Major Hospitality arrested me the moment I arrived, and handed me over to the Inky Inquisition—eight gentlemen of the Press—who placed me on the interviewer's rack at the demand of insatiable modern journalism. I scraped through the ordeal as well as could be expected in the circumstances, considering I hadn't yet acquired my land-legs. The raging waves may roar their loudest, and the stormy winds may blow their hardest, but they don't affect me. It is only when I find myself on terra firma once more that I feel any effects from an ocean trip. For the benefit of those who are subject to mal de mer I will disclose my prescription to act as a reliable safeguard, and that is to mesmerise yourself so that once on board no sensations seem to you strange or unwonted. The only drawback is that I have not yet discovered how to unmesmerise myself, although my theory worked splendidly when on board, so that when I get on shore I feel as if I were still on the sea. I am always ducking breakers, descending companion ladders, and I roll across the street as if it were the deck of a liner. Every building I enter seems to be rocking up and down, up and down, and as on the occasion I refer to I sat before the knights of the quill to be cross-examined, I felt as if I were in the cabin of a ship rather than in my own room at the hotel, and that the books on the table were in reality fiddles to keep the glasses and other things from falling off.
It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that the next day I find myself described as "not a well man," although "his face is ruddy," and "his blue eyes have a tired look and his hand is not so steady as it might be." I would like to know whose hand would be steady if, after six days of Atlantic travel, he was landed to find himself suddenly confronted with eight talented gentlemen, cross-questioning him ad lib., measuring the length of his foot, counting the buttons on his coat, and the hairs on his head, and if, after his tiring journey, he happened to yawn, looking to see whether he had false teeth or not!
And then to be handed a bad pen and worse paper, and have to draw pictures in pen and ink, in the space of five minutes, for the eight gentlemen who were watching to see "how it's done"! I have sketched crowned heads on their thrones, bishops in their pulpits, thieves in their dens, and beauties in their drawing-rooms; but I never felt such nervousness as I did when I had to caricature myself on the occasion of my first experience of American interviewing.
In my seeing America in a hurry, I addressed the reporters somewhat in this fashion:
"SANDY."
"I am not disappointed with anything I have seen. I was told that I would find the worst-paved streets in the world. I have found them. I was told that I would see unsightly, old-fashioned telegraph-poles sticking up in the streets. I have seen them. I was told that I would have to pay a small fortune for my cab from the docks to my hotel. I have paid it. I was told that a newspaper reporter would ask me what I thought of America as soon as I landed. I am asked that question by eight gentlemen of the Press; indeed, I was interrogated upon that point by the representative of a leading American paper before I left the shores of England. I was told that I would find the most charming and best-dressed women in the world. That promise is more than realised.
"I find New York as bright as Paris, as busy as London, as interesting as Rome, and, in fact, I am so delighted and bewildered with everybody and everything that, like the old lady's parrot, I don't say much, but I think a deal; and now my difficulty is to convey those thoughts to the public through the medium of your valuable papers."
Scores of Columbuses arrive at Sandy Hook every week to discover America for themselves, from Charles Columbus Dickens to Rudyard Columbus Kipling, to say nothing of Tom, Dick, Harry Columbus Brown, Jones, Robinson. It is hardly fair to say that they go over with their pockets full of letters of introduction to their American cousins, who receive them with open arms and unlimited hospitality, and then that these Toms, Dicks, and Harrys bring back in exchange notes for columns of ridicule and abuse of their Transatlantic friends. If our Americans have a fault, it is a very slight one. They are too sensitive. They seem to forget that they receive and honour some of our countrymen as critics and satirists, but they expect that on leaving their shores their late guests will wash off the critical and satirical sides of their natures just as an actor removes his paint and make-up on leaving the boards.
Americans, both publicly and privately, are incessantly interviewing the stranger: "What do you think of our great country? What do you think of ourselves?" They live in a glass house filled with forced young plants, from out of which house they may throw stones at the stranger, but woe betide the critic who has the temerity to cast one in return. He gets his impressions from the hothouse society snobs reared in the hotels of the cities, the dollar worshipper, the vulgar millionaire, made more obnoxious by the newer European importation, happily a plant not true to the American soil. We strangers too often see but the cut flowers, showy, glaring, to-day; jaded, gone to-morrow. We do not see the cultured orchid or the natural wild flowers of America, for the simple reason we do not look for them in seeing that wonderful country in a hurry.