EARLY JOURNALISM
During the two years Marti spent in Mexico City (1875-77), he consolidated his reputation as a writer and orator, contributing numerous articles to Mexican newspapers, especially El Universal, delivering the fiery speeches for which he was already renowned, and enjoying some success as a playwright. In this article he evinces the outspoken critical spirit that would eventually make Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz (and, in succeeding years, the dictators of both Guatemala and Venezuela) pressure him to leave.

THE POOR NEIGHBORHOODS OF MEXICO CITY

We are obliged to turn our eyes from the beauties on offer in the books of poets, and must put off, as well, whatever we might have said about some recently published scientific works, in order to direct not our enthusiasm but our dismay toward the terribly sad state of the unhealthy and neglected City of Mexico.
Strange it seems that there should be poets at all in our imperturbable municipality. A poet is something like a clean, white soul, and one might imagine that such a soul by its very nature rejects whatever is tainted, unclean, or repugnant in its surroundings. Agapito Silva publishes his “Poetical Thoughts” in El Porvenir,1 but how can he think poetically in this foul and contaminated atmosphere? And how can Eduardo Zárate fail to be appalled that the pure wings of his muse, elegantly outspread in the book of American poets that José Domingo Cortés2 has just published in Paris, are being dragged and defiled across the muddy and wretched streets of Mexico? Clean thoughts have need of clean surroundings: the delicate spirit is upset by any grossness of form or concept. And to turn from individual entities to the impassive city itself, we would have good reason to resort to the crude and demanding language of the law. The councilmen do not go to City Hall simply in order to grace the city with the calm of their magnificent persons. City Hall is a test of public men; those who handle public funds have a duty to make useful, visible, and fully transparent employment of them, for doltishness is no longer the right of anyone who has had a sufficient concept of himself to aspire to public office. Since City Hall has been entrusted with the means to make the dense and pernicious atmosphere of Mexico City breathable, the municipal corporation is very much obliged to attend to the primary interests that it has taken in charge—all the more so given the special care it must take to avoid being perceived as having neglected to carry out its mission because that mission was unpaid and therefore fruitless.
A city demands something more of its citizens than the hollow vainglory of calling themselves councilmen. It asks, imperiously, for neatness and cleanliness; it asks that its parks be elegant, that its places of transit be easily accessible, and that its impoverished back streets be subject not to a neglect that exacerbates the misfortune of all the needy children, but to tenacious and persistent effort, even though the good thus done will yield no financial profit. It is wrong for a person who values his good name to accept a post whose high mission he does not fulfill and whose significance he does not understand or live up to.
The outcry being raised by the press is not vain and futile, nor is it right that City Hall should gainsay those who remind it of its duty. In the poor neighborhoods, death, garbed in misery and ever seated at the thresholds of the houses, is now taking on a new form; deadly miasmas are exuded by the layer of greenish scum that blankets swampy pools of water. One breathes as if the air were heavy with humidity, or as if there were a scarcity of air, and this poor population of ours, so weakened already by their hunger, their laziness, and their vices, suffers even more from the scourge of this vagabond death that lives, errant and threatening, in every dense undulation of the atmosphere.
The press does not complain out of habit or fixation but because more of the poor are dying as a result of City Hall’s incomprehensible laxness. This is no simple matter that the municipality can afford to ignore : it is a matter of life or death, grave, immediate, and urgent. The accusation is all the more necessary the more it appears to go unheard, for the municipality has paid no heed to it at all. Why do the councilmen take so long to do what is right when it is their duty to do it and when the means to carry out most of it are certainly not lacking, though neither is there any surplus or abundance of them. If the wagons that transport objects to or from Mexico City must travel on the calzada de Buenavista, then why is the calzada an unusable road on which crowds of men are endlessly working to get stalled or toppled wagons under way again? It is the only road; how can City Hall neglect the only road? Why, in the center of the city, where limpid breezes cannot easily blow, are the eyes repelled and the lungs obstructed and harmful elements breathed in from the miasmas given off by puddles of stagnant water blanketed by a greenish layer of rot? It is distressing to have to occupy oneself with this, and it is injurious to City Hall’s reputation not to have addressed the problem already. The city council does not do the city some gratuitous favor by repairing the streets, taking care of the parks, and energetically promoting more hygienic conditions; rather, that was the purpose for which the members of the council were raised to the office they occupy. They do us a double harm: by not carrying out their duty, and by preventing, through their presence in City Hall, that duty from being carried out by others more intelligent or conscientious than they.
Precisely because their office is unpaid, they should be all the more careful to carry out its duties in full.
Since the populace entrusts them with funds whose employment cannot easily be scrutinized, the members of the city council, arbiters and handlers of these public funds, should be at pains to display to everyone that they have responded with interest and zeal to the public confidence of which, on election day, they claimed to be worthy. For how could anyone who, out of laziness or doltishness, did not strive for or understand all the good he could achieve, ever aspire to public office again?
Do the city councilmen fail to understand that precisely because their services are unpaid, they must take care to show that the lack of remuneration does not make them slow, neglectful, and wayward in their work?
For did they not seek the office to which the public vote has elevated them?
How can they make a show of not being concerned by the public’s reproaches? It may be that the white souls of the councilmen have not consulted their intelligence; certainly they would not deliberately seek to be unworthy of the honorable office they continue to hold.
 
