The difference between England and America to a working
man was thus most humanly put to me by a fellow-passenger:
‘In America,’ said he, ‘you get
pies and puddings.’ I do not hear enough,
in economy books, of pies and pudding. A man
lives in and for the delicacies, adornments, and accidental
attributes of life, such as pudding to eat and pleasant
books and theatres to occupy his leisure. The
bare terms of existence would be rejected with contempt
by all. If a man feeds on bread and butter, soup
and porridge, his appetite grows wolfish after dainties.
And the workman dwells in a borderland, and is always
within sight of those cheerless regions where life
is more difficult to sustain than worth sustaining.
Every detail of our existence, where it is worth
while to cross the ocean after pie and pudding, is
made alive and enthralling by the presence of genuine
desire; but it is all one to me whether Croesus has
a hundred or a thousand thousands in the bank.
There is more adventure in the life of the working
man who descends as a common solder into the battle
of life, than in that of the millionaire who sits
apart in an office, like Von Moltke, and only directs
the manoeuvres by telegraph. Give me to hear
about the career of him who is in the thick of business;
to whom one change of market means empty belly, and
another a copious and savoury meal. This is
not the philosophical, but the human side of economics;
it interests like a story; and the life all who are
thus situated partakes in a small way the charm of
Robinson Crusoe; for every step is critical and human
life is presented to you naked and verging to its
lowest terms.
NEW YORK
As we drew near to New York I was at first amused,
and then somewhat staggered, by the cautious and the
grisly tales that went the round. You would
have thought we were to land upon a cannibal island.
You must speak to no one in the streets, as they would
not leave you till you were rooked and beaten.
You must enter a hotel with military precautions;
for the least you had to apprehend was to awake next
morning without money or baggage, or necessary raiment,
a lone forked radish in a bed; and if the worst befell,
you would instantly and mysteriously disappear from
the ranks of mankind.
I have usually found such stories correspond to the
least modicum of fact. Thus I was warned, I
remember, against the roadside inns of the Cevennes,
and that by a learned professor; and when I reached
Pradelles the warning was explained—it was
but the far-away rumour and reduplication of a single
terrifying story already half a century old, and half
forgotten in the theatre of the events. So I
was tempted to make light of these reports against
America. But we had on board with us a man whose
evidence it would not do to put aside. He had
come near these perils in the body; he had visited
a robber inn. The public has an old and well-grounded
favour for this class of incident, and shall be gratified
to the best of my power.
