I asked if I had caught the words correctly, but she archly insinuated there was something in the second line that wasn't quite correct. I think, though, she was only in fun; the words were quite right, only her eyes seemed to wander in the direction of young B.
The Oxford Don.
None of the ladies would go inside, so Joe had the compartment all to himself, and no doubt smiled at the good joke as we bowled along. Joe was dry inside, and Perry, though outside, was just the same ere we found an inn. This recalled the story of the coachman and the Oxford Don, when the latter expressed his sympathy at the condition of the former; so sorry he was so wet. "Wouldn't mind being so wet, your honor, if I weren't so dry." But I think R. P.'s story almost as good as that. A Don tried to explain to the coachman the operation of the telegraph as they drove along. "They take a glass about the size of an ordinary tumbler, and this they fill with a liquid resembling—ah—like—ah—" "Anything like beer, your honor, for instance?" If Jehu didn't get his complimentary glass at the next halt, that Don was a muff.
The rain ceased, as usual, before we had gone far, and we had a clear dry run until luncheon. We see the Black Country now, rows of little dingy houses beyond, with tall smoky chimneys vomiting smoke, mills and factories at every turn, coal pits and rolling mills and blast furnaces, the very bottomless pit itself; and such dirty, careworn children, hard-driven men, and squalid women. To think of the green lanes, the larks, the Arcadia we have just left. How can people be got to live such terrible lives as they seem condemned to here? Why do they not all run away to the green fields just beyond? Pretty rural Coventry suburbs in the morning and Birmingham at noon; the lights and shadows of human existence can rarely be brought into sharper contrast. If
"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay"
surely better a year in Leamington than life's span in the Black Country! But do not let us forget that it is just Pittsburgh over again; nay, not even quite so bad, for that city bears the palm for dirt against the world. The fact is, however, that life in such places seems attractive to those born to rural life, and large smoky cities drain the country; but surely this may be safely attributed to necessity. With freedom to choose, one would think the rush would be the other way. The working classes in England do not work so hard or so unceasingly as do their fellows in America. They have ten holidays to the American's one. Neither does their climate entail such a strain upon men as ours does.
Overworked Americans.
I remember after Vandy and I had gone round the world and were walking Pittsburgh streets, we decided that the Americans were the saddest-looking race we had seen. Life is so terribly earnest here. Ambition spurs us all on, from him who handles the spade to him who employs thousands. We know no rest. It is different in the older lands—men rest oftener and enjoy more of what life has to give. The young Republic has some things to teach the parent land, but the elder has an important lesson to teach the younger in this respect. In this world we must learn not to lay up our treasures, but to enjoy them day by day as we travel the path we never return to. If we fail in this we shall find when we do come to the days of leisure that we have lost the taste for and the capacity to enjoy them. There are so many unfortunates cursed with plenty to retire upon, but with nothing to retire to! Sound wisdom that school-boy displayed who did not "believe in putting away for to-morrow the cake he could eat to-day." It might not be fresh on the morrow, or the cat might steal it. The cat steals many a choice bit from Americans intended for the morrow. Among the saddest of all spectacles to me is that of an elderly man occupying his last years grasping for more dollars. "The richest man in America sailing suddenly for Europe to escape business cares," said a wise Scotch gentleman to me, one morning, as he glanced over the Times at breakfast. Make a note of that, my enterprising friends, and let it be recorded here that this was written before my friend Herbert Spencer preached to us the gospel of relaxation.
It has always been assumed that dirt and smoke are necessary evils in manufacturing towns, but the next generation will probably wonder how men could be induced to live under such disagreeable conditions. Many of us will live to see all the fuel which is now used in so thriftless a way converted into clean gas before it is fed to the furnaces, and thus consumed without poisoning the atmosphere with smoke, which involves at the same time so great a loss of carbon. Birmingham and Pittsburgh will some day rejoice in unsullied skies, and even London will be a clean city.
We spent the afternoon in Birmingham, and enjoyed a great treat in the Public Hall, in which there is one of the best organs of the world. It is played every Saturday by an eminent musician, admission free. This is one of the little—no, one of the great—things done for the masses in many cities in England, the afternoon of Saturday being kept as a holiday everywhere.