rtably crossed, and I was landing in New York. I can clearly
recall at this moment some of the fantastic shapes the city put on in
my dreams--utterly different, of course, from my actual recollections of
it. Well, that dream is now realised; the gates of the Western world are
opening to me. What experience awaits me I know not; but this I do know,
that the emotion with which I confront it is not one of idle curiosity,
or even of calmly sympathetic interest. It is not primarily to my
intelligence, but to my imagination, that the word "America" appeals. To
many people that word conveys none but prosaic associations; to me it is
electric with romance. Only one other word in existence can give me a
comparable thrill; the word one sees graven on a roadside pillar as one
walks down the southern slope of an Alpine pass: ITALIA. But that word
carries the imagination backward only, whereas AMERICA stands for the
meeting-place of the past and the future. What the land of Cooper and
Mayne Reid was to my boyish fancy, the land of Washington and Lincoln,
Hawthorne and Emerson, is to my adult thoughts. Does this mean that I
approach America in the temper of a romantic schoolboy? Perhaps; but,
bias for bias, I would rather own to that of the romantic schoolboy than
to that of the cynical Old-Worldling.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: The _Oceanic_, it appears, is designed to break the record
in punctuality, not in speed. Nevertheless there are several indications
that our engineers are not resting on their oars, but will presently put
on another spurt. The very shortest Atlantic passage, I understand, has
been made by a German ship. Surely England and America cannot long be
content to leave the record for speed, of all things, in the hands of
Germany.]

LETTER II

Fog in New York Harbour--The Customs--The Note-Taker's Hyperaesthesia--a
Literary Car-Conductor--Mr. Kipling and the American Public--The City of
Elevators.

NEW YORK.

By way of making us feel quite at home, New-York receives us with a dank
Scotch mist. On the shores of Staten Island the leafless trees stand out
grey and gaunt against the whity-grey snow, a legacy, no doubt, from the
great blizzard. Though I keep a sharp look-out, I can descry no Liberty
Enlightening the World. Liberty (_absit omen!_) is wrapped away in grimy
cotton-wool. There, however, are the "sky-scraper" buildings, looming
out through the mist, like the Jotuns in Niflheim of Scandinavian
my