BY STEPHEN GRAHAM AUTHOR OF "WITH THE RUSSIAN PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM" WITH 32 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1914 All rights reserved Copyright, 1914, By HARPER and BROTHERS. Copyright, 1914, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. ——— Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1914. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A....

A translation of this book has appeared serially in Russia before publication in Great Britain and America. The matter has accordingly been copyrighted in Russia. My acknowledgments are due to the Editor of Harper's Magazine for permission to republish the story of the journey. I wish to express my thanks to Mrs. James Muirhead, Miss M. A. Best, and to Mr. J. Cotton Dana, who, with unsparing energy and hospitality, helped me to see America as she is. STEPHEN GRAHAM. Vladikavkaz, Russia....

From Russia to America; from the most backward to the most forward country in the world; from the place where machinery is merely imported or applied, to the place where it is invented; from the land of Tolstoy to the land of Edison; from the most mystical to the most material; from the religion of suffering to the religion of philanthropy. Russia and America are the Eastern and Western poles of thought. Russia is evolving as the greatest artistic philosophical and mystical nation of the world,

At Easter 1912 I was with seven thousand Russian peasants at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. On Easter Day 1913 I arrived with Russian emigrants at New York, and so accomplished in two consecutive years two very different kinds of pilgrimage, following up two very significant life-movements in the history of the world of to-day. One of these belongs to the old life of Europe, showing the Middle Ages as it still survives under the conservative regime of the Tsars; the other is fraught with all t

The day of the emigrants' arrival in New York was the nearest earthly likeness to the final Day of Judgment, when we have to prove our fitness to enter Heaven. Our trial might well have been prefaced by a few edifying reminders from a priest. It was the hardest day since leaving Europe and home. From 5 A.M. , when we had breakfast, to three in the afternoon, when we landed at the Battery, we were driven in herds from one place to another, ranged into single files, passed in review before doctors

I came to America to see men and women and not simply bricks and mortar, to understand a national life rather than to moan over sooty cities and industrial wildernesses. Hundreds of thousands of healthy Europeans passed annually to America. I wanted to know what this asylum or refuge of our wanderers actually was, what was the life and hope it offered, what America was doing with her hands, what she was yearning for with her heart. I wished to know also what was her despair. On my second day in

Out in the country was a different America. The maples were all red, the first blush of the dawn of summer. In the gardens the ficacia was shooting her yellow arrows, in the woods the American dogwood tree was covered with white blossoms like thousands of little dolls' nightcaps. Down at Caldwell, New Jersey, I picked many violets and anemones—large blue fragrant violets. The bride's veil was in lovely wisps and armfuls of white. The unfolding oak turned all rose, like the peach tree in bloom. E

As I tramped from village to village I was surprised to see so much stained glass in the churches of the Methodists, the Congregationalists, and other Puritans. Until quite modern times stained glass belonged exclusively to the ritualistic denominations. The Puritan, believing in simplicity of service, and in spirit rather than in form, put stained glass in the same category as the burning of incense, singing in a minor key, and praying in Latin. It partook of the glamour of idolatry; it had a s

It is possible to distinguish two sorts of hospitality, one which is given to a person because of his introductions, and the other which is given to the person who has no introductions, the one given on the strength of a man's importance, the other on the strength of the common love of mankind. America is rich in the one species, she is not so rich in the other. There is no country in the world where an introduction helps you more than in the United States. In this respect how vastly more hospit

Both the weather and the country improved before I reached Williamsport. On the height of the road to Hughesville I had a grand view of the mountains and of the sky above them, saw displayed green hills and forested mountains, and great stretches of ploughed upland all dotted over with white heaps of fertiliser. And the sky above was a battle-scene, the sun and his angels having given battle and the clouds taking ranks like an army. Glad was I to see to eastward whole battalions in retreat. I pa

America celebrates no "Whit-Monday," but has Decoration Day instead; a great national festival, when medals are pinned on to veterans, the soldiers of the War of North against South are remembered, and the graves of heroes are decorated with flags and flowers. On Decoration Day, and again later, on Independence Day, the whole populace ceases work in the name of America, and flocks the streets, sings national songs and hymns, goes on procession, fires salutes, listens to speeches. We British are

The men whom you meet during the day are like a hand of cards dealt out to you by Providence. But they are more than that, for you feel that luck does not enter into it. You feel there is no such thing as luck, and that the wayfarer is in his way a messenger sent to you by the hospitable spirit of man. He brings a sacred opportunity. I sit tending my fire, and watching and balancing the kettle upon it; or I sit beside the cheerful blaze on which I have cooked my breakfast or my dinner, and I hol

The chief characteristic of America is an immense patriotism, and out of that patriotism spring a thousand minor characteristics, which, taken by themselves, may be considered blemishes by the critical foreigner,—such troublesome little characteristics as national pride and thin-skinnedness, national bluster and cocksureness. But personal annoyance should not blind the critic or appreciator to the fundamental fact of the American's belief in America. This belief is not a narrow partizanship, tho

Even Americans of the highest culture and of Boston families speak English differently from any people in the old country. The difference may not be obvious to all, but it is there, and it is a thing to rejoice in, not to be sorry for. The American nation is different from the British, has different history and a different hope; it has a different soul, therefore its expression should be different. The American face as a type is different; it would be folly to correct the words of the mouth by O

I have come to that portion of my journeying and of my story where all day, every evening, and all night long I was conscious of the odour of mown clover, of fields of ambrosia. I was tramping along the border of Northern Ohio and Southern Michigan, from Toledo to Angola, Indiana. I was entering the rich West. The fields were vast and square, the road was long and flat, and straight and quiet, the June haze hung over luxuriant meadows, and there was a wonderful silence and ripening peace over th

The road into Chicago was one of increasing noise and smoke and desolation, of heat and gloom, and the rumour of a sordid defeat of life. I remember Calumet City by the factory stacks, the chimneys whose blackness seemed fainting out of sight in the haze of the heat. Dark smokes and white steams curled above many workshops; along the roadside black rivulets flowed from the factories. There were heaps of ashes and tin cans lying in odorous ponds. The leaves of the trees and the grasses of the fie

I observed many interesting things in Chicago, the following circular for instance: Balsok aut John J. Casey. Hlasujte na John J. Casey. Glosujgie na John J. Casey. Votate per John J. Casey. Vote for John J. Casey, Labour candidate for Congress. Ten years hence that farrago will have changed to simply "Vote for Casey." My neighbours in the hotel spelt their name in two ways, one way for Polish friends and the other for American understanding: Nawrozke. Navrozky. It is the latter name that will e