we were taken by Father Corr to tea with a friend of his, Mrs. Martin, from the eastern States, who was here in villeggiatura, for the summer, with her children. We found her 0135 135 as lively and amusing as she was hospitable. Her Japanese parlour-maid, who brought in the tea, seemed delighted to see us and said ‘Good afternoon, folks’ with extreme cordiality.

At Santa Monica it was exquisitely cool: as it is, I think, everywhere in California once one gets really to the sea. We walked for a while on its beach and duly ‘stared at the Pacific’: but it gave me a little clutch of home-sickness to think that it was the Pacific, and no England on the other side of it, but Japan the next parish.

In the evening we dined at Pasadena, one of the lovely suburbs of Los Angeles, with the Hon. Joseph Scott, one of the most prominent men of Los Angeles. An Englishman by birth (Northumbrian, I think) his sons, like himself, have been educated at Ushaw, and, like himself, seemed full of North-country geniality and directness.

It was a delightful and interesting evening. Mr. Scott had invited also Monsignor Gillow, Archbishop of Oaxaca, a refugee from Mexico, whose talk was like a volume of reminiscences. Oaxaca does not look much like ‘Wah-hacka’, as this place is pronounced—about as much as Mpairon is like Byron, which Mr. Oscar Browning tells us was the Greek orthography of the great poet's name.

The archbishop is seventy-nine years old, though he looks much younger, and he has abundant reminiscences of the Emperor Maximilian, and of the Empress Charlotte. It was in Rome, in 1866, that her madness began to show itself. She had 0136 136 gone to Europe to implore intervention in her husband's favour; from her fruitless interview with Napoleon III she went on, in despair, to Rome: and it became apparent that, under the stress of sickening anxiety and dread, grief, and disappointment, her reason had given way. Mgr. Gillow was in Rome at the time, and was often with the poor Empress: his stories of her eccentricities are full of painful interest, too tragic to be amusing. In May of the year following, her husband, after bravely defending Queretaro with only 8,660 men, against Escobedo's large army, was betrayed and taken prisoner. On June 19th he wag shot, on the plea of his own law, of October 3rd, 1865, that any Mexican taken in arms against the empire should be executed.

CHAPTER XXV

ON the next afternoon, 10th July, we were driven by Mr. and Mrs. Hampton, a lady and gentleman to whom we had been introduced, to Universal City a few miles from Los Angeles. This is the metropolis of the ‘Motion-Picture’ world. It is reached by a beautiful road winding between low hills, and consists of a number of large camps or settlements, each with its own stables, menagerie, Russian village, Turkish village, Italian village, Indian hamlet, etc., etc., and each belonging to a different production company.

We spent the afternoon here, watching the successive rehearsals of a new picture-play being prepared by Mr. John McDonagh. Its action was supposed to take place in or about a Wyoming outpost camp, in the 'sixties of last century: a wooden fort had been erected, with. soldiers, sentries, blockhouses, etc., the scenery immediately outside was, we understood, quite like that of Wyoming. Indeed, in the immediate neighbourhood of Universal City, almost every sort of scenery can be found: ocean, mountain, valley, plain, desert, city, suburb, forest, tropic, etc.: this, with the marvellous atmosphere and light, gives it its immense advantage as the scene of picture production.

On the evening of this day we were the guests of the Newman Club at a banquet, after which I 0138 138 gave a sort of lecture on Newman's great contemporary, Cardinal Manning. Next day we left Los Angeles temporarily to visit Santa Catalina, a truly beautiful island in the Pacific, about twenty-five miles from San Pedro, the port of Los Angeles. It is reached by large and comfortable steamers, and the voyage is most agreeable: it was mid-July, and we were in the latitude of Morocco, and under a sky as cloudless, a sun as bright as those of North Africa, but nothing could exceed the freshness of the sweet air, and the breeze might have been called more than cool.

The approach to Santa Catalina is lovely: though the island is only twenty-five miles long, and seven and a half wide, at its broadest, its stretch of coast scenery is splendid, and its mountains, over two thousand feet in height, are of most varied colour and form, and rise so directly from the sea as to appear much higher.

Avalon Bay, which is the narrow mouth of a gorge-funnel running up among the hills, with its little, pretty town on the water's edge, is wonderfully beautiful, riant , and attractive. The hotels are all close to the sea, and their windows command entrancing views. Nevertheless we were impatient for night to fall, for only at night can the wonderful spectacle of the flying-fishes, along the coast, be seen. The small vessel that carries you has an electric flash-light, and, moving along, a hundred yards or so from the rock-walls of the shore, it turns this to right and left over the smooth water. In its gleam myriads of flying-fishes are seen. I 0139 139 had often seen these beautiful creatures in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, but few at a time, and never very near. To see them so near, and in such amazing numbers, I should have thought incredible.

The air, for a few feet over the ocean surface was full of them, a carnival of them. They fly so far and so high that many strike the boat's side, some fly on board, and with such force that to be struck in the face by one would be very painful.

During the trip we saw also, by the aid of the flash-light, an eagle's nest, high up on a narrow rock-shelf, with queer little egrets peering out of it: also we saw a sea-lion, sulking on the rocks; and we were commanded to see a shark, in the water near our little vessel. I had seen too many of those horrible creatures to be disappointed in failing to see this one.

Next morning we went another sea-trip, to see the ‘Submarine Gardens,’ in other words the sea-floor, along the rocks, close to the shore, but often not more than twenty feet under the surface. The boat in which this trip is made is glass-bottomed, and, the water being exquisitely clear, and sunlit, it is easy to see down into the sea-garden below. In and out among the trailing branches of the huge sea-plants, red, golden, silver, and blue fishes glide unconcernedly, gold-fishes, of about two pounds weight, being the commonest. Here and there upon the rocky floor, where a little sand has silted into a saucer, one may see a big, sinister-looking skate. The sea-weeds have many colours. 0140 140 golden-brown, olive-brown, moss-green, being the commonest, but some purple, some crimson, and a few grass-green.

It is really a singular pleasure to be thus admitted to the privacies and confidences of the under-sea. There too are wonderful glooms and shadows, glints of sunshine; but in that lower world one sees the perpetual silence. All that active life is Cistercian and wordless: there is purpose, and occupation, motion, and gesture, but no speech. The shaded glades, and the sunlit, into which one peers down, have brilliant tenants, but no song.

Presently a young man belonging to the boat dived and fetched up shells (the great splendid abelone, with more iridescent hues than an enormous opal). To see him down there, especially to see his open, staring eyes, was rather weird than pleasant. In spite of his skill, his fish-like familiarity with his surroundings, the merman suggestion of his moving about down there, sidelong, inverted, never on his feet, it gave an impression half-uncanny.

Ours was but a twenty-four hour visit to Santa Catalina, but a much longer visit would be needed to do it justice. Its fifty miles of circuit has much more than fifty miles of bay and cove, for the coast is indented deeply: it has innumerable cañons, and valleys, and uplands, alpish peaks and summits: a perfect climate, brilliant sun, and neither heat nor cold. All manner of fishes haunt its coasts—the greatest fighting fish known, the Leaping Tuna, ranging from forty pounds' weight to two hundred and fifty: the Black Bass, reaching 500 0141 141 pounds in weight; the Albicore, from a dozen pounds to eighty: the white Bass, from a score to three score pounds; the swordfish which here attains six hundred pounds in weight: Yellow Tails (also hard fighters), reaching sixty pounds, besides Sheepshead,, Whitefish, Bonita, Barraconda, Rock Bass, Flying-fish etc., which can be caught with light tackle.

CHAPTER XXVI

ON the afternoon of Sunday, July 13th, we visited with Mr. and Mrs. Hampton, the Ramona Convent of the Holy Names, at Shorb, near Los Angeles. It seemed quite odd by this time to be visiting a Convent Academy without having the delivery of a lecture on one's mind: but it was holiday time, and the pupils all dispersed to their homes. Ramona Convent is very beautifully situated, among groves of oranges and palms, with splendid views of the mountains: in some ways this part of California suggests the Riviera, but everything is on, a larger scale, and the sub-tropical idea is nearer merging into the tropical.

On Monday, the Bishop having returned from Santa Barbara, I made him a farewell visit in the morning; and in the afternoon we went to San Gabriel some miles from Los Angeles. Here for the first time we saw one of the old Spanish Missions, this one dating from 1771, the original church still remaining: its campanile alone would make it one of the most picturesque buildings in the United States.

San Diego is the mother town of California, and from that mission, founded July 16th 1769, San Gabriel was founded two years later, the first Mass there being said, under a tree, on the 8th of September, Our Lady's birthday, 1771.

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The mission still flourishes, and Spanish fathers have charge of it even now.

The original convent, where the Franciscan missionary friars dwelt, is used as a museum, and has many interesting old pictures and other objects.

On Tuesday July 15th, we left Los Angeles for Santa Barbara.

This place is dazzlingly, I was going to say glaringly, beautiful. Mountains, sea, sky, palms and flowers, go to make up a beauty so spectacular as almost to seem more pictorial than real. No sea-place in California can be lovelier, though later on, near Monterey for instance, we saw scene after scene which even Santa Barbara cannot surpass.

Californians who remember it a quarter of a century ago declare that much of its original charm has been destroyed: for it was simpler then, more racy of old California, less smart, less sophisticated. But Santa Barbara even fashion could not spoil, for its beauty comes from nature, and cannot be lessened by ‘improvement.’

The immense hotel close to the sea, though certainly not unsophisticated, does not spoil either the beauty or the character of the scene: its architecture is Californian, and, in the midst of its groves of palms, one must confess that it is itself beautiful.

After luncheon we went to the old Mission, a couple of miles inland, on considerably higher ground, at the beginning in fact of the mountains. 0144 144 All of these old Spanish missions breathe an irresistible and very subtle charm: and each has some peculiar charm of its own. In common they have a singular air of suitability to their surroundings and their purposes, and a devoutness that no religious buildings anywhere could surpass: all too are stamped with a wonderful impress of simplicity. Each was raised, it is felt, for God's glory, and His children's use; not one of them to the glory of some man, or some man's family.

The special charm of Santa Barbara is that the sons of the Poor Man of Assisi still labour and pray within its walls and sacrifice at its altars. Neither time nor politics have snatched it from the Franciscans.

Backed by the mountains, with the pleasant, smiling town stretching down from its feet to the lovely coast, it stands well, ‘serene, indifferent of fate,’ and less harassed by fate than so many of the missions.

Its buildings, cream-white with red roofs, have ample space, and have neither the dreariness of dilapidation, nor the insolence of smartness. Cupolas crown the twin, two-storied, towers flanking the fagade of the church, and from them stretches a long round-arched cloister, airy, cool, and wholesome. Outside, and lower, is a garden-plot with lovely trees, and a big, massive antique fountain.

Father Junipero Serra said a low Mass here, erected and blessed a great cross, and sang the Alabado , when the Presidio was established and 0145 145 dedicated to Santa Barbara. But very soon afterwards he died, on 28th August, 1784, and the foundation of the Mission (as distinct from the Presidio) was carried out by his successor, Father Lassuen.

The Mission garden is large and pleasant, the house big, fresh, airy and cheerful, and full of many relics of its unbroken history. The church, like all these mission-churches, devotional beyond measure. In all of them much of the decoration was carried out, under the Fathers' direction, by their Indian converts: and it is always satisfactory, in design and colour perfectly suiting the plain and massive simplicity of the place. The part of the Convent garden adjoining the church is oddly lovely, lovely without plan, or effort, or self-consciousness: and among its flowers and flowering trees humming-birds dart like flying jewels.

A very kindly, cheerful and intelligent friar took us everywhere, and introduced us to one of the Community engaged upon record-work, who showed us voluminous journals in the beautiful handwriting of Padre Junipero.

We stayed a long time, and left with reluctance: but next morning I returned to say Mass in the mission-church. K

CHAPTER XXVII

FROM Santa Barbara we went to San Francisco, arriving at the latter half an hour before midnight after a journey of eleven hours.

At first the line keeps close to the sea, running along somewhat level ground, considerably above it, at the summit of cliffs. There are few stations and the country seems thinly inhabited.

At Gaviota the line turns inland and never approaches the sea again till San Francisco is reached. After San Luis Obispo, where there is another old Mission, the road mounts more and more steeply, and its curves become more and more extreme while it traverses the barrier of high mountains. All this part of the journey is splendidly beautiful, the immediately adjacent country itself lovely, and the distant views magnificent.

After disengaging itself at last from the mountains, the line enters a region strongly contrasted but beautiful too, an endless plain, extremely rich, evidently once an ocean-floor, whose coast-line was the long wall of mountains that draw farther and farther away. For a very long way the course followed is that of the Salinas river.

A little before midnight we were comfortably housed in the Palace Hotel, at San Francisco, not sorry to rest after a very long day, and very 0147 147 glad to feel already that the coolness of San Francisco, of which we had heard so much, was a fact and not a boast. Throughout our stay, lasting from the 16th of July till the 1st of September, it was always possible, and comfortable, to sleep under blankets: in the forenoon of almost every day an overcoat out of doors was pleasant and often necessary. July and August, we heard, I cannot say how accurately, are San Francisco's coolest months, owing to some peculiarity of the prevalent winds. Though San Francisco was for six weeks our headquarters, we spent much of the time in visits to hospitable houses at Menlo Park, San Mateo, etc., places twenty-five or thirty miles from it; and a large part of one week we spent in visiting the Yosemite Valley.

On the day after our arrival I was to lecture at the Academy of the Sacred Heart at Menlo Park, where we arrived about noon, and were met by Mrs. Donohoe, and one of her daughters who drove us to their delightful place, Holm Grove: nowhere could we have had a more charming first impression of Californian hospitality.

The large and charming house stands in lovely gardens, not cramped, as is so often the case with the gardens of big houses in the east and middlewest, but extensive in themselves and merging, through orchards of every sort of fruit trees (oranges, lemons, figs, peaches, apricots, nectarines, mulberries, pears, apples, plums) and vineyards, into fields that are in appearance and fact only divisions of a great park.

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Much of the life at home is spent in the very wide, and well-furnished, galleries or verandas that run round two sides of the house: cool always, and never cold, full of flowers, and plentifully supplied with tables piled with splendid fruit: while, outside in the garden, the glorious flowers are never long without the visits of adorable little hummingbirds.

We were soon (and often) to be the guests of other abundantly hospitable friends in this part of California, which is veritably an earthly Paradise.

After luncheon I gave my lecture at the Convent, the last school-lecture I was, owing to the holiday season, to deliver for some time.

The rest of our time at Holm Grove was spent in seeing the wonderful beauties of the neighbouring country, and enjoying the society of our hostess and her daughters. *

* Our host, owing to the illness of his mother, was, on this occasion, absent.

The ‘first impression’ derived from this visit was that Californians of our own class are very English in their ways and in their sympathies.

On Saturday, forty-eight hours after our arrival, Mrs. Donohoe drove us in to San Francisco, taking us over the Twin Peaks, whence there is obtained a series of wonderful views over the city, its bay, the mountains, and Golden Gate. San Francisco covers an enormous area, and many hills: few cities are placed on so splendid a site, and very few can have a climate so perfect.

On our return from Menlo Park we changed quarters to the Clift Hotel, whose situation is 0149 149 quieter than that of the Palace. Both are quite first-rate hotels, under excellent management.

At the University of Notre Dame I had met Monsignor Hanna, the Archbishop of San Francisco, who had urged our coming to San Francisco, and we now called upon him, and found him at home.

On the following day we visited the famous Mission Dolores of San Francisco: like all these missions, irresistible in fascination, though the church is dismantled and no longer used, a newer and much larger church having been built beside it. This new church, thoroughly Californian in spirit and inspiration, devout, finely plain, simple, and sincere, is worthy of its name as daughter and heiress of the Mission Dolores; indeed it would be hard to find, among all the sumptuous churches of the United States, any more completely satisfactory.

Whenever Catholic San Francisco expresses its devotion in a new Cathedral it is to be hoped this type and model will be adopted. So strong a stamp have the ‘Missions’ left that their architecture seems indigenous, and is congruous and expressive of the country: Gothic does not so seem, nor Byzantine, nor ‘Classic’, which is apt to mean a French translation of Roman, wherein all the power and charm of the original is spoiled. In no country is Gothic architecture lovelier then in France: but the finest ‘Classic’ church by a French architect fails to satisfy or please. I love French better than Italian, but who can admire Italian with a French accent?

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The existing Catholic Cathedral of San Francisco is not interesting: externally it reminds of the picture outside a German child's box of wooden bricks, though it is not of wood. The interior has no beauty, but for a function its large and wide Sanctuary is well adapted, though the Archiepiscopal throne is poor and unworthy. I cannot believe that this Cathedral will long satisfy the large, influential and wealthy Catholic population of San Francisco.

CHAPTER XXVIII

ON the next day, July 21st, Mrs. Hayne, a cousin by marriage of our Newhaven friend, Mrs. Hoppin, called for us, and drove us to her beautiful home, at San Mateo, about twelve miles further from San Francisco than Meido Park. This was our first visit to Mrs. Hayne, with whose sister, Mrs. Donohoe, we had already stayed. It was far from being our last, for she took us entirely under her wing. We stayed often with her, and she took us, as her guests, to several lovely places in California. On this occasion a party of thoroughly agreeable friends of hers gathered for tea, and another party, including some nephews and nieces whom we were soon to know well, for dinner.

On the following morning, Mrs. Hayne took us for a long drive of singular beauty, first in the immediate neighbourhood, and then up into the hills, which guard a long lake like a Highland loch.

In the afternoon she drove us back to San Francisco, where we were engaged to dine with a cousin or our own, Mrs. Oliver, whose house has a marvelous view of the Golden Gate and the mountains beyond it. Our cousin and her husband have lived many years in America, but remain 0152 152 English; their daughter, having lived all her life in America, is American. Natural and inevitable as this is, it always affects one oddly thus to see parents and children, of the same speech and blood, of different nationality.

July 24th we spent in visiting Mount Tamalpais, one-and-twenty miles from from San Francisco, an easy and inexpensive trip very well worth making. The first part of this journey is by water, across the bay to Sansalito, throughout which there is a rapid succession of beautiful views, of the bay itself, San Francisco, the Golden Gate, the mountains, and of the many inlets of the bay: the vessel passes close beside the ship-like Alcatraz island, and from it the other bay-towns are seen to much advantage. At Sansalito a little electric railway, three-railed, is joined, and this passes through the gorge-like, forest-filled Mill valley, of great beauty. On emerging from this lovely gorge the track becomes extremely winding, the longest bit of straight track being 413 feet, the number of curves being nearly 300, and the average grade of ascent being over one in twenty till the summit of Tamalpais, 2,600 feet above the Pacific on one side, the bay, hills and valleys on the other, is reached. Along every bit of the way the views are enchanting, varying much at every twist of the road. From the summit the views seaward, and along the coast, are truly splendid; inland the whole of San Francisco Bay, 40 miles long, and six to twelve broad, lies far beneath, and visible in its every turn and inlet; near San Rafael it connects 0153 153 by a strait with San Paulo bay, ten miles long, which again connects with Suisun bay, 8 miles long; all three are land-locked. Behind Santa Rosa rises Mount St. Helena, 4,843 feet high; standing sentinel over the San Joaquin valley stands Mount Diablo, 3,849 feet high. A succession of foot-hills, behind San José, leads up to Mount Hamilton, 4,209 feet high. Behind all is the Sierra Nevada range, with Mount Lassen, 10,100 feet, and snow-capped Shasta, 14,442 feet high. Sea, hills, uplands, gorges, plain, bay, ocean and sky, are a mesh of brilliant and most varied colour, all glorified by the splendid light and atmosphere.

The descent is by ‘gravity' cars’; the open carriages of the train come down the mountain by no motive power but their own weight carrying them down the steep gradient. Most of the afternoon we spent in Muir woods, four thousand acres in extent, covering the knees of Tamalpais. Here we first saw the magnificent Redwood, one of the world's oldest living things. These glorious pines range from two hundred to three hundred feet in height, many being over 3,000 years old. Near Calistoga, in Napa county, fossil specimens of this enormous tree lie exposed to view among their living descendants. How many ages, then, must the Redwood have grown here in California! Apart from its huge size, and enormous age, this tree is truly beautiful, and a forest of them is surpassingly lovely. It flourishes, they say, only in regions where the sea-mists can reach it, unlike the Sequoia of the Mariposa ‘Big Tree’ grove.

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On the day after this trip we lunched with Mr. J. B. Casserly of San Mateo, at the Pacific Union Club, a noble building, on the crown of one of San Francisco's seven hills, dominating the city, and with entrancing views. After our return from the Yosemite valley we stayed with Mr. Casserly and his family at his country house.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE Yosemite Valley is over three hundred miles from San Francisco, and we made the journey there and back by stagemotor; sleeping the first night at Merced. The road to that town either winds among lion-coloured hills, or cuts straight across plains covered with vineyards, melon fields, or orchards of peach and apricot.

Almost immediately after leaving Merced, at 8 o'clock on the morning of July 29th, we entered a region of enormous wheat-farms, often level for thousands of acres, but mainly tilting upward to a highland district. By noon we were well among the hills, where we lunched in a very pretty, isolated hostelry called Miami Lodge, placed by a tiny lake, in a wooded valley, 4,500 feet above the sea.

From Miami Lodge a six-mile run through the forest brought us to the most famous of all the groups of Big Trees, called Mariposa Grove. The word ‘grove’, however, gives a meagre idea of its extent: for there are many hundreds of these giants, a large number of the very largest being named, each State of the Union standing godfather to one, others being called after Washington, Grant, Lincoln, etc.: and the trees form part of a limitless forest.

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These trees are not Redwoods, but Sequoia sempervirens, Sequoia gigantea , etc. Their perpendicular shafts rise to over three hundred feet, many being over a hundred feet in circumference at the base of the trunk.

To one tree the name of Grizzly Giant has been given, and its estimated age is more than five thousand years; its height is 224 feet, and circumference at base 104 feet, while the lowest branch (100 feet from the ground) has a girth of 18 feet.

Not far from it lies a fallen tree of enormous size that must, from the age of the trees that have grown up beside it, have fallen a thousand years ago. The motor-road passes through the Wawona, the tree known, the world over, by its picture, taken as the marque de fabrique of the Big Tree Brand of California wine. But the picture, showing only a short section of its trunk, gives no hint of the noble beauty of this glorious tree.

When I spoke, above, of there being many hundreds of these giants, I alluded, of course, only to the largest: for there are countless thousands of the Big Trees.

