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...
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