—Revista Universal (Mexico City), September 4, 1875

SARAH BERNHARDT

It is not known whether or where this article was published, though it may have been written for the New York Sun in 1880. The version of it found among Martí’s papers is written in French, like the art reviews written for The Hour during the same period.
During a brief stay in Paris on his way to New York from Madrid in December 1879, Martí met Sarah Bernhardt at the Parisian benefit for flood victims in Murcia that he mentions. On his previous visit in 1875, he had seen her in the role of Racine’s Phaedre at the Comedie-Française.
The name is celebrated and already greatly beloved in New York. Great ladies are known to be in thrall to her. She is the symbol of energy triumphant. A poor woman who has made so much space for herself in the world must be a great woman.
Each century has its stars: the land of Rachel, Mademoiselle Mars, and Sophie Arnould has now been further enriched by Sarah Bernhardt, who is unquestionably a tragedian, but is also something even more valuable: a character. We are not going to say what has already been said: we have our own impressions to convey.
Sarah is supple, slim, svelte. When she is not shaken by the demon of tragedy, her body is full of grace and abandon; when the demon takes hold of her, she is full of strength and nobility. Her face, though feminine, exudes a lovely hauteur: it is not beauty that is imprinted there—though she is a fine-looking woman—but resolve. She will do what she wants. She has something of the first Bonaparte about her: her soul is full of friendship and frankness but she feigns disdain because she believes she must in order to make others respect her. Where does she come from? From poverty! Where is she going? To glory! She is feared, but loved, which is unusual: it is because she is hard, but good-natured, a haughty woman, but at the same time “un bon garçon.” Mention a woman in distress to her: she will open her purse. Tell her there is a little painting of real genius chez Goupil—or that very close to the Passage Jouffroy there is a beautiful Chinese carpet. Sarah, member of the Theatre Français, will not balk at the price. If the carpet is old, if the painting was made by a strong hand, she will buy it; sometimes she does not know how she will pay, but she will earn the money herself, honestly; she will paint another painting of her own, a seascape, a watercolor, or she will make a statue of love, since she lacks the power to make it a reality.
Alexandre Dumas has piled his house high with objets d‘art, from little Japanese monsters to a pre-Adamite Christ, an overly realistic Christ; but Sarah Bernhardt arranges her things better than anyone else can, and everything she owns is first-rate. She is majestic even in her caprices; her fantasies are royal. There is no particular merit in being born a queen and knowing how to be one, but there is great proof of majesty in being born into a poor family and knowing how to make a land as artistic and intelligent as France into your own kingdom.
There she was at the great Paris-Murcia gala, given to benefit the flood victims of Murcia, that Spanish city beloved by the sun. La Vie Moderne, an illustrated magazine, had built a magnificent red velvet throne for Sarah, with thickly embroidered Spanish cushions. Sarah, dressed as Doña Sol, the heroine of Victor Hugo’s Hernani, sat beneath the rich hangings, attended by a very beautiful lady in waiting, Mile. Croizette. She is proud, Mlle. Croizette, but what a good woman next to the superbly arrogant Sarah!
When Sarah stretches out her arm, she commands. When she raises her rather Asiatic head, with its slanting eyes, delicate nose, haughty forehead, and fragile lips, she must be obeyed, she must be admired.
It is not beauty that dazzles us: she is not beautiful. It is not a voluptuous charm that intoxicates us; she knows how to love, no doubt, but does not trouble herself with such unduly feminine matters. It is her lofty soul, dreaming of every height, an eagle’s soul—the soul of a lioness or of tempered steel. It is her gaze, penetrating as a Toledo blade; it is her irresistible superiority that makes us lower our heads.
That night she was selling panderetas, Spanish tambourines: great painters had employed all their talents upon them, in the service of the poor. The shoddy leather was exalted by the hand that was to sell it—and by Meissonier, Worms, Detaille, Neuville, Raimundo Madrazo, Dubufe, etc. The auction was dull at first, but by the third pandereta, what a crowd was gathered around Sarah! As far as the eye could see were women with their hair done à la Capoul, Russian princes, great writers, wealthy Englishmen, youthful dandies.