As to their reputed age, I was told afterwards, by one of the highest living authorities, that there is no reason at all why some should not be even ten thousand years old; but exact computation can be made only by felling the tree and counting its rings: that opportunity must occur rarely, but my informant had himself, in the case of one tree, counted rings proving an age of over three thousand years.

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About six o'clock we arrived at Wawona, where we were to sleep. This is a large hotel, with annexes, built in bungalow fashion, and placed in a very pretty bit of upland meadow-land surrounded by forest.

Immediately after leaving the neighbourhood of San Francisco, the temperature had begun perceptibly to rise, and the further we went inland the warmer had it become. Here at Wawona it was too warm at bedtime for any covering but a single sheet; but at seven in the morning, when we breakfasted, the temperature was only two degrees above freezing point—a drop of sixty degrees in ten hours. The cold, as we began our motor-drive to the Yosemite Valley, was piercing: by the time we arrived there at nine-thirty it was already very warm, and by noon very hot.

The whole journey from, say, two hours and a half after leaving Merced, till reaching Yosemite, had been through forest-clad mountains, every yard of it lovely in itself, and at quite innumerable points opening wonderful ranges of distant view.

The character of the scenery is nowhere subtropical, indeed it is generally oddly northern for its latitude; but to my English eyes sub-tropic landscape has always a smack of the theatrical and unreal: and the highland, northern-looking scene a friendlier appeal.

As to the great range of temperature mentioned just now, its explanation is obvious: in a latitude scarcely higher than that of Tunis, under a nearly vertical sun, and wholly cloudless sky, each July 0158 158 noon must be hot enough to generate sufficient warmth to last for many hours after daylight: night having come, the altitude easily accounts for the fall of temperature, once begun, being sharp and rapid.

Coming from Wawona the Yosemite Valley is entered by Inspiration Point, and the wonderful sentinel-rock of El Capitan, rising sheer from the valley-floor 3,604 feet, almost absorbs the attention. But, as one passes along, its many rivals assert their claim, Cathedral Rocks opposite; then the Three Brothers (the tallest 3,813 feet); Sentinel Rock, 4,157 feet, and finally the mighty Dome, and, opposite it, the Half Dome, 4,892 feet above the valley-floor, 8,852 feet above sea-level.

The valley is thus 3,960 feet above the sea. It is only seven miles long, and about a mile broad, walled in everywhere by rocks from 3,000 to 5,000 feet high, mostly sheer precipice, and therefore naked. The colour-scheme is vivid and simple: green, white and blue, for the valley-floor is brilliantly green, the walls shining white, and the sky of flawless blue. The space between the valley-walls is very level, mostly wooded, but with beautiful stretches of pastoral meadows. The river Merced generally flows near the foot of the north wall. In the middle of the valley there is a church, a post office, and an hotel; and there are two big camps. Fortunately all of these are much hidden among the woods, or the character of the valley would have been more spoilt. Visitors can only begin to arrive when the snows have melted: 0159 159 but, by the time of our visit in the last week of July, there had already been nearly three hundred thousand. For these the camps are, obviously, a great convenience: each visitor can there obtain a comfortable tent, well furnished, for which, with attendance, and meals in a large bungalow dining-hall, the charge is very reasonable.

Here we remained several days, my cousin riding up the trail to Glacier Point, etc., and I contenting myself with strolls here and there in the valley, especially to the lovely little Mirror Lake, under the Half Dome.

The Yosemite Valley is a slit in the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, and before 1851 was a stronghold of Shoshone Indians. In that year it was discovered by Captain John Boling, and a party of mounted volunteers, in pursuit of a hostile party of Indians.

Of one of its great glories—the waterfalls—I can hardly speak, so little water remains by the end of July. The triple leap of the Yosemite Falls makes 2,350 feet; 1,430 feet sheer down, in the first stride; 600 in the next, and 320 in the third. The Bridal Veil drops 900 feet in one spring; the Nevada Fall 600.

Though the Yosemite valley has not the terrible and unique impressiveness of the Grand Cañon of the Corado, it is ideally lovely; it reminds of other beauty, but can only remind of the exquisitely beautiful, elsewhere.

CHAPTER XXX

EARLY in the morning of August 1st, we left the Yosemite Valley, and motored all day to Modesto, where we slept; resuming our journey next morning, we arrived at San Francisco about noon. There we found Mr. Casserly awaiting us, and with him went to San Mateo, where we received the kindest welcome from Mrs. Casserly, who had arranged that I should give a drawing-room lecture tó a large party of their friends, which I did in the afternoon. The Archbishop of San Francisco came over to dinner, and his talk, of books, of Rome, of the Popes, and especially of Leo XIII, was singularly interesting. Of Leo XIII he said, as I have always thought, that he ranks with the four greatest of the Popes, Gregory the Great, Leo the Great, Gregory VII, and Innocent III; certainly the greatest Pope of the last seven centuries; and the greatest figure of the nineteenth. The following day, Sunday, we spent most delightfully with the Casserlys, remaining with them till midday on Monday, when Mrs. Casserly drove us back to San Francisco. In the afternoon I lectured at the Fairmont Hotel to the Catholic Women's Council of San Francisco, and a general audience, in a fine room of this splendid hotel, where we had tea after the lecture with our kind friend Mrs. Hayne. In the evening we dined 0161 161 with the Archbishop, who welcomed us with very cordial hospitality. The rest of this week was filled with social engagements; luncheon on two days with Mr. Casserly, dinner with Mr. McEnerny (a leading member of the bar, and a very interesting talker) and Mrs. McEnerny; dinner with our cousin, Mrs. Oliver, ‘by the Golden Gate,’ another dinner with the Very Rev. James Grant, the Catholic rector of Burlingame, a place adjoining San Mateo, where we found a number of charming people to meet us; and where we slept. Another night we dined and slept at Mrs. Hayne's at San Mateo, after a long day's expedition with her to Santa Clara. This excursion was planned by her to enable us to visit the Convent of Carmelite Nuns, a really beautiful house, modelled after St. Theresa's own Carmel of Avila. The large and beautiful garden we could not visit, as it is part of the Enclosure; but the extent of its circling wall shows its size, and the trees visible above them give some indication of its charm. An extern Sister received us, and announced our arrival at a ‘turn’; which, I may explain, for the non-Catholic reader, is a cylinder of wood, turning on a pivot, in an aperture of wall which it closely fills. A small segment of the cylinder has been voided; so that, when the ‘turn’ is pulled round, the opening comes opposite the person outside, who can place within any object to be conveyed to the nun on the other sidea—note, a parcel, food, etc.—who again makes the cylinder revolve till the opening comes before herself. L

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We then went to see the very beautiful chapel, which is not entered by the nuns; on either side of the high altar is a grille of wrought iron through which they can see into it from their choir which is behind the altar. When they receive Holy Communion the nuns kneel before a small opening in the grille, through which the priest outside communicates them.

We then went to the parlour, or ‘Speakroom’, where there is another, triple, grille, before which visitors sit. The grille nearest them is of iron, with spikes at the intersection of its lattice-work. A foot behind it is a wooden grille, and, behind that, doors of baize on a light wooden frame—sometimes woollen curtains. The Prioress came to ‘see’ us; i.e. to sit on the floor, in the room behind the grille, and talk to us through the latter. A Carmelite nun is almost necessarily a woman of intellect; and this lady's mere voice gave the instant impression of a highly cultivated, clever, and capable personage.

Presently I was asked to address the Community, for which purpose I returned to the chapel, alone, no lay member of our party being admitted to it till the talk was over. Sitting on the outward side of the grille, by the altar, it was a somewhat strange experience to be speaking to an invisible audience; for, though there was no curtain drawn between them and me, their choir was darkened, and in the gloom no figure could be seen.

Finally the whole community came to the room adjoining the ‘Speak-room,’ the inner baize doors 0163 163 of the grille were opened, and I had a further talk with the nuns, from my side of the iron grille.

No Carmelite Convent of nuns has more than twenty-one nuns: but, though the order is so austere, and is not very long established in the United States, it has already eleven houses, each of which is full. No one who has read Marotz will need to be told that the present writer devoutly admires Contemplative Religious. When he had written that book he wondered if any publisher would accept a novel one-third of which was concerned with the life of a convent of Contemplatives. But, not only was it at once accepted by the first publisher who saw it, the reviewers chiefly commended that portion of the book; and George Meredith wrote to the author, who was quite unknown to him, saying ‘I am reverently in love with Poor Sister, the foundress and Superior of that Convent.’

So far from the function of the Contemplatives being midiæval and now obsolete, no age has needed them more than ours, no society more imperatively required the saving salt of their presence in its midst.

On the morrow Mrs. Hun drove us over to her sister's, Mrs. Donohoe, at Menlo Park, and we had tea there. On Saturday night we were again the guests of Father Grant at Burlingame, as he had asked me to preach for him next day After doing so we all lunched with Mr. and Mrs. Baker, very agreeable English friends of his, who also lived at Menlo; and finally had tea with Mrs. Hun's 0164 164 sister-in-law and neighbour, Mrs. Parrott, at Baywood, another San Mateo house where we were to be very frequent and willing guests. Mrs. Parrott is a sister of Mr. Donohoe, and she and many daughters and sons became some of the kindest and most untiringly hospitable of our Californian friends, never to be forgotten, and always to be thought of among our most agreeable memories.

The following week was also one of social pleasures, including another visit to Mrs. Donohoe's at Menlo Park, where we stayed, this time having the pleasure of meeting our host himself. It was during this visit that We saw a house in course of transit down the road to a new site. On Thursday we went to stay at Baywood with Mrs. Parrott, and only returned to San Francisco on the following Monday: but during this time Mrs. Hun took us, and two of her nieces, from Saturday to Monday, to Carmel by the Sea. This was a long and most beautiful journey; at first through the rich San Joaquin valley, a country of orchards and vineyards bounded by hills: in the afternoon we stopped at San Juan Bautista to see the old Mission, where there is a fine collection of antique vestments, of exquisite material and colours, antique pictures, wooden statues (already ancient when brought from Spain) and other ecclesiastical objects, all of rare interest. At Monterey we made another stop to visit another old Mission, in charge of the Rev. R. Mestres, a very charming Spanish priest, intensely interested in these monuments of his country's missionary zeal in the New World. 0165 165 He also had many lovely old Spanish vestments to show us.

Finally we reached our quarters, a comfortable hotel among the woods, close to the seashore, at Carmel by the Sea. This place takes its name from one of the most famous of the old missions, the church of which remains, a mile or two away; it was originally, and is still largely, a colony of artists.

I had promised Father Mestres to say Mass and preach on the following morning in the old church, in some ways the most interesting of all the Mission churches, and, to me at least, by far the most appealing It stands in a poignant loneliness close to the sea, an inner curve of the great and beautiful bay of Monterey. The shore is here sandy and flat, and no dwellings break the effect of its sunny desolation. Monterey is out of sight behind a ridge; pine woods hide the village of Carmel; the mission-house has gone, only a few low ruins remaining. The once large population of Indian converts, whose homes were gathered round the church, has wholly vanished. The smooth green hills, their narrow valleys running down to the sea, are empty; only the church remains, once the focus of many thousands of simple lives. Its plan is as simple as the people for whom it was built, though large and solid; a great nave, without aisles or transept, broad and very long, whose thick walls have exterior buttresses and are strengthened by inner buttresses as well, with a quaint curve, merging atop into the low curve 0166 166 of the roof; few windows, intended to temper rather than to admit freely the vehement light; the pulpit a bracket high up on the wall; the altar at the end of the nave, and raised very much above it, but not parted from it by a chancel, and high over it a plain arch; the fachada is simple too, but oddly charming: the round-arched doorway is set under a straight, tiled, lintel immediately beneath a deep quatrefoil window: over the window projects a shallow hood formed of a complete half-circular arch somewhat advanced from the wall, the arch itself flanked by shallow, roundheaded niches, like blind windows, then a gable over all. The effect of light and shade produced by these plain means is excellent, unlaboured and altogether satisfying. At the left of the facade is a low tower, capped by dome and cross.

Close beside the altar is a plain slab upon the wall telling that the mortal part of Father Serra lies here; as also that of his successor as President of the Missions, Father Lassuen.

The church would easily hold twelve or fifteen hundred worshippers; the little congregation I addressed numbered perhaps two hundred, white folk of our own race, but very sympathetic listeners to the story of the great work for the Indians of the great and holy man whose spirit seemed so near us there—nearer than his ashes: a very noble haunting.

CHAPTER XXXI

DURING the past week I had lectured, to a party of her friends, in Mrs. Hitchcock's house at Burlingame; on the night of the 18th of August I lectured at Newman Hall, in the Berkeley University, to a very large audience, dining before the lecture with Father O'Neil, Head of Newman Hall, and meeting an interesting party of leading Professors of the University.

All the rest of our time at San Francisco was agreeably taken up by social engagements, many visits to Mrs. Hun's and to Mrs Parrott's at San Mateo, and many dinner-parties in San Francisco. Our last days were spent at Baywood, during which visit I lectured in a public hall at Burlingame, my cousin singing more beautifully I think than I had ever heard him, and with excellent appreciation from the large audience.

On Monday morning we left Baywood with most sincere regret. Mrs. Hun drove us and two of her nieces to San Francisco, where, from the Presidio, we saw the entry of the U.S.A. Pacific Fleet, a very fine sight. The Presidio, the cantonment of San Francisco, covers a large area, skirting the sea and bay, above the Golden Gate; rising steeply to wooded heights, it encloses lawns, fields, parade-grounds, barracks, officers' houses, garrison 0168 168 institutes, etc., the whole very attractive. No troops, anywhere, could be more fortunate in their quarters; and from no place at San Francisco could the arrival of the great fleet have been seen to such advantage.

At the door of our hotel we parted, with true regret, from Mrs. Hun and her charming nieces; she and her family had, during two most delightful months, been the principal contributors to the happiness of our days. It only remained to pack up, and at night we started on the long journey to Portland, seven hundred miles north, in the state of Oregon, where the lecture-tour was to be seriously resumed.

California was not left behind till 3.30 of the following afternoon. The less attractive part of the journey was made during the night; from dawn it was always interesting, keeping to the course of the Sacramento River, whose upper portion, flowing down through the Sierra Nevada, presents continual scenes of beauty. There are many and oft-repeated views of stately Shasta, rising to 14,442 feet above the sea; it appears, disappears behind a lower mountain-mass, reappears, is lost again, and shows itself again and again towering above some new gorge.

At 3.30 we crossed the 42nd parallel, and entered the State of Oregon, more than twice the size of England. Of California's loveliness everyone knows, but, of the marvellous beauty of Oregon, I, at least, had heard nothing. Completely different from California, it has a charm not less appealing. 0169 169 Its climate is lower, with less range, and far more moist; and its general effect is greener and cooler, a natural result of its more northern situation, stretching from the 42nd parallel to 46°15, for several hundreds of miles along the Pacific. Roughly speaking it consists of three great lines of mountain running north and south, the Coast Range, the Cascade Range, and the Blue Mountains, and of two immense valleys, dividing the Coast Range from the Cascade Range, and the latter from the Blue Mountains. The general height of the Cascade Range is from six to eight thousand feet, but it has many snow-capped peaks of twice that altitude. Beyond the Blue Mountains are high table-lands and rolling plains.

Our whole journey was beautiful, always through mountain regions, and with never-ending variety of highland scenery, often with oddly Scottish suggestions.

What was not at all Scottish was the spectacle of several forest-fires which we saw at night. The Pacific states often suffer badly from these, as does Arizona: and they are naturally apt to be most prevalent and destructive at the end of the summer. Great forest-fires had recently caused much loss in Montana. We reached Portland between seven and eight in the morning of September 3rd, and betook ourselves to the Multnomah Hotel, a large and very comfortable house. Immediately after breakfast we started on a drive that occupied the rest of the day, up the Columbia River.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE Columbia, which has, rather unfortunately, abandoned its old name of the Oregon, is the largest river, except the Yukon, in Alaska, on the western coast of North America. It is 1,400 miles long, and drains an area of 298,000 square miles. So much, geography books tell us; but no geography book can give an idea of its glorious beauty. It is a common boast of eastern Americans that the Hudson River is more beautiful than the Rhine; but it would insult, not compliment, the Columbia to compare the Rhine with it. The Columbia is incomparably the most beautiful river I ever saw: more enchanting than the Potomac from Mount Vernon, and that is a strong assertion; lovelier than the Hudson from West Point; grander than the St. Lawrence, even in its glorious reaches just above and below Quebec.

Its river-bed is magnificently wide, and from each shore rise mountains of noble altitude and of a bewildering variety of form: here and there one of these has thrown out sentinels into the stream, tall, impregnable, fortress-like blocks, rising to several hundreds of feet; some are bare, or seem so from their distance, many are swathed, about the knees or waist, with forest: some crowned with it. There are innumerable water-falls, in themselves 0171 171 lovely, and much more beautiful from their situation. Often these falls are close beside the road: but many more can be seen, far above, in the higher reaches of the hills.

Portland itself is not on the Columbia, but on the Willamette River, twelve miles from its junction with the Columbia; along the latter we drove, with many stops, between forty and fifty miles: at the place where we first touched it we were over a hundred miles from the sea; along the opposite shore runs the State of Washington, the Columbia being for 350 miles the boundary between Washington and Oregon.

We made a long midday halt at a breeding-station, where we saw trout in every stage of their career; at many points along the river are the great wooden weirs into which salmon are carried by the stream. Hundreds of thousands of salmon are caught annually for export, frozen or ‘canned,’ over half a million cases of cans being shipped every year.

The following day was spent in visits to the Cathedral, St. Mary's Academy, and the Convent of the Holy Child. The Archbishop was away, but one of his staff, Rev. E. V. O'Hara, after Mass, entertained me most hospitably at breakfast, and then drove me to St. Mary's Academy, which had engaged me to lecture, and where we dined that night, meeting some clever and amusing priests.

The Convent of the Holy Child, a recent foundation, belongs to an English Order, and the Community is at present mainly English. We had much to 0172 172 say concerning their Houses in England, and especially the Mother-house at Mayfield in Sussex, a beautiful old country palace of the pre-Reformation Archbishops of Canterbury.

The next day, Friday, September 5th, was persistently wet, and we stayed indoors, grappling with long-accumulated correspondence, till 8.30 p.m., when I lectured for f or St. Mary's Academy at the Lincoln Auditorium, a very large public hall. Thence we went direct to the railway station, and started half an hour before midnight for Seattle.

CHAPTER XXXIII

AT 7.15 on Saturday morning we reached Seattle, the chief city of the State of Washington. It had forty years ago 3,500 inhabitants: ninety thousand, twenty years ago, and now has, I was told, about half a million. It is the chief seat of the lumber trade in Western America. The business part of the city, which has very wide and handsome streets, lies along the fine harbour, which, called Elliott Bay, is an arm of Puget Sound. The residential quarter runs steeply up the slopes of the several hills, many of the buildings thus showing to great advantage; none stands out better than St. Mary's Academy, a fine, domed pile, dominating a wide valley from the flat crown of a high hill.

At the station we were met by Mr. Charles Donohoe, and Mr. Sullivan, who drove us to the house of the former and his mother, where we enjoyed a most charming hospitality during our stay of two days. Mrs Donohoe and her three children were ideal hosts, treating us from the first as old friends, with unmeasured kindness.

On Saturday I lectured three times: at 10.30 a.m., 2 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. The first and third lectures were at St. Mary's Academy (of the same Order of the Holy Names as St. Mary's Academy at Portland), and the second at the Convent of the 0174 174 Sacred Heart. The former is an enormous house, but they told me they cannot take all the pupils who offer; and the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a much more recent foundation, has already more applications from pupils than it can accept.

On Sunday morning I gave a short ‘Conference’ to the Carmelite Nuns, and in the afternoon again lectured at the Convent of the Sacred Heart; all the lectures at Seattle were numerously attended from outside, in addition to the audience of students, the Community, etc.

On Monday morning, early, we parted from our kind hostess, and her daughter, her two sons accompanying us to the boat, and at 8.30 we sailed for Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. This was a beautiful and most enjoyable journey, the Sound during much of it resembling a loch, with wooded islands, and wooded shores, backed by steep bluffs, hills, and, behind all, great mountain-ranges.

Victoria, which we reached at half-past two in the afternoon, is at the south-eastern corner of the island of Vancouver, which is 278 miles long and about fifty-five in average breadth. The city is not large, but is certainly attractive. Its own situation is charming, and the country round is beautiful. In character the place is very English, a strongly English feeling prevailing among its population. The fine Parliament buildings stand extremely well, close beside the pretty harbour. At the landing-place we were met by Father Wood, the Bishop's Secretary, who drove us to Bishop's House, where we were to stay. The Bishop, 0175 175 Monsignor Alexander Macdonald, proved a perfectly charming host: as full of kindness as of learning, a great student, and man of letters, and a singularly interesting talker.

Almost immediately after our arrival he took us for a lovely drive, in the course of which we visited a Convent of Poor Clares: a small, very simple wooden building, with a little featureless garden. The Bishop of the diocese has the right to enter any of these strictly enclosed Convents at any moment, and we accordingly were able to see the ‘Enclosure’ of one, which I had never before done. The Poor Clares is the ‘Second Order of St. Francis of Assisi,’ the First being that of his friars, the Third being open to lay persons of either sex, though it forms the Rule of many professed religious, practising the three vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience. St. Clare having placed herself under St. Francis, at Portiuncula, and soon been joined by her Sister Agnes and many other devoted women, she received from him the very austere Rule, which, though subsequently modified by Pope Urban IV, still makes the Poor Clares the strictest of Contemplative Nuns. They are barefooted, sleep upon boards, and observe perpetual silence, though the Superior may speak, to give directions to her nuns, and a nun to her to ask direction. Their old name in England was Minoresses, and their first house in England, founded in 1293 outside Aldgate, still give its name to the Minories.

We visited their ‘Choir,’ a plain large room, bare, but cheerful and exquisitely clean, with stalls 0176 176 for the nuns, and a very simple altar back to back with the altar of the chapel outside the enclosure. The Prioress also showed us their meagre garden, which made me wish that some of the many Convents we had seen, with large and lovely grounds, could send each a slice of theirs to eke out this small, flat, uninteresting and overlooked cabbage-plot of these poor Contemplatives, who never stir beyond it. Strictly enclosed nuns should always have a reasonably large garden.

We talked to the Prioress and some of the nuns: cheerful, happy creatures, wonderfully youthful in appearance for the many years they had been there, and apparently in excellent health, in spite (or because of?) the almost perpetual fast. Under the original rule of St. Francis, even Christmas Day was a fast-day.

