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Arnold Bennett - Your United States
idea at the back of his head was the anticipation of leaving it? Watch American business men together,
and if you are a European you will clearly perceive that they are devotees. They are open with one
another, as intimates are. Jealousy and secretiveness are much rarer among them than in Europe. They
show off their respective organizations with pride and with candor. They admire one another
enormously. Hear one of them say enthusiastically of another: "It was a great idea he had - connecting
his New York and his Philadelphia places by wireless - a great idea!" They call one another by their
Christian names, fondly. They are capable of wonderful friendships in business. They are cemented by
one religion - and it is not golf. For them the journey "home" is often not the evening journey, but the
morning journey. Call this a hard saying if you choose: it is true. Could a man be happy long away from
a hobby so entrancing, a toy so intricate and marvelous, a setting so splendid? Is it strange that, absorbed
in that wondrous satisfying hobby, he should make love with the nonchalance of an animal? At which
point I seem to have come dangerously near to the topic of the singular position of the American woman,
about which everybody is talking....
V. TRANSIT AND HOTELS
The choice of such a trite topic as the means of travel may seem to denote that my observations in the
United States must have been superficial. They were. I never hoped that they would be otherwise. In
seven weeks (less one day) I could not expect to penetrate very far below the engaging surface of things.
Nor did I unnaturally attempt to do so; for the evidence of the superficies is valuable, and it can only be
properly gathered by the stranger at first sight. Among the scenes and phenomena that passed before me I
of course remember best those which interested me most. Railroads and trains have always appealed to
me; I have often tried to express my sense of their romantic savor. And I was eager to see and appreciate
these particular manifestations of national character in America.
It happily occurred that my first important journey from New York was on the Pennsylvania Road.
"I'll meet you at the station," I said to my particular friend.
"Oh no!" he answered, positively. "I'll pick you up on my way."
The fact was that not for ten thousand dollars would he have missed the spectacle of my sensations as I
beheld for the first time the most majestic terminus in the world! He alone would usher me into the gates
of that marvel! I think he was not disappointed. I frankly surrendered myself to the domination of this
extraordinary building. I did not compare. I knew there could be no comparison. Whenever afterward I
heard, as I often did, enlightened, Europe-loving citizens of the United States complain that the United
States was all very well, but there was no art in the United States, the image of this tremendous
masterpiece would rise before me, and I was inclined to say: "Have you ever crossed Seventh Avenue, or
are you merely another of those who have been to Europe and learned nothing?" The Pennsylvania
station is full of the noble qualities that fine and heroic imagination alone can give. That there existed a
railroad man poetic and audacious enough to want it, architects with genius powerful enough to create it,
and a public with heart enough to love it - these things are for me a surer proof that the American is a
great race than the existence of any quantity of wealthy universities, museums of classic art, associations
for prison reform, or deep-delved safe-deposit vaults crammed with bonds. Such a monument does not
spring up by chance; it is part of the slow flowering of a nation's secret spirit!
The terminus emerged brilliantly from an examination of the complicated detail, both esthetic and
practical, that is embedded in the apparent simplicity of its vast physiognomy. I discovered everything in
it proper to a station, except trains. Not a sign of a train. My impulse was to ask, "Is this the tomb of
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