Leaves in the Wind

by A. G. Gardiner

Then the engine struck work, and the conductor went to the help of the driver. It was a long job, and presently the lady with the dog stole down the stairs and re-entered the bus. When the engine was put right the conductor came back and pulled the bell. Then his eye fell on the dog, and his hand went to the bell-rope again. The driver looked round, the conductor pointed to the dog, the bus stopped, and the struggle recommenced with all the original features, the conductor walking the pavement, the driver smacking his arm on the box, the little dog blinking at the lights, the sealskin lady declaring that she would not go on the top—and finally going....

"I've got my rules," said the conductor to me when I was the last passenger left behind. He had won his victory, but felt that he would like to justify himself to somebody.

"Rules," I said, "are necessary things, but there are rules and rules. Some are hard and fast rules, like the rule of the road, which cannot be broken without danger to life and limb. But some are only rules for your guidance, which you can apply or wink at, as common sense dictates—like that rule about the dogs. They are not a whip put in your hand to scourge your passengers with, but an authority for an emergency. They are meant to be observed in the spirit, not in the letter—for the comfort and not the discomfort of the passengers. You have kept the rule and broken its spirit. You want to mix your rules with a little goodwill and good temper."

He took it very well, and when I got off the bus he said "Good night" quite amiably.

ON THE AMERICAN SOLDIER

I hope the young American soldier, with whom we are becoming so familiar in the street, the tube and the omnibus, has found us as agreeable as we have found him. We were not quite sure whether we should like him, but the verdict is very decisively in the affirmative. It has been my fortune to know many Americans in the past, but they were for the most part selected Americans, elderly persons, statesmen, writers, diplomatists, journalists, and so on. Not having been in America I had not realised what the plain, average citizen, especially the young citizen, was like. Now he is here, walking our streets and rubbing shoulders with us in sufficient numbers for a general impression to be taken. It is a pleasant impression. I like the air of plenty that he carries with him, the well-nourished body, the sense of ease with himself and the world, the fund of good nature that he seems to have at command, the frankness of bearing, and, what was least expected, the touch of self-conscious modesty that is rarely absent.

If I may say so without offending him, he seems extraordinarily English. Physically he is rather bulkier than the average English youth, and his accent distinguishes him; but these differences only serve to sharpen the impression that he is one of ourselves who has been away somewhere—in a civilised land, where the larder is full, the schools plenty, and the family life homely and cordial. It is very rare that you see what you would call a foreign face in the uniform. This is singular in view of the mighty stream of immigration from Continental countries that has been flowing for three-quarters of a century into the melting pot of the United States; but I do not think the fact can be doubted. The blood is more mixed than ours, but the main current is emphatically British.

Perhaps the difference that is observable could be expressed by saying that the American is not so much reminiscent of ourselves as of our forebears. He suggests a former generation rather than this. We have grown sophisticated, urban, and cynical; he still has the note of the country and of the older fashions that persist in the country. Lowell long ago pointed out that many of the phrases which we regarded as American slang were good old East Anglian words which had been taken out by the early settlers in New England and persisted there after they had been forgotten by us. And in the same way the moral tone of the American to-day is like an echo from our past. He preserves the fervour for ideals which we seem to have lost. There is something of the revivalist in him, something elemental and primitive that responds to a moral appeal.

It is this abiding strain of English Puritanism which is responsible for the tidal wave of temperance that has swept the United States. Already nearly half the States have gone "bone dry," and it is calculated that, perhaps in two years, certainly in five, with the present temper in being, the whole of the Union will have banished the liquor traffic. A moral phenomenon of this sort might have been possible in the England of two or three generations ago; it is unthinkable in the moral atmosphere of to-day. The industrial machine has dried up the spring of moral enthusiasm. It will only return by a new way of life. Perhaps the new way of life is beginning in the allotment movement which is restoring to us the primal sanities of nature. We may find salvation in digging.