In the evening I lectured, the Bishop introducing me with an eloquent and beautiful speech, at St. Ann's Academy, attached to the Mother-house of the Sisters of St. Ann: the audience, both ‘extern’ and from the house, large, and wonderfully cordial and appreciative. At the end of the lecture several ladies and gentlemen arose in their places and made impromptu speeches: finally, came the reminder that we were once again in the Empire, by the singing of ‘God Save the King,’ whose portrait, faced by that of the Queen, adorned the hall.

After getting home, the rest of the household having gone to bed, I sat up long, talking to the Bishop: the charm of whose talk is wonderfully heightened by a Highland intonation, which is not 0177 177 an accent, but a cadence. Gaelic was his mother speech, for, though born in the Dominion, he comes from one of the maritime regions of eastern Canada where hardly anything but Gaelic is spoken.

All the morning of the next day was given to a very beautiful drive with Father Wood, called the Malahat Drive, through forests overhanging loch-like reaches of the Sound. In the afternoon we went to tea with the English widow of a Belgian Minister to Japan, Baroness D'Anethan: at night I lectured again at St. Ann's, where I was asked to address the younger pupils, not in a regular lecture, on the following morning. After luncheon next day the Bishop took us to the boat (a large and very comfortable one) that was to take us to Vancouver.

Vancouver City is so original as not to have itself placed on Vancouver Island, but on the mainland, at the western end of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It is a much larger place than Victoria, and probably much wealthier: what matters more to the traveller, it is seated in the midst of magnificently beautiful scenery. The approach from Victoria by sea is amazingly lovely: and we saw it to great advantage under the lights of a watery but brilliant sunset: it had been fine all day, but rain was coming and would soon fall. Among the medley of great and little mountains some seemed to float high in a yellowish haze, some frowned in purple shadows and black.

The site of Vancouver was, even thirty-five years ago, a dense forest: now it has miles of broad and handsome streets, all the public buildings of a M 0178 178 fine city, and, above all, splendid views from nearly every point. Our destination, which we reached, in a steamy rain, about 7.45 in the evening, was the large and beautiful Convent of the Sacred Heart, at Point Gray, some miles out of the city. Here a delightful welcome awaited us.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE Convent of the Sacred Heart at Point Gray has not been built many years, and was supposed, while being built, to be far too large for the educational needs of Vancouver. But, already, it is not large enough for the number of applicants. Western America and Canada certainly show appreciation of the work for higher education so efficiently carried out by the religious of this and of other orders.

Not many weeks before our coming I had received an invitation to come and lecture from Rev. Mother Conwell, of the Academy of the Sacred Heart at Halifax; we now found her in charge at Point Gray; the Rev. Mother of the latter, Madame Gorman, having moved to Halifax. From Mother Conwell and all her nuns we received wonderful kindness, our stay being made altogether delightful. What also added to its enjoyment was the presence of the Archbishop of Vancouver, Monsignor Casey, whom the nuns had invited to stay at the convent during our visit.

On the morning after our arrival I lectured, and after luncheon the Archbishop drove us to his own house, where he has an interesting collection of pictures, some very fine, by old masters. Thence he drove us, far out into the country, to the house of 0180 180 Mrs. Le Fevre, in a lovely situation among forests on the shore of the Sound, where we met a very pleasant party and had tea.

What also contributed greatly to our pleasure during this stay at Point Gray was the company of the nuns' chaplain, Father Knox, in whose house we slept; a clever young Englishman with a repertoire of excellent stories, excellently told.

Early on the morning of September 12th we left Point Gray, taking train from Vancouver for Sycamous.

This journey, and those of the following days, were of indescribable beauty; the whole passage of the Cascade Range, Gold Range, the Selkirks, and the Canadian Rockies presenting a ceaseless succession of scenes unsurpassable in loveliness.

The scenery can be enjoyed from the train the more thoroughly that there is attached to it an ‘Observation Car,’ so that passengers need not be confined to such views as can be seen from the windows near their own ‘reservations.’ The Observation Car is the last on the train, and is open, with seats enough for about eighty persons, and room for plenty of others. At various points of specially striking beauty the whole train stops for ten minutes or so, enabling passengers to get down, stroll about, and, if they wish, take photographs.

The scenery of the Cascade and Gold Ranges is so glorious that one can hardly believe that of the Selkirks is going to be more splendid still, but it is far finer, yet not so magnificent as that of the Canadian Rockies.

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Thus the charm of this journey, for the eastward-bound passenger, is always progressive. Not till the Canadian Rockies are reached is the region of snow-mountains entered. Nevertheless, the more Scottish highlands of the Cascade Range, the Gold Range and the Selkirks, different as they are from the vaster Alpine masses of the Rockies, could not be admired in any terms which would be exaggerated. In all these ranges the rivers, close to which the line pushes its wonderful way among the mountains, are always beautiful beyond description.

Very late at night we reached Sycamous, and found excellent quarters in the comfortable hotel upon the platform of the station, and close to the edge of the lake.

Another early start took us on next morning towards Lake Louise.

All this day the beauty of the journey was surpassingly great, and no idea of its charm can be gathered except by making it. Very high snow mountains are continually being approached, reached and left behind only when many others have taken their place. The rivers and gorges are not less entrancingly lovely, and there is always a prodigal richness and variety of colour.

Late at night we reached the station for Lake Louise, whence an open train of two cars carried us up to the hotel—for at the lake there is nothing but the hotel. Owing to the altitude it was sharply cold, though the days were still hot and fine.

On arrival it was too dark to see much, though the immense pile of lights that was the hotel is on 0182 182 the very brink of the lovely lake. After two long days of such continual attention I confess I was tired out. It is not possible to pass, hour after hour, through scenes of such unrivalled beauty, which one sees for the first time, and will never see again, without giving unceasing and unrelaxed attention: yet this willing tribute is a greater strain than one would imagine: and I believe that in a nine months' continuous tour like ours, one was, at last, as much tired of observation , of new scenes and places, as by the lecture-giving, the immense journeys and the making of them ‘to schedule,’ starting always at a long-fixed hour, arriving late at night (or early in the morning after a night's travel, or several nights and days of travel), to meet new people and leave again, for another long journey, at another hour not dependent on one's own choice, but fixed, months before, to fit in with a programme which any alteration of hour would disarrange.

CHAPTER XXXV

MORNING revealed to us the loveliness of our surroundings, which, arriving long after dark, we had been able only to suspect: though a night of many stars, there had been no moon, and, while we felt the Alpine region all about us, its features were masked. The air had been that of a clear winter's night: morning was that of high summer.

Anyone looking at a map of western Canada will see upon it many lakes—Lake Louise will not be marked: it has no importance of size. The State of Minnesota claims to possess ten thousand lakes, and probably thousands of them are bigger than Lake Louise; nevertheless the latter fully merits its fame, owed not to its extent but to its extreme loveliness. It may not be more than a dozen miles in circumference (I do not remember hearing its dimensions); in the enormous bulk of the Rockies it can at all events appear but a tarn: its size is of no consequence whatever. A flawless emerald on the finger of the great mountain, no lake, anywhere, could be more entrancing. Its colour is a miracle of brilliance and purity.

Looking down into itself it for ever sees, beneath it as above, the glories of Mount Victoria and Mount Lefroy, and their glaciers, whose rich whiteness is not lovelier than their strange bars 0184 184 of fawn colour and chocolate. The atmosphere (the lake surface is 5,670 feet above sea-level) is of a dazzling clarity: the sky of an amazing blueness: the lake shores to right and left swathed in forest-green; opposite, at the glacier-foot, of moraine-grey: in the foreground the green is different, that of lawn and meadow. Only two snow mountains have been named, but there is a coronal of them, innumerable, and all of elevations nearly twice that of the lake's own altitude above the sea

The hotel behind one is no blot upon the landscape: it is well named the Chateau, and, huge as it is, could not be better designed to fit with its surroundings.

I spent the forenoon in driving, nine miles, to the valley of the Ten Peaks, and Moraine Lake. An Alpine drive more lovely throughout could hardly be imagined, and its objective is a real climax. The valley, high up among lonely fastnesses of the mountains, was till recent years undiscovered and unsuspected, and is wonderfully hidden. Its loneliness, however, is not desolation: very beautiful woods line the lake shore on one side; opposite, from the water's edge, rise glaciers, steep gorges, or the precipice-wall of abruptly towering peaks. All the peaks are of striking form and snow-clad.

The lake, long and narrow, is a mirror filled with splendid pictures.

Our own great mistake was in not allowing for a longer stay at Lake Louise: a week, at least, should be given to it, whereas in the early evening 0185 185 of the day following our arrival we had to leave. But, as I have said, our arrivals and departures did not depend on our own choice, being inexorably fixed by the lecture-programme.

We were lucky in having ideal weather, for, till two days before our arrival, I was told, there had been continual snow-storms, obliterating all landscape.

Our journey eastward, till darkness hid everything from view, was extremely beautiful; though we were no longer climbing higher and higher, but gradually descending. At Banff we only stopped a quarter of an hour, long enough, however, to make us wish we could stop longer: though getting late it was still quite light, and there was so much beauty around that it seemed a pity to be hurrying away from it. But here, as often, we were paying the necessary penalty of travelling ‘to schedule’: we must see what we could, not all we would.

The morrow brought us into very different scenery: we were no longer winding through alpine gorges and valleys, with a wilderness of high mountains all about us, but traversing one of the flattest and vastest plains in the world—a plain, however, opulent with wheat, and with a certain beauty of its own, the beauty of enormous expanse, far horizons, and illimitable sky.

Passing through Calgary, where the Prince of Wales was staying, its buildings gay with decorations in his honour, and Regina, already a great city, though so lately not much more than a name, 0186 186 we arrived shortly before midnight at Winnipeg.

At Winnipeg we stayed three whole days; it is a large and very flourishing city, cheerful and prosperous, but without any striking natural features: the plain all around it, and its rivers, the Assiniboine and Red River, not particularly interesting. In character Winnipeg is more American and less Canadian than any other city of Canada we visited.

I lectured at St. Mary's Academy, the Motherhouse in Canada of the Nuns of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, at whose houses in Portland and Seattle I had lectured already, the Archbishop of Winnipeg, Monsignor Sinnot, presiding. The charm of our visit to Winnipeg was chiefly due to the hospitality and kindness of these nuns, and of the Archbishop.

CHAPTER XXXVI

ON the afternoon of September 19th we left Winnipeg to return for some weeks to the United States, our destination being Winona, capital of the county of that name in the State of Minnesota. This beautiful Indian name means ‘sky-tinted water’, and the State is said to contain ten thousand lakes, and in it are the head-waters of the Mississippi, whose course of 2,960 miles begins at Lake Itasca. On issuing from the lake it is only twelve feet wide, but before leaving the State it is already a noble and beautiful river. It runs through many of the lakes, many more are but broad reaches of the river, and again many others were once sections of the Mississippi, though now parted from it. The stream in its sinuous course makes countless loops, and sometimes, in seasons of flood, it has broken, where the bank on one side was weak and low, an opening for itself, poured its waters across the isthmus formed by the loop, and by a short cut rejoined its original bed lower down: the short cut has thus become the new, and more direct, course, while of the abandoned section only the deeper portion has remained, into which the shallower parts have drained down, till ultimately the shallows emerge, at first as marsh, 0188 188 ultimately as meadow-land. At the point of rejunction the separation of the abandoned reach from the river is effected by the river itself, which is continually bringing down the material to silt up the opening opposite to that of its own entry: till finally what was once a river-section becomes an isolated lake.

Though Winona was our destination we were to break our journey at St. Paul and Minneapolis; we arrived at the former about 8.30 on the morning of the 20th and were met by the Very Rev. James C. Byrne, Pastor of St. Mary's, whither he drove us. His church, of which only the crypt is yet built bids fair to be one of the finest and most satisfactory in America. The crypt, at present used as the parish church, is already beautiful, most devotional, and full of dignity.

With Father Byrne we visited also the Cathedral of St. Paul, and the Pro-Cathedral at Minneapolis. The ‘Twin Cities’ face each other across the Mississippi, here twelve hundred feet wide, and flowing between steep and lovely banks, richly wooded. Below the Falls of St. Anthony navigation begins, the navigation that continues uninterrupted for thousands of miles to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Cathedral of St. Paul stands in a magnificent situation, at the end of a high ridge, commanding splendid views across the plain, the residential portion of the city chiefly behind and around it, and the industrial at its feet. It is a most striking object, incomparably the finest building of the city.

0189 189

The Pro-Cathedral at Minneapolis has also an excellent site, the best in that city, and is already, though internally incomplete, an extremely handsome edifice. The Pastor, Very Rev. T. E. Cullen, was kind enough to take us over it. After lunching with them at the principal Club we drove to a water-fall at some distance from the city, after which it was time to resume our journey to Winona, a hundred and three miles further south. There we were met by Rev. P. F. O'Brien, and driven to St. Mary's College for boys, about two miles out in the country, where we were to be the guests of the Bishop, and his Pro-Rector, Very Rev. E. F. Griffin.

The College is the Bishop's favourite and special work, and is a great one. A fine building in a beautiful and most healthy situation, it already provides higher education for a large, and ever growing number of young men. It must be remembered that Minnesota is a State of the far north-middle west, very young in comparison of the eastern and southern states, and so remote from them that only wealthy parents could afford to send their sons to their seats of education.

The Bishop, Monsignor Heffron, has his own house quite close to the College, in its beautiful grounds. Our stay was rendered most agreeable by the kindness of the Bishop himself, of the Rector of the College and of Father O'Brien, who specially charged himself with our entertainment.

The following morning was chiefly spent by me in the inspection of St. Theresa's College, in 0190 190 Winona itself, where I was to lecture in the afternoon. This is another great work of Bishop Heffron's, in charge of Franciscan Nuns (by whom we were hospitably entertained at luncheon and dinner) providing for the higher education of girls, as St. Mary's does for that of young men. The situation has not the charm of St. Mary's, but the buildings leave nothing to be desired, everything in them being the dernier mot of completeness.

Of the Rev. Mother I had heard so much praise that I much regretted her being away, but in her absence the Dean of Studies, Dr. Molloy, made a most competent cicerone. After luncheon, with Father O'Brien we went for a long and beautiful drive, along the broad valley of the Mississippi. At five I lectured in the fine auditorium of St. Theresa's College, Bishop Heffron presiding, as afterwards he did at dinner.

The next day being wet I was not sorry for a restful day indoors, at St. Mary's, making up arrears of correspondence, and enjoying pleasant breaks of conversation with the Bishop, the Rector, and Father O'Brien. In the evening, accompanied by the Bishop who was going to the same place, we left for Chicago, arriving there early on the following Monday morning.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THIS visit to Chicago was a purely holiday one: there were no lectures to deliver, and it was arranged in order to keep our promise of revisiting our friends, the Murphys, at Elmhurst. Mr. Murphy met us at the station and we drove out at once to Cool-na-Creeva. This part of Illinois looked as charming in autumn as it had done in early summer, and it was a very genuine pleasure to meet our friends at Cool-na-Creeva again, tell them of all we had seen in the months between, and hear of their doings and readings. An entire rest for a day and a half was also, by this time, become a real treat. Returning to Chicago also gave us the opportunity of meeting again Miss Anna Ward, whose kindness had made so much of our pleasure in our former visit, and of meeting at last Mrs. Edward Hines, who had been our most hospitable, but unseen, hostess in June.

On the afternoon of the next day we left for Bourbonnais, a three hours' journey through attractive pastoral scenery. The country districts of Illinois are very pretty, with a genuinely rural charm, though there is no great undulation of surface, and the natural features are pleasing rather than striking. Our station for Bourbonnais, 0192 192 which is a country village entirely French, was Kankakee, where we arrived at seven o'clock, and were met by Rev. J. W. Maguire, one of the priests of St. Viator's college, where I was to lecture. After dining with him in the town we drove out to Bourbonnais, and I lectured immediately to a large audience of young men in a huge hall. Then for an hour or two we enjoyed a singularly pleasant talk with the President and a number of his assistants, fathers of the society of St. Viator, and Professors in the College, a specially interesting, cultivated, and agreeable set of men. This evening was so pleasant altogether that I sincerely regretted that our stay had to be so short; by nine o'clock on the following morning we had to be in the train for Springfield.

St. Viator's impressed us altogether favourably; the groups of buildings, set about beautiful grounds, have the air of a University; the neighbourhood is attractive; and the young men and their teachers struck me as specimen Americans.

We reached Springfield, the state capital of Illinois, in the early afternoon, and by three o'clock I was lecturing at the Academy of the Dominican Nuns, whose guests we were till our departure on the morrow. From these Sisters we received the most hearty and genial welcome, though indeed the same should be said of every Community in the United States and Canada where we were entertained. After the lecture we were taken for a drive by the young gentleman who had kindly met us at the station on our arrival, 0193 193 and his friend Mr. Lindsay, a young but well-known American poet.

We drove first to see the house where Abraham Lincoln lived, after his marriage, I take it, to Miss Mary Todd in November, 1842. It is a smallish ‘frame’ house, much like its neighbours, with nothing interesting in its appearance or situation. If smart it would be smug; being the reverse of smart, it is forlorn—or nothing. But, if smart, it would be singularly uncharacteristic of its great tenant, the greatest but one of all Americans, if not the greatest, without even the exception of Washington, and incomparably the most lovable and most pathetic.

Thence we drove through the city and saw Lincoln's law offices, coming finally to Oak Ridge cemetery, a beautiful park, where stands the national monument to his memory; this is an obelisk of granite, beneath whose base is the chamber in which lies the murdered President's body; the door of this crypt is a grille through which the sarcophagus can be seen.

It is all fine, but no one can feel it to be Lincoln's real monument; that is the unviolated union of his country, in which the darkest child is, by his means, born free.

In the evening the nuns invited to share our dinner the two gentlemen who had been our guides during this drive, and Mr. Lindsay gave us some interesting particulars of a recent walking tour among the Kentucky mountains, where a very primitive life still prevails among the hill-folk. N 0194 194 It was, perhaps, among such people that Abraham Lincoln's childhood was passed, before his father moved from La Rue county in Kentucky to Gentryville, on the Indian shore of the Ohio.

Early on the following day, September 25th, we bade farewell to our kind hostesses and took train for St. Louis, where we arrived about an hour before I had to lecture at the Academy of the Visitation nuns at 3 o'clock. At luncheon our fellow-guest was the young Jesuit Father Garesché, one of the most popular of American Catholic writers, and a very agreeable companion.

After the lecture there was a reception, and many ladies and gentlemen were introduced, among whom was Mrs. John Ringrose Drew, widow of a cousin of ours, and her sister Miss Lumaghi, with whom we became great friends: and also the sister of one of my oldest American friends and correspondents, Mr. Scannell O'Neill, one of the earliest American discoverers of John Ayscough, and founder of the John Ayscough Club. At St. Louis we remained till Monday the 29th, three whole days and two bits of days, during which I lectured five times, besides accepting many social engagements.

The lectures were at the Academies of the Visitation, Sacred Heart, St, Joseph, and Loretto, and the University of St. Louis. The last named was given in an immense hall to a very large audience of young men and their Professors, and being extremely unwell I was very nervous, much dreading my inability to make myself even heard; 0195 195 but no lecturer could have had a more enthusiastic and encouraging audience, and what had been dreaded as a task, only too likely to be a flat failure, became a real pleasure.

The heads of the University were also so very kind that it was with genuine regret I had to refuse their cordial invitation to lunch, and hurry away; but I had to keep a very early luncheon engagement elsewhere, and be at St. Joseph's Academy, a long way out, for another lecture, by two o'clock.

The nuns of this college have a very fine house, quaintly contrasting with the picture they have of the log hut that was their first home here.

At the Academy of the Sacred Heart I not only lectured, but was allowed to say my Mass each day, and came to know the nuns very well, finding them all I have ever found the sisters of this splendid order.

St. Louis is a charming city, and one of the most beautiful in America, though without the striking advantage of site of San Francisco, or even of Madison or Albany. It has no ocean, no bay, no Golden Gate like San Francisco; no lovely lakes like Madison, no Hudson valley like Albany. Nevertheless its site is far from being a mere dead level, its beautiful parks are picturesquely undulating, and the country round, though presenting to a distant spectator the general appearance of a plain, proves on nearer approach to be far from flat, and is diversified by wooded knolls and ridges, meadows well timbered, or parted by lovely groves.

0196 196

St. Louis, like most American cities, makes great use of country clubs, often many miles from the town. At two of these we were entertained, and found them extremely attractive, their situations beautiful and well chosen, and the buildings not only sumptuous but designed with excellent taste and fitness.

To one of these we were driven by Mrs. Drew and her sister, Miss Lumaghi, for tea after one of my lectures. At the other we lunched on Sunday with Mr. Ross Clemens, a cousin of Mark Twain's, and Mrs. Clemens: on which occasion our own conversation, my cousin's and my own was, as far as possible from being of a Twain-like brilliancy. The fact was that by this time both of us were at the end of our tether, on the brink of a collapse from sheer exhaustion. After the cool weather in Canada it had been a real shock to find what to us seemed extreme summer heat at St. Louis—it being now the end of September; and the whole month had been pretty strenuous, involving thousands of miles of travel, and a great many lectures. On this unfortunate Sunday, the thunderous heat was specially oppressive, and we were also irresistibly oppressed by sleepiness. On getting back to St. Louis, after a most beautiful but long drive, between four and five o'clock, we were half-promised to tea at the house of Mrs. Stanley, a lady who throughout our stay at St. Louis was particularly kind to us; but that engagement we were incapable of keeping, and had ignominiously to go to bed for a couple of hours instead. 0197 197 Meanwhile one of the most terrific thunderstorms I ever saw broke furiously, with almost pitch darkness and a tropical deluge of rain.

After dinner, when her nephew, Mr. Lumaghi, came to take us to Mrs. Drew's to spend the evening, the streets were like rivers: nevertheless the visit was most agreeable, and very well worth making.

Next morning, by 10 o'clock, I was lecturing at Loretto, about fifteen miles away, a very fine Academy, in a most attractive place, where I received a particularly cordial welcome not only from the nuns in charge, but from a large party of the local clergy who had been kind enough to come and encourage me by their presence. It was very regretfully that I felt obliged to hurry away quite instantly after the lecture, but St. Louis was a good way off, and from St. Louis we had to depart in the forenoon for St. Mary of the Woods, in Indiana.

