PAGE
Prologue[xi]
CHAPTER
I. The Voyage[1]
II. The Arrival of the Immigrant[41]
III. The Passion of America and the Tradition of Britain[54]
IV. Ineffaceable Memories of New York[73]
V. The American Road[85]
VI. The Reflection of the Machine[103]
VII. Russians and Slavs at Scranton[123]
VIII. American Hospitality[141]
IX. Over the Alleghanies[161]
X. Decoration Day[177]
XI. Wayfarers of all Nationalities[188]
XII. Characteristics[209]
XIII. Along Erie Shore[225]
XIV. The American Language[245]
XV. Through the Heart of the Country[252]
XVI. The Choir Dance of the Races[274]
XVII. Farewell, America![294]

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. The emigrants in sight of the grey-green statue of Liberty in New York Harbour[Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
2. Russian women on board—
(a) The peasant[12]
(b) The intellectual and revolutionary type[12]
3. The boisterous Flemings[14]
4. (a) The dreamy Norwegian with the concertina[18]
(b) The endless dancing[18]
5. (a) A Russian Jew[26]
(b) "A patriarchal Jew, very tall and gaunt, hauled along a small fat woman of his race" [26]
6. "One of the young ladies was being tossed up in a blanket with a young Irish lad" (p. 25)[30]
7. (a) English[36]
(b) Russians—Fedya, Satiron, Alexy, Yoosha, Karl, Maxim Holost[36]
8. Dainty Swedish girls and their partners looking over the sea[44]
9. Apple orchards in blossom on the spurs of the Catskills[84]
10. On the way to school: my breakfast party[92]
11. The tramp's dressing-room[110]
12. By the side of the highway to Michigan: the electric freight train[120]
13. An Indiana farm: the wind-well behind it, the wheatfield in front[142]
14. "The cream-vans come along and buy up all the cream" (p. 261)[152]
15. "Ploughed upland all dotted over with white heaps of fertiliser" (p. 161)[158]
16. "Slovaks working on the line with pick and shovel"[166]
17. The Slav children of Snow-Shoe Creek[174]
18. Italians working with the "mixer" on the Meadville Pike[200]
19. Ingenious photographs of American types[212]
20. The Lithuanian who sat behind the asphalt and coal-oil scatterer[226]
21. "Johnny Kishman, a German boy, got off his bicycle to find out what manner of man I was" (p. 233)[234]
22. Erie Shore. "Amidst old logs, under a stooping willow tree, I made my bed" (p. 235)[238]
23. The sower[252]
24. The store on wheels[258]
25. "I had an interesting talk with an ancient man by the side of the road"[262]
26. "Old Samuel Judie, lying on a bank, and philosophising on life"[270]
27. At the fountain in the park: a hot day in Chicago[276]

PROLOGUE

From Russia to America; from the most backward to the most forward country in the world; from the place where machinery is merely imported or applied, to the place where it is invented; from the land of Tolstoy to the land of Edison; from the most mystical to the most material; from the religion of suffering to the religion of philanthropy.

Russia and America are the Eastern and Western poles of thought. Russia is evolving as the greatest artistic philosophical and mystical nation of the world, and Moscow may be said already to be the literary capital of Europe. America is showing itself as the site of the New Jerusalem, the place where a nation is really in earnest in its attempt to realise the great dream of human progress. Russia is the living East; America is the living West—as India is the dead East and Britain is the dying West. Siberia will no doubt be the West of the future.