They barred the way, and others were forced to look upon her from afar. She seemed quite proud of her triumph; at that moment she felt a little like the queen of Spain.
The whole world knows what she does: her great roles, her delightful writings, lovely paintings, bold little statues.
As a painter, she draws well, colors flawlessly, lights up the canvas as if by a stroke of genius: a clarity, an effect of moonlight, a fallen tree. But that is not enough. As a writer, she has sounded a piercing and magnificent cry in her Paris-Murcia journal: her whole soul is there! Her work as a sculptor reminds us of Gustave Doré; she does not have his flair for composition, she will never sculpt groups like his, but she is as elegant, original, and brave. As for her work as a tragedian, let us hear the words of M. Emile Girardin, the Gordon Bennett of the French press: “Rachel had more genius; Sarah possesses more talent. Rachel is well aware of everything she does; Sarah draws from her nature without much awareness. Sarah is worth more.” Truly: one must be great in order to become great. Clearly: she has known how to triumph.
In his home, Girardin has two beautiful portraits: one of Rachel, the other of Sarah Bernhardt. He sees her as a father would: he is passionate in his praise of her. How well this admirable old man of seventy speaks! His brain is as strong today as it was when, with dire hand, he killed the gallant Armand Carrel.
Sarah wears her hair very simply. She likes long-waisted dresses that sweep the floor. Her eyes are fevered. At the sight of certain creatures, one says: Muscle! At the sight of Sarah, one says: Nerve! The llama is a poor, delightful sort of Peruvian goat; Sarah raises her head like an irritated llama, but not like the llama that dies of sorrow, its melancholy eyes turned toward the sky, when its Indian master scolds or punishes it. Sarah would kill the Indian.
Sarah receives guests on Wednesdays. A woman writer, Julie Lambert, also has a beautiful salon in Paris, where one converses well and sees the best of the Parisian writers, but chez Sarah one feels from afar the spirit of Victor Hugo, who loves her. In the actress’s salon, one notices a power of thought, a virility of purpose, an anxious mobility that well reflect the tempestuous spirit of the mistress of the oceans—and of her century. One does not sense the presence of Moses, as in Victor Hugo’s house,1 but at times one believes that one senses Judith.
Last year in London she appeared with the actor Coquelin in one of her most important roles; the British could not find crowns enough for her: everything was taken in advance. Extraordinary prices were paid for her paintings: her precious little sculptures met with great success. When she was seen surrounded by all the world at the Murcia gala, everyone said, “Sarah is an immense success!”
Ah yes, that is true today, but how much strength, weeping, sorrow, and indomitable energy did she have to exert and endure to attain it! She deserves to be studied as a lesson in the force of the human will. Young people who do not triumph fast enough put a bullet through their heads. Sarah may have wept the kind of hot tears that go unseen and do not flow from the eyes, but she worked. Fifteen years ago—alone, so young, and all in tears—she must have said to herself, “What is to become of me?” Today she must have asked herself more than once, “How can it be that I am not a queen?”

IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA (BY A VERY FRESH SPANIARD)1

During Marti’s first extended stay in the United States, in 1880, he was invited by influential journalist and publisher Charles Anderson Dana2 to contribute to a New York weekly literary magazine called The Hour. All told, Marti published twenty-nine short essays in the magazine that year, most of them originally written in French, on diverse topics such as “Raimundo Madrazo” (February 21), “Fortuny” (March 20), and “The Metropolitan Museum” (April 3). Among them was the following series of articles on his initial impressions of the United States. These he wrote in English, with what seems to have been rather minimal intervention from his editors, and they appear here exactly as they did in The Hour.