Before concluding this brief notice of our visit to St. Louis I should mention its very beautiful Cathedral situated to great advantage on the finest avenue of the city and undoubtedly the most striking edifice of the city. The only adverse criticism that suggested itself to my personal taste was that the large statues, on the baldachino over the high altar, are out of place in a Byzantine church, and distract the eye, detracting from, instead of adding to, the beauty of the fine interior.

It was a great disappointment to me that we could not meet Archbishop Glennon, owing to his absence at Washington, but he had written me a particularly charming letter regretting that our 0198 198 visit was timed for the period of the conference of the American Episcopate at Washington when he could not be at St. Louis. We had everywhere heard of the Archbishop as one whom it was a privilege to meet, witty, genial, and kind, as remarkable for his personal charm as for his great capacity and influence.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

IT was at the drawing on of dusk that we arrived at St. Mary of the Woods, which has its own railway station close to the convent, as it has its own coal-mine (not so close), and its own hotel for the use of parents and friends visiting pupils.

From very small and adventurous beginnings, when Indiana was considered very far west indeed, St. Mary of the Woods has grown, in the course I believe of three quarters of a century, to be a very important and very imposing seat of education. Each of its many buildings is extremely large and fine, and all are grouped among lovely grounds in the centre of a large estate.

The country round is pretty and attractive, reminding me somewhat of the rural, but not mountainous, districts of Kentucky, and more southern than western, as I thought, in character. During our stay of two nights we were hospitably entertained by the Convent Chaplain in his Presbytery. My invitation to lecture here had come from the Mother General, Mother Cleophas, who was now unfortunately away, but greatly as we regretted her absence it made no difference to the warmth and kindness of our welcome from her nuns, Sister Magdalene especially, who charged 0200 200 herself with every arrangement on our behalf. Here, as in many more instances than I have mentioned, the Convent Chapel, large and beautiful, calls for particular notice.

But everything at St. Mary of the Woods is beautiful, and the whole visit will live in our memory as one of the most delightful of our American experiences. During it I gave two lectures, at which my cousin, as usual, sang, and, as usual, with immense appreciation and applause.

At eight o'clock on the morning of October 1st we left St. Mary of the Woods for Indianapolis, where we arrived at eleven, and went to the house of Mrs. Sheerin, on North Meridian Street, by whom we were immediately taken for a drive, ending at the house of Monsignor Gavisk, Vicar General of the diocese, where we had luncheon. At three o'clock I lectured, after which we were taken for another drive by Mr. and Mrs. Bingham, in the course of which we were shown the house of Mr. Booth Tarkington, the clever and popular novelist. Like so many American cities, Indianapolis has a very large and finely laid-out park.

After a dinner party at Mrs. Sheerin's we were taken by Mr. Bingham to a ‘Motion Picture play’ at one of the two Picture Theatres owned by him: concluding rather a strenuous (and terribly hot) day by leaving at 11-45 for Evansville where we had to change for St. Vincent's, our destination in Kentucky.

At Evansville where we knew nobody, we arrived at 8.30 a.m., still very tired, and after 0201 201 breakfast were sitting writing letters in McCundy's hotel at an open window looking down upon the Ohio river, which here divides the States of Indiana and Kentucky, when an Interviewer arrived, on behalf of one of the Evansville newspapers. My cousin had just made my excuses to this gentleman, when three others appeared to carry us to luncheon with Father Ryves, Pastor of the parish of the Assumption. How they had discovered our arrival and whereabouts I could not guess then, and cannot now. I had to point out that our train for St. Vincent's would leave precisely at luncheon time, but they declared luncheon was ready and awaiting us, and would take no refusal. And ready and waiting a very sumptuous luncheon proved to be: and pleasant the party was: most agreeable our host. It certainly was a rush to catch our train, but we did catch it, and by three o'clock I was lecturing at St. Vincent's.

St. Vincent's, like St. Mary of the Woods, has its own station, pretty near the Convent. Of this place we have specially affectionate memories. It and its Academy have existed for a century, and during those hundred years it has been piling up traditions of genial old-world hospitality. It has a something specially and delightfully homelike about it: perhaps the homes that are loved best are seldom the grandest or smartest, and many quite excellent Convent Schools in America are more splendid, but none could impress one as better loved by its children. The mothers of those children were educated there before them, 0202 202 and the mothers and grandmothers of these mothers themselves. The buildings being less modern may be less imposing than those of some other Academies: but they have an air of their own that expense could not achieve, they are full of comfort, and they are by no means less attractive for their absence of smartness. The land about them, green as it is, has not the character of close-shaven lawns, but of more natural park and meadow; the many trees are large and old, older probably than the buildings themselves. The whole place gives actually the impression of being, in fact, what it delights in calling itself, an old Kentucky home.

The nuns here, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, are delighful people, beyond measure hospitable, like all the nuns of all the orders we had the privilege of knowing in America and Canada, and with a singular old-fashioned geniality and simplicity of kindness.

Their Chaplain too, Rev. Bernard Cunningham, was one of the most delightful people we met in America, racy of the soil of Kentucky, full of originality and character, witty, genial, and irresistibly amusing. Kentuckians have the name of being the wittiest of Americans, and I must say that our experience would lead us to think it a reputation well deserved.

At ten o'clock on the morning after our arrival I had to lecture again, and at both lectures my cousin sang—to an audience full of the most stimulating appreciation. On both occasions there were many 0203 203 people from outside, some of whom had come a long way: and to these people I was peculiarly attracted; excellent and interesting, they seemed to me full of individuality, shrewd, intelligent and simple.

At one o'clock we had to leave St. Vincent's, our last glimpse of it being of all the nuns, their pupils, and their Chaplain, gathered round their hospitable door, singing ‘The Old Kentucky Home’ and calling out ‘Come back again,’ ‘Come back again.’ At the little roadside station we had ten minutes to wait, and were extremely interested in the talk (to each other, not to us) of a couple of farm-hands, a young one and an old.

This part of Kentucky is intensely rural; for miles around St. Vincent's there are solitary villages, and more solitary farm-houses. These men were the Kentucky version of George Eliot's, or Thomas Hardy's, entertaining rustics—who entertain, as St. Paul tells us we may do angels, unawares. Both George Eliot's and Hardy's village-folk are often funny by means of a witty stupidity, less often by a sort of accidental-seeming shrewdness. Our two Kentuckians were shrewd too, but it did not seem accidental, and it was not sharp. There was the same deliberation, even slowness, of phrase as in the English prototype, though the phrase (not being reported by Hardy or George Eliot) had not quite the same liability to apparently inspired, rather than intended, epigram: but the idea and the phrase bore a more equal proportion, the quaint expression exactly 0204 204 conveyed the meaning, and the meaning was clear and just: the speaker was not himself groping for it. The English, too, was good, simple and genuine: incomparably better English than that of many journalists.

I have never believed that living where people are few makes the few that there are dull: and the talk of these men, obviously of small ‘education,’ was vastly more interesting to follow than that of townsmen who would consider themselves far higher up the social ladder, and immeasurably more enlightened.

Our train brought us in about an hour to Henderson, where we were to change, and where as it turned out we had four hours to wait in the station, for a train that might arrive at any moment. This was due not to unpunctuality, but to an ‘obstruction’ on the line, ‘obstruction’ being a euphemism for a slight railway-accident.

During the four hours there was nothing to do but read, and to note such local peculiarities as result from Kentucky being one of the old slave-states, though it was not one that seceded in the Civil War. Here, as throughout ‘the South’, there are separate waiting-rooms labelled ‘White’ and ‘Coloured’, as there are on the trains separate carriages for Coloured travellers, to which all Coloured travellers must confine themselves. Full-blooded Indians, should such be on a journey, are, I understand, free to make use of the parts of trains, and station waiting-rooms, reserved for whites.

0205 205

Owing to this long wait it was a quarter of an hour past midnight before we reached Louisville, principal city of Kentucky, founded in 1778, and called, two years later, after Louis XVI of France, whose troops were then fighting on the American side in the War of Independence.

CHAPTER XXXIX

AT Louisville we made no stay, but after a night's rest went on to Nazareth, in Nelson County. The railway station there is at the end of the Avenue leading to the front of the principal building of the Convent.

This, the Mother-house of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, has all the charms of St. Vincent's, though it is immensely larger and more imposing. From it St. Vincent's was founded in 1821, nine years after its own foundation, the few Sisters entrusted with the charge of creating the new settlement riding away to Union County on their devoted task.

The foundress of Nazareth, Mother Catherine Spalding, was one of the great figures of American Catholic history, like Mother Seton; neither her Sisters of Charity, nor Mother Seton's, were branches broken off the parent tree of St. Vincent's French order, but vigorous American grafts upon it.

The beginnings of Nazareth, like the beginnings of St. Mary of the Woods, were heroically simple and humble: the foundation of each was marked, not by a ceremonial stone, but by the self-sacrifice of the foundress and her companions.

At the beginning of the last century, Kentucky, then an Indian-haunted forest, was being settled 0207 207 from Virginia, and, perhaps in a less degree, from Maryland. The children of the Catholic settlers had no means of instruction: and the Bishop, the saintly Monsignor Flaget, and his equally saintly coadjutor Father David, longed for nuns to make a school for them. In December, 1812, two came, at first as the guests of the Bishop and Father David, in their log-house of four rooms. Catherine Spalding had joined them when, by Easter, 1813, the Sisters moved to a log-house of their own, built in an adjoining field by the hands of the lads being trained by Father David for the priesthood. Catherine, the youngest, was elected Superior: there were hardly more than half a dozen in all—including postulants. It was a wonderful life: the Sisters radiantly happy in the midst of hard and incessant toil. They could afford no servants, and, besides their work of teaching, they laboured in the fields, spun, wove, and made their own clothing, tilled the ground for their grain, sowed it, reaped it, gathered it: tended their live stock, and did the whole indoor work of their frugal household as well. Before five years were over they had thirty boarders, and had earned enough to put up a brick house for them two years later. In the following year they opened a branch house at Bardstown, in three more years they were able to send off Sister Angela Spink and her pioneers riding away west to start St. Vincent's.

For over a century Nazareth has gone on flourishing and spreading wider the arms of its charity; from it have been born not only other Academies 0208 208 like that of St. Vincent's, but many schools for the poor, many hospitals, and many orphanages. It is itself now a venerable and most beautiful place. The buildings are of great extent and great charm, the lands belonging to the institute are rich and extensive, the grounds about the Convent and Academy full of beauty.

Our welcome here had all the friendly cordiality of that at St. Vincent's, alike from the nuns and from their venerated and beloved Chaplain, Father Davis, who has been with them for many years.

I lectured here on both evenings of our stay spending the remainder of the time most pleasantly. Here, as at several of the large Convent Academies we visited, there is an excellent and interesting Art Gallery and Museum.

At 2 p.m. on Monday, October 6th, we left Nazareth for Cincinnati, where we arrived about nine o'clock at night. It stands, in the southwest corner of the State of Ohio, on the Ohio river, opposite Covington and Newport in Kentucky, which appear to be as much part of it as Southwark and Lambeth are parts of London. The business portion of the city lies along the river bank, between it and a high bluff-faced ridge, on the top of which, and on the higher slopes of which, is the residential quarter. It has a fine park, and attractive suburbs like Clifton, which to all intents and purposes are part of the city.

Our destination for the night was the Convent and Academy of Notre Dame, on East Walnut Hills: a very large and very fine mass of building 0209 209 splendidly placed high above the city. Here we received from the Superior and her nuns a most genial welcome, and were given quite splendid rooms shut off from the Convent though under its roof.

The next day was to be rather a busy one as there were three lectures to deliver, at points somewhat distant from each other.

The first, at 11 o'clock, was at ‘Delhi,’ or Mount St. Joseph on the Ohio, a place of which I shall have more to say later on. It is about eleven miles from Cincinnati in an entrancingly beautiful situation. The Convent stands on the level summit of a high green hill, finely timbered and falling in natural terraces to the Ohio: the opposite shore of Kentucky is very steep, covered with lovely hanging woods. After the lecture and luncheon we had to leave, but the nuns cordially begged us to return for a longer visit, which, as will be seen, we did very soon. Meanwhile we had to return to the Notre Dame Academy for my lecture there at 3 o'clock. After dinner we went on to Clifton, for the third lecture, which was at 7.30, at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, where we stayed the night, and the three following nights also.

On the morrow of our arrival, however, Wednesday the 8th, we went to Dayton, another city of Ohio, for a lecture at the Academy of Notre Dame, which lecture I at all events enjoyed owing to the cheery and hearty welcome of the nuns, the children themselves, and their genial Chaplain, O 0210 210 Father Kassman. At 5.55 we left again for Cincinnati, and drove out to our home for the next three days, at Clifton.

This was one of the most delightful rests we enjoyed during our nine months in America. There was no more lecturing, we declined all sight-seeing, and rainy weather gave us a welcome excuse for a quiet time indoors, reading, attending to correspondence, and enjoying (when they had time for it) the excellent talk of our hostesses. Rev. Mother O'Lone, Mother Sturgess, Mother Scanlon, Mother Erskine were four, but only four, of those to whose kindness we were particularly indebted. I forget the name, and perhaps she would, even if I didn't, not like my mentioning it, of another Mother, from Kentucky, who had all a Kentuckian's humour and irresistible power of entertaining. Of those I have mentioned one was an excellent raconteuse , with a répertoire of some of the best stories I have ever heard.

The afternoon of Saturday, October 11th, we left Cincinnati, stopping on the way to the station to visit the fine Good Samaritan Hospital, of which, since our leaving Colorado Springs, our kind friend, Sister Rose, then Superior at Glockner Sanatorium, had been appointed Superior. With her we had a long chat, and then caught the train to Cleveland.

Cleveland, two hundred and fifty-five miles from Cincinnati, is the largest city in the State of Ohio, and stands on the southern shore of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. It was 10 o'clock at night when we arrived, and too 0211 211 dark to see much of the actual city: but the long drive (of ten miles, I think) out to Villa Angela, our destination, on Lake-Shore Boulevard, we could see was a beautiful one.

Villa Angela is a very large Convent and Academy of the Ursuline Nuns, standing in most attractive grounds almost on the shore of Lake Erie: the Rev. James O'Reilly, Chaplain of the Convent, met us at the station, and we called at a hospital there to pick up the Superior of Villa Angela, and another nun, who had been attending the death-bed of a young Sister of their house, who, after a very short illness, had died that evening. No hearts are tenderer or more affectionately kind than those of nuns, and, coming from such a scene, these two could not but be sad: they had just lost a loved member of their own family and household, just seen ended a bright career of usefulness and service, almost on its threshold. But it was beautiful to see their unwillingness to cloud the coming of strangers with any shadow of sorrow; their resolve, after a few words of simple explanation, to think only of welcoming them, with gentle cheerfulness.

Our quarters for the two nights of our stay were in Father O'Reilly's house, and a very pleasant host we found him. On the following afternoon I lectured at the Convent, to a large audience of the nuns and their pupils, increased by many ladies and gentlemen from outside, and a number of the clergy. At night we attended a banquet at the very splendid Club of the Knights of Columbus 0212 212 with many ladies present, after which there were speeches, one of which I had to contribute.

The morning of the next day we spent idly and pleasantly at Villa Angela, from whose most friendly inmates we parted after luncheon, arriving at Pittsburg, the second city of Pennsylvania, at ten o'clock at night.

It is here that the Rivers Alleghany and Monongahela meet, and, joining, form the Ohio (‘Fair River’), which from Pittsburg flows nine hundred and seventy-five miles to its junction with the Mississippi. Of the American rivers seen by us the Oregon, Hudson, Potomac, and Ohio are the most beautiful.

The city takes its name from Fort Pitt, built in 1759 and called after Chatham. In pioneer days the place was called the Gateway of the West, and was always important. It was the jumping-off board of the adventurer, the settler, and the trader, bound for the unknown West. They arrived here by the line of sparsely strewn forts trending towards the wilderness from Philadelphia. It was in the wilderness itself. Here the wanderers paused, cut down timber from the forests that stretched all around, and made themselves boats to bear them down the great river into the vague and mysterious West.

Most, perhaps, landed and made clearings and settlements, at one point and another along the river-shore, whence have arisen the great cities that now make its banks opulent, Wheeling, Cincinnati, Louisville, Evansville, New Albany, 0213 213 Madison (Indiana), Portsmouth, Covington, and Cairo, besides innumerable other towns: some pushed on a thousand miles and came into the yet greater river, and so turned south into a different region altogether.

By 1754 the pioneers had stockaded their camp here: but in the next year the French ousted them, built a fort and called it Duquesne. It was here that George Esmond Warrington, of Castlewood in Virginia, Esquire, a volunteer under General Braddock, was held prisoner by the French, after they had surprised, killed and defeated that general on July 9th of that same year 1755—as has been told by Mr. Thackeray in “The Virginians.” In November, 1758, however, came General Forbes and took possession of the ruins of the fort, destroyed by the French themselves before they fled down the Ohio. Next year the English began their own fort, spent £60,000 upon it, and called it after their Prime Minister. And now, where Port Pitt so expensively arose, stands Pittsburg, a very large, very populous, very wealthy, but not very lovely city.

CHAPTER XL

ON the following day we went by train to Beatty, a place near Pittsburg, where I had a lecture-engagement.

This was at St. Xavier's Academy, a college conducted by the Sisters of Mercy. St. Xavier's occupies a commanding position in a hilly country some miles from the city of Beatty, and has spacious and excellent buildings. That which makes the surrounding district wealthy—the presence of coal in large quantities—can hardly be expected to add to its beauty, for nowhere are the adjuncts of coal-mines lovely objects: nevertheless it is not an ugly region, and some of the coal-districts of Pennsylvania are very beautiful, however the immediate neighbourhood of the pit-heads may be spoilt.

Returning late that night to Pittsburg, we made an early start on the morrow, for Cincinnati, and during much of the journey were passing through such a district, of great natural beauty marred only in the immediate neighbourhood of the mine heads.

In the train I had beside me a lady and her extremely quaint little girl of about nine or ten years old. Her interest was much divided between the scenery outside and myself. Her manner was 0215 215 gravely observant, and our acquaintance opened as follows:—Having for a short time been passing through some rather ugly places, the train turned a corner and we found ourselves skirting a rocky bluff, half covered with ‘scrub’ and bush: with a pretty little river tumbling down over a craggy bed.

“That,” remarked the little girl, in a sort of legal manner, pointing a truncheon made of the rolled-up Evening Post , “that is all right.”

“Quite,” I agreed.

“Do you come,” she enquired, “from New York?”

“Not at present.”

“Were you raised there?”

“No, much further off.”

“Washington? California?”

“I couldn't come from both.”

“Well, which?”

“Neither. I am English.”

“Oh! from London?”

“No; I live quite in the country.”

“Any children there?”

“Oh, yes. Several.”

“Nice ones?”

“Some are.”

“What's the matter with the others?”

Thus our conversation began. At this point my young friend's mamma hinted that she was talking too much. But she replied, “He likes it.”

Lest she might, after all, be mistaken, she returned to the study of the landscape for ten 0216 216 minutes: at the end of which time she placed two excellent chocolates on the top of my head.

“ They're all right too,” I observed.

“Is he,” she demanded, pointing to my cousin (who is but forty years my junior) “your uncle?”

“Anything but.”

“Well, your grandson?”

On being informed of the exact relationship she said—

“Give him two of my chocolates.”

“Hadn&t you better give them to him yourself?”

She shook her head with much dignified reserve.

“I don't know him,” she objected.

“Next stop Columbus,” called out the conductor.

“Why is it called Columbus?” she demanded.

“Oh,” I ventured profanely to suggest, “did you never hear of President Columbus?”

“Tut! Discovered America 1492,” briefly retorted my young friend.

She was the only fellow-traveller during my time in America who favoured me with her delightful conversation.

We reached Cincinnati about 6.30 in the evening, and were met at the station by Sister Rose, our friend of Colorado Spring days, with whom and another lady we drove out to Mount St. Joseph on the Ohio. She was taking a few hours' holiday to welcome us. After my lecture on the 7th the nuns had asked us to return to Mount St. Joseph for a longer visit—and here we were: returned all the way from Pittsburg.

0217 217

We now had four days of complete rest and complete enjoyment, in a beautiful place and among friends the kindest conceivable.

There are parcels of time that we remember ever after for something done in them, something seen, or something heard: and others that we remember simply because of those who were with us. So it was with those days at Mount St. Joseph on the Ohio.

How little can one say in a printed book—how little can I say in this one of the kindness shown to us in so many, many places in America and Canada. Even that little may easily appear too much to the reader; but how inadequate must it seem to those who showed the kindness, should they read the book.

Autumn was now come, though it came in the guise of a brilliant Indian summer, with bright sun and balmy air: the trees were at their loveliest, and the Ohio banks were rich with trees: river and sky echoed each other's perfect colour. Every glance from a window was a pleasure, the happiness that our delightful friends gave all day long in their wonderful genial friendship. The Mother General, Mother Mary Agnes, Sister Eveleen, Sister Alexine, Sister Cecilia, Sister Anne Aloisia—and all of them, when can we forget them?

On Sunday night we left them to go to Detroit, where we arrived, as we had arrived before, early in the morning, receiving a charming welcome from our now old friends, Mrs. O'Brien and her sister Miss Flattery. With them we spent some 0218 218 very happy days, meeting again some of those whose acquaintance we had had the pleasure of making in the summer. Every day our hostesses and their cousin Mr. Flattery had some scheme for our enjoyment. And when, on the afternoon of October 24th, we left them, they saw the last of us at the station. The train, almost immediately, passed bodily on to an enormous ferry-boat that carried it across the Detroit river to the Canadian shore. The journey, as long as daylight lasted to show it, was very pretty; at first along the shores of Lake St. Clair, then across a level but attractive pastoral country, where the trees had innumerable brilliant tints of autumn colouring.

At 10.30 the same night we reached Toronto, where we stayed at St. Joseph's Convent, with which for years I had had a friendly correspondence, and where our welcome was like that of old friends.

On the following evening I lectured in the large auditorium of the Academy, and on Sunday morning preached at the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes, with whose Rector, Monsignor Whelan, I lunched afterwards to meet the Archbishop of Toronto, and several of his clergy—a very agreeable party.

In the afternoon we were taken for a drive to see the city and its environs, ending up at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Locke where there was a large party of interesting people. At 10 p.m. we left Toronto for Ottawa, very sorry to part from our kind friends at St. Joseph's, who had made us feel truly at home in their beautiful house.

