rely another of those who have been to
Europe and learned nothing?" The Pennsylvania station is full of the
noble qualities that fine and heroic imagination alone can give. That
there existed a railroad man poetic and audacious enough to want it,
architects with genius powerful enough to create it, and a public with
heart enough to love it--these things are for me a surer proof that the
American is a great race than the existence of any quantity of wealthy
universities, museums of classic art, associations for prison reform, or
deep-delved safe-deposit vaults crammed with bonds. Such a monument does
not spring up by chance; it is part of the slow flowering of a nation's
secret spirit!

[Illustration: IN THE PARLOR-CAR]

The terminus emerged brilliantly from an examination of the complicated
detail, both esthetic and practical, that is embedded in the apparent
simplicity of its vast physiognomy. I discovered everything in it proper
to a station, except trains. Not a sign of a train. My impulse was to
ask, "Is this the tomb of Alexander J. Cassatt, or is it a cathedral, or
is it, after all, a railroad station?" Then I was led with due
ceremony across the boundless plains of granite to a secret staircase,
guarded by lions in uniform, and at the foot of this staircase, hidden
like a shame or a crime, I found a resplendent train, the Congressional
Limited. It was not the Limited of my dreams; but it was my first
American Limited, and I boarded it in a condition of excitement. I
criticized, of course, for every experienced traveler has decided views
concerning _trains de luxe_. The cars impressed rather than charmed me.
I preferred, and still prefer, the European variety of Pullman. (Yes, I
admit we owe it entirely to America!) And then there is a harsh,
inhospitable quality about those all-steel cars. They do not yield. You
think you are touching wood, and your knuckles are abraded. The
imitation of wood is a triumph of mimicry, but by no means a triumph of
artistic propriety. Why should steel be made to look like wood?...
Fireproof, you say. But is anything fireproof in the United States,
except perhaps Tammany Hall? Has not the blazing of fireproof
constructions again and again singed off the eyebrows of dauntless
firemen? My impression is that "fireproof," in the American tongue, is
one of those agreeable but quite meaningless phrases which adorn the
languages of all nations. Another such phrase, in the American tongue,