enough when they are at home. But these American jokes are
boomed as solemnly as American religions; and their supporters gravely
testify that they are funny, without seeing the fun of it for a moment.
This is partly perhaps the spirit of spontaneous institutionalism in
American democracy, breaking out in the wrong place. They make humour an
institution; and a man will be set to tell an anecdote as if to play the
violin. But when the story is told in America it really is amusing; and
when these jokes are reprinted in England they are often not even
intelligible. With all the stupidity of the millionaire and the
monopolist, the enterprising proprietor prints jokes in England which
are necessarily unintelligible to nearly every English person; jokes
referring to domestic and local conditions quite peculiar to America. I
saw one of these narrative caricatures the other day in which the whole
of the joke (what there was of it) turned on the astonishment of a
housewife at the absurd notion of not having an ice-box. It is perfectly
true that nearly every ordinary American housewife possesses an ice-box.
An ordinary English housewife would no more expect to possess an
ice-box than to possess an iceberg. And it would be about as sensible to
tow an iceberg to an English port all the way from the North Pole, as to
trail that one pale and frigid joke to Fleet Street all the way from the
New York papers. It is the same with a hundred other advertisements and
adaptations. I have already confessed that I took a considerable delight
in the dancing illuminations of Broadway--in Broadway. Everything there
is suitable to them, the vast interminable thoroughfare, the toppling
houses, the dizzy and restless spirit of the whole city. It is a city of
dissolving views, and one may almost say a city in everlasting
dissolution. But I do not especially admire a burning fragment of
Broadway stuck up opposite the old Georgian curve of Regent Street. I
would as soon express sympathy with the Republic of Switzerland by
erecting a small Alp, with imitation snow, in the middle of St. James's
Park.

But all this commercial copying is very superficial; and above all, it
never copies anything that is really worth copying. Nations never
_learn_ anything from each other in this way. We have many things to
learn from America; but we only listen to those Americans who have still
to learn them. Thus, for instance, we do not import the small farm but
only the