0219 219

At Ottawa, where we arrived at 8 o'clock on Monday morning, we were the guests of the Archbishop. Archbishop Gauthier, half French-Canadian, half Scots-Canadian, is one of the most fascinating people I have ever met, and his talk was delightful. The members of his Curia living with him were also beyond measure kind to us. In the afternoon we had tea at the convent of the “Gray Nuns,” where I was to lecture at night. A good many nuns from other convents of the Order, in Canada and the State of New York, had taken the trouble to come to Ottawa to attend the lecture, and were staying here. It was, in the evening, a very crowded audience, and before the lecture there was an excellent concert.

Ottawa, as everyone knows, is the Dominion Capital of Canada, and the seat of the Dominion Legislature. Here resides the Governor-General, and also the Papal Delegate.

Early on the following morning we left Ottawa—to return in a few days—for Montreal, which we reached at 12.30. Here we were the guests of the Very Rev. Dr. McShane, Pastor of St. Patrick's, a great parish wonderfully administered. Attached to the church is a mass of buildings containing accommodation for every sort of work of parochial utility: halls for meetings, sodality chapels, various large rooms for the instruction of converts, for Sunday Schools, etc., etc., including a great auditorium where I lectured at night. In the afternoon we were invited to tea at the house of Mrs. Wintell, facing the University, to see the Prince of Wales 0220 220 return from a review. It was a scene of the most vehement enthusiasm: the broad open space, and the whole route by which he approached it, was packed with a dense crowd so closely pressed around his small open motor-car that it could only edge its way on at a foot-pace. The Prince stood up in the car, smiling, laughing, waving his hand, saluting, then waving his hand again, and the crowd shouted itself hoarse. His boyish looks, his obvious modesty, his singular grace of simple geniality, evidently captured all hearts.

At 8.30 I lectured at St. Patrick's to a delighfully cheery and cordial audience. On the morrow we lionised the city, first of all driving up the hill, the King's Hill, that gives its name to the city. The story of the foundation and infancy of Montreal is too long to be told here, but it is fine reading, and can be read best in Francis Parkman's Jesuits in North America. It was in the intention of its founders an outpost Mission Station; a long arm stretched out into the wilderness to draw the pagan tribesmen to Christ. And Maisonneuve, the soldier, and actual founder, shared all the fervour of the missionary.

The island site selected was chosen for safety, for comparative safety; in the dim unknown forests, stretching for hundreds of leagues around, lurked unknown multitudes of fierce heathen, savage, cruel, treacherous, and always alert: where the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence meet, their arms embrace an island, at whose south-eastern corner the little company of priests, soldiers and neophytes 0221 221 made their camp and raised the Cross. The story of peace and hope, of tragedy and patience, of hope again, is wonderful. Its monument is the Montreal of to-day, the largest city in Canada, full of churches, each full of people. Maisonneuve's statue in the Place d'Armes looks round on a square oddly like one in a city of France: it faces the church of Notre Dame, a building full of interest, and wonderfully picturesque within; behind it is the even more interesting chapel of Perpetual Adoration. Down about the markets are street-scenes that seem like importations from old France, and narrow, steep ways leading down to the harbour; only the harbour is a part of the great St. Lawrence, and the sea is a thousand miles away.

Montreal is full of life and growth, but its core is ancient, and it is not a big raw city just scrambling into smartness.

Of all cities in America, with the single exception of Quebec, it interested me the most.

I am afraid we must have been tiresome guests to our very kind host, Father McShane, for our train did not leave till midnight, and we kept him up till an unconscionable hour. However he did not betray it, but seemed as glad to keep us as he had been to receive us.

CHAPTER XLI

AT Quebec we arrived between seven and eight o'clock on the morning of the last day of November. It was now winter and the morning was raw enough.

Major Pelletier, A.D.C. to the Lieutenant Governor, whose guests we were to be, met us at the station and drove us out to Government House, a couple of miles from the city. On the way we passed the monument to Montcalm, and then the famous Plains of Abraham, with their column to the memory of Wolfe on the spot where he gloriously fell.

Government House, called also Spencer Wood, is quite a delightful place: the house, itself large and comfortable, with fine rooms, dignified but homelike, well sheltered from north winds by a pretty wood slightly rising behind it, and the views over the St. Lawrence to south, east and west most beautiful.

The Governor, Sir Charles Fitzpatrick, formerly Chief Justice of Canada, received us with the most cordial kindness, as did Lady Fitzpatrick, a charming French Canadian, of one of the oldest French families of the Dominion, and their daughter Miss Fitzpatrick. They made our stay of four days singularly agreeable.

0223 223

After breakfast we went out with Sir Charles into the grounds which crown the very high cliffs above the river. Almost at their foot, a few yards to the left, Wolfe landed his men to begin their memorable climb to the heights of Abraham.

After luncheon we were driven by the Governor and some of his family further up the river to see an enormous cantilever bridge built in very recent years across the huge river. Next morning Major Pelletier drove us into Quebec and we visited the Parliament House, a very fine building, in an imposing situation. The two chambers, for the Upper and Lower Houses, are extremely fine. Then, passing through the old walls, fortunately still intact, we entered the city proper, which has all the quaint dignity and charm of a French town of the seventeenth century. Here we visited a Convent, standing near, if not upon, a part of the Jesuits' original enclosure. Then the Seminary, an old and very large building, whose pupils wear a picturesque, and highly becoming uniform—they are by no means all of them embryo ecclesiastics, the greater number probably being destined for secular professions.

Thence we went to the Archevêché to call upon the Archbishop of Quebec, Cardinal Bégin. The Palace, on the hill leading to the upper town, in an open and picturesque situation, has exactly the air of a French episcopal château carried by magic across the ocean. The Cardinal is an altogether delightful person, clever and witty, most genial, and kind-hearted. He is eighty years 0224 224 old, and promptly informed us of his age, adding that he felt like a youth, which was obviously the precise fact—a gentle, wise youth with a miraculous knowledge of the world and mankind.

He seemed willing to keep us a long time, and we were more than willing to stay.

However we did leave at last and went to the wonderful terrace, high over the great St. Lawrence, where the château dominates river and port, city and landscape, for many miles up and down stream.

We were happy in our cicerone, for Major Pelletier, French Canadian, and most loving son of Quebec, let us see and admire, with a quiet, filial certainty that the wonderful scene must enforce its own singular appeal. The glorious site, the quaintness of this old French city, set far in the lovely bosom of the New World, its dignity and serene majesty, make up a charm, unique and without rival. And over all these lies, as over so few cities of the American continent, the unmarketable atmosphere of history. The sense of it gilded all the marvellous scene with a light lovelier than that of the serene winter sunshine. Beside her great river Quebec sits, watching its endless journey, herself immovable, folding her noble memories to her breast—the noblest those of her Jesuit martyrs, whose record, as told by the stubbornly Protestant Parkman, is the most amazing, as it is the most agonizing, tale of heroism we can read in any history.

During the afternoon of this day I lectured at the Convent of Notre Dame, at Belle Vue, quite 0225 225 near Spencer Wood; as my audience consisted entirely of French Canadians, I was, at the time, much in doubt whether my English lecture was understood; but I learned afterwards that the French Canadians of the French provinces are far more enterprising in learning English than the English are in learning the language of their French neighbours, clients, and customers. On this evening Cardinal Mercier arrived in Quebec (whence he was to sail for England, in the Megantic), on a visit to Cardinal Bégin.

Next morning we attended the High Mass at the Basilique as the Cathedral of Quebec is called, and saw the fine ceremony to great advantage, as the Governor, who was himself ‘assisting’ at a prie-dieu, gave the use of his pew to Major Pelletier and ourselves. The function was most impressive, the Mass was sung by the Bishop-auxiliary, the two Cardinals occupied thrones facing each other at the entrance of the chancel, and the choir was filled with Bishops and other Prelates in purple. Just outside the chancel were the priedieus of the Governor and his Ministers, and to right and left the senior youths of the Seminary in their quaint seventeenth-century uniform.

The Basilica, externally very plain, but within highly decorated according to the late Renaissance fashion, made a wonderful setting for all these groups.

At the end of the Mass, Cardinal Bégin read an address to his illustrious guest, who presently went to the pulpit and preached: as the address P 0226 226 he had just heard was in fact a panegyric his method of alluding to it was very happy. He accepted it, he said, as bestowed upon the Belgian people, of whose loyalty and courage, patience under dire misfortune, and steadfastness in refusing compromise, he proceeded to speak with fatherly pride and thankfulness.

At the luncheon which followed, the two Cardinals sat side by side in the middle of a long table, my own place being opposite, with the General of the Order of Servites, next to me, whose conversation I found of special interest.

After luncheon Cardinal Bégin presented my cousin to Cardinal Mercier, after which we had to leave immediately, as we were making a little pilgrimage to St. Anne de Beaupré.

CHAPTER XLII

The shrine of St. Anne de Beaupré is, I think, about twenty miles from Quebec, higher up the St. Lawrence. It was originally an ex voto of certain sailors who were in danger of shipwreck, and has been for many generations the most famous and popular place of pilgrimage in Canada. The fathers in charge are Redemptorists, and to one of them, Father Joseph Caron, we were commended by his sister, Lady Fitzpatrick. We were taken over the great church, which is extremely fine and picturesque, and over the small original shrine opposite to it.

Then it was time to return, and the evening drive, though very cold, was interesting and very pretty.

On arriving at Spencer Wood we found the two Cardinals, Cardinal Mercier having come to return the Governor's visit of that morning.

The Cardinal of Malines is of immense height, and his extreme thinness makes him appear even taller than he really is. At sixty-eight years old he looked considerably younger: the predominant expression of his fine face is that of kindness, but a kindness full of resolution and firmness. His manner is very gentle and simple, sincere and friendly. I should say his only diplomacy would 0228 228 be absolute and uncompromising directness, against which scheming sublety would find itself quite baffled. I cannot imagine him saying anything harsh or unkind, or anything merely flattering. The enemies of his cause would fear but never distrust him. And trust, from friend or opponent, he would, I imagine, greatly value: for popularity care very little.

They worked him terribly hard in America: on one day he had to speak twenty times, though obviously, for the most part, briefly; nor does his tall, lean frame give the idea of great physical strength. While at Mount St. Joseph's on the Ohio we received from the Bishop of Toledo an invitation to return thither to meet Cardinal Mercier at a banquet, and it was with special regret we had to refuse, all the more as our great friend there, Mr. McManus, wished us to stay at his home. Him, however, we had the pleasure of meeting again during our second visit to Detroit, where he has his offices.

After the two Cardinals had left, we concluded a most interesting day by a very pleasant evening, the Governor's son and his wife dining with their parents that night.

At midday on the next day, Sunday, November 2nd, we brought our most agreeable visit to Sir Charles and Lady Fitzpatrick to an end, and left Quebec on our return to Ottawa. Our train, however, did not start (owing to an ‘obstruction’ on the line) till several hours after we reached the station, and, instead of reaching Ottawa that evening, 0229 229 we could only go as far as Montreal, where we arrived at 11 p.m. and spent the night.

I began my three Masses next morning at 6 o'clock in the miniature St. Peter's, and at 9 we were off again for Ottawa, which we reached at 12.30. At the station we were met by Mr. D'Arcy Scott, who took us to luncheon at the Rideau Club opposite the Dominion Parliament Buildings: after which he drove us to the Archbishop's Palace. There we were grieved to find our kind friend the Archbishop very unwell, but he welcomed us back most affectionately.

In the evening I lectured at the Academy of the Sisters of Notre Dame, in Gloucester Street, an institute of which this is the Mother-house.

Next morning we awoke to find a white world, and snow heavily falling: but we were told this was not the beginning of the real Canadian winter. This snow would end in rain, as presently it did, like some snow at home, with the quite European result of slushy streets and cascades from the roofs.

In the morning we drove out to call upon the Papal Delegate, Monsignor di Maria, formerly Bishop of Catanzaro, whom we found a most charming person, genial and friendly, delightful in that special fashion that seems peculiar to the best Italians. From southern Italy to Ottawa is a long step in climate and he seemed to suffer from Canadian winters. His house had a little personal interest for myself, for here during many years lived our kind friend the present Archbishop of Winnipeg, as Secretary to the then Papal Delegate, 0230 230 Monsignor Stagni, afterwards Cardinal, to whom Monsignor Sinnot was much in the habit of reading aloud, in the very room where Monsignor di Maria received us, my books.

I lunched with Mr. W. L. Scott, elder brother of the Mr. D'Arcy Scott with whom we had lunched on the previous day, both gentlemen being barristers, and sons of the late Sir R. W. Scott, Secretary of State for Canada.

On my return I found my cousin so unwell with a feverish cold that I agreed with the Archbishop that our departure, fixed for that afternoon, must be postponed for twenty-four hours. It was now again snowing, as it was next morning: but at 4.25 on that afternoon, of November 5th, we had to start for Rochester, in the State of New York, as I was to lecture there on the following morning.

It was with sincere regret that we parted from the kind Archbishop, whose farewells were full of fatherly affection.

The journey to Rochester was chiefly performed in the darkness: there was plenty of snow outside, especially when we were passing through the Adirondacks, where it lay several feet deep. These mountains, ranging from 2,400 to 5,500 feet in height, have the reputation of wild and rugged beauty, and, though it was little we could see, the whole region seemed eminently picturesque. In the Adirondacks are the head-waters of the Hudson river.

But before crossing into the United States, as we were nearing Cornwall, the train was boarded 0231 231 by the officer whose duty it was to inspect passports. Ours were visés , but he seemed able to arrive at no decision as to our eligibility for entrance into the United States, and said we would have to wait. The prospect was not agreeable, as the only building visible outside was a tiny wooden shed, showing black against the snow, in which it would be tiresome enough to have to pass the night. Three, particularly unwashed, Slovak labourers were also to be detained.

The official deigned no reply to our enquiry as to what was amiss with our passports, merely repeating that we would have to wait.

As I happened to have about me a private note from one of the Attachés at our Washington Embassy, I produced it, though it seemed unreasonable to hope that an unofficial letter would be more impressive to this officer than regular passports certified by his own Consul-General in London. The effect was, however instantaneous.

“I guess,” said the official, “ you're all right.”

“I guessed that all along.”

So, when the train went on, we went on too; but the poor Slovaks were left behind. On this train there were no Pullman cars, but we had ‘reservations’ for Pullmans on the train we were to join after changing at Tupper Lake junction. It proved to be a miserable little station and an extraordinarily polyglot crowd had, like ourselves, to wait there—Czecho-Slovaks, Slovenes, Ruthenians, etc. The cold outside was piercing, for there was a bitter wind blowing over the snow, 0232 232 but it was better than the insufferable heat and stuffiness of the waiting-room. In about an hour the train for Rochester arrived, and we were soon asleep in our comfortable beds on board it.

CHAPTER XLIII

AT 6.25 we reached Rochester, where we were met by Miss Cox, a young lady who had heroically left her bed in the bleak dawn to drive us to the Convent of the Sacred Heart. Here at 10.30 I lectured: in the evening we dined with Monsignor Curran, Vicar General of the Bishop, and next day we went on to Albany. The Mohawk valley, its woods now bare, could not have the loveliness it had in early summer; but it must always be interesting, so many pages of American history being concerned with it.

Soon after seven o'clock we were back among our old friends at Kenwood, warmly welcomed by Father Cloutier, Mother Hughes, Mother de Goebel, Mother Bodkin and Mother Howe, and soon sat down to dinner with a very charming fellow-guest, Miss Helen Grace Smith, of Torresdale, near Philadelphia, to whom, as it happened, we had introductions.

Next day we lunched, at the Ten Cyele Eyck Hotel, with a friend made during our former visit, Mr. Kearney, meeting three very interesting gentlemen, Governor Glyn, late Governor of the State of New York, Rev. W. P. Brennan, and Mr. McCabe. Unfortunately I was feeling extremely unwell, which 0234 234 somewhat spoiled my enjoyment of excellent company.

On the morrow I was still so unwell as to feel obliged to go back to bed after Mass, and remained there till the evening, when I got up and gave a lecture.

On the following morning, November 10th, we lunched with Governor Glyn, and were afterwards taken by him over the Senate House and Congress Hall, and also over the extremely beautiful State Library and Museum. Governor Glyn was one of the three most entirely bookish people I met in America, and one of the most thoroughly well-read people I have ever met anywhere, as he is one of the most interesting and agreeable.

We had barely returned to Kenwood before Mr. Behan, of Troy, called to drive us to that city, where I was to lecture at 7.45. After dining with him and his family we were driven to Troy Hospital, in charge of the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, where the lecture was to take place. I had been a little taken aback by a request over the telephone to let the lecture be as little technical as possible as a large proportion of the audience would be “coloured people.” What particular complexion my talk should assume I hardly knew.

It turned out that it was not ‘coloured’ but ‘collar people’ I was to address, for Troy is the great centre of collar-making, and my audience was as white as myself.

However a literary discourse was not desired, and what they got was certainly not a lecture, 0235 235 but an olla podrida broadly flavoured with anecdotes. No one could have had a better audience: so cheery, so friendly, and so prompt to rise to any point intended. Close under the platform were a couple of young priests, who had come, I suppose, to hear some literary talk. Under cover of a curtain of laughter I told them I was ashamed of myself, but they were also delightfully kind, and only said eagerly, “Oh, do go on,” “Please go on.”

After the audience had gone the ‘lecturer’ sat on in the hall chatting with Miss Grace Smith and Sister Marie, who was responsible for the quite impromptu entertainment.

Next morning we returned to Albany, and that afternoon we left Kenwood, on a somewhat cross-country journey to Scranton, a big mining city of Pennsylvania, where, at 11.30 on the following morning, November 12th, we were driven at once to Mount St. Mary's Convent, where I was to lecture.

After lunching with the chaplain, Rev. J. A. Boyle, we were taken by him for a drive, to see the city and its environs. The natural beauty of the district is striking, though the coal industry to which it owes its wealth has not improved that beauty. Father Boyle showed us whole streets where the approach of mines pretty close to the surface has caused subsidences, and where many houses therefore stand all askew, some quite abandoned, others appearing to show some temerity in the people who still inhabit them. In the front yard of one house a child playing had recently disappeared into the earth before his mother's eyes: at another place 0236 236 was a pit like a huge shell-hole, into which a woman had disappeared, but had, I think, been afterwards extricated.

Finally we called upon the Bishop, the Right Rev. M. J. Hoban, who insisted on our removing our baggage from the Casey Hotel to his house. He attended my lecture at Mount St. Mary's in the evening, and then, with him, we returned to his hospitable mansion, where, in his library, we sat up for a long talk about books. Dr. Hoban was another of the vehemently literary people it was our good fortune to meet in America. In America, as not everywhere, it seems as if a special devotion to literature goes hand in hand with boundless hospitality. Immediately after luncheon next day we started for Washington, a very pretty journey of about ten hours.

CHAPTER XLIV

The railway station at Washington is one of the most splendid and beautiful in the United States, and that is saying a great deal.

We were met there by Father J. B. Delaunay, of the Society of the Holy Cross, one of our old friends of Notre Dame days, who drove us out to Holy Cross College at Brookland, where the Catholic University of America is seated. At this university many of the Religious Orders and Congregations have affiliated colleges, e.g., the Paulists, Marists, Sulpicians, Franciscans, Dominicans, the Society of the Holy Cross, the Catholic Missionary Union, etc. The Jesuits have had, since 1789, their own University at Georgetown, close to Washington.

Brookland is a very agreeable suburb occupying high ground, from which fine views of the beautiful city and its Capitol are obtained—views which the morning showed us in all the loveliness of brilliant autumn colouring.

Holy Cross College crowns a beautiful mound of lawns, gardens and shrubbery, and is itself a very attractive classical building. Here for nearly a fortnight we were very happy, and much spoiled, guests.

On the morning after our arrival we called upon Bishop Shahan, Rector of the Catholic University, 0238 238 and, after half an hour's pleasant talk with him, visited the other colleges and university buildings, of which Gibbons Hall, called after Cardinal Gibbons, the founder, is the most imposing.

The progress this great university has made in little over thirty years of life is indeed a wonderful achievement.

During the afternoon we called on several people, delivering letters of introduction. On the next day we visited the Capitol, familiar to every European by pictures, though no pictures I had seen do justice to the beauty of the site, and the fine grouping of other State buildings near it—of which the Congressional Library, beautiful and dignified externally, is internally one of the most perfectly beautiful buildings in the world. The drive from Capitol Hill down Pennyslvania Avenue enables the visitor to see most of the great buildings of Washington, though several of the finest are not on it. Travellers in the United States during the 'thirties and 'forties are apt to speak of Washington as a large village; it is a very large and very populous city now, and in many ways the most attractive in the Union. One traveller, of the 'thirties, carped at its many trees as serving no purpose; they serve at all events the purpose of contributing greatly to its beauty. That visitor to Washington extolled our own Embassy as the finest house in the city. It is left far behind now by many houses.

I suppose everyone knows from pictures what the White House looks like. In design and size it is suggestive of many English country seats of the 0239 239 eighteenth century—in books of British noblemen's and country gentlemen's houses, published about the time Mr. Repton was ‘improving,’ you will see scores of White Houses. The design is agreeable, there is an air of modest but solid dignity: it looks convenient and comfortable. But it fails to suggest the official residence of the President of the United States. It would not be at all too large or too imposing for the official residence of the Governor of an individual State: the gardens would be small for a State Governor's house. But one does not, on the spot, think greatly of these things. One is too greatly occupied with the thought that Abraham Lincoln lived there through the second and greater birth of the Union, whose martyr he was. Its simplicity suits his memory. A palace would fit with no idea of him.

Of George Washington the White House does not make one think: to Mount Vernon his ghost is as faithful as he was in life. There he hardly seems dead: to turn a corner of its wide domain and meet his stately figure would only surprise by a congruity rare in the pack of inconsistencies we call life. His wig and cocked hat, his laced coat, would make a monstrous apparition indeed in the garden of the White House.

From thence we drove across the Potomac to Arlington. The pilgrimage thither, and that to Mount Vernon, are the most interesting that can be made in the United States, and they are not rivals, but belong to one another. Arlington is haunted by George Washington; most of the 0240 240 remaining relics of his home now again at Mount Vernon were taken back thither from Arlington. It was the home of his wife's son, to whom he was always a father: Washington Parke Custis gathered these relics together, and preserved them with reverent affection. Here was the bed on which Washington died, here the bookcase made to his own order: here his wife's tea-table: here their portraits painted on their marriage, and here the last portrait taken of the living Washington, in crayons, by the Englishman, Sharpless. Here also there used to hang many pictures of the battles of the Revolutionary War painted by Mr. Custis himself, into which portraits of his great stepfather were introduced. Washington Parke Custis's daughter and heiress married Robert E. Lee, whose son Custis Lee was thus great-grandson of Martha Washington.