I

I am, at last, in a country where every one looks like his own master. One can breathe freely, freedom being here the foundation, the shield, the essence of life. One can be proud of his species here. Every one works; every one reads. Only does every one feel in the same degree that they read and work? Man, as a strong creature—made to support on his shoulders the burden of misfortune, never bent, never tired, never dismaying,—is unrivalled here. Are women, those beings that we, the Southern people, like,—feeble and souple, tender and voluptuous, —as perfect, in their way, as men are to theirs? Activity, devoted to trade, is truly immense. I was never surprised in any country of the world I have visited. Here, I was surprised. As I arrived, in one of this summer-days, when the face of hasty business men are at the same moment fountains and volcanoes; when, bag in hand, the vest open, the neck-tye detached, I saw the diligent New Yorkers running up and down, buying here, selling there, transpiring, working, going ahead; when I remarked that no one stood quietly in the corners, no door was shut an instant, no man was quiet, I stoped myself, I looked respectfully on this people, and I said good-bye for ever to that lazy life and poetical inutility of our European countries. I remembered a sentence of an old Spaniard, a healthy countryman, father of thirty-six sons: “Only those who dig their bread, have a right to eat it: and, as if they dig most deeply, they will eat it whiter.” But is this activity devoted in the same extent to the development of these high and noble anxieties of soul, that cannot be forgotten by a people who want to escape from unavoidable ruin, and strepitous definitive crumbling? When the days of poverty may arrive—what richness, if not that of spiritual strength and intellectual comfort, will help this people in its colossal misfortune ? Material power, as that of Carthage, if it rapidly increases, rapidly falls down. If this love of richness is not tempered and dignified by the ardent love of intellectual pleasures,—if kindness toward men, passion for all what is great, devotion to all what means sacrifice and glory, are not as developed as fervorous and absorbent passion for money, where shall they go? where shall they find sufficient cause to excuse this hard burden of life and feel relief to their sorrow? Life wants permanent roots; life is unpleasant without the comforts of intelligence, the pleasures of art and the internal gratification that the goodness of the soul and the exquisiteness of taste produce to us.
I am deeply obliged to this country, where the friendless find always a friend and a kind hand is always found by those who look honestly for work. A good idea finds always here a suitable, soft, grateful ground. You must be intelligent; that is all. Give something useful. You will have all what you want. Doors are shut for those who are dull and lazy; life is sure to those who are faithful to the law of work. When I was a child, I read with admiration,—born as I am in a country where there is no field for individual activity, a series of biographies as those who are called here with a magnificent simplicity—self-made men. My childhood was not entirely gone out when I admired again, in British Honduras,3 a wealthy Southern family brought by misfortune to painful scantiness,—and raising by their hands, in the thick bossom of forest, a clean, elegant, prosperous sugar plantation. The father, an ancient governor of a powerful State, was the engineer; the charming mother, very simply dressed, with a perpetual smile on her lips,—the smile of those who are courageous enough to support human sufferings, —was the most skillful housekeeper I have ever seen. Hot cakes, fine pastry, fresh milk, sweet jelly—were always on hand. When she came to me, the noble face illuminated by the most pure look, the curled silver hair carefully dressed, a waiter with exquisite dishes in her wrinkled hands—the sweetest feelings filled my heart, and tears of pleasure came to my eyes. The sons helped the father in all kinds of labors; they ploughed the field,—saw the sugar-cane, burn the woods, build a new “sweet home,”—and as slightly dressed as miserable countrymen in those far forests do,—very early in the morning, merrily singing, they drove the oxen to the hardest work of the plantation. And they were elegant, gentle, learned young men. I will study a most original country at its birth—In the school; at its development—in