I have had opportunity for but little sight-seeing about Boston, for the days were filled with meetings and labors. But the Public Library I did visit. Oh, those book palaces, those book cathedrals in America! What is not granted there to the people hungry for learning! And in what form it is given! The building is adorned with all the magic of architectural and plastic arts; the frescoes that adorn the palatial stairway—designed by Puvis de Chavannes—are a poem; another great master, Sargent, was intrusted with the decoration of some of the inner rooms. Beauty everywhere!
There is a widespread notion that the American possesses only a business sense and not an æsthetic sense; that the cities with their “cloud-scratchers” and elevated roads and warehouses are ugly. What a mistake! The horn of plenty that has scattered its treasures over this land has not forgotten beauty any more than wealth. Not to speak of natural beauties—Niagara Falls, the Rocky Mountains, and the like—I mean the works of man. Whoever planted woodbine, ivy, and other vines, to clamber in rich luxuriance up the walls, even to the roofs of houses and churches, knew that he was creating beauty. Here again nature comes to man’s aid, for the autumn foliage glows and gleams in colors which are quite unknown in our landscapes. In contrast with the brilliant hues there are soft and tender tones,—such an azure green, such a rosy gray, such a bright golden violet as only the most audacious art secessionist would venture to mix on his palette.
After the close of the Boston Congress public meetings were arranged in many other cities,—New York, Philadelphia, Worcester, Springfield, Northampton, Toronto, Buffalo, Cincinnati, and elsewhere; and in these places the principal men and women who had been speaking at the Peace Congress gave lectures concerning the transactions there and the peace movement in general. Everywhere were the same enthusiastic interest on the part of the public, the same dignified treatment on the part of official circles, and the same detailed and approving reports from the press. Our lectures were desired and applauded in churches, universities, girls’ schools, workingmen’s homes, concert halls,—everywhere.
On my return to New York I got somewhat acquainted with the city. The word “acquainted,” though, seems presumptuous when I had only a few days, or rather a few hours—for the days were filled for the most part with the duties of my calling—to devote to this giant phenomenon, this city of three millions. Nevertheless, even what is seen as quickly as in a lightning flash can leave an abiding impression, especially when it is so surprising and overpowering. If I were to sum up the impression that America made on me, I might say that I was affected somewhat as Bellamy’s hero was, who, after sleeping for many years, wakes up in an absolutely changed and improved world. Not as if, as in the case described by Bellamy, several centuries had been passed in sleep, but rather as if two or three decades, filled with discoveries and other advances, had been anticipated; thus seemed everything around me. The woman movement, the anti-alcohol movement, the social movement, technical arts, popular education, democratic spirit, toleration, comfort of living, luxury, physical development,—everything speedily carried forward and upward to a climax. A still deeper impression than the one made by all that was so abundantly flowering there (I grant that there may be also many poisonous plants in the garden) was made upon me by what is planted there, by what is still hidden in the seeds but is full of promise for rich harvests in the future. Education is power, education is freedom, education is ennoblement; and from that treasure, which is indeed imported from the Old World, such mighty systems of culture multiplied and disseminated will be established in the New World that for the coming generations an inestimable raising of the general standard of life is to be expected. I have had the opportunity to see universities, colleges, and libraries, and to hear about the settlements of university extension. “Education,” said an American lady to me, “is something which we feel in duty bound to disseminate widely; the whole people must be able to share in it.”
All the development of magnificence, all the zeal in conferring donations, which in the Old World has been shown in princely palaces and cathedrals, in the New World—and from far richer sources—flows into places for education. That, indeed, up to the present time, more fundamental knowledge is to be obtained at European universities is indicated by the fact that Americans whose means permit it, and who are particularly ambitious, come to us to study, and that all the professors and scientists there regard it as a privilege to be able to spend a few years as students in our higher institutions; but I am speaking now of the dissemination, especially the coming dissemination, of public instruction, which is still so young in America. Its deepening will come of itself, together with the rejection of much useless educational truck inherited from the olden days and not likely to be any longer useful for the new times.
Unfortunately I did not make the acquaintance of the so-called “smart set,” the upper four hundred, whose palaces line Fifth Avenue and who are so constantly regarded as the type of the leading classes in America—though as mistakenly so regarded as a certain Boulevard society is taken for the prototype of French character. It would have been very interesting to study this “smart set.” All that I saw was the outside of their palaces, but they certainly presented to the eye no remarkable splendor. Their possessors—the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers and Morgans and Astors and others—at this season of the year were either still at their country estates or away traveling.
The huge opera house, in which German, French, and Italian operas, each in the original, are performed by the leading artists of the world, was not yet opened. The Italian opera will begin with Puccini’s Bohème, sung by Caruso and Marcella Sembrich. Madame Schumann-Heink, who is undertaking the rôle of Kundry, is just at present the object of many social attentions and incessant interviews. The performances of Parsifal, regarded by Frau Cosima Wagner as desecration, are said to have been of overwhelming beauty.
The Americans are importing all our treasures of refined art and old culture; for us there is only one revenge: we must absorb more and more of their acquisitions, give more attention to the life that is unfolding there, rise above envy and jealousy, above pride and prejudice,—those feelings which in an epoch of international intercourse are no longer suitable, and which in the past have stood in the way of the development of universal comity. For, after all, we are only one world; every treasure, every forward step in whatever corner of the earth, increases the wealth and the potentiality of happiness of the whole human family.
The words “human family” (a family as yet far from united, still living in bitter feud) bring me back to the theme that lay at the basis of my whole transatlantic journey,—the Peace Congress. In New York, among the festivities arranged in honor of the delegates, was a great meeting organized by the Germans living there. It was held in Terrace Garden under the honorary chairmanship of Oscar S. Straus, member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, former Ambassador Dr. Andrew D. White, and the universally respected Carl Schurz. “Why so respected?” This question was once put to Dr. White by Bismarck. “Tell me, on what grounds does the old forty-eighter enjoy such universal and high regard in your country?” “For this reason,” replied the American ambassador, “because he was the man who treated the slavery question, which at that time was the question, not, as was customary, from the philanthropical or the constitutional, but from the philosophical standpoint, with regard to its significance not for the negroes, but for the country.”
Perhaps, I might add, the Americans are so charmed by Carl Schurz because, when he was in a leading position in the public service, he called a halt in the increasing deforestation of the country. And, above all, because he is a personality! I made his acquaintance, and in his house spent one of the most exhilarating hours of my American visit.