Arlington is beautiful. It crowns wooded heights whence, over the lordly Potomac, one looks across to Washington gathered about her shining Capitol. Its park, falling by many knolls and dells to the Potomac, is the graveyard of thousands of soldiers who fell in the war between North and South.

The house is a Doric temple: behind are the old home offices, and quarters for a few slaves. Robert Lee loved slavery no better than George Washington, who had slaves of his own, like all Virginia country gentlemen. It was not in defence of ‘our institution at the South’ that Robert E. Lee drew his sword, but ‘in defence of his native State.’ He was a soldier by calling. “I have not been able,” 0241 241 he wrote to his sister, on 20th April, 1861, “to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.” He loved America and the Union. It was agony to this most chivalrous of all rebels to become one. But he thought his first patriotism was due to his own State: first of all he was a Virginian. All Americans are proud of him now, and love his stainless memory, none more reverently than they whose admiration is most reverent for Lincoln. He was the heart of the South, as Lincoln was the heart of the North. No greater hearts ever beat in America, more valiant or more tender, nobler or more pure. Duty was the austere mistress of each, and each obeyed with absolutely single mind. There is a terrible pathos about both. The pathos of Lincoln's life lies not in its martyr-end, but in its poignant loneliness: the pathos of Lee's noble figure is less in the fact of his being the protagonist of a lost cause, and heroism in a lost cause must ever move us, or in the memory of his failure and surrender, but in the fact which cannot be forgotten that, if he had not failed, his success would have been the triumph of a wrong cause: his heroic sword would have completed the disruption of his country, he would have saved Virginia, but he would have ruined America.

Nowhere more than at Arlington must one feel this, while venerating his knightly memory. All around lie thousands of sleepers, slain in the great combat between brother and brother—though no fratricidal strife was ever waged with less cruelty or malice. Perhaps it was harsh justice to lay those Q 0242 242 sleepers here, to overpower by their presence the memories of a gracious home by insistent monuments of war. One dare hardly call it worse than justice, though bare justice is rough measure for us humans. Standing on that once happy threshold one thinks most of Lee's leaving it, and of his wife's and his children's flight from it to another White House, on the Pamunkey River, where George Washington and Martha Custis were married, and whence Mrs. Lee had presently again to fly, leaving on the door this writing:

“Northern soldiers who profess to reverence Washington, forbear to desecrate the home of his first married life, the property of his wife, now owned by her descendants.—A granddaughter of Mrs. Washington.”

Within, Arlington is gaunt and empty now. The fine rooms are easy to picture as the setting of a great colonial family of the eighteenth century: but there is no home object to help the picture. The large rooms, dusty and unfurnished, echo starkly the footfall of the tourist and the stranger. It is less sad outside among the green graves.

CHAPTER XLV

ONE returns from Arlington to Washington by Georgetown, already a considerable place with a University before the Federal City (as Washington himself had called the Union Capital before the Commissioners gave it, in 1791, his own name) had arisen out of the swamp. Parts of Georgetown have still the eighteenth-century air much more apparent in its neighbour, Alexandria.

Our friend Dr. Cavanaugh, who was absent in New York on our arrival, had now returned, and henceforth every scheme of pleasure we enjoyed was planned by him and enjoyed in his company.

Before his return Father Delaunay had been our kind cicerone. The Rector of Holy Cross College, Very Rev. L. M. Kelly, D.D., had recently undergone an operation and was still in hospital: but presently he too returned, and added his most friendly welcome to theirs. Every one of the fathers and of the Community joined in that welcome as cordially as if we had been the personal guests of each.

On Sunday afternoon we visited the house where Lincoln died: opposite is Ford's Theatre, now a warehouse, which, with his family, the President attended on the evening of April 14th, 1865. On March 4th he had for the second time taken office as President of the United States. On April 9th Lee had surrendered with his army to Grant, 0244 244 at Appomattox: exactly a week after Jefferson Davis had abandoned the Confederate Capital at Richmond. Lincoln came thither immediately, and with his little son Tad in his hand walked about unattended. He had only been back in Washington from Richmond four days. On the morning of this very day, April 14th, the Union flag had been hoisted again at Fort Sumter, by General Anderson, exactly four years after he had marched out of it with the honours of war, that flag having been fired upon by the Confederate troops, and the war having thus begun.

On this Friday afternoon the President and Mrs. Lincoln * had driven out together, he talking to her happily of the life they would live when the Presidency should be over. General and Mrs. Grant had promised to accompany them to the theatre, in the evening, but had changed their plans and left Washington on Thursday. The President was attended at the theatre by Major Rathbone with the lady he was engaged to. The play was an English one—‘Our American Cousins’; it was a crowded house: it was known that the President was to be there, and many officers released from the war had come to see the man whose steadfastness had done so much for them. Some time after ten o'clock a shot was heard, and the President fell forward, dying. John Wilkes Booth, a young actor, was the assassin, brother of a better known actor, actually playing Hamlet at Boston at the time. Booth, having fired his shot, leapt from the box on to the stage, but fell and broke a small

* Lord Charnwood's ‘Life of Abraham Lincoln.’

0245 245 bone in his leg, scrambled to his feet again, and, shouting the motto of Virginia, “Sic semper tyrannis,” disappeared behind the scenes and got away, to be shot later in a barn by those who attempted to capture him.

Lincoln never recovered consciousness. They carried him across the street to a small mean house, where he was laid on the bed of a young lodger in a mean, small room. His sad worn face bore a look of unspeakable peace. All night they watched by his side; at 7.22 on the following morning Edwin Stanton, his War Secretary, told the others he was gone, saying “Now he belongs to the ages.” *

* Lord Charnwood's “Life of Abraham Lincoln.”

The room is emptied now of such poor furniture as it held then; it and the room in front, and one behind, are hung with innumerable portraits of Lincoln, mostly common ones, poor photographs, prints from newspapers and the like, many being horrible libels on that rugged but most noble countenance. Among them hang some awful advertisements, clipped from newspapers, of runaway slaves, with reward offered, and descriptions of scars. Lincoln made their repetition impossible.

On the morrow we went to Mount Vernon. The railway journey, through the Virginian fields, is very pretty. One looked about for the country-houses where Washington's neighbours lived. I think I saw only one, and of that one I was not sure if it were the original eighteenth-century building or another on its site.

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We reached Mount Vernon early in the forenoon. It is wholly unspoiled, almost wholly unchanged. Outside the lodge gates is the little railway station, and the little guest-house for the refreshment of visitors: that is all the harm time has done the place.

The lodge is a pleasant little house, such as may have made the comfortable home of some contented dependant, though perhaps a slave. The sloping carriage-road leads up to a well-timbered park, where on a plateau stand the house, the outdoor kitchens, larders, stables, barns and cowshed: here is Mrs. Washington's garden, flanked by the decent quarters of Washington's slaves. All the buildings are pleasant to the eye, suggestive of a pleasant, simple, but opulent, home life.

The house itself is very pretty, its rooms not stately but comfortable, and housing still, or again, the furniture used by Washington and his family. Perhaps he inherited it, with the estate, from his eldest half-brother Lawrence, who had been his guardian, and who had changed the name of the place to Mount Vernon after his friend Admiral Vernon, under whom he had served at Carthagena.

If the rooms at Mount Vernon are not grand they reflect the life of opulent, refined people, and the views from the windows are stately indeed. The Potomac is here of noble breadth, and Mount Vernon stands high above it, with glorious views across to Maryland, and of wonderful reaches up and down the river. The ground is beautifully shaped, flat immediately before and behind the 0247 247 houses, it falls beyond the lawn, and its Gazebo in front, by steep wooded bluffs to the river shore, and to the right by rich, natural undulations, of sunny grasslands, to the road winding through another wood to the landing-place, whence Mr. Washington would go by river to Alexandria, and whence his tobacco-ships would sail for ‘home’ as the Virginians called England till she became ‘the enemy’.

The place is so unspoiled that one feels the absence of the family to be but accidental, as if they had rowed, or driven, round to see their friends the Fairfaxes at Alexandria. Anne, sister of Bryan, eighth Lord Fairfax, had married Lawrence Washington, and reigned at Mount Vernon while George and his wife were living at White House, on the Pamunkey, by Fredericksburg. Later on, Anne Washington married George Lee. I expect Lawrence Washington and Anne Fairfax were married by her brother Bryan, who was a clergyman.

The Mount Vernon rooms are all pleasant, numbers of Mr. Washington's books still line the walls of his library; Mrs. Washington's drawing-room looks just as it did when she presided at her tea-table. The dining-room has a hospitable air, and the kitchen suggests plentiful fare. The bedrooms look all ready for neighbours' visits, visitors whom Mrs. Washington loved to make at home and comfortable. Not the least cheerful room is that in which Mr. Washington died—which his widow made her own afterwards, that she might see the eastern sun shining on his last bed, across the sward.

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It is a place of sunshine.

No doubt there came wintry storms of disappointment and anger, but their clouds have long dispersed and can hardly be repictured. Down in that cosy study of his, Mr. Washington had some angry letters to write. It was not pleasant for the Father of his Country to read that he was nicknamed the Stepfather. In one letter he declares that such indecent terms had been applied to him as could hardly be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket. The grave, calm, great man could be tempestuously angry, and he was not the less great for it; he would be less lovable if it had not been so. He was angry, but we may be sure he never wished he had taken the army at its word and let it make him king. He had been angry then.

The clouds of petty, libellous attack dispersed: he was, after all, secure in the unwavering confidence and admiration of all good men. Another sort of cloud gathered about him and Mount Vernon, he lived to see himself nationally canonised, and to know his home the shrine of the national cult. We may suspect it slightly bored him: but he was all sense, and it was better than ingratitude and libel.

Abraham Lincoln was in every fibre of his miraculously simple, and miraculously complex, nature American. George Washington (if American readers won't tear me to pieces for saying so) was wonderfully an Englishman: and the most reverent pilgrimage of generation after generation, to his shrine, of innumerable admiring Englishmen, can 0249 249 never, I am sure, vex his stately shade. The best English admired him while he was opposing the armies of their blind king—largely German armies at that. His triumph was not felt in England as a disgrace. Her sons across the sea had once again conquered in the cause of Freedom. Few English Generals have been more revered in England than General Washington.

CHAPTER XLVI

WE lingered so long at Mount Vernon that it was necessary to telephone to the Convent at Alexandria, where luncheon awaited us, that we could not get there till quite late in the afternoon. When we did arrive, however, the hospitality of the kind nuns was still undaunted, and about four o'clock we were set down to a most sumptuous repast—the oysters at the beginning would alone have made a meal, so would the salad, so would each successive dish! The warm welcome of the nuns was of a piece with their lavish hospitality; no guests brought by Father Cavanaugh could doubt of their reception by the Sisters of the Holy Cross. We liked to think it specially Virginian, like their old house and their old town, though I daresay the nuns came from places far enough from Old Virginia.

The Rev. Mother had happened to be walking out with her young ladies, and had happened to have a good many Of the Sisters with her, when the Prince of Wales was going through to Mount Vernon, and had happened to be just where he passed; she spoke with a most motherly, kind enthusiasm of the irresistible Royal lad.

Alexandria was Mr. Washington's county town. The Fairfaxes lived there—their old-fashioned, solid home still standing. Washington was constantly 0251 251 ‘in town.’ His pew is in the church: and the Lees', too, who would drive over on Sundays from Arlington, later on. I wonder if Madam Esmond brought her boys thither from her house of Castlewood: anyway we assigned to her also a pew—pretty well in the front, you may be sure.

It is a thoroughly Georgian church, and remains so, wholly unmodernized, to-day: there are no slaves in the slaves' galleries; there is no other change. The odd little Communion Table, the tall white pulpit towering behind and over it, the reading-desk, the Communion rails, the white pews and galleries—all are as they were when Madam Rachel Esmond Warrington rustled up the aisle in her stiff silks with George and Harry, and Mrs. Mountain and little Fanny, behind her, not a bit displeased to think the people were saying, “There comes Princess Pocahontas,” and not a bit suspecting any sarcasm in it. She would bid her boys note the reverent gravity of young Mr. Washington, when he arrived with his brother Lawrence from Mount Vernon: later on, when Anne Fairfax's place at Mount Vernon was taken by the widow Custis, Madam Rachel would turn but sour glances towards the Washington pew.

I'll be bound her own was pretty near Governor Fairfax's, and not behind it! And, out of church, would the little Pocahontas comfortably yield the pas to the Governor's lady? He had represented His Majesty at the Bahamas, but Madam Fairfax had only been a Miss Gedney, and only the widow Clarke when His Excellency married her en secondes 0252 252 noces , whereas Madam Esmond ranked herself Viscountess. Was she really glad when Parson Bryan succeeded his kinsman and became a British peer, her own papa the Colonel having never been more than peer de jure ?

Hard by was the Carlisle pew, where Sarah Fairfax, Major John Carlisle's wife, said her prayers. They lived in one of the large red houses in Alexandria.

And there was another Washington pew—the Werner Washington's, Werner's wife being another Fairfax—Madam Carlisle's half-sister Hannah.

The bodies of these good folk lie outside in the big churchyard now: no cemetery, mind you, but a regular old-fashioned churchyard surrounding the old red church.

Alexandria has still much of the air of a Georgian country town with many broad, quiet, streets of roomy houses, sedate, homelike and comfortable, built of bricks baked in England, and brought out in ballast by the ships that were to go ‘home’ laden with tobacco, bricks long since mellowed by time, their red browned by winter rains and rusted with slow-grown lichens. Alongside or behind the big houses are pleasant ample gardens, with pleached walks, fine old trees, flower plots, and archery lawns. There is the Court House, where there were dances in winter; where in 1755, when the long-rumoured war with the French had come, the British General had his Head-Quarters.

Why has the south no Virginian, or Carolinan, Hawthorne to tell the legends of its country towns— 0253 253 legends, one feels, of a ruddier, more genial, more social, less grim and gaunt character, than New England's?

It was a pleasant life, that of such places as Alexandria, the metropolis of a big opulent country: they had plenty of character, the folk who built, and lived in, and loved in, and quarrelled and made it up in, the pleasant homes in these pleasant old streets; the houses bear the stamp of their character still.

On the evening of that Mount Vernon and Alexandria day I lectured at Trinity College, half a mile from Holy Cross College, on the way into Washington: a vast, fine, block of buildings housing a very fine institution for the higher education of girls, in charge of the Sisters of Notre Dame of Namur—the same Notre Dame nuns as those of Cincinnati and Dayton, where I had lectured before.

This college, like many of the Convent Schools we had visited, has a fine art gallery, a great deal finer than the Municipal Art Galleries of many of our provincial towns.

CHAPTER XLVII

ON the next day, November 18th, we spent the afternoon in Washington, visiting public buildings, etc. We went to the top of the Washington Monument, an immensely tall obelisk, and afterwards to the Capitol where we saw the Senate in session.

In the evening we dined with the Chief Justice of the United States, and Mrs. White. His position is the greatest in the United States, with the sole exception of the Presidency; and Mr. White is as much honoured as any living American. Both he and his charming wife gave us the most cordial and delightful welcome. It would not be possible to pass a more interesting evening.

As our talk passed to the great events of his youth, when Mr. White himself was fighting in the war of the North and South, and the Chief Justice understood our admiration for General Lee, who was his cousin, he most generously gave us a present of priceless interest, a little portrait of Robert E. Lee, signed by himself.

Few, indeed, of those I have met in life have ever more deeply impressed me with the sense of greatness and goodness than the Chief Justice of the United States.

On the evening of the following day I lectured at the Academy of the Holy Cross, at Dumbarton, 0255 255 outside Washington; and on the next day the Rector of Holy Cross College and his community entertained the Papal Delegate at luncheon.

We had already called upon Monsignor Bonzano, and been lucky enough to find him at home, on the evening of the day after our arrival. The Apostolic Delegation is a stately house, in the best part of Washington, the gift I believe of the American Episcopate to the Holy See. Monsignor Bonzano, Archbishop of Melitene, has been Papal Delegate in the United States since 1912, and is an ideal representative of the Holy See, on whose presence the Catholic Church in America has good reason to congratulate itself. His Excellency had received us with the utmost kindness, and, as I sat next him at luncheon, I had a further opportunity of enjoying his interesting, kindly conversation.

Soon after his departure we went into Washington, to tea with Mrs. Lee, the widow of a cousin of General Robert E. Lee. This party we especially enjoyed, Mrs. Lee and her daughters being extremely interesting people, travelled, highly cultured, and fine specimens of Southern ladies of one of the great traditional families of the South.

On the morrow we lunched, at the Metropolitan Club, with Prince Reginald de Croy, at that time attached to the Belgian Embassy in Washington, though since returned to Europe. We were his only guests, and we persuaded him to talk of his wonderful experiences during the war. The most remarkable of these concerned the time when he 0256 256 and his sister were at home in their château upon the Belgian and French frontier, where they had the odd experience of having to entertain General Von Kluck, the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, etc., where also they were the means of shielding many refugee soldiers, English and French, and effecting their escape. Prince Reginald was later on condemned, fortunately in his absence, to death by the Germans: his sister was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, two years of which she actually suffered, in Germany, in severe illness and extreme hardship. The whole story was one of unique interest, and should make an enthralling book, if the Prince would himself, as I hope, write it.

During the afternoon of the next day we visited with Father Cavanaugh, the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, and saw the printing of bales of money.

That evening we drove far out into the country to Stone Ridge, to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton at Bethesda, their beautiful country house there. This again was a singularly pleasant party; its members all of the family of our host and hostess. In the drawing-room we admired the two most beautiful portraits of Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee we had ever seen: Mr. Hamilton, like ourselves, being a devout admirer of the great American and the great Virginian.

After dinner, apart from the juniors, I enjoyed with my host one of the most interesting talks I had during all my visit to America. Though special it was typical—typical of what I found to 0257 257 be the best American opinion, that the world duty of America and England requires their mutual friendship and trust.

On the following afternoon, November the 23rd, we visited two ladies to whom we had letters, the Misses Rigg, in their big family home; in the library of which was a Romney portrait that would rouse the envy of a collector. These ladies, also Southern, know many of our friends on both sides of the Atlantic, and made our visit very pleasant.

In the evening we dined at St. Cecilia's Academy, and then drove home to Holy Cross College, only regretting that it was our last night under that most hospitable roof.

The Rector had soon after our arrival returned from hospital, looking very worn and pale; but ill as, alas, he still was, his welcome was the kindest conceivable. R

CHAPTER XLVIII

NEXT morning, November 24th, we left Holy Cross College and Washington, with very keen regrets at leaving our kind hosts there, and at noon arrived at Baltimore.

We went immediately to call on Cardinal Gibbons, the greatest figure of the Catholic Church in America, and universally, by those of all creeds, regarded as one of the greatest of all Americans. He received us with the most delightful friendliness, and made us immediately at home. In spite of his eighty-six years, the Cardinal retains the elastic step, rapid movement, alertness, and vivacity of youth. His very tall slim figure is most dignified, as it is most attractive, but his beautiful, refined face is known by portraits to all the world. One of those portraits, signed by himself, he was so very kind as to give us.

His manner is the most perfect conceivable: direct, simple and sincere, with faultless dignity and courtesy, it has something more irresistible in its kindness, one might say affectionateness.

His own keen interest in life, in men and things, and his complete knowledge of them, make him a wonderfully interesting talker.

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He spoke with the most kindly, paternal cordiality of the Prince of Wales, who had visited him a few days before ourselves. He talked also of Cardinal Mercier's visit; and he told us of his having that morning received into the Catholic Church Dr. Kinsman, Bishop of Delaware, of the American Episcopal Church.

It would have been delightful to prolong this interview, but the gentleman at whose house we were to lunch, by whom we had been driven to the Cardinal's house from the station, was waiting for us at the door all this time, and we were ashamed of making him wait longer. Not a Catholic himself, though his family are Catholics, Mr. Gittings spoke with sincere enthusiasm of the Cardinal, assuring us that if there were a Revolution in the streets (Baltimore has not at all a Revolutionary air) His Eminence would only have to show himself and it would disperse and melt away!

Mr. Gittings has a large estate outside Baltimore, at Ashburton, with an ideal family home. There we were given a charming welcome by Mrs. Gittings and their daughter, Mrs. Barrett, whom we had met in New York in the spring.

I have never mentioned the material part of our entertainment on any occasion when I have spoken of the innumerable hospitalities we received all over the United States and Canada: I only do so on this occasion because at luncheon one of the dishes consisted of the famous canvas-backed wild duck of the south, which certainly deserves 0260 260 its reputation; it is incomparably the best of all the water game birds.

After a thoroughly agreeable afternoon we drove with Mrs. Barrett to the station as she was rejoining her husband in New York. Thither we ourselves returned next morning, the first portion of the journey affording many beautiful views of the noble Delaware river, close to which the line runs.

This our last stay in New York was made specially agreeable by the opportunities it afforded of renewing our acquaintance with the friends we made in the spring.

We lunched and dined more than once with the Schuyler Warrens, whom we found as cordial and interesting as ever, and extremely interested in our long and wide experiences of their country and of Canada. Mrs. Warren seemed keenly aware that, interesting as it all must have been, it must also have been exhausting, and said emphatically,

“You have done all this without a breakdown; many stronger and younger people have broken down completely under much less of it.” At her house I had the pleasure of meeting again the Abbé Ernest Dimnet, one of the most entertaining of talkers, whom I had known well in Paris, himself now engaged on a lecture tour in the United States.

We also met more than once our most sympathetic friend and publisher, Mr. Arthur Kenedy, and again lunched with him at Savarin's.

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Our friend Mrs. Winslow, whom we had first met at New Haven, at Mrs. Hoppin's, dined with us; as did our Philadelphia friend, Father * Kirlin, who was so good as to come to New York to see us.

* Now Monsignor.

I made a short excursion, without alarms, to Newark to lecture at St. Vincent's Academy, a college conducted by the Sisters of Charity, the young gentleman who drove me to and from the station, Mr. Robert Holland, informing me that his father, Mr. John P. Holland, was the inventor of the ubmarine.

We also went again to Pelham Manor, where, after a most agreeable luncheon-party with our friends the Blaine-Walkers, I lectured at the Pelham Manor Club. This was my last lecture in America, but, before it, we had revisited St. Elizabeth's College, at Convent Station, and Marymount at Tarrytown, and I had lectured again at both.

On the night of our visit to Pelham Manor we dined with Miss Lumaghi, our St. Louis friend, sister of Mrs. John Ringrose Drew, and were taken by her to hear Caruso.