the family; at its pleasures—in the theatre, in the clubs, in Fourteenth Street, in large and small family party. I will go, in a brilliant Sunday, walking down the fashionable Fifth Avenue, to the crowded church to hear a preacher—the word of peace—speaking about politics or the field of war. I will see many nonsenses, many high deeds; the politicians, who save the country, when they could—without any effort go back to the days of arrogant militarism, violation of the public will, corruption of the political morality; I will see benevolent faces of men, defiant faces of women, the most capricious and uncommendable fancies, all the greatness of freedom and all the miseries of prejudices; here, a powerful originality, there a vulgar imitation of transatlantic extravagances. Liberty in politics, in customs, in enterprises; humble slavery in taste. Frenchmen give the sacred word; great names, and not great works are looked for. As there is not a fixed mind on art, the most striking is the most loved. There is no taste for the sweet beauty of Hélène or Galæthea—the taste being all devoted to old imperfect works of China and Japan. If a scientific object would have been intended by the owners of these bibelots, it would be a matter of praise. But it is only for the censurable pleasure of indiscreetly holding foreign goods bought at a high price.
At a first glance what else can I tell? I have all my impressions vividly awaken. The crowds of Broadway; the quietness of the evenings; the character of men; the most curious and noteworthy character of women; the life in the hotel, that will never be understood for us; that young lady, physically and mentally stronger than the young man who courts her; that old gentleman, full of wisdom and capacity who writes in a sobrious language for a hundred newspapers; this feverish life; this astonishing movement; this splendid sick people, in one side wonderfully extended, in other side—that of intellectual pleasures—childish and poor; this colossal giant, candorous and credulous ; these women, too richly dressed to be happy; these men, too devoted to business of pocket, with remarkable neglectness of the spiritual business—all is, at the same time, coming to my lips, and begging to be prepared in this brief account of my impressions.
Size and number: these are here the elements of greatness. Nothing is absolutely neglected, however. If the common people, increased every day by a thirsty foreign population, that must not be confounded with the true American people, shows that anxious desire for money, and fights frightfully in this way,—the true Americans preserve national greatness, constitutional rights, old and honorable names, from the vulgar storm of immigration, that brings in strength and possibilities of wealth, what they lack of intellectual height, and moral deepness. In the columns of a newspaper, in the page of a magazine, in the familiar chit-chat, the most pure feelings, noble aspirations, and generous ideas bravely fight for the rapid improvement of the country, in the sense of moral development.
It will be reached. It has not yet been reached, because many strangers bring here their odiums, their wounds, their moral ulcers. What a terrible enemy the desperate want of money is for the achievement of virtues! How great a nation must be, to conduct in a quiet way, these bands of wolves, hungry and thirsty, these excrescences of old poor countries, ferocious or unuseful there,—and here, under the influence of work, good, kind and tame!
And, for the mot de la fin, let me tell you what it happened to me, as I came, a week ago, from Cape May, a charming watering-place, to Philadelphia. The train near to the station jumped off the tracks; the car where I was, fell side-way. The accident was without consequences ; but, as everybody was compelled by the shaking and pulling of the car to abandon violently their seats, the moment was a solemn one. Women became deadly pales. Men forgot women, looking for their own salvation. I thought, first, what must occur to a man under such a case, and, in the same instant, I saw rolling a poor eighty years’ woman on the floor. I ran to her, offering her my hands. The old lady, very elegant indeed, notwithstanding her large amount of years, looked at me gratefully, tended her hands toward me;—but, as she touched the extreme of my fingers with their own, she told me, with expressive frightened grimaces:
“By the hands, no! Go away! Go away!”
Was she an old Puritan?
 
