By Edward A. Steiner Author of “From Alien to Citizen,” “The Immigrant Tide,” etc.   colophon     New York   Chicago   Toronto Fleming     H.     Revell     Company London     and     Edinburgh   Copyright, 1910, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street To Professor Richard Hochdoerfer, Ph. D. erudite scholar and most lovable friend, this book is dedicated    ...

“D as ist ganz Americanish .” Whenever a German says this, he means that it is something which is practical, lavish, daringly reckless or lawless. It means a short cut to achievement, a disregard of convention, an absence of those qualities which have given to the older nations of the world that fine, distinguishing flavor which is a fruit of the spirit. Many attempts have been made to enlighten the Old World upon that point; but in spite of exchange-professorships and some notable, interpretati

T HE Herr Director and I were sitting over our coffee in the Café Bauer , Unter den Linden . In the midst of my account of some of the men of America and the idealistic movements in which they are interested, he rudely interrupted with: “You may tell that to some one who has never been in the United States; but not to me who have travelled through the length and breadth of it three times.” He said it in an ungenerous, impatient way, although his last visit was thirty years ago and his journeys a

T HE Herr Director and the Frau Directorin wished to go to church on Sunday, and after eating a piously late breakfast I spread before them New York City’s religious bill of fare, bewildering in its variety and puzzling in its terminology. I gave them a choice between four varieties of Catholics: Roman, Greek, Old and Apostolic; more than twice that number of Lutherans, separated one from the other by degrees of orthodoxy and nearness to or farness from their historic confessions. There were Met

M UCH to my regret the Herr Director did not sleep well that second night in the United States. His nerves had suffered from those first thronging impressions, he looked pale and was decidedly irritable; “for how could a man sleep or be expected to sleep in this business canyon, loud from the thunder of the elevated, and bright from the flashing of illuminated signs?” Together they had the effect of an electric storm upon him. When he did fall asleep he dreamed that the Metropolitan Tower, the W

M ANY years ago the Herr Director and I were tramping through the Hartz Mountains in northern Germany. He had not yet achieved portliness and fame; while to me, America was still the land of Indians and buffaloes, and I had never dreamed of going there. We were climbing the Brocken, and that which thrilled me more than its granite steeps and deeply mysterious pines was, the hundreds of school-boys and girls we met, singing as they climbed, and who, when they rested, listened to their teachers wh

I F I were gastronomically inclined I would study New York’s cosmopolitan population and its progress towards Americanization from the standpoint of its restaurants; for the appetite is most loyally patriotic. A man may cease to speak his mother tongue and have forsworn allegiance to Kaiser and to King, but still cling to his ancestral bill of fare. If I were an absolute monarch and wished my alien people quickly assimilated, I would permit them to speak their native tongue and cling to the fait

T HE anteroom of the editor’s office was crowded when the Herr Director and I arrived to meet the men of the staff at luncheon. The Herr Director is a publicist himself, and has edited one of the best known German newspapers. Having called on him when he was trying to mould an already moulded public opinion I made some interesting comparisons which he did not approve. I could not forbear reminding him how, when I once called on him in his office, I had to wait in a similar anteroom over an hour,

“T AKE us out of New York,” the Herr Director said after a wearing day of sightseeing, “or we will go home on the next steamer. My neck aches from looking at the sky-scrapers, my nerves are all on edge, and,” glancing at the Frau Directorin who had hugely enjoyed every moment and showed no sign of weariness, “we must have rest.” I was reluctant to leave New York, because, after all, it holds those great thrills with which we like to startle our foreign friends. I feared the change from those dai

N EW YORK is geographically misplaced for such a purpose as mine. It ought to lie somewhere west of Niagara Falls, so that one might be able to take strangers to that wonderful cataract without their having previously exhausted all the emotions which they are capable of expressing. The day journey between New York and Buffalo is never commonplace, especially when it furnishes such euphonious names as Susquehanna, Wilkes Barre, Mauch Chunk, etc. From the hilltops we had glimpses of great valleys

W HAT the foreigner thinks of the American Pullman, if he has to spend a night in it, may be found in any volume of the extremely voluminous and interesting literature upon the United States, written by visitors to this country; but more interesting still would be what they have not written about it, and that I have had frequent chances of hearing. The most picturesque and exhaustive comments I ever heard were those made by the Herr Director the evening we left Buffalo, and as he finally determi

T O the average European there are two things American which have not yet lost their romantic quality: The prairies and the West. Anticipations of seeing both, filled the breast of the Frau Directorin with mingled feelings of fear and pleasure, as she discussed with her husband the fate of the children they had left behind them—in the event of our being captured by the Indians. However, the probability of our safe return and her consequent opportunity to tell envious friends her experiences in t

B OTH the Herr Director and his wife had a strange desire to see the Mormons. They explained it by saying that besides the Indians whom they had as yet not seen, and the Negroes whom they had seen everywhere, they always thought of the Mormons as most American, that is most unlike other people. The Rocky Mountains, as I had expected, did not impress them. From the car window they seemed more like elevated plains, with here and there a restless chain of hills in the distance. “As restless as the

S INCE landing in New York the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin had endured many a formal reception; she with angelic patience, and he with the usual masculine aversion to formal social amenities. When I announced that a reception was to be tendered us in San Francisco, he cried with uplifted hands, “ Um Gottes Willen! ” He did not object to really meeting people; but to stand in line an hour or two shaking hundreds of outstretched hands, not knowing nor caring much to whom they belonged, s

B ETWEEN the Grand Canyon and the ship there might be “many a slip,” especially as I was to conclude my guardianship of the travellers in my own town, prosaically placed in the great Mississippi Valley, which consists of two plains—one at the top and the other at the bottom, filled with corn and hogs, and most prosperous and contented people. The place towards which we journeyed holds two things which are the biggest, most beautiful, and best things in the world—my home and my work, both of whic

T HERE are some aspects of our American life which I tried to hide from my guests. I kept as many of our national family skeletons as possible in their closets, and made sure that the doors were securely locked. I was glad that the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin were to leave this country before our insane Fourth of July, which we are endeavoring to make sane. I did not care to have them here on Thanksgiving Day from which, through the superabundance of turkey and cranberry sauce, the ele

I AM sure the Herr Director will not object if I have the last word; for while he was with me that privilege was seldom mine and obtained only by dint of strategy. Since his departure, the great war which he prophesied has moved over Europe and hides every bit of fair and peaceful sky like a storm-cloud; its thunder and destructive lightning fill the air, leaving scarcely a place safe and undisturbed. Not a soul is unafraid, not a heart is without pain and sorrow, and the Herr Director himself,