On the night of our good-bye visit to Tarrytown, I dined with Comtesse de Laugier Villars, meeting a most agreeable set of fellow-guests, notably a nephew of hers, a young American Staff Officer, lately returned from Europe, whose talk about the war was most interesting.

On Saturday, November 29th, Mr. Arthur Kenedy lunched with us, then we went to tea with Mrs. 0262 262 Winslow, and hastened thence to the Pennsylvania Station to catch our train for Torresdale, where we were to dine and sleep at Mr. Walter Smith's, whose sister Miss Helen Grace Smith we had met at Albany and Troy. He and she, and another brother and sister, live together in a charming home close to the banks of the Delaware, about twenty miles down stream from Philadelphia. All four are most interesting people, and no visit could have been more agreeable.

During Sunday morning we revisited Eden Hall and found the nuns as kind and cordial as ever, and full of interest in our visits to the many Convents of the Sacred Heart, in the United States and Canada, which had entertained us since we had seen them last in the spring.

Last, but far from least, during this last visit to New York, I had the pleasure of finding at home, at St. Catherine's Priory, our first American hosts, Prior Smith and Father Schwertner, who were full of hospitable reproaches that we had not offered ourselves as guests again to them. To tell the truth we had been ashamed to write and say we were returning to New York, lest it should seem we were hinting at such an invitation, after having trespassed for a whole month on their hospitality before.

It was none the less a pleasure to meet again friends so cordial and so kind.

At 9.30 on the morning of December 5th we left New York finally, for Portland, in the State of Maine, whence the Megantic was to sail, 0263 263 owing to difficulties of coaling at New York. Two good friends came to the station to see the last of us, Mr. Arthur Kenedy and Dr. Locke, Head of the Newman School at Hackensack, New Jersey.

CHAPTER XLIX

WE had during the last couple of months been experiencing pretty sudden and considerable changes of latitude and of climate. The oppressive heat of St. Louis on the last days of September was soon followed by Ottawa and snow: the deep wintry snow of the Adirondacks had in turn been very soon followed by the mellow autumn of Washington. During our last ten days in New York dry hard days of biting winds, with keen frost in their teeth, had alternated with chill rains. And now we were steadily pushing much further north again, and the landscape outside, though not white, had a wintry, shuddering, look enough. But that landscape, as far as Boston, was an old friend now, and had a more friendly appeal than when first seen.

At New Haven there was a more decided touch of winter, and we felt the kindness of Mrs. Hoppin, and her sister Miss Mitchell, in braving the bleak weather to come and spend with us at the station the few minutes the train stopped there. They could not now be hospitable to us at home, but were determined to be so even in their own absence and brought for our solace on the journey a basket plentifully stocked with delicacies.

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Alas! it was but a glimpse we had of these friends, and the train was off again. But at Boston we were to see other friends again: at the station the Reggios met us, and we were driven to their house for our two hours' wait. Round the tea-table the whole family was gathered, except some of the babies who were unwell and unable to come down: there were Mr. Reggio and his daughter, his two sons and their wives, and Dr. Willie Reggio's two little girls. We talked, and talked, with not half time enough to say all there was to say. It was like being at home again after our travels, and telling the home circle all we had seen while away. Then there were the beloved children to see upstairs, and then the rush back to the station: but not by ourselves, for Mr. Reggio and Miss Reggio were coming too, determined to see us off from Portland. It was a kindness impossible to thank them for sufficiently: a kindness so great that we were ashamed of all it involved, a long night journey in midwinter, and the journey back afterwards.

In the train we could carry on the talk begun around the tea-table, and this time it was carried on over Mrs. Hoppin's basket, all the more useful as there was no dining-car on the train. It was just midnight when we got into the hotel at Portland, where we found a thin powdering of snow on the ground, and a sharp blast freezing it.

Next morning, December 6th, we had to be aboard the Megantic before 8.30, and by 7 o'clock were breakfasting in the big dining-hall at the top of the hotel, with splendid views from the windows, 0266 266 of the beautiful Portland harbour. That was our last meal in America, and for the last time we were enjoying the unbridled American hospitality, for our friends had come to Portland, I think, expressly to be our hosts. But their work for us was not done even when we were on board: some of our heavy baggage had failed to arrive, and off they went scouring the country for it, ran it to earth at the distant town-station, and brought it triumphantly to the ship in time.

It was hard to understand how all the snow in the dockyard didn't thaw in the neighbourhood of two such warm hearts.

At 11.30 we were off, and very comfortable and homelike the ship felt. Our cabin was large and well furnished, warmed by a cheerful red stove: our steward a most attentive person, with much to tell of Cardinal Mercier, whose steward he had been on the last homeward voyage. Next morning we were at Halifax, to get more coal: and it was a pleasure to see that beautiful harbour, like a great lake, again, though provoking enough that no one was allowed ashore, as we remained in harbour for a day and a half.

During much of the time a blizzard was raging: and, very soon after we had left at last, we got into bad weather. The storm rapidly increased in intensity: one old sea-dog among the passengers, who had crossed the ocean over eighty times, said he had never seen so bad a storm on the Atlantic. It was a following gale and following too close; it was our best chance to 'bout ship 0267 267 and head westward again. But to 'bout ship in such a gale is full of difficulties and danger, especially, I take it, during the time the turning ship must lie broadside on to wind and wave. It took a long time, and all the while oil was being poured on the seas.

In the midst of our own troubles we received wireless signals from another ship in distress, sixty miles away, and we did our best to get to her: she sank, however, before our arrival, though another vessel had reached her meanwhile and saved all her crew.

During two days we were heading westward, at our full available speed, but the force of the gale was driving us two knots an hour eastward all the time. I must say everyone behaved excellently; no one was nervous or dismal; a general spirit of cheerfulness reigned through the ship, and passengers only told each other comfortably that our captain was reported one of the best, most skilful, and careful in the whole mercantile marine.

The ship herself made dismal groanings, but no other groanings were heard. When all danger was over, and the captain had leisure to attend to us, the whole body of passengers was anxious to testify its gratitude and appreciation. The second-class passengers composed a fine letter of thanks to him, and the first-class passengers presented to Commander F. E. Beadnell, R.N.R., an address with a purse of £70 for the purchase of a piece of plate.

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Our own great loss during the many days of the storm was that of his genial company from our table in the saloon.

On the morning of December 18th we arrived at Liverpool, after a voyage of twelve days from Portland, and disembarked after an absence from England of eight months and a half.

CHAPTER L

EXCEPT in the case of a child every traveller has, no doubt, read much about any foreign country before the time arrives for him to visit it He has read the descriptions of other travellers, their experiences and their impressions: he knows the history of the country, and something of the lives of its greatest men. Probably he has read some portion of its literature, through which perhaps he has gathered a clearer understanding of the country itself than the accounts of former travellers alone would have given him. More especially is this true of one who, before visiting a foreign land, has long known its people as revealed by themselves in their memoirs, their letters, and their journals. He will have his own idea of the country he comes to visit, and on the whole it will not be far from the truth: its history will have told him too much, its own people will have told him too much in the images they have shown him of themselves in their drama and their poetry, their biographies and essays, their memoirs and their diaries, their statues and painted portraits of themselves, their songs and their music. The Englishman visiting America for the first time will also have his preimpressions: and he may imagine, more or less consciously, that he has less to learn upon the spot 0270 270 than if he were now making his first visit to France or Italy. If so it will probably be because he thinks of the Americans as a branch of the English people: such phrases as ‘Our Transatlantic Cousins’ have been accepted by him as really descriptive: he thinks of them, in fact, in the main, as those of George Washington's contemporaries in England who respected him most thought of him and of the Americans who were also their contemporaries. And so he thinks of them as having nearly the same share in English History with himself, of their ancestors as having been his own, engaged in the same hopes and struggles, joys or sorrows, with them, and inheriting the same glories with almost the same sense of possesion. Such a man will unconsciously conceive that there must be less to learn on the spot than in France or Spain: he has only the period since American Independence to reckon with: to note how, say, a century and a half of living overseas has changed these English folk. He knows that he will have no foreign tongue to talk; he may count on finding everything easier to understand.

But such a traveller forgets that he has less to help him before he starts. The history he has had to read is much shorter, and, in a sense, much more meagre, to the foreign reader (and he is a foreign reader), much less captivating and less illuminating. He will have been captivated by the early Colonial history: but will he remember that it is not the history of the ancestors of the bulk of the existing population of the United States, 0271 271 and so can little help him to understand them ? The same will be true of the period of the assertion and the achievement of Independence.

The third great period of interest, that of the war of North and South, may be the only other that provides interest of the higher class. However vital to the Americans themselves, however justly a matter of pride to them , the account of the economic development of their country, its growth in wealth, in commerce, and in population, it is too statistical to be enthralling reading for the stranger, and it is also too impersonal.

The very greatest figures in American history are as interesting to the British as to the American reader: but in so brief a history the very greatest must be few: and the lesser figures do not constitute types.

History apart, Americans have given the rest of the world little of that self-portraiture alluded to above. American memoirs are few: autobiographies of great Americans fewer still: biographies, those of Washington and Lincoln apart, few again and of meagre importance. What first-rate life of Robert E. Lee is there, or of Ulysses Grant? How few outstanding Americans have left us, in their letters or journals, fine portraits of themselves?

America has an immense output of extremely pretty poetry, but no great national poet: Longfellow was an American, but even those who regard him as a great poet do not claim his poetry as national. Edgar Allan Poe, who was a greater poet, gives 0272 272 few American pictures. Mr. Hosea Biglow gives many, but they are not of any America now extant and were always local. Walt Whitman's pictures represent, and sharply, a phase and an epoch.

The great American prose writers? Washington Irving described England better than he described America. Hawthorne's America was New England only; and Boston to-day hardly belongs to his New England. The South never had its Hawthorne or even its Thoreau: Mr. George Cable is of Louisiana only.

Emerson is even less concerned to describe the Americans than Hazlitt was to describe the English: Emerson was concerned with universals.

Bret Harte painted a whole gallery of portraits of poignant vigour and pathos, and of a humour itself, like all finest humour, ringing with pathos. But it was a Californian gallery only, and the originals of his portraits died without issue. The reader steeped in Bret Harte would understand the Californian of to-day no better than if he had never read Tennessee's Partner, or Roaring Camp, or The Outcasts of Poker Flat, or Mliss, or An Idyll of Red Gulch.

No great American Drama has shown the American to us English. The greatest American portraitists have, perhaps, given us as many pictures of our own countrymen and women as of their own: at all events, their portraits of Americans one must go to America to see.

The Englishman who does go thither for the first time may think he has less to learn of the 0273 273 Americans than he had originally to learn of the French or the Italians, but at all events he has learned less. He has formed, inevitably, ideas and impressions, but on slighter evidence.

There is, of course, the evidence of newspapers. But would the American people admit that their portrait was given adequately, or correctly, in their newspapers?

There is one special reason for their refusing to admit it: even the greatest country must have the defects of its greatness, and one effect of the immense extent of the United States is that it cannot, like a small country, have a central Press. Choose any city you will, Washington or New York, Boston or Philadelphia, Chicago or San Francisco, its Daily Press cannot be the Daily Press of the whole Union. The impossible is not attempted: each great city has its own press, characteristic perhaps of its own regions, but not characteristic of other regions, equally American, yet as distant may be as England or France, more distant than London is from Paris, Paris from Madrid, or Berlin from Rome.

Furthermore what European has any intimate familiarity with the Press of the United States? He reads excerpts from it in European journals, and such excerpts may rather mislead than enlighten him as to American opinion at large, may merely confuse his judgment as to American character. On the spot, the European visitor to the United States has to form his judgment, and, on the spot, he will not feel the judgment easy to form. S

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For instance the exuberant hospitality with which he is received, the kindness more precious than hospitality, may itself mislead him: it may cause him to jump to the conclusion that England is better liked over there than she is. A wholesome corrective would be the reading of Mr. Owen Wister's Straight Deal.

On the other hand he may nearly as easily fall into the opposite mistake.

Should it happen that a certain type of widely read American newspaper fall, as he moves from city to city, into his hands, he may, not very unnaturally, conclude that England is the bête noire of the United States, in her idea the villain of the world-drama and her natural enemy, whose downfall is her dearest aim. A wholesome corrective to that might be the learning how strongly approved Mr. Owen Wister's Straight Deal is by millions of the most responsible, most thoughtful, and most really representative Americans. A further correction might be the discovery that, whatever Americans talk about, they are always thinking of themselves. An American newspaper may be scolding England, but it is not really thinking of England, it is thinking all the while of the United States, and probably of some quite temporary business in the United States, a matter of politics, an affair of office, some candidate, or some ‘plank in his platform’.

Imagination is not the American's strong point: the average American who has never quitted them has no realization of any place outside the United 0275 275 States, and generally he has no desire to realize such irrelevant places. He cannot believe they are of much consequence: they are anachronisms.

Probably the American ‘man in the street’ does not read Oliver Wendell Holmes: if he has heard that ‘good Americans, when they die, go to Paris,’ he himself, if he has never left the United States, cannot see why good Americans should wish to go there while alive, and concludes that he would be shocked if he did go.

But the English traveller who should go to America with the idea that he is visiting a nation of cousins, who should be easier than foreigners to understand, is in for the greatest mistake of all. He has never been taught to call them foreigners. Throughout life he has heard of foreigners and Americans. He believes, and I imagine correctly, that Americans speak of Englishmen and Europeans. And he knows that America is an English-speaking country. Does he remember that scores of millions out of the hundred million of that English-speaking population are no more English in blood than Romulus and Remus were? What count does he take of the millions of African blood, or of Asiatic, German, Italian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Czecho-Slovak, Ruthenian, to say nothing of Danes, Greeks, Spaniards, Belgians and Hebrews?

But, it may be said, these people are not surely all English-speaking: the English-speaking American world is not coloured by their thought, affected in its character by their inherited nationalisms, their traditional mentalities.

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The coloured population is English-speaking: so is the German: the others, unable on arrival, perhaps, to talk English learn it almost before the first generation passes away: the second generation must and does talk it. I do not say that ‘American thought’ is visibly affected by each of these immigrant nationalities: but in course of time it must influence, in proportion to its ‘numerosity’: for votes do influence opinion, and the expression of opinion influences votes. I do not imagine that Jews, for instance, are peculiarly popular in America: nor do three and a half millions bear a large weight of proportion to a hundred millions: but, as long as the press has any influence at all, three or four million who have a big press behind them will largely colour the public expression of opinion: and, in a country where finance looms so large as in America, three or four million aliens with vast financial resources will have vast influence, if not in the formation of real thought, in the public expression of current opinion.

No doubt even now, after a century and a quarter of separation from England, a large proportion of the American population, though less large than we always remember, is of English extraction, if tinged by intermarriage with descendants of other nationalities, or with persons themselves of completely ‘foreign’ race. We, who are English, would be apt to consider them, maybe, as the real Americans. Among them there is probably a considerable feeling of sympathy for England: or, if you like, less inherent antagonism towards England. 0277 277 But it would be a mistake to exaggerate this comparative goodwill. Mr. Owen Wister has shown how even these have been educated to a misconception of England, been prejudiced from school-days against her.

Again: do we ourselves always approve of the public actions of our public men? And a distant country is likely to know us and judge us by the conduct of our public men, whom, after all, we have ourselves placed in power.

We all know the adage, ‘a man gets the wife he deserves’: perhaps Americans would say that England must get the Ministries she deserves. I wonder if they would agree that the United States has the Press it deserves?

I do not think anyone will say that in this book there is an attempt on the part of a stranger to dogmatize about a country and a people that he saw for less than nine months: it is more likely that the book will seem colourless for lack of definitely expressed opinion: but it is because the author has so constantly borne in mind, while writing it, the peculiar circumstances given above, that he has not often ventured to say ‘America is such,’ ‘Americans are so and so.’

An American of Baltimore is extremely different from an American of Boston: a description of the Americans of Chicago or Detroit would serve badly enough for a description of the Americans of San Francisco. Yet even the casual, transient visitor can see that the natives of all these places are all equally American. The United States are miraculously 0278 278 prepotent, with certain exceptions, in making all their citizens, even of one generation, American. A Virginian is as American as a Californian, yet the characteristics of one are poles apart from those of the other.

This book, if it can show nothing else, illustrates one shining quality of all Americans, their hospitality. I hope it illustrates another, their kindness and their warmth of heart. There is a third, which may surprise some English people of limited and not fortunate experience: I found Americans singularly modest.

Charles Dickens has given us a repulsive picture of Spread Eagleism: and, by Americans, not by English travellers, I have been told that it is not extinct. But it is regarded as a mark of inferior breeding, of which an American gentleman would be ashamed.

Of this, however, I am sure, that boasting in America is national not personal. Personally the American is modest: he may boast of the greatness of his country, its size, its wealth, its progress: but you do not hear him brag about himself.

Again: if he is purse-proud, it is for his country. Of the national wealth he is inclined to boast too much, and inclined, too, to attach an undue importance to the bigness and the riches of a country. Greece was a tiny country, and far from being wealthy, but it has done inestimable service to the world and civilization, and will never cease to be regarded as having been immeasurably great.

But though the American may boast of the wealth of the United States, and also of that of his own 0279 279 city, I have never heard one American brag of his personal affluence, or hint, though it were the case, that he himself was a very rich man.

Again, I was struck by what used to be called the ‘candour’ of Americans everywhere. They are peculiarly fair-minded, and open-minded: I do not mean flabby in opinion, but ready to listen to and consider an opposite opinion; and extremely willing to learn, and to admit that a stranger may have something, small or great, to teach them—except in ‘business.’

Americans will constantly say of themselves, ‘We are a crude people,’ though it may be that they who make the remark are those with least occasion to make it of themselves.

CHAPTER LI

SO far as my personal observation enabled me to judge, I should say that the women of America are ordinarily more ‘cultivated’ than the men: because they appear to read more. It seemed to me that the American man in general reads little after leaving school or college. That is to say, he reads little but the newspaper. If I am correct in this impression it would not be hard to find an explanation of it. Literature, unless the grey books of Pelmanism are literature, is not concerned with the making of money, and no one would become a reader with the idea of learning from literature how to become quickly rich.

I do not perceive, indeed, that even while at school or college the American lad reads much. To gorge textbooks is not what I mean by reading.

It seemed to me that the American girl, after leaving school or ‘Academy,’ is still apt to continue her education, even when she also is working for her living. All over the United States you find, very numerously supported, women's clubs, whose objects are not social but educational, and whose principal object is mutual encouragement in good reading. No doubt they greatly indulge in the hearing of lectures, but the very aim of the lectures is to drive members to the reading of the best authors. 0281 281 The object of members is not at all to become bookworms, nor to acquire technical knowledge of commercial value, but just to acquire and keep up the taste for good reading.

Perhaps among those not earning their own living the American woman has more leisure for this sort of thing than the English. At all events, it seems that American women so circumstanced have less to do than the English—and do it. During school and college days the many thousands of American girls I have met are certainly encouraged to acquire and continue the practice of good reading, apart altogether from their textbooks or ‘course’ books. Of course, all the girls I met were in Catholic schools, colleges, and academies: how it may be in others I cannot, from personal experience, say: but in the enormous number of convent schools, colleges, and academies at which I lectured, and in many of which I stayed , I was struck by the sane and sound system, aiming far more at giving a real education than at turning out successfully-examined girls: they were not stuffing-shops, whose work would be regarded as complete when the creatures to be stuffed had been compelled to gorge to the utmost limit of their swallowing power.

I cannot say whether the average American man adds to his reading of newspapers that of magazines: if so, it would not add much to his appreciation of literature. With singularly few exceptions the American magazine is of low literary value, like the Americanized magazine over here. I understand that there is ‘good money’ in them: 0282 282 especially for the short story: and that belief concerning them has led to a lamentable development, which must tend to maintain a poor standard: you can take out a course of short-story writing, and such courses are largely taken out, with what fine results of originality and vigour may be conceived. I understand that ‘how to become a poet’ is taught in the same fashion—and I should think that innumerable American poets have taken out the course.

I was on innumerable occasions asked how to learn literary style. The enquiry was, no doubt, flattering: and by those who made it the answer was probably considered disobliging. ‘Any writer with a good style can only have acquired it by habitual, constant, appreciative reading of the finest writers.’

All these enquiries were clearly made in the belief that there is some patent receipt for style, as for short-story writing, and for the manufacture of poetry.

Americans have always had the reputation of a peculiar readiness to make much of eminence, and flatter celebrity. This seems to me a phase of their modesty. They are even over-willing to concede superiority to others on report, and sometimes lionship is conceded to quite small kittens: a very amiable concession much appreciated by the kittens.

But they are amiable. As husbands, and fathers, wives and mothers, brothers, sisters, and friends, loving, affectionate, and loyal. Their rancours are all political. By disposition not at all prone to 0283 283 uncharitable judgment, they will believe all evil of a political opponent—and print it. But, then, does the printed word go for much? They are in private life pleasant talkers, the level of conversation high. Conversation overheard , for instance in trains and clubs, is singularly un interesting. At the end of each ‘Pullman’ there is a smoking-room, and there the talking goes on. The theme all over the Union is the same—money. It may be that the theme is tacitly chosen because it is uncontentious, as Dr. Johnson said that Sir Robert Walpole always chose to talk of a worse one at his table ‘because all could join in it.’

But I confess I do not believe it is chosen for that reason, but because it is felt to be the theme of universal, national interest.

I am not accusing Americans of avarice, I do not think them avaricious at all. They are neither stingy nor greedy.

They are generous, and I think they would like everybody to be rich. But they seem to think too much of money, to assign to it an importance it has not got, and to make it the life-test and the life-standard, to meditate upon it day and night: and this is not out of love for spending or for luxury, but from an inherently false attitude towards money—an idea of its greatness: as if they could not stand up against it and it knocked them flat.

I doubt if they could believe in the sincerity of any other attitude. Imagination is not their strong point. Of their National Civilization they are proud, and they mean by it their National 0284 284 wealth. A press largely Jew-owned is not apt to discourage their point of view.

They are given to think in terms of money.

It is astounding to be told by a gentleman of the ‘educated classes’ that his city contains a million-dollar Public Picture Gallery: not thereby meaning to inform you what the actual building cost but of the importance of the collection. For that matter every public building in the United States is, so to speak, marked in plain figures: the first thing, often the only thing I was told about it was its price.

