Chapter V: Part 5

In thus commending American hotels over English it is, however, only right to admit that the American hotels are very much more expensive.

While on the subject of eating, I would say that for all their notorious freedoms Americans have a better sense of order than we. Their policemen may carry their batons drawn, and even swing them with a certain insolent defiance or even provocation, but New York goes on its way with more precision and less disturbance than London, and every one is smarter, more alert. The suggestion of a living wage for all is constant. It is indeed on this sense of orderliness that the success of certain of the American time-saving appliances is built. The Automat restaurants, for example, where the customer gets all his requirements himself, would never do in London. The idea is perfect; but it requires the co-operation of the customer, and that is what we should fail to provide. The spotless cleanliness and mechanical exactitude of these places in New York would cease in London, and gradually they would decline and then disappear. At heart, we in England dislike well-managed places. Nor can I see New York's public distribution of hot water adopted in London. Such little geysers as expel steam at intervals through the roadway of Fifth Avenue will never, I fear, be found in Regent Street or Piccadilly. Our communism is very patchy.

There are some unexpected differences between America and England. It is odd, for instance, to find a nation from whom we get most of our tobacco and who have the reputation of even chewing cigars, with such strict rules against smoking. In the Music Halls, which are, as a rule, better than ours, smoking is permitted only in certain parts. Public decorum again is, I should say, more noticeable in an American than an English city, and yet both in San Francisco and New York I dined in restaurants--not late--between 7 and 8--and not furtive hole-in-corner places,--where girls belonging to the establishment, wearing almost nothing at all, performed the latest dances, with extravagant and daring variations of them, among the tables. In London this kind of thing is unknown. In Paris it occurs only in the night cafés. It struck me as astonishing--and probably not at all to the good--that it should be an ordinary dinner accompaniment.

I was asked while I was in America to set down some of the chief things that I missed. I might easily have begun with walking-sticks, for until I reached New York I seemed to be the only man in America who carried one, although a San Francisco friend confessed to sometimes "wearing a cane" on Sundays. I missed a Visitors' Book either at the British Embassy in Washington or at the White House. After passing through India, where one's first duty is to enter one's name in these volumes, it seemed odd that the same machinery of civility should be lacking. I missed any system of cleaning boots during the night, in the hotels; but I soon became accustomed to this, and rather enjoyed visiting the "shine parlours," in one of which was this crisp notice: "If you like our work, tell your friends; if you don't like it, tell us." I missed gum-chewing.

But it was on returning to England that I began really to take notice. Then I found myself missing America's cleanliness, America's despatch, its hotel efficiency, its lashings of cream, its ice on every hand. All this at Liverpool! I missed later the petrol fountains all about the roads, a few of which I had seen in India, at which the motorist can replenish; but these surely will not be long in coming. I don't want England to be Americanised; I don't want America to cease to be a foreign country; but there are lessons each of us can learn.

If I were an American, although I travelled abroad now and then (and I hold that it is the duty of a man to see other lands but live in his own) I should concentrate on America. It is the country of the future. I am glad I have seen it and now know something--however slight--about it at first hand. I made many friends there and amassed innumerable delightful memories. But what is the use of eight weeks? I am ashamed not to have gone there sooner, and humiliated by the brevity of my stay. I have had the opportunity only to lift a thousand curtains, get a glimpse of the entertainment on the other side and drop them again. I should like to go there every other year and have time: time to make the acquaintance of a naturalist and learn from him the names of birds and trees and flowers; time to loiter in the byways; time to penetrate into deeper strata where intimacies strike root and the real discoveries are made; time to discern beneath the surface, so hard and assured, something fey, something wistful, the sense of tears.

