u mean by that a wonderful land--a land of sunshine and
light, of happiness, of faith in the future!" I answered. I saw no
misery or poverty there. Every one looked happy. What hurts me on coming
back to England is the _hopeless_ look on so many faces; the dejection
and apathy of the people standing about in the streets. Of course there
is poverty in New York, but not among the Americans. The Italians, the
Russians, the Poles--all the host of immigrants washed in daily on the
bosom of the Hudson--these are poor, but you don't see them unless you
go Bowery-ways, and even then you can't help feeling that in their
sufferings there is always hope. The barrow man of to-day is the
millionaire of to-morrow! Vulgarity? I saw little of it. I thought that
the people who had amassed large fortunes used their wealth beautifully.

When a man is rich enough to build himself a big new house, he remembers
some old house which he once admired, and he has it imitated with all
the technical skill and care that can be had in America. This accounts
for the odd jumble of styles in Fifth Avenue, along the lakeside in
Chicago, in the new avenues in St. Louis and elsewhere. One
millionaire's house is modeled on a French chateau, another on an old
Colonial house in Virginia, another on a monastery in Mexico, another is
like an Italian palazzo. And their imitations are never weak or
pretentious. The architects in America seem to me to be far more able
than ours, or else they have a freer hand and more money. It is sad to
remember that Mr. Stanford White was one of the best of these splendid
architects.

It was Stanford White with Saint-Gaudens--that great sculptor, whose
work dignifies nearly all the great cities in America--who had most to
do with the Exhibition buildings of the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893.
It was odd to see that fair dream city rising out of the lake, so far
more beautiful in its fleeting beauty than the Chicago of the
stock-yards and the Pit which had provided the money for its beauty. The
millionaires did not interfere with the artists at all. They gave their
thousands--and stood aside. The result was one of the loveliest things
conceivable. Saint-Gaudens and the rest did their work as well as though
the buildings were to endure for centuries instead of being burned in a
year to save the trouble of pulling down! The World's Fair always
recalled to me the story of Michael Angelo, who carved a figure in snow
which, says th