A smile answers that question.
We stood, my friend and I, looking over the placid ocean as the moon just pierced the clouds and glimmered on the waters.
Evening splendours were upon the surface of the sea, the delicate light of the moon just showing the waves, most beautiful and alluring.
"It is like first acquaintance with one's beloved," said I; "like the first smile that life gives you, bidding you follow her and woo her. Later on, in the rich splendour, when the golden road is clear and certain and ours, we do not care for the quest. We look back to those first enchanting glances, those promising reconnaissances. The promise of love is more precious than love itself, for it promises more than itself; it promises the unearthly; it touches a note of a song that we heard once, and have been all our lives aching to remember and sing again."
America is too happy and certain and prosperous a place for some. It is a place where the soul falls into a happy sleep. The more America improves, the more will it prove a place of success, of material well-being, of physical health, and sound, eugenically established men and women. But to me, personally, success is a reproach; and failure, danger, calamity, incertitude is a glory. For this world is not a satisfying home, and there are those who confess themselves strangers and pilgrims upon the earth.
* * * * * * *
Back to Russia! From the most forward country to the most backward country in the world; from the place where "time is money" to where the trains run at eighteen miles an hour; from the land of Edison to the land of Tolstoy; from the religion of philanthropy to the religion of suffering—home once more.