 
—The Hour (New York), July 10, 1880

II

Let us begin this time by a curious confession. This is the only country, of all those I have visited, where I have remained a week without becoming particularly devoted and deeply attached to some woman. Even in Southampton, where in a brilliant half an hour, I saw a sweet girl, we loved ourselves, and we bid good-bye for ever; even while crossing a magnificent country, the Atlantic coast of Guatemala, where—like a Crown Venus, emerging from the spring of a clear river—a supple, slender but voluptuous Indian woman, showed herself to the thirsty traveler with all the majestic power of a new kind of impressive and suggestive beauty, I loved and was beloved. Everywhere, a woman’s soul has come to bless and sweeten my exhausted life.
But I have not found in New York my two lovely eyes! That is a curious case, because I feel rapidly beauty of the body or the soul, and I pay both sudden and fervently vehement admiration. I attach myself most vigorously to a clear mind, a generous heart, a deep and tender eye. I have spent many a sunny afternoon between Fourteenth and 23d Street; I have visited, I have talked, I have dined with American women. I have been acquainted with serious ladies, with most gay young ladies; they have translated my verses; they have decorated the button-hole of my evening dress; they even have, in a noisy cordial party, crowned me with a bonbonnière, representing a chicken’s head. But I am still as an inconsolable widow, awaiting the first powerful emotion. Education and politeness, although not of kind we like in Europe, is quite common here; beauty is the general endowment; culture is spreading, but French tastes invade and penetrate the elegant world. But where are the chaste abandon, the savory languor, the Haydée-like looks, the tender sweetness and gentle grace of our Southern women?
Man here is both strong-minded and strong-bodied; if he usually drowns in the stormy business tide, the intellectual and refined pleasures which charm us and occupy us in old romantic Europe,—he remains kind, because he is prosperous; he has the strength of gladness; he gains it by his vigorous efforts; he has an athletic development secured by his continual work in the red-hot forge of life. But why should women look so manly? Their fast going up and down stairs, up and down the streets, the resolute, well-defined object of all their actions, their too virile existence, deprive them of the calm beauty, the antique grace, the exquisite sensitiveness which make of women those superior beings—of whom Calderon said that they were “a brief world.”
A friend of mine told me once, while we were paying a visit to an always-smiling, always-talking, never-resting Andalouse lady, “If your tired veins need a new, powerful blood, and you want to see a land less obstructed by the ruins of feudal castles, old heavy churches, go to that marvelous land, America. But if you want, as I want, a woman’s smile to live upon, take with you this gentlewoman—there women never smile!”
The great heart of America cannot be judged by the distorted, morbid passion, ardent desires and anguishes of New York life. In this turbulent stream, natural currents of life cannot appear. All is darkened, unhinged, dusty; virtues and vices cannot be at first glance properly analyzed. They run away tumultuously mingled. Prejudice, vanity, ambition, every poison of the soul, effaces or stains the American nature. It is necessary to look for it—not in the crowded street, but in the sweet home quietness; not in the convulsive life of the city, but in the open-hearted existence of the country.
Young women in America are remarkable by their excessive gaiety or excessive seriousness. Their control over themselves, their surety of being respected, their calculated coldness, their contempt of passions, their dry, practical notions of life, give them a singular boldness and a very peculiar frankness in their relations with men. What I have seen and heard is, indeed, painfully suggestive. The love of riches moves and generally guides feminine actions in this country. American women seem to have only one necessary thought when they see a new man: “How much is that man worth?” Such thoughts deform and harden the most handsome faces, made by the Almighty to be the consolation of misfortune, the home of grace, tenderness, nobleness.
A conversation I have heard, sharp and cold as the end of a weapon, deserves to be remembered. God has never intended the young woman to speak in such a way. It was in a literary party. Arrogant New York ladies cruelly sneered at a Western wealthy family, whose recent prosperity and humble beginnings were denounced by the heavy luxury of the dresses, the striking colors of the silks and a certain provincial candor which inexpert parvenus bring always to their first excursions into society. But mockery of this kind is especially unreasonable in this country, where nobody has a right to disdain the modest cradle of others, all being born in a similar poor cradle. The New Yorkers who now mock at the showy, vulgar, amusing Western family, must not forget that the same natural pride and social inexperience marked undoubtedly the first business triumphs and prosperous years of their equally modest ancestors.
A plough or an engine are, gloriously indeed, the only blazons of American families. No gold fields, no plumed helmet, no fierce dragon in their coat-of-arms. Hard work and self-made prosperity are their only armorial ensigns. Sons of toil, they ought to be all brothers. An old rich man must not sneer at a new rich man, for they came, in one or two degress, from the same mother—poverty; from the same father—work. An old plough has no reason for disdaining a new one; the time that distances the one from the other is not a reason for mockery. For my own part, I like better the man who has just used the plough than another who has forgotten the manner of using it.
 