I am very far indeed from suggesting that Americans would throw themselves at the head of a stranger from abroad because they understood him to be especially rich, and receive another coldly because they perceived him to be poor. I know the contrary to be the case. It is distinction of some sort, or the reputation of it, that attracts them to the stranger they do not yet know personally: as soon as they do know him personally they welcome him for himself, if he be found worthy of liking, even if he be also found of less distinction than they had fancied. They are often twitted by Europeans for a special fondness for rank in strangers: as if these democrats had after all a hankering after royalty and nobility. I believe that the Americans as a people dislike both—dislike them to the point of prejudice and bigotry. They are keenly alive to the benefits of a Republic, apparently unable to conceive that there can be counter-advantages belonging to a monarchy, 0285 285 however limited, free, and constitutional: and an aristocracy they appear sincerely to regard as one of the worst evils of a monarchy. Personal loyalty to a Sovereign is quite incomprehensible to them, and they seem to disbelieve in the possibility of its existence. The survival of royalty at all they regard as a bad joke.

The warm welcome afforded in America to a royal stranger is not any disproof of this, but only a proof of their exuberant hospitality. They are always ready to be hospitable to a stranger, and a royal stranger's arrival and presence must be widely known. If it happens, as it is apt to happen, that the stranger proves on inspection to have an agreeable, friendly, unaffected, and simple manner, then his welcome becomes enthusiastic; but it is personal, a tribute to himself, not to his rank. It is no proof of their having, after all, a sneaking fondness for princes, but a proof of their candour in being able to surmount fixed prejudice against princes, and welcome a guest who deserves welcome. They will not treat a nice man coldly because he holds a rank they dislike.

The rank they tolerate most easily is ecclesiastical rank, for three reasons perhaps: because the proportion of Catholics to the population is very high; because ecclesiastical dignity is not hereditary and has nothing to do with birth, and may therefore be taken as a presumption of some special distinction or merit in the man; and because the Catholic Church and her leading personages 0286 286 enjoy a very high degree of respect in the United States.

The national adoration of democracy is reflected in the national adjective of eulogy, which is ‘democratic.’ Everything and everybody which it is intended to praise is described as democratic. Yet one may doubt if there be more equality in America than in England. Americans believe that in England only people of the same rank live togather, and it shocks them: but it would seem as if in the United States only people of about the same degree of wealth lived together. Families of narrow means live socially apart from families of affluence, though the former may be equally ladies and gentlemen, by birth, education, and manners. My own impression is that the poor gentry however well-bred, agreeable, and cultivated, would find it very difficult to gain admission, if they desired it, to the houses of the wealthy. It appeared to me that the ranks of wealth were firmly, if tacitly, closed against them.

There cannot be more liberty in America than in England: many Americans will assure you that there is less: but the standing instance quoted will probably be, nowadays, Prohibition. You will be assured that it is abhorred, and imposed not by the will but against the will of the American people: that it was never imposed by the vote of the American electorate, however hoodwinked, but merely by a series of subterranean assaults that secured, through the basest tricks, a preponderating vote of the various State governments. Bribery, blackmail, and 0287 287 what not, are declared to have been used to obtain those votes by the army of cranks, or worse, who put through Prohibition during the absence in Europe of immense numbers of voters, of whose voice, had they been present, those who represented the several States would have been afraid. Even if, they protest, the majority of the State votes for Prohibition had been honestly obtained, that majority of States would not represent the majority of voters in the Federal electorate.

Of the truth of all this a stranger must be ignorant: but even a stranger may be able to perceive that, whatever was intended by those who engineered the imposition of Prohibition, the effect is precisely that general irritation which the accusers of its engineers are said to have desired, and that further acerbation of the poor against the rich. Prohibition does not secure total abstinence, and may never secure it: for, while any article is much desired by many millions of people, those who are wealthy enough will probably obtain it: but it will only be the wealthy who can do so: either because they will have been able to stock a long supply, or because they can still afford to pay for illicit and secret supplies. In either case the poor will feel that they are at once forced to a total abstinence for which they recognise no necessity, while they believe that wealth enables others to use that of which they are deprived.

That revolutionaries should openly declare themselves, though not teetotalers themselves, in favour of Prohibition, and determined to back it up, because 0288 288 the workman deprived of his beer will be ripe for revolt, certainly gives colour of reason to those who, all. over America, accuse the engineers of Prohibition of being worse than innocent cranks, and pronounce them cunning mischief-makers.

I neither saw nor heard anything to give the impression that the Americans are an intemperate people in need of any such crude and drastic remedy as universal Prohibition: indeed, it would be difficult to understand how a nation generally intemperate could be made by any juggling, and certainly could not be made by a real majority vote, to amend its constitution in favour of Prohibition.

All I heard was that the Saloon System had been bad and injurious. But a legislature powerful enough to impose universal Prohibition would certainly be powerful enough to reform its Saloon System drastically and effectually.

CHAPTER LII

I HAVE tried above to give some few, among many, reasons why an English visitor may find America more of a terra incognita than he had expected.

The identity of speech, unconsciously and not quite unnaturally, may lead him to think he will find fewer differences than there are between the two nations—for some generations to come one could hardly talk of the two peoples.

The differences of custom are not marked enough to arrest his immediate attention or give much to say about them. The differences which lie deeper are those of habit of mind: the things which make it hard for the English to understand the Americans, and equally hard for the Americans to understand the English.

Do not all English people think of the people of the United States as Europeans overseas? But they are Americans. Asia and Europe melt into each other: the lips of Europe and of Africa all but meet at the Pillars of Hercules: nevertheless we always think of Asiatics, Africans and Europeans as wholly different and unlike. But, when we speak of all four quarters of the globe, Asiatics, Africans, Europeans and Americans, we do not think of the T 0290 290 last two as different from each other: because the Americans came from Europe: but they have also gone from it, and the departure is as important as the origin: to Americans themselves more important. They are apt to speak with greater satisfaction of having left Europe than of having, themselves in their forbears, once belonged to it.

Do Americans admire Europe? They do not say so.

An English visitor must leave America, after a prolonged sojourn there, penetrated with feelings of gratitude for the unmeasured kindness of his welcome: for the boundless hospitality shown, and the testimonies, even more valued, of friendship. And the more personal friendship is, the more precious must it be to himself.

But it seems to me that he would be wise not to mistake all this great personal goodness towards himself for something altogether different. Nor do I think him very likely to mistake it.

Though welcomed with utmost kindness by those of different religion, or opposed politics, from ourselves, we do not take their goodwill as a proof of approval of our faith or our politics. We know it is personal: personal courtesy and personal benevolence. On both sides of the Atlantic there are large numbers of the best people earnestly solicitous for a strong, enduring and mutual goodwill, sympathy and affection even, between England and the United States: in such a mutual understanding they perceive an enormous guarantee for the world's freedom and happiness, And what we greatly 0291 291 desire we are prone to think we are to get: and we are prone also to see signs of it in things which have not quite that significance.

When an Englishman receives a gracious welcome in the United States it proves—that the Americans are gracious to strangers. Of that he must come away certain. But he had better not mistake personal benevolence for an illustration of national appreciation.

If, because America did at length enter the late war on the side of the Allies, he had expected to find the United States in a vehement ardour of national sympathy for the Allies, he will have been disappointed. Neither for England nor for France will he find America blinded by affection. The Atlantic is not at all too wide for British faults to be visible across it.

It was not affection either for France or Great Britain that brought America into the war, nor does she say that it was. She is far from saying that the war has made either country dearer to her.

Many of the most clear-sighted Americans have come to see that the interests of the United States cannot be switched off from those of France and England, that in fact a prosperous England and a prosperous France are better for herself, her trade and her safety, than a France and England reduced and weak. But not nearly all Americans perceive even that. And nearly all are more than shy of any such close friendship as might imply any entanglement in any European affairs. 0292 292 Perhaps, though America can hardly dislike us for eagerness to be friends with her—she must esteem it an evidence of good taste—she may have thought we seemed too eager. “The lady,” she may have told herself, “doth protest too much, methinks,” while listening to Britannia's courtesies.

I have ventured to say that, perhaps, America thinks too much of money, and may place her own greatness too much in her wealth. Unless that is a mistake of mine it is likely to make her suspect that Britannia is also thinking too much of America's millions, as if Britannia, in her affectionate approaches, had only one eye upon Columbia's shining qualities, and one (the right eye) shrewdly fixed upon her dollars. Some Americans have told me that England should inform them more: give them true versions of newspaper fables. But I have found many others inclined to resent the over-information to which they have been exposed since the war began: in other words, to British propaganda, or Ally propaganda. They dislike being bored.

I suppose any English traveller on his way home across the Atlantic has opportunity, and will take occasion, to ask himself whether his impressions of America leave him with any decision as to the likelihood or unlikelihood of a closer cordiality between his own country and that he has lately been living in. For my part I could not pretend to any decision on the subject.

Naturally, as I loved my own country, and thought her worthy of affection, I wished to believe 0293 293 that America, where I had been so well treated, might be joined with her in closer ties of friendship. Whether it were likely I could not, and cannot, pretend to say. I have never been able to regard it as a duty to believe a thing is, or even is to be, because I know that I wish it to be, and think that I know that it ought to be.

“If, of all words of tongue or pen, The saddest is, ‘It might have been,’ A sadder still we daily see, ‘It is, but hadn't ought to be?’”

And we do see it daily.

Because I like both I would like England and America to like each other. But it won't make them do it.

Will anything? That is known, but not by me, or perhaps anywhere here on earth. Will the two countries even try to like each other better? (Mr. Wister tells us pretty plainly that his country does not at all events like ours, though for his part he seems to think it might just as well.)

That also I cannot tell.

On each, and on both, I think there lies a great world-responsibility, and together both countries could discharge it better than tugging different ways, and embarrassing each other.

If they fail to unite in discharging this great world-responsibility, I cannot pretend to foresee by which nation's fault it will be, which will be the most manly and frank, which the least suspicious or touchy.

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One thing I do see, that the heart of each nation is greater than its mouth, finer than its tongue, truer than its talk, incomparably nobler than its printed gibe, or loudly applauded platform-gabble, often meant to hurt, to win the easiest of all triumphs—a sneering laugh at the far absent.

CHAPTER LIII

I DO not think there is in these pages much of adverse, or uncomplimentary, criticism: what there may be is not applicable to those among whom I lived in America: with them I never felt like a foreigner among strangers. I was always made to feel that I was at home with friends: and I must say there was never anything to remind me that these were no home-friends. Well-bred people do not differ much from each other the world over.

The nature of our tour allowed of only hurried glimpes of American Society, as we were for the most part constantly moving from place to place, What we were able to see was extremely agreeable and occasioned regret that we could not see more.

The only drawback to its enjoyment was, as I thought, an eagerness to make politics the topic of conversation. Some to whom I mentioned this expressed surprise, and declared that it was not a general proclivity, but rather an exceptional one. Others admitted that it was becoming general, but was a new phase of American Society engendered by the war, and especially by Mr. Wilson's second election and what had followed from his European activities. Of him one heard, very naturally, quite 0296 296 incessantly; but very rarely was he spoken of with any moderation. In one house his name would call down thunders of obloquy, he was denied any greatness, any sincerity: everything evil was asserted of his policy and his motives: he had landed America in the falsest of positions, and that out of personal vanity and private ambition: he had gained his second Presidency by an unscrupulous trick and exploited the Presidency by a series of tricks that degraded it and the United States. In the next house Mr. Wilson was the greatest of statesmen, the only Statesman of the War, and the noblest of Patriots: he was more than a Statesman, a Seer: and greater than a Patriot, for he was a world-Patriot, in labour of the good of all the nations. As the others declared that he was entangling America in the meshes of inevitable future wars, so these proclaimed that he was the destroyer of all future wars anywhere. He was sublimely sincere, and sublimely strong; he had saved America from disgrace, and covered her with glory and honour. His eyes were far above the petty interests and intrigues of party politics, among the eternal principles of right and justice and noble hopes. He was the greatest American since Lincoln, and in his hands America would achieve the veneration of the world, the tortured world it was his single aim to save from self-destruction. Of manœuvre he was incapable, of the main chance he was as careless as of private advantage or personal adulation.

If, as did happen, one was within an hour exposed to each of these tempests, of obloquy or 0297 297 panegyric, in succession, it was a little overpowering.

There never seemed to be any middle opinion, or any willingness to admit that an ignorant stranger's, not valuable, opinion should hesitate between the two extremes. I feel sure that no European can understand American politics, and I know I am a European: but ignorance, meekly admitted, does not excuse from you the delivery of an opinion: a traveller might as well hope to save his purse by assuring the eager highwayman that there is nothing in it. If he shows there is nothing in it, then he must be searched.

Americans are villainously libelled as unscrupulous in the collection of souvenirs of slight intrinsic value, but I did often wish them less violent collectors of opinions of no value whatever.

Americans have one unusual privilege: they are prophets in their own country. Martin Chuzzlewit suffered from it, and it is a peculiarity still remarkable after three quarters of a century. By one offensive and repulsive personage he would be introduced to another repulsive and offensive personage, and almost always be informed by the former (in full hearing of the latter) that the presentation made him acquainted with one of the most distinguished, important, enlightened, remarkable individuals in that or (par conséquent) any other country. The offensive and repulsive people, so offensively described by Dickens, exist no more, if they existed when he stuffed his pages with their counterfeit presentments: but the prodigies are not 0298 298 obsolete. Every neighbourhood is illustrated by their presence: every city has its school of prophets, and presentation to them is not difficult but inevitable.

I have said that the Americans are singularly modest, and this is not a contradiction of my belief, but an instance of its correctness. They are touchingly willing to admit the eminence of people no more eminent than themselves, and often obviously inferior to themselves, because of those people it has been asserted by persons to whose opinion only an extreme self-diffidence would ascribe any consequence.

I was constantly being introduced to eminent persons by people who were quite unmistakably superior to those notables, and most modestly unaware of it.

But what Dickens did not remark, they are also wonderfully ready to make much of imported prophets. The British Lion may not be, in their eyes, the king of beasts, they do not, of course, admire kings; but British lions they love to stroke.

Another illustration of their modesty is their extreme eagerness to know what a stranger thinks of them—conceit would not care a dime. Nor would conceit be at all discomposed by an opinion that fell short of flattery. It would serenely recollect that the criticism was ignorant and worthless. If half the world abused John Bull he would still sleep o' nights. He would know that he is what he is, not what foreign jealousy may say he is. 0299 299 This is not an admission, by implication, that John Bull is conceited. He is not. Even his self-content is more ancestral than personal. He is disposed by character to think more of the doings of his forbears than of his own. He is too conservative for conceit: a willingness to remain what others, before our time, have made us, rather than aim at some superiority to them, is essentially the reverse of conceited.

The less conservative an Englishman is the more conceited shall you find him.

Your reformer is never humble. The wisdom or the faith of ages may have been good enough for countless millions of sages or of saints, but are not good enough for him. The classics of literature, of art and of architecture he discards: their beauty is unworthy of his admiration or praise. He can detect the puerility of Homer, the vapidity of Rafael, the dullness of the Venus de Milo, the vulgarity of St. Peter's, the barbarism of Notre Dame de Paris or of Chartres. He (or she) will turn you out a new religion while you wait, without any particular god, but with himself (or herself) for the object of your cult. He will provide out of his own brain a philosophy contradictory of the discoveries and admissions and axioms of every other brain: a science that does not prove. All that has been held beautiful he will expect you, at his bidding, to find ugly. And he may be an Englishman, but he is wholly unlike John Bull, and tries to make capital of it. He does not like Englishmen, but he is as thick as thieves with England's enemies, to whom 0300 300 he is as useful as he can be, and by whom he is flattered and despised. But of one art, the newest, he is an unbridled exponent, and practises self-advertisement so adroitly that strangers will call his pictures British art, his lewd ungainly outrages on verse English poetry, and imagine his yelps are the considered utterance of English social and political principle. He is less English than an Esquimaux, but his noise across the Atlantic might easily make Americans fancy the English a conceited people.

CHAPTER LIV

IT may very easily be said in criticism of this book that it is only the narrative of a Catholic tour in the United States and Canada. The record is of a continual movement from one Catholic university, or college, or society, to another: and that the travellers could have seen comparatively little of non-Catholic America or Canada.

Well then, let this little book be regarded merely as a Catholic's experiences among his co-religionists in North America. I do not know of any similar book. The books of American travel I have read appear to be written by observers, not only non-Catholics, but without much appreciation of Catholic faith or practice. At all events the circumstances of our tour gave constant occasion for noting, as the books just mentioned never did note, the position of the Catholic Church in America.

It is stronger than that of any other Christian faith, and rapidly progressive in its strength: and there seems abundant ground for belief that the progression will continue steadily. Though not a prophet in my own country, or out of it, I will dare to prophesy that in the not distant 0302 302 future the faith of all in America who care to remain Christians will be that of the Catholic Church.

Not merely by force of Catholic immigration and intermarriage: but by force of something more spiritually significant and important; because the Catholic Church knows what she believes.

She strengthens her children with revealed certainties instead of weakening them by human conjectures: she claims their obedience by Divine Revelation, instead of trying to arrest their vagrant attention by ephemeral clevernesses.

The other bodies still using the name of Christ hardly claim to be speaking in His name, and abating the claim abdicate the very grounds of authority to teach. Their appeal is no longer to the faith of their hearers, but only to their intelligence, and the intelligence may discard, and is discarding, their teaching. And inevitably, for the teachers are discarding it themselves. At first they dropped only what they thought a little, but more and more has been dropped, till their hearers (when they keep any) say ‘Why not drop it all?’

‘Since these teachers admit so handsomely that most of what they used to say was fabulous, let us not dally and loiter on the way, but discard the whole fable.’

‘These teachers disclaim Divine Authority for their teaching: the Founder of the religion they profess they no longer dare uncompromisingly to call 0303 303 Divine. He came from God—so they say we all do. His teaching was Divine—which part? for much of it, they explain away: he was, all said and done, oriental, and employed a good deal of oriental rhetoric: he forbade things, and they do not censure our doing them: he demanded things, and they assure us they are not required, but that remarkably cheap substitutes would be accepted, and may be even more valued by him now. He very flatly claimed to be God, but they say he did not mean it: so it was unkind of the Jews, who were quite sure he did mean it, and whom he did not undeceive, to kill him for saying so. He made the Jews unreasonably angry by working miracles, for it appears the miracles were all optical illusions: his ignorant disciples, and biographers, were rather vulgarly eager to insist on the reality of these imaginary miracles—for that sort of vulgarity nowadays people are apt to get shut up: and it was odd of him not to tell them to be more careful. He was not, it appears, the Virgin-born son of the Most High, but the son of a local carpenter and his wife. It is no longer pretended that he died to atone for the sins of mankind, but, if voluntarily for no particular reason or purpose, or else involuntarily, because he could not help himself, like Savonarola and Cranmer, and sectarian bigotry ran high in Jewry and Tudor England. His apostles lied when they said he rose again from death, ate in their presence, and so on.

These teachers who appeal to our intelligence let us perceive that they no longer believe much of 0304 304 it: and our intelligence perceives that they believe none of it: and certainly we shall not.’

We hear more and more of Reunion: and the obduracy of “Rome” is wistfully deplored.

With what is Rome to reunite? with teachers who dare teach nothing? She never was united with any such. With teachers who admit as true blasphemies she has always abhorred and condemned?

With moralists who allow things she knows Christ, Her Master, with clear Divine voice, utterly disallowed?

How can she share faith with those who retain none, and think no single point of faith worth keeping?—she who knows she has no more right to part with a fraction of her children's inheritance than she has to squander the whole. It is not her teaching but God's. If it was her invention like the religions of reformers and empyrics she might: she is its guardian not its patentee, so she cannot chaffer it away for the big advertisement of being able to say ‘we are now one, and our numbers entitle us to a respect to which we have no other claim.’

The house of truth in which she lives is her home, and why should she leave it because a lot of her naughty and stupid children have run out into the dark and the fog, and have at last discovered that they are by themselves? They can run home. She has kept the home together, she and her wiser, more faithful children. It would be a rare way of keeping the home going to run off after the truants 0305 305 outside in the dark, and shut the old house up: She can't share with those who have nothing left; they have nothing to give, and her all is indivisible. She can only give them exactly what she has herself, and that she is eager to give if they will come home for it. Of course, vast numbers desire none of her things—for themselves: though it is a chronic irritation to them that she keeps them, and sedulously guards and cherishes them. They do not at all like the notion of going in and resuming their possession of those things of which they are, wilfully, disinherited: but they would like hugely to see her come out to them with all those things in her hands to burn in their sweet company. Then indeed they might proclaim union: for she and they would alike having nothing left, and could cower in equal nakedness over the smoke and smoulder and dead ashes of what had been faith. On the other hand there are vast numbers whom a wholly materialistic ‘education’ has not made contented materialists: who, above all the babble of the unbelievers, can hear the gentle whisper of a Divine invitation, who have always believed in Jesus Christ, or have recovered belief in Him, or wonder how to, and ask for plain teaching concerning Him. There are millions who are coming to perceive that a world in which God is ostracized, politically disfranchised, and declared to be only, if at all, tolerable and to be tolerated as a private and personal idiosyncracy, is a dismal, muddled, puzzled, incoherent, suicidal world: who recognise aghast that society on a basis boastfully human, and furiously protesting against a Divine U 0306 306 basis, is self-doomed, and now proudly self-doomed to anarchy and self-destruction. And these, hopeless of human remedy, will turn and look for a Divine, and find, daily more and more inevitably, that the quacks of the new moralities and the new piosities, have no better nostrums to purvey than the anarchists themselves; that they are anarchists, and have always been so, inherently and by blood, though their queer little masks and dominoes, banners and labels have not been so frankly designed or inscribed.

Tired of cheap imitations, those who think Christianity worth having will turn for it to the one Church that has thought it worth keeping. Aghast at anarchy, millions will seek safety in the teaching that has always based itself on Divine, and therefore indefeasible, authority. Those who have come to see, and many will they soon be, how little profit there is in opinions and views as a substitute for Faith, will be arrested by the fact that there is one Church which has always proclaimed the unity of faith, and refused to admit that the contrary of truth can be equally true, or that it is unessential to believe the truth, and equally permissible to believe its contradictory.

Novelty has charms, and many are seduced by them, but they are charms which soon wither, and when withered disgust. Very many will be disgusted with the boasted novelties of the religious discoverers of our time (who, you will perceive on examination, are in fact only undiscoverers, a sort of anti-Columbuses, whose enterprise it is to 0307 307 undiscover America, and protest it doesn't exist and never did), and these, sick of the cry of novelty, will inevitably turn for relief to Permanence, and find a promise of rest and health in the Church that refuses to teach new things or to discard the verities that are, like Him they concern, Eternal.