INDEX

Adirondacks, etc.
Agra and its Fort
Aitken, E. H., his three books
Akbar
America, its democracy
its humour
its slang
its trains
its women
its newspapers
its MSS.
its hotels
its maturity
American painters in England
Americans, at home and abroad
Americans, their clothes
their physiognomy
their disturbing wealth
Aquariums
Architecture in America
"Association" books

Baker, Mr. Herbert
Bam Bahadur, that great hunter
Baseball and cricket
Beecher, Henry Ward
Benares
Berkeley University
Bernier on the Moguls
Betel-nut chewing
Birds in India
Blackbuck, the agile
Bombay--Towers of Silence
Boston
Butler, H.E., Sir Harcourt

Calcutta--the piano-carriers
its snake charmers
and the Maidan
and its English buildings
its old cemetery
Charnock, Job
Chicago, its hospitable policeman
its pictures
Cinema, the
Cobb, Mr. Irvin
Comparisons between America and England
Coney Island
Cow-worship in India
Cricket and baseball
Curzon, Lord, his preservation of ancient buildings

Dances in India and Japan
Delhi--the camel omnibuses
its architecture
and the Mutiny
Fort
Dickens, Charles, presentation copies

"Eha," his three books
Elephanta, caves of

Fakirs in India
Fatehpur-Sikri
Faneuil Hall, Boston
Fifth Avenue
Foss, Mr. Samuel W., his Boston poem
Franklin, Benjamin
Fujiyama
Funerals in India and England

Ganges, the
Geisha dances
Gilbert, Mr. Cass
Girard, Stephen
Goschen, Lord, wounds the tiger

Hakone, Lake
Hawking
Herford, Mr. Oliver
Hindus, the, and animals
Hokusai
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Hong-Kong, funeral at
Honolulu
Hooghli, the
Hotels in America
Humayun's Tomb
Huntington, Mr. H. E.

Jahan, Shah, his buildings
Jains, the, their preservation of life
Japan--its lack of idlers
and animal life
its women
its American reading
Japanese, their small stature
materialism
public manners
their gold teeth
Journalism in America

Katsuragava rapids
Keats' _Lamia_, 1820
Kesteven, Sir Charles, his library
Khan, Sir Umar Hayat
Kohinoor, the
Kutb Minar, the
Kyoto, its temples

Lake Placid Club
Lamb, Mr. A. M., his distress at Honolulu
Charles, first editions
manuscripts
Landor, Walter Savage
Lavater abroad
Lincoln Memorial
Liston, Lt.-Col. Glen
Lucknow and the Mutiny
its delectability
Lutyens, Sir Edwin Landseer, R.A., goes hawking
and Imperial Delhi
and the priests
and the divers
hunts the tiger
Marquis, Mr. Don
Moguls, the
Mohammedan customs
priests
Monkeys
Morgan, Mr. J. Pierpont
Mount Vernon
Mutiny, the
Myanoshita

Nautch, the
Nawanagar, the Jam of
New or Imperial Delhi
New York, its skyscrapers
its buildings
its aquarium
its shops
its dances
its sky signs
its pictures
its MSS.
its maturity
Newspapers in America
Newton, Mr. A. Edward

Otome Pass

Painters, American, in England
Parsees, the
Peacock Throne, the
Philadelphia
Pictures in America
Prince of Wales in New York
Prohibition
Pronunciation in America

Ranjitsinhji, Prince
Rickshaws
Roosevelt, Theodore, his Memorial Road
"Rose Aylmer"
Ruth, "Babe"

San Francisco
Saranac
_Saturday Evening Post_, the
Scott, Mr. A. P., his house
Sculpture in America
Shaw, Mr. Bernard
Simplified spelling
Skyscrapers
Skysigns
Slang in America
Snake-poison antidotes
St. Gaudens, Augustus
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Swamp-deer hunting
Swan, Mr. Thomas, his despair at Honolulu

Taj Mahal, the
Talmadge, Constance
Norma
Tavernier on the Moguls
Theatre, the, in Japan
Tiger hunt, a
Tinney, Frank
Tokio, its dress
its theatre
Tolstoi, Count Leo
Towers of Silence
Townsend, Joe, his ballad

Valley Forge
Venice and Benares
Vers Libre
Vultures

Washington
George
Martha
Wayne, Anthony
Wayside Inn, the
Wheeler, Mr. Charles Stetson, his story
Women in America
in Japan
Woolworth Building, the

Yamaguchi, Madame
Yokohama

End of Project Gutenberg's Roving East and Roving West, by E. V. Lucas