The Hour (New York), August 21,1880

III

We read in Europe many wonderful statements about this country. The splendor of life, the abundance of money, the violent struggles for its possession, the golden currents, that dazzle and blind the vulgar people, the excellencies of instruction, the habit of working, the vision of that new country arising above the ruins of old nations, excite the attention of thoughtful men, who are anxiously looking for the definitive settlement of all the destructive forces that began during the last century to lay the foundations of a new era of mankind. This could be, and ought to be, the transcendental significance of the United States. But have the States the elements they are supposed to have? Can they do what they are expected to do? Do they impose their own character, or do they suffer the imposition of the character of others? Is America going to Europe or Europe coming to America? Error, both in politics and religion has been worshipped in the Old World. Truth, liberty and dignity are supposed to have reached, at last, a sure heart in the New World. We must ask for a response to these secrets of the home life from the benches of the schoolrooms, the daily newspaper and conversation in society. Eloquent answers to all mystifications strike the observer as he goes through the streets. We must ask women for the natural end of their unextinguishable thirst for pleasure and amusement. We must ask them if a being so exclusively devoted to the possession of silk dresses, dazzling diamonds and all kinds of costly fancies could afterwards carry into their homes those solid virtues, those sweet feelings, that kind resignation, that evangelic power of consolation which can only keep up a hearth shaken by misfortune and inspire children with contempt for regular pleasures and the love of internal satisfactions that make men happy and strong, as they did Ismael, against the days of poverty. We must ask a boy of fourteen what he knows and what he is taught. We must observe in the newspapers what they place before the public—news or ideas. We must look at what people read, what they applaud, and what they love. And, as these problems cannot be answered in a page, or understood and remembered by a new-comer, I have taken here and there some memoranda. Here, from my note-book, are some:
“What do I see? A girl seven years old goes to school. She talks with unusual ease to other girls; this miniature of a woman has all the self-control of a married woman; she looks and smiles at me as if she could know all the mysteries of mankind. Her ears are adorned with heavy earrings; her little fingers with rings. Where can this wonderful volubility come from? What will this little girl, so fond of jewelry at seven years, do for it at sixteen? Slavery would be better than this kind of liberty; ignorance would be better than this dangerous science.”
“I went down town by the elevated railroad. As I travelled by this perilous but seductive way, I lost all hope of understanding Americans when I heard the name of a street, ‘Chamber Street!’ always pronounced in an indistinct way by the conductors. Is it Cham, Chem, Chamber or Chember? Is it Houston, House or Hous? Is it Franklin, Frank or Frenk? It is curious to observe that I can always understand an Englishman when he speaks to me; but among the Americans a word is a whisper; a sentence is an electric commotion. And if somebody asks me how can I know if a language that I so badly write, is badly spoken, I will tell frankly that it is very frequent that critics speak about what they absolutely ignore. There is, among the Americans, an excellent writer, the humorist Mark Twain4—and has he not presented the gifted king of Bavaria, a poet, an enthusiast, a knight of old times, as a savage who oblige the singers of his theatre to play the same opera twice in a night, under the most terrible rain that could fall over the poor Bavarians? He astonishes himself with the mastodontic composition of German words. All conversation is here in a single word: no breathe, no pause; not a distinct sound. We see that we are in the land of railroads. ‘That’s all’—‘did’nt‘—’won‘t’—‘ain’t‘—’indeed’ —‘Nice weather’—‘Very pleasant’—‘Coney Island’—‘Excursion.’ That is all that I can seize, when I listen with anxious attention to the average American. When I listened to men and women of culture I have been able to appreciate how the correctness of Addison can be mingled wit the acuteness of Swift, and the strength of Carlyle with the charming melody of Longfellow.
“Among women, as their usual kindness inclines them to soften the asperity of their language, in order to be easily understood by the foreigner, the English tongue appears exceptionally harmonious. Everything could be pardoned to these indefatigable talkers, if they would speak in such a way, in order to employ the time that seems to be always short for them; but If—by a marvel—you can fathom the sense of those whirling words, you will remark that a vulgar subject is, commonly, too extensively developed.”
“I love silence and quietness. Poor Chatterton5 was right when he desperately longed for the delights of solitude. The pleasures of cities begin for me when the motives which make pleasure for others are fading away. The true day for my soul dawns in the midst of the night. As I took yesterday evening my usual nocturne walk, many pitiful sights made a painful impression upon me. One old man, dressed in that style which reveals at the same time that good fortune we have had and the bad times that begin for us, steps silently under a street-lamp. His eyes, fixed upon the passers by, were full of tears; his hand held a poor handkerchief. He could not articulate a single word. His sighs, not his words, begged for assistance. A little farther on, in Fourteenth Street, a periodic sound, as a distant lamentation, sprang from the shadow. A poor woman knelt on the sidewalk, as if looking for her grave, or for strength to lift on her shoulders the hoarse organ whose crank her dying hand was turning. I passed through Madison Square, and I saw a hundred robust men, evidently suffering from the pangs of misery. They moved painfully, as if they wished to blot out of their minds their sorrowful thoughts—and were all lying down on the grass or seated on the benches, shoeless, foodless, concealing their anguish under their dilapidated hats.”
 
The Hour (New York), October 23,1880