ch the excluded
interviewers had given currency; and the occasion being taken for
giving utterance to impressions of American affairs.--ED.]

Has what you have seen answered your expectations?

It has far exceeded them. Such books about America as I had looked into
had given me no adequate idea of the immense developments of material
civilization which I have everywhere found. The extent, wealth, and
magnificence of your cities, and especially the splendour of New York,
have altogether astonished me. Though I have not visited the wonder of
the West, Chicago, yet some of your minor modern places, such as
Cleveland, have sufficiently amazed me by the results of one
generation's activity. Occasionally, when I have been in places of some
ten thousand inhabitants where the telephone is in general use, I have
felt somewhat ashamed of our own unenterprising towns, many of which, of
fifty thousand inhabitants and more, make no use of it.

I suppose you recognize in these results the great benefits of free
institutions?

Ah! Now comes one of the inconveniences of interviewing. I have been in
the country less than two months, have seen but a relatively small part
of it, and but comparatively few people, and yet you wish from me a
definite opinion on a difficult question.

Perhaps you will answer, subject to the qualification that you are but
giving your first impressions?

Well, with that understanding, I may reply that though the free
institutions have been partly the cause, I think they have not been the
chief cause. In the first place, the American people have come into
possession of an unparalleled fortune--the mineral wealth and the vast
tracts of virgin soil producing abundantly with small cost of culture.
Manifestly, that alone goes a long way towards producing this enormous
prosperity. Then they have profited by inheriting all the arts,
appliances, and methods, developed by older societies, while leaving
behind the obstructions existing in them. They have been able to pick
and choose from the products of all past experience, appropriating the
good and rejecting the bad. Then, besides these favours of fortune,
there are factors proper to themselves. I perceive in American faces
generally a great amount of determination--a kind of "do or die"
expression; and this trait of character, joined with a power of work
exceeding that of any other people, of course produces an unparalleled
rapidity of progress. Once