A Visit To America - pocketboek

A VISIT TO AMERICA CHAPTER ONE Approaching Manhattan up by the long-stretching island. quot WALT WHITMAN. THE voyage was uneventful. My main impressions of it were the width of the Atlantic, which I had never before crossed, the number of references made by my fellow passengers to the salutary effect of sea-air upon the human constitution, and the benevolent expression upon the face of President Harding, whose portrait presided, like a Patron Saint, over most of our activ ities. It is true, now that I come to look back upon it, that few, if any, Americans on the ship referred to Mr. Harding in conversation as a Saint, or seemed at all pleased to be sailing under his Patronage. But perhaps they were political opponents, and therefore biased against the good man. At any rate they were unani mous, for some reason which I could not fathom, in the opinion that no ship connected in any way with President Harding was likely to run out of oil On the morning of the seventh day the first incident occurred since the evening at Cobh nee Queens town, when dainty Irish colleens had tried to sell us genuine hand-made peasant lace from Manchester, and broths of boys had offered us unique bargains 2 A VISIT TO AMERICA mass-produced in shillelaghs. We saw land. Long Island appeared on the horizon. A few hours later we arrived at Quarantine and halted for the Medical Examination. It was a long business, but it incommoded us not a whit. For the Hygienic Theory of the United States appears to be based on a remarkable notion. Anyone who can afford to buy a first-class ticket is automatically presumed to be free from all contagious infection. A doctor com ing from a campaign against bubonic plague in Turkey, a medical missionary from the yellow fever districts of Central Africa, an explorer from the typhus infested villages of Turkestan, all these are exempt from medical inspection if they have taken the precau tion of travelling first class. But let a man be as free from germs as an iceberg, and let him scrub himself in antiseptics three times a day, and let him travel in the steerage class, and by Heavens he will learn that Quarantine is no idle word. For at least an hour we leant in a superior manner on the rail, while our poorer fellow passengers were presumed to be suffering from the deadliest and most baffling diseases known to, or unknown by, medical science, and as we leant we affirmed and re-affirmed and stated frankly and repeated with the utmost em phasis at our command, to each and all our charming American friends on board, that the Skyline of Man hattan not only came up to, but far exceeded our wild est, our most hallucinatory we groped frantically for bigger, taller words expectations. A VISIT TO AMERICA 3 As the liner steamed slowly up the Hudson, the stream of expert pointers-out grew thicker and thicker, and better and better informed. quot The one on the left, Mr. Macdonell, is the Woolworth Building next to it is the Chrysler Building, and beyond the Chrysler is the Empire State. But the building which you can t see is Number One, Broadway, the office of the Stand ard Oil Company. After I had duly pigeonholed this information, the next one would reverse the order of the buildings, and add that I couldn t see Number One, Broadway, the office of the Cunard Company, and then a third would substitute the R. C. A. for Woolworth, and the Irving Trust for the Empire State, andadd that Number One, Broadway, was the office of Messrs, J. P. Morgan. But all were agreed on one point, the invisibility of that mysterious building. I never discovered whether they were right or not, but I should imagine that they were not. As we advanced closer and closer, the effect of the Skyline was somewhat counter-balanced by the sink ing feeling induced by the nearness of the Customs Examination. In Europe we hear more about the hor rors of the latter even than about the magnificence of the former...