The American woman is an excellent speaker. It is surprising to hear her oratory at one of her large club luncheons, such as the Sorosis in New York. I was honoured with an invitation as their special guest (1900), and for the first time in my life saw two hundred women sit down together for a meal. The club woman is young and handsome, well dressed and pleasing, and she stands up and addresses a couple of hundred women just as easily as she would begin a tête-à-tête across a luncheon table. She is not shy, or if she is she hides it cleverly.
Americans entertain royally; they almost overpower the stranger with hospitality. They are generous in a high degree, not only in big things, but in constantly thinking of “little gifts or kindnesses” to shower upon their guests. They become the warmest and truest of friends, in spite of their sensitiveness and hatred of criticism. Never were any people so sensitive about their country or themselves, or so ready to take offence at the slightest critical word. But we all have our weaknesses, and while we are too terribly thick-skinned and self-satisfied, Americans are perhaps too sensitive for their own happiness. They are not only warm friends amongst themselves both in sunshine and in shade, but they are equally staunch to their English visitors. They may in the main be a tiny bit jealous of England, but individually they seem to love British people, and welcome them so warmly one can only regret that more English do not travel in America where they would see her people at their best, for, alas! many of the Americans who come over here leave a wrong impression altogether of the charms of our brothers and sisters across the Atlantic.
The more the inhabitants of these two countries see of one another, the better they understand and appreciate each other’s feelings, the stronger are forged the links of the chain of brotherhood. And the stronger this chain is made, the better for the whole world.
America! It is impossible to mention here all the delightful people I met in America, from Mark Twain to Thompson Seton; from Kate Douglas Wiggin to Gertrude Atherton; from Agnes Lant to Julia Marlowe; from Jane Addams to Louise Chandler Moulton; from Dana Gibson to Roosevelt. Their names are legion, and in grateful remembrance they lie until I can visit their shores again, and shake them by the hand. I simply loved the American women.
The following delightful Christmas note from Dr. Horace Howard Furness, the great Shakespearian writer of America, and one of her foremost sons, is an instance of the kindly remembrance and loyal friendliness the American people keep green for their English friends, bridging not only the billowy Atlantic but the swift stream of Time.
“Wallingford,
Delaware County,
Pennsylvania,
December 12, 1910.
“Mrs. Alec Tweedie,
London, England.
“Dear Mrs. Tweedie,
“’Tis very pleasant to know that you still hold me in remembrance, whether it be in the bright days of Christmas-tide or in the grey days of the rest of the year.
“It is good to know that you have been journeying with your boys. What happy fellows they must have been, and what a proud, proud mother you!
“Politics in England, at present, are intensely interesting, and it is certainly pleasanter to look on from afar than to be in the turmoil itself. Having lived through that horrible nightmare, our own Civil War, I have learned that it is far from pleasant to live in times which the Germans call ‘epoch-machende.’